YHS: Chareidi v Orthodox

Spot the difference

Above are recruitment ads for Science and English teachers for the YH Secondary girls' school. Nothing strange in that other than perhaps they may have run out of a ready supply of ex-sem girls and so must cast their net further afield. That however should be a cause for celebration as it indicates that the latest batch of sem graduates have spent their valuable formative years studying how to de-bug lettuce and sew hems and not filling their heads with such narishkeiten as the writings of that notorious anti-semite and his musings on Brutus and Casius. We have hespeidim of gedoilim beginning moirai vraboisai not speeches to friends and countrymen about thrice refusing crowns. That is not the Torah way.

Besides, do you know that Science KS3 has life processes as a subject which in turn includes repr-duction, rachmono litzlon? Is that what we needed a state aided school for to teach our heilige kinderlech how to have more kinderlech kenienehore, chas vcholilo?

Getting back to the advert which is what brought me here in the first place, you may have noticed on first blush that one has an email in the heading while the other one doesn't. Again nothing to raise an eyebrow since different audiences have different tastes and while one type of reader may shun a school that has no email medium for communication another may be attracted for that very reason. Anyway both have an email further in the text and so it's simply a case of not shouting it out too loud.

Ok, Tickle, your obsession with YHS seems to be getting the better of you and if this is all you have to say why not just shut up?

But, let me grab your wrist, hang on a second. Take a look at the beginning of the ad and you will notice that while the one on the right begins with YHS being an "Orthodox Jewish Voluntary Aided School based in Stamford Hill" that bit has been excised from the ad on the left. One searches for an explanation and wonders if it the Orthodox in the sentence the other paper objected to or is it the Stamford Hill bit?

The Torah as always comes to the rescue and it is only when we apply the 13th rule of Rabbi Yishmael's rules of extrapolation that we can make some sense. This is the rule that where two passages contradict each other 'until along comes the third passage and reconciles between them.'

And the third way in this case being our old friend, admissions.

As the admissions brochure above shows the O word dares not speak its name and it's the C word that predominates: Charedi. You know who they are, I assume. That group that is on the cusp of becoming the majority of Anglo Jewry and according to the 'principal' we should be planning ahead. Presumably by rewriting JFS admissions criteria and lining up some family members for the JLC and BoD. But oy how I digress.

Didn’t I mention reconciliation? So hold on tight because we are now going on a Talmudical roller coaster and here comes a long extrapolation, exegesis, exposition and reconciliation all rolled into one.

You see, the ad on the right comes from the JC whose readers are as likely to send their kids to YHS as the Chief Rabbi on the YHS podium is likely to appear in the Hamodia, and even if those readers were to apply the very taking of that paper is likely to win their application an instant place in the waste-paper basket and memeile we can spill the beans to them that we are O in order to attract those teachers who might turn their nose up upon sight of the C word and we still won't risk chas vcholilo a queue forming at those daunting iron gates (reserved for visitors only). Ma she'ein kein with the Hamodia where the advert on the left appeared if we were to tell their readers that we are Orthodox only rachmono litzlon and based in Stamford Hill noch it could affect business for the school hall whose hirers and leaseholders may take objection to the shande of an O presence in the holy square mile. We also can't mention the C word because there is a minhag not to advertise the school lest parents whose children are not lucky enough to be enrolled in the eponymous primary school clamour to get over those railings and we can't have a rabble at our gates as if we're an apple store launching a new ip-d, chas vsholem. Let them therefore think we're in the Outer Hebrides and don't even tell them we're Jewish and then maybe they'll stop fardreiing us a kop with applications and appeals so that we have more time to concentrate on applying the 4-inch-below-knee rule. So to sum up, and here we conclude, when writing to bring them in use the O word, when writing to keep them out use that deliciously indefinable C word which works a dream for exclusions and when straddling both worlds leave it out alltogether and a plague on both their shuls.

Phew, are you still here? Well, do hurry up, applications close today!