1 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Isolation and Integration: Education and Worldview Formation in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Schools

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Field of Education and Social Policy – Learning Sciences

By

Moshe Krakowski

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

June 2008 2

© Copyright by Moshe Krakowski 2008 All Rights Reserved

3

Abstract

Isolation and Integration:

Education and Worldview Formation in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Schools

Moshe Krakowski

Researchers have long recognized that schools are powerful environments for shaping students’ worldview and identity. The structured content, activities, and resultant culture of schools profoundly impact the way in which students learn to make sense of the world around them. In the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community this function of schooling is prominently visible, as the overall worldview of the community is in many ways inconsistent with that of modern secular society, and often stands out in sharp contrast.

This dissertation uses ultra-Orthodox elementary schools as a platform to explore issues of worldview formation. In this work I argue that the central purpose of elementary education in the ultra-Orthodox community is the inculcation of the ultra-Orthodox worldview. This is accomplished through a comprehensive religious education oriented around apprenticeship into communal practices and beliefs, rather than the acquisition of conventional content knowledge, along with a traditional secular education that is conceptually isolated and restricted in content, whose purpose is limited to the acquisition of basic skills necessary to function in daily life.

To make this argument, I use a novel conception of worldview, wherein worldview emerges from the activities individuals engage in and the beliefs they maintain. This conception is then used to demonstrate how the activities and beliefs presented in the school day work in

4 concert with the students’ home lives to instill in the students a sense that the world must be assessed in terms of its accordance with a specific model of the good life, that is, the correct and proper way to live.

5 Acknowledgements

The cliché that this work could not have been possible without the support of many exists for a reason: it accurately reflects reality. In this instance, the obstacles and pitfalls that I encountered were such that it was far more likely that this dissertation would not be written than the reverse. Were it not for the exceptional intellectual and emotional support that I received from all quarters there is no question that I would have stumbled, and would not be writing these words today.

I must first express tremendous gratitude to the individuals that make up the Learning

Sciences program at Northwestern University. Though the program has profoundly shaped the way that I understand learning and education, and is a powerful intellectual environment, that is not its most outstanding feature. The Learning Sciences Program it is truly unique in the level of collegiality and support offered to graduate students and the true warmth that dominates the atmosphere (the atmosphere being an emergent property of the many, many individual acts of kindness and good will that individuals do for one another on a daily basis). In this regard I have to express great thanks to my cohort, an unusually special group of individuals, for all that they have done for me; they were instrumental in creating the warm atmosphere without which I would have likely abandoned my studies.

In this vein, I must also express my gratitude to my committee, Bruce Sherin, Uri

Wilensky, Eva Lam, Danny Edelson, and Shani Bechhofer. As a group they are remarkable in their diversity, representing widely divergent fields of expertise and interest; individually, they are remarkable for their commitment to a project that did not lie within any of their domains.

6 Their willingness to spend valuable time and energy on my project is greatly appreciated. I am lucky to have had their input, advice, and persistence in pushing an often stubborn and stiff- necked graduate student to greater rigor and precision.

As my advisor and chair of the committee, Bruce Sherin has given of himself in a way that few, if any, advisors do. There is no question that without his mentorship I would not have completed this project (nor likely even begun). I have been profoundly influenced by his intellectual approach, and have finally, after many years, absorbed some of the difficult and challenging ideas that he has articulated. He taught me what truly careful work looks like, the importance of literary precision, and what it means to conduct research at the highest level.

Perhaps one day I will be able to approach that level of meticulousness. Just as critically, he has given me his time and attention in a manner that goes far beyond the call of duty. I already miss our wide-ranging discussions, whether they concerned the utility of a construct for cognitive transfer or the utility of Rex Grossman as quarterback for the Bears.

This project could not have existed without the help of the individuals at the three elementary schools where this study was conducted. They opened their arms to me, though they had no reason to do so, and though many of them doubted the benefit of this work, they were happy to indulge me. I had anticipated great resistance to this project at the outset, but instead, the schools went out of their way to make things easier for me. Similarly, the teachers, parents, and students who were willing to put up with me, to allow me to videotape classes and to answer my questions, deserve a great deal of thanks. Without the generous assistance of the community

I could not have conducted this study, and for that I am truly grateful.

7 The Mechanchim Chabura at the Chicago Community Kollel has been a source of spiritual sustenance for me over these many years; each evening there gives me the strength for the long day that follows. I have learned a tremendous amount about what it means to live life at the highest level, and what true seriousness and commitment looks like. In addition, I have been academically enriched by my discussions with the many rabbeim, gaining insights into the experiences of teachers that I would never have had access to otherwise. In particular, I would like to thank Rabbi Mordechai Eisenbach, who first welcomed me to the Kollel and has been a true friend and mentor, and Rabbi Avrohom Shultz, who has studied with me as a Chavrusah for more than seven years, and has served as a role model for what it means to be truly Yoshor. My relationship with them, along with the spiritual foundation given to me by Rabbi Moshe Stav, gave me the necessary perspective and the spiritual resources to remain grounded in the real world, and not confined by the ivory tower.

