BJJ vs. Bnos Sara (Time Sensitive)

amother

Holly

Sun, Dec 04 2022, 2:58 pm

Op, what did your dd decide? How was her year?

My dd is deciding where to apply now and I would love to know more about BJJ if that’s where your daughter ended up going! People told me it has a style of teaching from many decades ago - that’s a plus for my dd. She wants rigorous and demanding. But I’d like to know about the social side of BJJ and what the crowd was like recently.

Thanks!

amother

Sun, Dec 04 2022, 3:50 pm

amother Holly wrote:

DD did opt for BJJ and B”H was very, very happy with her decision. She had a wonderful year and loved just about everything everything about it. (As noted upthread, she relates well to and appreciates older teachers.) She ended up in the Alef class and benefited from both the classes with Reb. David and the kinas sofrim among her classmates. (Of note: Reb. David is unfortunately not well this year and is only going in twice a week. She is only teaching Chumash twice a week and is not teaching Historia, so the Gimmel class is not having here at all.)

With regard to the crowd: I think it was about 1/3-1/2 Lakewood, 1/4-1/3 Tristate area (excluding Lakewood), and remainder OOT. There were some girls from Toronto, but I think only 1 girl from Europe (England). DD made a very nice group of good friends. Of note: There was a significant split in the seminary between the fancy/materialistic/in-towny etc. girls and those who were simpler and less into luxuries etc. DD was friendly with everyone, but her actual friends are all from the simpler, less materialistic crowd, and there was definitely a perception (among her side at least) that the other side was more snobby, cliquey, etc. We are from the tristate area, and DD has had plenty of experience dealing with this type of outlook and behavior, so she was not fazed by it, but some of her OOT friends were shocked and had a much harder time with it. The seminary is very large, however (182 girls last year), with lots of terrific girls of many types, so just about anyone should be able to find some friends.

Overall, she had a wonderful, wonderful year, and we are all very happy with how it worked out. For her at least, it was definitely the right choice. Hatzlacha rabbah! Hope this helps.

amother

Ebony

Sun, Dec 04 2022, 6:04 pm

amother Green wrote:

As this thread is now discussing bnos sorah’s (& BJJ) reputations — what is the reputation of bnos Avigail/Avigayil? My DD is debating which of the 2 to attend.

My daughter is in bnos Avigail this year. We needed to decide between bnos sora and bnos Avigail. Bh seems we made the right decision she is super happy in bnos Avigail. That being said she is a real out of towner and bnos Avigail is even more out of towny than bnos sora. The style of learning is very different between the 2. Bnos sora does a lot of very intense reports. Bnos Avigail has 1 report all year. They are both on Neve campus so both have terrible food 😬. If you have a strong background in textual based learning and are able to cruz thru mefarshim on your own you should be able to manage scholastically in either one.