"Every Girl Will Be a Seminar Principal and Then No Girl Will Be in Captivity" •

Before you is a summary of topics from the daily lesson as delivered by our teacher, the Rav, Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a – yesterday after the Maariv (evening) prayer, Wednesday night, the 18th of Kislev, Parshas Vayishev:

Emperor Diocletian arrived with an "open mind," but the children from the cheder (Torah school) of Rabbi Yehuda Nesiah "opened his head" (cracked it). So he took him and threw him into the fire; of course, he was burned. Then he said, "I know that a Jew comes out of the fire alive, but stop throwing stones." A girl does not throw stones; the holy Shelah (Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz) says that boys possess the zuhama (impurity) of the serpent because they participated in the Golden Calf. The girls do not have this. Every [boy] from the moment he is born is already throwing stones; it is his nature. Girls have no impurity of the serpent and no sin; they place the red scarf on the window (referencing Rahab), and they do not belong to stones nor to sin. Korach said he did not ascend to heaven; he sat on the mountain and smoked a hookah like the Sheikh of Rabbi Chaim Farhi. They told him, "You are traveling to Mecca, bring the diamond." So he had no choice; he made him swear not to touch a Jewish child. But the police announced that whoever throws stones will be put in prison; at age fifty, he will emerge from prison broken and shattered. Everyone must know that it is a Torah prohibition to travel to Shechem (Nablus). Just now, a bus returned full of bullet holes; by a miracle, the driver had dropped everyone off five minutes earlier. Because the commanders themselves sell them weapons. Do not break through checkpoints and do not go out in buses. And not in private travel—whoever travels does so on his own private responsibility. By a miracle, we do not have twenty funerals. In any case, we request that there be no funerals anywhere, that the soldiers stop being killed. Now a building collapsed in Rafah; it is all because the girls did not lengthen their skirts. Every girl should come home and lengthen her skirt to the ankle. Do not sleep past six [AM]. At eight-thirty, everyone should be in their rooms and in the seminars (religious schools). Every girl will be a seminar principal; in every kibbutz, there will be a seminar, and then there will be no girls in captivity. For 440 days, girls have been in captivity; perhaps this week they will release them. A girl has more intellect than a boy; what they learn in four years, she grasps in a second. Every girl can grasp all the material in a second. Every girl should open a seminar for a thousand students; there will be a thousand seminars—that is a million girls doing teshuvah (repentance), and all of the Jewish people will do teshuvah, and we will merit the complete Geulah (Redemption) speedily in our days, Amen!