Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920

4. “A Perfect Jew and a Perfect American”: The Religious Education of Jewish Girls

“A Perfect Jew and a Perfect American” The Religious Education of Jewish Girls Amelia Allen opened her 1876 diary with the hope that “God grant that the end of this year may find me in all respects a better and wiser daughter in Israel, a more affectionate sister, and a true friend.” During the course of the year, she and her family participated in the local excitement of hosting the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The patriotism engendered by the Centennial was tinged with religious significance for Amelia, who observed, “Thankful ought we to be both as a nation and as a religious body that we are allowed to think and act as we wish!” Her connection of civic and religious independence was rooted in the kind of religious education she had enjoyed since childhood. A student and later a teacher in the religious educational system founded in Philadelphia by Rebecca Gratz in 1838, Amelia was used to the idea that national and religious identity complemented rather than contradicted each other.1 Her sister Fannie similarly linked Jewish and American themes. Prompted by the approach of Passover, Fannie reflected in her diary, “How glad I am that I should have been born in a Republican country,” one where she was free to practice religion and patriotism alike without fear of contradiction.2 The sisters’ formal religious education provided them with a means of synthesizing the Jewish and American aspects of their identity. The growth of religious education was in some ways unique to American Judaism.3 For centuries, formal Jewish schooling had been the preserve of the intellectual elite. With rare exceptions, girls had never fallen into that category, although lack of formal religious instruction had not prevented generations of Jewish women from being extraordinarily devout . In the most traditional Jewish communities in nineteenth-century 4 143 eastern Europe, only a very few gifted men engaged in Torah study as a full-time pursuit beyond childhood, but the strong emphasis put on such study meant that scholarly men remained the ideal. Jewish women’s education tended to be informal, take place in the home, which was the center of their religious activity, and focus on the particular issues that required their knowledge and accountability, such as Sabbath observance or dietary laws. A growing number of families even in these traditional environments began to provide their daughters with more extensive Jewish education as the nineteenth century wore on, but girls’ religious instruction was not seen as a communal responsibility until the twentieth century and even then was controversial. In central and western Europe, nineteenth-century Jewish communities were somewhat more likely to value the idea of girls’ religious education. This was particularly true once Reform Judaism, with its emphasis on personal and private religious expression , began to spread during the 1840s. Still, few central or western Jewish communities provided extended formal instruction for all boys, much less all girls.4 Whether in eastern or western Europe, the concept of community was very strong among most Jews. The Jewish environment automatically provided by community meant that Jewish families could and did assume that much of their children’s Jewish education would come organically through participation in the community. This attitude dovetailed nicely with general expectations that girls would inevitably learn to be women from their mothers at home. During the second half of the nineteenth century , there was growing concern that such home schooling was failing to produce knowledgeable young Jewish women, and a few schools for Jewish girls appeared in response.5 However, most Jewish immigrants arrived in the United States accustomed to the idea that Jewish community essentially equated with Jewish education. In America, it became quickly apparent, this neat equation would not work. Even the earliest seventeenth-century Jewish arrivals in New York had seen the need to provide religious education to their children, who were so isolated in a heavily Christian environment. By the mid-nineteenth century, anti-Semitism was less of a problem than it had been for colonial Jews, although social discrimination and missionary activity were common. But for Jews spreading out across the small towns of the American interior, formal religious education of some kind represented virtually the only chance for Jewish continuity. America was killing Jewish identity with kindness; the very possibility of easy assimilation and in144 | “A Perfect Jew and a Perfect American” termarriage meant that families had to make...