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NEWS
Annual Seminaries Union Gathering Highlights Contemporary Threats
by Yated Ne'eman Staff
The Seminaries Union workshop held on the sixth night of Chanukah in Bnei Brak focused on protecting Bais Yaakov schools from outside influences that pose a threat to pure Torah education. Also on the agenda was a fully formed plan to start using the Hebrew calendar for planning the school year, a change that has long been called for, but steps toward adopting it have been inadequate. The event was a success and provided a forum for Bais Yaakov positions and plans currently being implemented.
The workshop is a longstanding annual tradition organized by Seminaries Union General-Secretary R' Yitzchok Osterlitz, who was on hand to receive the principals arriving from across the country.
The opening speaker was HaRav Ze'ev Wolf, principal of Bais Yaakov HaRav Wolf in Bnei Brak and chairman of the Seminaries Union. He discussed the challenge of safeguarding the "pure jar of oil," Bais Yaakov, which he described as the foundation and light of Am Yisroel, both today and for generations to come.
HaRav Yehoshua Eichenstein, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Yad Aharon in Jerusalem, warned against various tests hovering above us and threatening our spirituality. "We're facing difficult and bitter nisyonos that our forefathers never imagined, such as the Internet, weekly newspapers and news phone lines. We must unite our spiritual strengths in order to defeat the impact of the dangers," he said.
"Previous generations had to contend with nisyonos as well — in Lithuania through the Mussar Movement, and in other places through Chassidus and tzaddikim who had a following. In a later generation, around the time the State of Israel was declared, the yeshivas and Bais Yaakov schools were started in Eretz Hakodesh. Now we are confronting serious new dangers and threats. Today's problems include permissiveness, the media, the Internet and high standards of living."
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