What do you do for a girl who has failed to pay her financial obligations to the educational institution she attended? If you ask the rabbi of a well-known Jewish seminary in Jerusalem, the solution is simple: forbid the students, the bride's friends, from attending her wedding.
The girls' seminary, located in Jerusalem, operates in the format of a boarding school, and is intended for girls who are in various processes of 'repentance'.
As part of boarding school life, the girls are required to pay for their stay. One of the students, a girl of Ethiopian origin, had difficulty paying her tuition and housing.
""The girl simply has no money, she didn't even have money to pay a bridal guide," Rabbi N., an activist in the world of re-repentance, who witnessed the story up close, tells Haredim 10.
However, the rabbi of the seminary firmly informed the young bride that if she did not pay her debt by the time of the wedding, her friends would be prohibited from attending the wedding. The rabbi added and threatened the students that any student who attended the wedding would be expelled from the institution immediately.
The bride, who, as mentioned, doesn't have a penny in her pocket, did not pay her debt - and the rabbi carried out his threat: the midrash students did not attend the wedding.
Rabbi N., who learned of the sad story, managed to organize a group of girls from the Tohar seminary in Yad Binyamin, so that they could come and make the exiled bride happy.
An examination of Haredim10 reveals that rabbis who approached the rabbi of the midrash and asked him why he would not invite the young woman to 'Din Torah', under the pretext of violating the 'rejoicing of the bride and groom' - responded, they said, that "this is the situation.".
Female students at the seminary said that when they offered to collect money for the bride, the seminary rabbi forbade them from doing so.
One of the activists in the world of repentance who was exposed to the story told Haredim10: "In a Haredi place, this wouldn't have happened. There's a feeling that because it's the world of repentance, there's no one to protect the girls there. The girl has to pay her debt, there's no doubt about it. But that can't be the punishment.".
""We send our own Teshuvah scholars to seminaries and midrashes, but we must check in the future that such shocking things do not happen in these places.".
Haredim10 contacted the rabbi of the seminary to provide his response, but without success.
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