A few of the notes that reached us after our first issue. We are listening; your feedback is important to us. Please keep it coming.
A Kallah Is Not a Blank Slate
A response to "A Letter to My Kallah Teacher," Issue 1
In the recent edition of this publication, a moving letter was written to kallah teachers. Every kallah who has experienced the pain and disappointment of an abusive marriage deserves compassion and accountability, and the writer's story deserves our attention and reflection. And it's not the whole story. Teaching kallahs is a calling, and it is not for the faint of heart, certainly not in our current landscape of increasing expectations and needs.
We expect kallah teachers to educate about relationships, communication, boundaries, emotional and physical intimacy, conflict resolution, and healthy marital expectations, in addition to a brand new, never before experienced, halachic process which carries serious ramifications. Many believe that kallah teachers are ideally positioned to teach about the entire lifespan of womanhood, and even fiscal responsibility and budgeting basics. We expect them to identify trauma, attachment wounds, mental health concerns, misinformation, and relational patterns. Sometimes, implicitly, we even expect them to undo years of silence, shame, poor modeling, or emotional neglect, all within the span of a few weeks. Oh! And we also want them to "stay in their lane."
This is not only unrealistic. It is harmful. Letters to the kallah teacher are not only being read by the educator herself. They are being read by parents, community members, teachers, chosson teachers and more, all of them nodding their heads in assent: "yes, yes, it's the kallah teachers!"
A young woman does not arrive at kallah classes as a blank slate, waiting for her teacher to generate everything she needs to know. She arrives with a history. She has been shaped by her family, her teachers, her friendships, her community, her lived experiences, and the messages, spoken and unspoken, she has absorbed about herself and about marriage.
Kallah classes matter tremendously. But they are one chapter in a much longer story, and they do not appear at the beginning of the book. We need to recognize that kallah teachers are never walking onto fresh, untouched sand. The kallah teacher is not, cannot, and should not be the sole source of a young woman's relational education.
The idea that a kallah teacher will "handle it" some time in the future can inadvertently allow everyone else to abdicate from their responsibility. Parents may unconsciously assume that they do not need to talk to their children about emotional awareness, dignity, boundaries, communication, or healthy relationships because eventually, "the kallah teacher will teach her." Educators and communities can similarly place the burden on the kallah teacher to fill every gap.
Our children should internalize, long before they reach kallah classes, that their voices matter. That they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. That healthy relationships do not require them to disappear, but are conduits for them to expand exponentially.
A kallah teacher can build on the foundation created by the village that came before her. The goal should not be to place the entire weight of a young woman's emotional and relational development on the shoulders of the kallah teacher. The goal should be to raise children who arrive at kallah classes with a foundation already laid, ready to learn, ask, grow, and enter marriage as whole human beings. Not blank slates waiting for someone else to write the first words.
Shevi Samet, MA, MFT-LP, brings two decades of experience as a classroom instructor, Torah educator and kallah teacher to her clinical practice. She develops and delivers trauma-informed, emotionally focused workshops for kallah teachers and educators across the communal spectrum, and works with organizations to cultivate support and continuing education for kallah teachers internationally.
I just finished the magazine. Wow. I feel so grateful that you created this and gave it to the community. It feels like such a gift.
Reading it was incredibly validating. It made me feel so much less alone in my healing journey; the articles were so relatable. I'm honestly in shock at receiving this blessing.
I've never come across anything like it. Reading it made me realize how much I've been missing this kind of content, not just in magazines, but in general. I think its absence has made me doubt my own journey at times.
So often it feels like my inner world and the world around me exist as two separate realities. This magazine connected them in a way I didn't know I needed. Thank you for creating something that made me feel seen.
F.L. from Israel
I read Chibur over Shabbos, in two sittings. It truly connected me back to myself, something I'd been missing for quite some time.
With every article I thought, this is the most beautiful part of the magazine. And then I'd reach the next one and think, no… this is.
Thank you both so, so much. And thank You, HaShem.
Danja Saidel-Keesing, Efrat
The letter to the kallah teacher was especially powerful. Unfortunately, it's not only kallah teachers who are misguided.
Anonymous