Educating in the Divine Image: Gender Issues in Orthodox Jewish Day Schools

Foreword: Gendered Lessons in Jewish Schools

Foreword Gendered Lessons in Jewish Schools JewishdayschoolstransmitlessonsaboutJewishvalues,aswellasaplethora of information. Few would be surprised that expectations regarding the male and female roles of students—and the men and women they will become—are among the societal values conveyed by Orthodox day schools. However, as Chaya Rosenfeld Gorsetman and Elana Maryles Sztokman analyze explicit and implicit gendered messages, some startlinglessonsarederived not fromhalakha—Jewishlaw—butratherfrom often unexamined and sometimes unwitting “cultural and sociological” premises. Boys and girls enrolled in all-­ day Jewish schools learn lessons notonlyaboutthefoundational texts ofhistoricalJudaismandaboutJewish religious rituals and culture, but also about their teacher’s and school’s understandings of maleness and femaleness. Drawing on data generated in a Jewish educators’ survey, qualitative interviews with educators and with day-­ school graduates, classroom observation, textual analysis, and basic data from the day schools themselves , Gorsetman’s and Sztokman’s discussion places day-­ school classrooms into the social contexts of family, religious community, and the general cultures of the United States and Israel, and into the intellectual contexts of educational and gender theory. The book begins with the way things are taught—with pedagogical techniques and styles, noncurricular aspects of education: classroom and teaching, sex-­ segregated classrooms , dress and behavior codes, and prayer services in school settings. As the authors note, teachers can, and often do, transmit messages “about who is more visible, who is first in line, who is smarter and more capable, whose learning is more important, and who is dominant”—often without realizingtheyhavedoneso.Suchinequitiesarenotlimitedtodayschools, of course, and the authors suggest that often “the process of gender differentiation in schools—in which girls are socialized into one set of expected behaviors and boys are socialized into another—is as detrimental to boys as it is for girls.” x foreword Prescriptions about wardrobe reveal similar noncurricular messages in Orthodox day school settings. Because boys, as a group, are not described in rabbinic literature as attracting “a sexual gaze, they are not restricted from physical play and movement due to how they dress.” Orthodox females , in contrast, are made aware of their bodies and their wardrobes when they are just schoolgirls—an awareness that continues into lifelong internalself-­consciousness.Informantsexplainedthattheystruggledwith what they wanted, what their husbands wanted, and what they thought their societies wanted: “demands on her body, especially demands that negate and nullify her own sense of personal desire and comfort.” At the same time, the outside world is sending very different—and equally gendered—messagestowomentellingthemtobe“gorgeous,fashionable, and thin.” Thus, religious girls are subjected “to the double set of societal gazes.” Perhaps no educational policy so clearly divides day-­ school communities as gender segregation in the classroom. This book lays out the evidence from broader educational theories and settings, applying the arguments both pro and con to Jewish religious schools. One poignant comment comes from an observer who remembers more relaxed approaches in the Modern Orthodoxy of his youth; by exaggerating the separation between boys and girls, he charges, educational institutions overemphasize sexuality and underestimate other types of encounters between men and women, “a deeply immodest message.” Curricular choices are critical conveyors of lessons about gender roles, and day schools face specialized challenges to gender equality, resulting in the potential discouragement, or even suppression, of some girls’ ambitions and talents. As the authors note, “the message in religious girls’ schools is often that girls’ ‘niceness’ supersedes academic excellence and ambition.” This tendency may be especially egregious in some Israeli schools: “In Modi’in, when parents finally pressured the girls’ school to open up an accelerated science program, other parents complained that the program was ‘socially problematic because it would make some girls feel bad.’” Symptomatically, the school responded not by helping parents understand why girls need to receive scientific education, but rather by canceling the program. Gendered messages are clearly conveyed through decisions about cur- foreword xi riculumforboysandgirls—sometimesbasedonessentialistassumptions about differences between males and females in regard both to their intellectual capacities, and their spiritual natures and potential. Studying Gemara (Talmud)—“learning” in colloquial Jewish parlance—has historically been the province of boys and men. Jewish feminism has implemented some liberalization of such attitudes in progressive circles, including Modern Orthodoxy. More Centrist Orthodox authorities have pushed back, discouraging female Talmud study. Subjects that are intellectually rigorous are sometimes presented as detrimental to women’s religious functioning: For example, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, rabbinical adjudicator (posek) for many Israeli women’s seminaries, publically ruled “that women are absolutely forbidden...