2.12.2008
More on separate web yeshivot
I am nothing if not fair, so after posting that last post, I sent a quick e-mail to Rav Yedidya Rausman, the director of WebYeshiva.org, sharing my blog post and asking him to clarify. This is what he said:
This was really the best possible outcome for me, short of them telling me this and promising to clarify the matter on their website.
I do not feel that I need to retract my previous post or apologize, since I was only working off what they presented to the public, which, clearly, did not find favor in my eyes. (I will include a link to this update in that post, though. As I said, I am nothing if not fair.) That criticism still holds, even if the website is not true, as appears to be the case--if you're going to call something WebYeshiva, your website should really be up-to-date and accurate. However, that said, this situation is still preferable to to the website being accurate and the WebYeshiva being sex-segregated.
Now that that question is satisfied and my ire has died down, I went and got a little video tour of the yeshiva, checked out the schedule (not sure which time zone those times are in), and watched one "vlog" post about brachot rishonot and acharonot when drinking from a water bottle throughout the day. (For the uninitiated, a vlog is a video blog.) I know that this is possibly a superficial or silly thing to say, but Rav Brovender looks and sounds great--just like I remember him looking when he taught a shiur I attended at Midreshet Lindenbaum in 1997-1998. That's pretty incredible, considering all that's happened to him since.
I am still intrigued by the whole idea, since I have not yet found a new chavruta or any other way to study regularly, given my nutty work schedule. I will have to look into this some more.
Happy learning!
Thank you for your letter. In fact all classes that we currently offer are co-educational. If you would like to discuss this further, I would be glad to do so.I also sent an e-mail off to Rav Shimon Felix, a faculty member of WebYeshiva and a former teacher of mine. This is what he said:
To tell you the truth, I really don't know anything about any policy - my shiur has one full-time woman attendee and one on-and-off attendee (she has kids), they both are on the screen, they talk, all the guys (only about 5 or 6 all together) know they are women, so I don't know about any other policy....(Hah! At 6 am New York time I am sound asleep. But thank you for the invitation, anyway!)
You could drop in if you like, it is at 6 AM NY time.
This was really the best possible outcome for me, short of them telling me this and promising to clarify the matter on their website.
I do not feel that I need to retract my previous post or apologize, since I was only working off what they presented to the public, which, clearly, did not find favor in my eyes. (I will include a link to this update in that post, though. As I said, I am nothing if not fair.) That criticism still holds, even if the website is not true, as appears to be the case--if you're going to call something WebYeshiva, your website should really be up-to-date and accurate. However, that said, this situation is still preferable to to the website being accurate and the WebYeshiva being sex-segregated.
Now that that question is satisfied and my ire has died down, I went and got a little video tour of the yeshiva, checked out the schedule (not sure which time zone those times are in), and watched one "vlog" post about brachot rishonot and acharonot when drinking from a water bottle throughout the day. (For the uninitiated, a vlog is a video blog.) I know that this is possibly a superficial or silly thing to say, but Rav Brovender looks and sounds great--just like I remember him looking when he taught a shiur I attended at Midreshet Lindenbaum in 1997-1998. That's pretty incredible, considering all that's happened to him since.
I am still intrigued by the whole idea, since I have not yet found a new chavruta or any other way to study regularly, given my nutty work schedule. I will have to look into this some more.
Happy learning!
Labels: gender, Torah (broadly defined)
# posted by Abacaxi Mamao : 2/12/2008 08:55:00 PM
Comments:
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Seriously -- the website refers to them as "the men's program" and "the women's program"!
I'm glad to see that the Internet is breaking those barriers, though.
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I'm glad to see that the Internet is breaking those barriers, though.
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