Q: Are you opposed to a Bais Yaakov girl going to seminary in Eretz Yisroel?

A: I’m not opposed to going to seminary anyplace. Only that I recommend getting married as soon as possible. If a girl has marriage opportunities and she postpones them for the sake of seminary, that’s an error.

I told you once about the girl – she was a distant relative of ours – who at age eighteen had a good marriage opportunity. But she was ambitious to become a nurse; she wanted to become a nurse so she passed up this very good marriage opportunity. Well, she became a registered nurse, but she missed an opportunity. Now, you’ll say a nurse is different, it’s not seminary; I don’t care, I’m telling you the story anyhow.

Now, years passed by – I don’t know what happened to her in between. But then one day she shows up by us. She was a distant relative and she showed up in Brooklyn. And now she was in her late fifties, still unmarried. And the poor girl came here and she was looking for a shidduch. So she went to – I won’t say the name of a certain matrimonial agency that advertises its services. And so they furnished her with an elderly bochur, a prospect, who took her out. He took her to a certain restaurant that was on Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue. The restaurant had two entrances – that’s important information; remember that piece of information, it had two entrances. He took her to the restaurant, he seated her at a table and ordered something and then he excused himself for a moment; and she never saw him again.

Then she later caught on to the idea that he was only a decoy, someone sent by the agency for older girls who had paid down fifty dollars for the first interview, so that when she comes back to complain, they’ll be able to excuse themselves: “Well, he didn’t want you.”

He had walked through the second door. She was facing this door and he made his getaway through the other door. The poor girl ran out of the restaurant; she was so angry and mortified, so embarrassed at being left alone that she spoke to a policeman there on the corner and she complained to him. The policeman said, “What can I do?”

And she came weeping to us; it really was a tragedy because she has missed the opportunity when she was eighteen. So girls, don’t postpone. Seminary is a great thing. If nobody wants to marry you now, by all means go to seminary. It’s a better place than waiting in an office and spoiling. An office will spoil you in the meantime.

But if a young man is willing to take you and he’s presentable, don’t wait! The best time to marry is as soon as you graduate from high school.
TAPE # 271