What often remain are the vivid memories of warm family meals imbued with the holiness of Shabbos and hosts who’d “cornered the market” on hachnassas orchim

Ask any seminary girl’s mother for her take on the Shabbos set-up. You’ll likely be treated to a fiery monologue enumerating her dear daughter’s weekly challenges of “finding a place for Shabbos,” punctuated dramatically by the oft-heard, shrill question: “And for this we’re paying twenty grand?”

But fast-forward to several years later and the picture sometimes changes. As the kallah meidel looks back on that seminal year, she’ll often realize that it was those varied Shabbosos that touched her most. Out of ten packed months that whizzed by in a blur, what often remain are the vivid memories of warm family meals imbued with the holiness of Shabbos and hosts who’d “cornered the market” on hachnassas orchim.

For a soon-to-be wife and mother who will be a hostess and queen at a Shabbos table of her own, seminary out-Shabbosim offer girls the opportunity to glean myriad examples of practices, perspectives, and ideals they’d want to incorporate in their future homes.

“When I came back to seminary each Motzaei Shabbos,” remembers Orly Cohen, now a busy wife and mother of a boisterous brood, “I made a list of exceptional hachnassas orchim routines I’d observed that I wanted to eventually integrate. Ranging from the simplistic to the more meaningful, this extensive list included items like walking guests to the bus stop and waiting with them until the bus arrived or learning halachah as a family at the Shabbos table, whether hilchos Shabbos or shmiras halashon.

“I’ve learned to do things like set up a small table of drinks and snacks in my guests’ room to show that I’m really happy to have them, and I always offer Erev Shabbos potato kugel — it makes homesick seminary girls feel so at home! Being on the receiving end has taught me how to give. And the many seminary girls who now come to my home for Shabbos thank me for the same ‘little’ things that made me feel welcome and wanted as a nineteen-year-old girl.”

“I couldn’t put my finger on why I was enjoying myself so much one Shabbos,” remembers Yehudis Lieberman, now a seminary mentor on the other side of the desk. “And then it struck me. It was the extraordinary shalom bayis that reigned: it was the exceptionally caring way the husband spoke to his wife and the enormous respect with which she reciprocated. Now that I’m married, this couple serves as my personal paradigm, continually giving me something to strive for.”

To be sure, not every seminary Shabbos experience will be remembered fondly. But for a girl who’s eager to grow, she’ll find something to learn, regardless of whether it’s a “do” or a “don’t.”

Family First spoke with post-seminary girls of all stripes and colors, to present a wide-ranging selection of almost unfailingly growth-inducing seminary Shabbos experiences.

The Blind Couple

Avigail Rudnick, with contributions from Rachel Weiss

Seminary girls are renowned for their tireless search for “chavayot” — memorable, bizarre, or inspiring experiences that they can retell to their friends and family after the fact. The Shabbos I spent at the famous “blind couple” of Ganei Tikvah definitely qualified as a “chavayah.” Their phone number had been passed virally around our dormitory, accompanied by various exclamations like, “My sister said it was an amazing adventure!” and “You have to call weeks in advance if you want a slot!”

When I called in September to ask if I could come for Shabbos, Mrs. Tziporah Wishky answered that the first available Shabbos on their calendar was in January. I quickly signed up.

When the January Shabbos finally arrived, two friends and I packed our bags, rode the bus to Ganei Tikvah, and took a taxi to the address specified by Mrs. Wishky, in the Yismach Moshe section of the city. We were greeted warmly at their small apartment and shown to our room. Although the two inhabitants of the house were blind, they had a fully stocked library with all the latest ArtScroll and Feldheim novels. Aside from providing Mrs. Wishky with plenty of reading material (she reads the books with Braille-interpreting and synthetic speech scanners), this literary treasure trove was just one of the ways they strove to make their seminary guests feel at home.

As I observed our blind hosts, I realized that their techniques and methods were often different from ours, but their goals were the same. One example that stands out in my mind was how Mrs. Wishky prepared and lit her Shabbos candles. She filled the glass candleholders with olive oil, “seeing” if they were full by sticking two of her fingers into the cup. When she lit her candles, she held the match to the wick for a moment and then felt it briefly with her fingers to “see” if the wick had been ignited.

Shabbos followed an unusual routine. We enjoyed a lovely Friday night seudah — enhanced by homemade, fresh-squeezed grape juice — read for a while, and went to sleep. We were awakened early in the morning and invited to come to shul for the neitz minyan. (Shabtai, our host, had taken this practice upon himself following a successful kidney transplant in 1988.) As we trudged along the darkened streets of Ganei Tikvah toward the neighborhood shul, we watched a fully self-sufficient Mrs. Wishky navigate her way by tapping her cane against the sidewalk. Barely able to keep our eyes open, we managed to daven and then returned home, where we had a milchig seudah at around 7 a.m. After the meal, we went to sleep for most of the day. For Seudah Shlishis, we enjoyed a sumptuous fleishig seudah.

Over Shabbos, Mrs. Wishky told us their story. She was a baalas teshuvah from New Jersey who had studied at Neve Yerushalayim; her husband was a Lebanese oleh who came with his family from Beirut following the Six Day War. After two years of seminary learning, Tziporah married Shabtai, and they settled in Ganei Tikvah. During the week, she works as a life coach while Shabtai learns full-time in kollel.

At first, it seemed to us that the only thing they had in common was their blindness. He spoke an authentic, guttural Sephardic Hebrew, and she’d reply in a heavy American accent. But as Shabbos went on, it became apparent that this unique couple was amazingly well-suited. Unable to communicate through body language due to their blindness, they had refined their speech with each other to the point where sometimes just a word would suffice.

Just before Havdalah, the lights in the house went out. My friends and I looked at each other, feeling awfully uncomfortable. Should we inform our hostess that it was suddenly pitch-black? After all, she didn’t know the difference. Before we could decide, Mrs. Wishky said, “Oh, don’t worry, the lights will go back on soon. The Shabbos generator is transitioning to standard electricity.”

“How did you know?” one girl audaciously asked.

“I heard the switch of the generator,” she laughed. Clearly, the Wishkys used their functional senses to the fullest.