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29 Teves 5761 - January 24, 2001 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family
The Benefactor
by Sudy Rosengarten

Part III

The following is the last installment of a true story of moral courage, of the uncompromise of values that has become the hallmark of the Bais Yaakov model of the Jewish Daughter. Names have been changed.

Story synopsis: Abraham Cohen, stingy business magnate, decides to adopt one philanthropic project to ease his conscience. His arbitrary choice is a seedy-looking girls seminary, which he is invited to visit. He subsequently begins to revamp the entire place and introduces a charm and poise woman instructor to put some chic into the `old fashioned' girls.

Strange things were happening. Whereas the halls had always been full of laughing, shouting, alive young girls, an unnatural quiet now reigned. Blinking demurely, everyone spoke in throaty whispers, tilted their heads coquettishly, sighed deeply. Even their walk was affected. Dainty, itsy- bitsy steps replaced the once rushing steps through the corridors and up the stairs. Some girls had blackened eyes, painted cheeks, exaggerated hairdos and clinging clothes. Everyone's expression was suddenly so pensive, so preoccupied, so unspontaneous... Maybe yours would be too if you had to concentrate on pulling in your tummy, pushing forward your chest and walking on the balls of your feet, all at the same time.

Not being a shlump had become a full time job. There was almost no time left to study. To think how much they had missed out on all the years without even suspecting it. Well, that's what happened when a man like Abraham Cohen entered your life. All your horizons broadened. With their new poise, all doors would be thrown open for them. And no one would ever suspect, from looking at them, that they were religious Seminary girls.

*

The Dean of Students sat at her desk, office door wide open. She observed the goings on in the corridor at her leisure. Her gaze lingered on the group at the mirror.

The next day the mirror was gone. Miss Carr did not show up for class. A Special Student Assembly was called, to which Abraham Cohen was invited.

The Dean's soft, gentle voice, when she spoke, seethed with emotion. With the new accoustics that Mr. Cohen had installed, it shook your very soul.

With humble apologies to Mr. Cohen, the Dean explained Miss Carr's absence. "She was notified this morning that her services were no longer needed in our Seminary."

Automatically, all heads turned to where Abraham Cohen sat. Gentleman that he was, he smiled politely, though a muscle twitched vigorously in his neck.

"My children," the Dean continued after the hum of excited voices had died down, "I stand before you today with the same feelings as that of Yom Kippur. For today is Judgment Day for us here. Today we must decide if our struggle to build this school for the past five years has been in vain.

"I don't hide the fact that I weep," she said sadly, stabbing a dish-pan reddened finger at her [genuine] tears, "for had I known, or even suspected, that this day would ever come, I would not have had the strength or the desire to build this Teachers' Seminary and endure the constant struggle that is involved."

Girls were beginning to slide down in their seats, just the way Miss Carr had emphatically insisted must never be done.

The Dean continued in a voice that broke and broke and would not be broken. "We are commanded to be holy. What does holy mean? Holy means to live apart and alone, separated from the outside world, in a world of our own, untainted and unblemished by the mores and morals of society at large. A world unto itself, fashioned by G-d's word. Just as soon as we enter or even seek to become part of the greater world outside, our sights become dimmed with her images, our spirit is drugged with her enchantments. Our will is transformed with her enticements. Such is the power of environment. We are human beings and not angels. As such, we are influenced by whatever we see and hear.

"Nevertheless, let us, just for the sake of argument, agree that there is much to be gained in that outside world. But why seek the rules of poise from a faculty member of Sarah Lawrence, when we can learn it directly from our own Mother Sarah? Though all who saw her praised her unequalled beauty, she sat hidden in the tent, confining her grace and beauty to the privacy of her home rather than flaunting it provokingly at strangers. How to walk? Walk humbly before Me, in humility, in modesty. How to talk? In truth, from the heart. What has become of our whole purpose in Creation, in which our role was to be the Light of all Nations, when we forsake our own living wells of fresh, living water to dig up broken cisterns that cannot even hold any water?

"And whatever gave you the idea that the outside world is superior to our own, in the first place? Is that world really so gracious and poised and beautiful and genteel that we want to desperately emulate it? If so, what about the Inquisitions, the Crusades, the gas chambers, the yellow stars, the crematoriums..."

The Dean stopped to catch her breath. There wasn't a sound in the room. Abraham Cohen's face was a blank. One could not tell what he was thinking or even whether he listened.

When the Dean continued, sarcasm replaced her tears. "And do you honestly believe that after the Jew has eliminated the sing- song from his speech and the curve from his spine, after he's straightened his nose and polished his manners, that he will be any more loved and accepted by that world outside? Oh, my dear innocent children! The moderns of Europe were shocked to discover that in metamorphosis they were hated just as much. Long after their hearts had stopped beating Jewish, they continued to suffer the curse of their birthright... And neither poise nor pear shaped vowels nor parrotting the outside world had made them more acceptable or welcomed.

"My children," she concluded, "there is one question you have to ask yourselves today... tomorrow... in generations to come. Are we the proud Daughters of Israel or are we mere caricatures of her trying to ape gentile debutantes."

The assembly was over. The girls filed silently out. Loud voices were heard in Rabbi Schwartz's office and a taxi with Abraham Cohen inside sped away. The next day, a moving van pulled up in front of the school and the auditorium was dismantled, stripped of everything but its ornate wallpaper. The next day the kitchen equipment was removed, leaving exposed plumbing to mock the richer days. The dormitory was the last to be emptied.

The place was beginning to look like the good ol' days again, the pre-Abraham Cohen days. Once again, Rabbi Shwartz was running around in a dither, trying to get short term loans from people as poor as himself to prevent the teachers' checks from bouncing. Once again, the halls resounded with the unaffected, unrestrained laughter and shouting of girls running to greet one another with exuberance, affection and enthusiasm.

His mother should have known better than to send him back to that world he had long ago left in body and soul, Abraham Cohen mused sourly. But, after all those years, she had still hoped to save him. Jewish mothers! They never gave up.

What a time he'd have not getting back to old habits. His daughters had just about decided amongst themselves that he was going senile... and all along, in the back of his mind, he realized, startled at the discovery, he had actually been trying to fashion those uncomplicated, unsophisticated young girls into carbons of his own detestable daughters.

He was sad. He was tired. He had a lot of loose ends to tie up. He wondered what madness had prompted him to remove all the equipment.

"I wonder how I'll sleep tonight," he said aloud and tried not to think anymore. "Oh, Mama, give up on me already. Let me stick to Sally's Stray Cats' Society and the World Reform Movement. The religious don't need me, anyhow. They manage to survive long after we moderns are gone and forgotten. Just let me sleep, Mama. Let me sleep..."

 

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