The seminary experience should therefore be rooting our young women to Toras Eretz Yisrael in all its dimensions
Perhaps I was raised a little differently than my contemporaries. My father a”h, a child Holocaust survivor, raised me on an old song of longing, “Me’al Pisgat Har Hatzofim, Shalom Lach Yerushalayim.” In 1946, only my grandfather’s sickness prevented my paternal family’s planned move to Eretz Yisrael with the Brichah.
I was raised with the assumption that all we have built here, while beautiful, is temporary. So while our Devorah is only four, and no doubt I will wince when the bill comes, I am saving a small amount for seminary now, and looking forward to her building her own connection to the Land. A Land that the first Rashi in Chumash teaches has been calling our people from the very beginning.
Shmuel Winiarz is a real estate attorney and amateur Jewish historian. He lives in Passaic, New Jersey, with his family.
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1100)
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