The bags are packed. Tearful goodbyes. She’s off for a year of seminary. One year. A small segment in the larger scheme of time. Yet, for many, this one year becomes the forge and the catalyst that molds the basis for much of their future life. What lessons remain? Which thoughts made the strongest impressions?
For most of us, seminary is a cozy little cocoon of existence, sandwiched between twelve years of schooling and the rest of our lives. Over the course of one year (or two, or three), we sit there soaking up the atmosphere of kedushah, learning Rashis and Rambans, and discussing the profundities of life.
And then comes “real life.” Jobs and shidduchim, marriage and children, stressors and challenges. Caught up in the rigors of everyday life, how many of us remember the lessons we learned in seminary, much less how to apply them on a day-to-day basis? How many of us are still reviewing our seminary notes or remember what the Shiurei Daasor the Ramchal had to say on the parshah? Can we still hold our own when it comes to a Shabbos-table discussion about some vital point of halachah or hashkafah? And if we can’t, what does remain with us ten, twenty, thirty, or even forty years post-seminary? What do we gain from our seminary experience after much of the information we learned has been forgotten?
Family First spoke to women decades out of seminary to discover the answer.
Nechama Burnham, who attended two years of Yavne Teachers’ College in Cleveland,Ohio, in 1968, relates, “Seminary was so much more than a classroom. It was a totalexperience. The Telshe Yeshiva and the kollel couples were right there. They opened my eyes to what it means to live a life of Torah.”
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