Orthodox Union President Boasts NCSY Trips Convert Public School Kids Into “Yeshivah Products”
Liberal and Secular Jewish Parents, Warn Your Teens Not to Accept Candy From Strangers, or Pizza From NCSY/JSU!
The Orthodox Union president, Stephen Savitsky is busy. Busy, busy, busy. Turning liberal Jewish kids into yeshiva products! Thanks to the OU, your kid can have the value system you instilled in him replaced in a mere six weeks!
Steve Savitsky, the president of the Orthodox Union, the parent organization of NCSY, writes in the official organ of the OU, Jewish Action that,
“Six weeks of a camping experience can turn a Jewish public school student into a yeshivah product.”
Isn’t that wonderful?
Remember, though, it’s a process:
1) JSU public school recruitment through pizza parties
2) Latte and Learning
3) Shabbatons
4) Trips
Now, for those kids who are really open to rejection of western civilization and replacing it with a flat-out fundamentalist approach, have we got a trip for you! NCSY’s Kollel trip – because nothing advocates “Modern” Orthodoxy quite like “Kollel.”
“Six weeks of NCSY Kollel can transform a nice day school student into a budding ben Torah.”
To find a JSU chapter near you (and there are over 170 chapters, most, but not all of which are run by NCSY advisers who want to help your kid think like they do and not like you do, please go here.
These are the goals of NCSY. Not “to get more Jewish teens attending public high schools to do something Jewish! That’s it! It’s that simple!!!” They want to make the into “yeshivah products” — the head of the OU’s own coarse words. Not mine. Or, if they can, to make them into “b’nai Torah” — a type of Orthodoxy usually reserved for black hatters.
This is what they want. This is who they are.
18 comments
you had me until the end.
so you honestly believe ANY public school kids are going on kollel?
sorry “do” not so
“so you honestly believe ANY public school kids are going on kollel?”
Only a few. What I DO believe is that they will be taught to chase approval from the black hat community and use the “yeshivish” community as the either the standard, or at least, as an influence.
“Ben Torah” signals black hat identification to some degree.
Take a look at Beyond BT. These guys certainly aren’t Kollelniks, but they chase black hat and yeshiva approval.
how horrible. they’re going to reject “western civilization” wtf is western civilization anyhow?
All this Kollel stuff is a bit scary, but if you live in Jerusalem you see scores of very young kids (English speaking), with a very lot of money and no supervision having a whole lot of fun. They say they are here to “study”. Apparently there are some youngsters strong enought to resist the call of the “dark light”. Their parents would probably roll over if they knew what was going on, but for the most part these kids seem to keep out of serious trouble and I’ll bet the farm that they will have some great memories and crazy stories to tell when they get older!
Jewish public school kids are like any other Jewish kids.
If they get caught up in the haredi/yeshivish life-style in Israel or anywhere else, they’ll slowly over time lose their hard-core learning habits and eventually become mainstream Jews, Heebing it up like the rest of us. Isn’t this what happens to kids from MO or RWMO day schools anyway?
At least they’ll have a decent Jewish backbone. For the amount of kids this helps as opposed to hurts, I’m all for it.
wtf is western civilization anyhow?
Science, history, you know…Tumah, Mo
“how horrible. they’re going to reject “western civilization””
I was going to say something horribly sarcastic, but instead will just invite you to imagine it and save myself the trouble of actually doing it, while at the same time enhancing my plausible deniability by not actually saying it myself.
What I DO believe is that they will be taught to chase approval from the black hat community and use the “yeshivish” community as the either the standard, or at least, as an influence.
“Ben Torah” signals black hat identification to some degree.
I think you’re misunderstanding. The term “Yeshiva student” does not mean becoming “Yeshivish.” It just means a student who attended a Yeshiva or Jewish school and received a Jewish education. There are plenty of kids who go to Yeshiva and are not Yeshivish. The word “Yeshiva” is often used loosely like that. When they say, “Six weeks of a camping experience can turn a Jewish public school student into a yeshivah product.” - they don’t mean they’re going to turn anyone Yeshivish. They just mean the kids are hopefully going to come out with more of a Jewish education than they had going in. The same with “ben Torah.” It just means a Jewish student who learns and follows the Torah. It doesn’t mean going to kollel, it doesn’t mean wearing a black hat, it doesn’t mean becoming Yeshivish or Chareidi. It means learning and following the Torah. If you have a problem with Jews who follow the Torah, then you’re not just against the Right Wing. You’re against Judaism as a whole.
The same with “ben Torah.” It just means a Jewish student who learns and follows the Torah. It doesn’t mean going to kollel, it doesn’t mean wearing a black hat, it doesn’t mean becoming Yeshivish or Chareidi.
Uh huh, Then why choose the name “Kollel” for one of their problems? And why did Savitsky himself differentiate between the Kollel summer program and the other programs?
They have a kollel. That doesn’t mean it’s for every kid and not every NCSYer should go to it, either. Going to NCSY doesn’t mean going to their Kollel. That’s just one of their many programs that caters to a specific kind of kid.
Right. They replace paradigms from yeshiva day school to black hatter. There is a range to the conversion they seek.
It’s not conversion. They’re not seeking to turn anyone into anything they’re not. They’re looking to help Jewish kids grow in their Judaism to whatever level those kids feel comfortable with. If there are certain kids that are really into it, then yes, they’ll be encouraged to continue being into it. Kids in NCSY choose to grow or not to grow. No one is forcing them or brainwashing them. Educating, yes, but what kids do with education is up to them.
They’re not seeking to turn anyone into anything they’re not.
Wrong. They are not “yeshivah products.” It is similar to evangelicals who attempt to convert liberal Christian kids to fundamentalist Christianity.
No one is forcing them or brainwashing them. No one is forcing them ANYMORE. However, there are tactics which have been used in the past and are probably still used today which are problematic, including sleep deprivation combined with love bombing.
All “Yeshiva products” means is that they will be educated as if they went to a Yeshiva - a Jewish school. What they do with that education is up to them. And you cannot say that education is the same thing as brainwashing. I don’t know what you’re talking about with sleep deprivation and I don’t even know what love bombing is. No one in NCSY was ever sleep deprived on purpose and certainly not to be brainwashed. The only reason they’d be sleep deprived is if they stayed up all night on a Shabbaton hanging out with their friends.
Sleep deprivation? Like all night Nintendo sessions? Love bombing? Like endless marketing saturated media? Enforced poverty? Like the notion that your nation’s poor have a snowball’s chance in hell of achieving wealth in a society with an ever increasing income disparity? Come on Kelsey. Apply these standards to the world around you. Then you’ll really find something to kvetch about! I’d take you a lot more seriously if you were a little more even handed.
The only reason they’d be sleep deprived is if they stayed up all night on a Shabbaton hanging out with their friends.
Yes, followed by the hyper-emotional Havdallah service. Read this in Salon: http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt.....19/lanner/
When “education” means a significant change of lifestyle which was/is hidden from the parents, well, that is problematic. And NCSY hides it goals at many points in the manufacturing of underage “yeshivah products.”
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