Not only were girls considered evil according to my yeshiva, but theOY run kiruv organization NCSY was considered doubly evil because they sought to make kids frum by putting on coed events led by so called orthodox Jews. The yeshiva considered anything coed to be evil, they would tell us that the only way that NCSY would get kids to come to their events was by making it coed, which meant that the people coming to events were intent on their evil sinning with the opposite sex – it was a convincing argument considering they forgot to mention that almost every kid in attendance was from public school, a place where the so called sinning was almost mandated by making everything coed. They failed to tell us that NCSY provided some kids who had no Jewish friends with the opportunity to join a vibrant community of other Jewish kids their age.
They forgot to mention that almost all of the kids in attendance were used to coed events, unlike us yeshiva guys who thought going to shul on shabbos was a thrill because we got a glimpse of the girls for about 3 seconds. They also didn’t mention that NCSY was responsible for thousands of secular teens becoming religious throughout the years and that NCSY at least according to me seems to be the most responsible and successful kiruv organization that is run by snags. To be honest, out of all the Baalei Teshuva I have met over the years, those who had gone to NCSY seem to be the most normal.
But still, we yeshiva guys did want to go to NCSY for the girls, there were lots of them, they were all in short skirts and they were ready and willing to talk to us, albeit for the few who were locals and were brought up to hate the yeshiva for all the evil it did by not holding by the donut shop.
In my third year of high school I was caught coming back from an NCSY convention with my roommate at the time. We had gone to meet girls, he had a crush on one of them (everyone had a crush on her so it wasn’t counted) and besides for going to meet girls, we just wanted to feel like normal teenagers. When I was in yeshiva I never felt normal, I loved yeshiva, they were great years, but I always felt like I was part of some strange cult that thought blue jeans, backwards caps and tank tops brought evil upon their members.
So we walked on over Beth Shalom one warm Friday evening and when we were walking back into the dorm this one beis medrish guy asked where we were and he knew, so he sat us down in his room and he told us about the evils of girls. He said that dating before marriage just wasn’t worth it, I noticed that the rabbis and beis medrish guys liked to tell us about how thinking of girls took concentration away from our studies and they were right, but my mind was elsewhere anyway, it might as well be on some cute girl I met at an NCSY regional convention.
Of course, any mussarnik worth his weight in salt couldn’t just stop at the thoughts screwing with our mind. He had to tell us about his trials and tribulations with girls and of course he started on with the masturbation talk with slyly inserted halachic tidbits about us boiling in our own semen and the angel of death throwing semen spears at us.
Then he told us, something that I have frequently from the yeshiva crowd, that NCSY stands for No One Can Save You, which many moons later makes no sense at all, considering the fact they NCSY seemed be doing a superb job at saving lost Jewish souls and getting Jews to marry other Jews and raise Jewish families. Does that justify the risk of having coed events? I wonder what the gedolim would say?
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