Many parents of 8th-grade girls are anxious about the crucial decision of choosing which seminary to admit their daughters. The process of admission is often accompanied by suffering and heartbreak, with promises made about the issue of registration fees. During the registration process, parents are required to pay fees ranging from NIS 150-250 to register their daughters for multiple seminars, in hopes that at least one will accept their daughter. However, many seminars refuse to admit the candidates, resulting in parents paying for a humiliating rejection.
D., a resident of Jerusalem, experienced this humiliation firsthand. He registered his daughter for three different seminars, paying substantial registration fees. However, one seminar swiftly rejected his daughter, without giving any justification. D. then demanded a refund for the registration fee, but the seminar refused, claiming that the fee was only for the registration process. However, after D. showed them a court ruling that collecting registration fees is illegal, the seminar immediately refunded the fee.
Many parents are not aware of their right to demand a refund, and some fear that it may harm their daughter’s chances of being admitted to other seminaries. However, D. believes that the shame and fear should take sides, with seminaries that reject candidates for non-interested reasons being the ones to feel ashamed, not the families paying for the rejection.
Seminar girls. Illustration (photo: Nati Shohat, Flash 90)
These days, many parents of girls in the 8th grade are praying and pleading with concern for the fateful decision that will be made during this period – which seminary their daughter will be admitted to.
Many words have been written about the suffering and heartbreak involved in the seminary admission process and many promises have been made, in vain. Despite this, for one problem – apparently negligible, but very humiliating – a solution may be found.
The issue of registration fees has also been discussed in the past and promises were made about it, but it may be solvable.
For those who are not familiar with the process: as part of the cumbersome registration process, parents who wish to register their daughter for the seminar are required to pay a registration fee ranging from NIS 150-250. Usually the parents will make sure to register for several seminars at the same time, out of a lack of knowledge to which seminar the girl will be accepted. This is how the worried parents scatter hundreds of shekels everywhere in the hope that one of the seminars will accept their daughter.
But in many cases the seminarians refuse to accept the candidate, and the parents are left with the bitter taste of the humiliation of being rejected – what deepens the feeling is that the financial hole is actually a contribution to the institution that caused them shame and humiliation.
And this is what D., a resident of Jerusalem, tells us: “I registered the girl according to the director’s recommendation for 3 different seminars, each of them charged substantial registration fees, but one of them was particularly swift in her negative response.”
He added: “As parents, we understood that we were not at all on the agenda as far as the seminar was concerned. The seminar’s management did not bother to justify its decision. We understood that there may be a way to put a few more shekels into the seminar’s coffers. It is enough that a hundred girls who register were not accepted, and the seminar has already earned 15,000 shekels, on the backs of the families and the rejected girls.”
D. describes that he could not bear the double humiliation – both the quick refusal, and the payment for it: “We decided to ask for the registration fee back, so we did, we wrote an email demanding the registration fee. The seminar immediately responded with a refusal and claimed that the registration fee was not intended to be accepted but only for the registration process.”
D. did not give up, and a quick inquiry he conducted on the Internet revealed that the court ruled that collecting registration fees is illegal. “We sent the refusing seminar a copy of the court ruling, without adding a single word to it. And behold, it was a miracle! Within minutes we were asked to go to the seminary’s offices in order to receive the registration fee back.”
From a conversation held by other parents with ‘Kikar HaShabbat’ it becomes clear that many are not aware of their right to receive their money back, and some of them fear that such a demand will harm their daughter’s chances of being admitted to other seminaries.
D. shares with the Shabbat Square that these concerns are legitimate, but in his opinion, “the shame and fear should take sides, the seminaries that refuse to accept girls for non-interested reasons, should be ashamed of that, and certainly not harass them financially.”