Part II of III

In most Modern Orthodox day schools, girls are permitted and/or encouraged to study Torah, yet at many schools, boys and girls have different curricula and texts for Jewish studies. That’s for elementary school. In high school, the numbers increase. TOSHBA sheets instead of actual texts are still used. (When I taught Talmud to girls at Frisch in the 70s we used a regular gemara.)

There is also the issue of the internalized gaze on the female body. Girls learn from the time they’re 5 that they are being watched and looked at. Their body, their skin, their movement, is being watched and looked at. Before they even have the tiniest hormone of puberty entering their body, before they even know what sex is, they’re already learning that men are looking at them sexually. If they are learning when they’re 5 years old that they have to cover their knees in a certain way because adult men might be looking at their knees, what exactly are they learning?

What are boys learning? When boys are learning that girls have to cover up from the time that they’re 5 because boys can’t help themselves but look at girls’ knees, what are we teaching boys about their own sexuality, about their own relationships with girls? We’re teaching them that boys can’t control themselves, that boys cannot have a normal relationship with girls, that boys only see girls as sexual objects. We are teaching that there is no other way, that this is the natural way, and that we just need to accept it. As a result of this, girls have to constantly be covering and being aware of covering; and boys have to constantly be aware of the girl as a sexual object.

Girls, on the other hand, are taught that they don’t have any sexuality at all. There is nowhere where women are taught that maybe boys should cover up too because when a woman sees a man she gets all excited and turned on and can’t control herself. That is a narrative that is just foreign to Jewish life. It doesn’t exist anywhere. There are a lot of messages that come from this, and they’re all troubling. Children are learning this from 5 years old!

Many educators are guided more by politics than pedagogy. They’re guided more by ideas about “What will people think?” than “What is really good for the child?” We saw this recently about the controversy of girls wearing tefillin. It’s caused a huge uproar throughout the Orthodox world: What does it mean that these schools are allowing a few girls to wear tefillin?

The fact is, and almost everyone agrees, that there is no real halakhic objection to girls wearing tefillin. So much of the discussion is political and fear-based. This girl comes to you. She’s a 12, 13-year-old girl, she just had her bat mitzvah, and she really wants to pray to G-d in the most sincere way possible, wearing tefillin just like the boys. That’s what she wants to do. She wants to connect with G-d. Isn’t that what we want?

So, a pedagogical response would be one which looks at this person, this child, this beautiful creature of G-d and says, let me help you on this spiritual journey. What a beautiful thing it is that you want to connect with G-d. That would be what we consider to be a beautiful, pedagogical response. You’re looking at the child and saying, wow, this is a creature of G-d trying to connect spiritually. But instead, what we’re hearing is all of this stuff about what will the neighbors think and what will people think? And, oh my G-d, we’re going to become Reform, we’re going to become Conservative—all of these considerations that really have nothing to do with pedagogy and everything to do with politics.

Still conflicted, we will conclude with Part III next week.

Rabbi Dr. Wallace Greene has had a distinguished career as a Jewish educator. He has taught children, teens, and adults. He was a college professor, day school principal, and director of two central agencies for Jewish education, including our own community’s Jewish Educational Services for over a decade. He is the founder of the Sinai School, and has received many prestigious awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lifshitz College of Education in Jerusalem and The World Council on Torah Judaism. He is currently a consultant to schools, non-profit organizations, The International March of The Living, and serves as Executive Secretary of The Alisa Flatow Memorial Scholarship Fund. He can be reached at [email protected].