No matter how hard you try, you cannot escape your family; they remain with you for as long as you live. This is a good thing. As I build my life, brick by brick, I cannot lose sight of the fact that the foundation upon which it rests was put in place by my parents. There is nothing that one can do or say to appropriately repay the debt owed to them for this bedrock of stability; the best that one can do is to try to build the best possible structure upon it, and thereby honor their hard work, dedication, and love, which made everything else possible.

On a related note, my sisters have been a profound influence on my life. The combination of emotional warmth and love and profound intellectual and religious discussion that characterizes many of our interactions, is, I believe, truly unique. They have always taken my

8 assertive (they might call it bombastic) demeanor in conversation with equanimity, and have taken my ideas seriously (while rarely ever agreeing).

My in-laws and my brother in-law have also been a source of great support to me over the near decade that I have known them, and I greatly appreciate their love and care. I have been greatly enriched by my intellectual and philosophical discussions with them, and I could not have pursued this dissertation without their help.

My in-laws have also given me something that has had a greater impact on my life than anything else, without which none of my achievements (meager as they are), let alone this dissertation, would have been possible. My wife, Eve, is the true source of all of my accomplishments. A scholar of exceptional skill and intelligence, she also manages to take care of three children and the attendant responsibilities that accompany them. There are no words that could possibly describe the thanks that I owe her (an omission she points out regularly), but I will try. I owe her thanks for this dissertation, for the push to excel in life, for the awareness of the difference between the mediocre and the sublime, for the recognition of truth, for the constant demand that life be lived without compromise, for her irrational belief that I am greater than I actually am, and for her constant love. These things make me bigger, and they have changed me into someone qualitatively different than who I was.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention my children, Fruma Avigayil, Miriam, and

Shalva, who have tried their hardest to prevent me from finishing this dissertation, but despite all their efforts have only helped ensure my success. The long hours awake at night with them, the chaos of white walls turned to giant marker murals, and the fatigue from cleaning up 800 plastic

Ziploc bags in the living room, have been exponentially offset by the pure and absolute joy of

9 their existence. This joy has carried me through the hardest patches, and the most difficult trials and tribulations.

Finally, I owe thanks to G-d, the Creator of the universe, for allowing me to successfully reach this point. His hand has shaped my life, and is retroactively visible in all of my endeavors, whether or not I was aware of its presence at the time. It is an indication of G-d’s awesomeness and might that he takes interest in those so infinitesimally tiny and meaningless, and the humility that must come with this recognition is staggering. All one can do in the face of this is continue to work hard at the task given to us, remembering the Biblical verse “For the matter is very near to you; in your mouth, and in your heart, to do it”.

Moshe Krakowski Chicago, IL Purim 5768 March 2008

10 Table of Contents

Abstract 3

Acknowledgements 5

Table of Contents 10

List of Tables 13

List of Figures 15

Chapter 1: Isolation or Exposure 16

Ultra-Orthodox School: A Brief Introduction 19

Previous Research on Ultra-Orthodox Education 23

A Sketch of a Worldview Framework 27

The Data: Collection and Analysis 40 Research Context: Three Boys’ Schools 40 Overview of Methods 43

Structure of this Study 52

Personal Coda 53

Chapter 2: Background 58

Section 1: Three Schools Described 59 The Organization of the School System 59

Section 2: Education and Occupation 81 Data Categories 82 Results 90 Summing Up 105

Section 3: Standardized Test Scores 106 Yeshiva 108 Chassidic 111 Lubavitch 114 Summing Up 117

The Three Schools and the Community in Review 119

11 Chapter 3: The Accommodation of Secular Material: Administrators, Teachers, and Students 122

The Purpose of School 127

The Tension Inherent in Secular Education 131 Secular Teachers and Accommodation of Secular Material 132 Student Reactions 139

Summary: Secular Studies in the School Day 143

Chapter 4: Classroom observation: an activity node analysis 145

The Activity Node Construct 146 Activity Nodes in Schools 150 The Methodology and Development of Activity Nodes 156

Catalogue of activity nodes 162 Religious Class activity nodes 163 Cluster of Chumash Activity Nodes: Detailed Discussion 166 Cluster of Gemara activity nodes 171 Cluster of Gemara Activity Nodes: Detailed Discussion 174 Standard activity nodes (non-Chumash, non-Gemara) 180 Idiosyncratic activity nodes (non-Chumash, non-Gemara) 193 Secular-class activity nodes 195 Standard activity nodes 195 Idiosyncratic activity nodes 206

Activity Node Differences 211 Activity Nodes Within a Broader Context 211 Worldview and Belief Construction 217 Difficulty of Content 219

Religious Integration and Secular Isolation 228

Chapter 5: Worldview, Isolation, and the Teacher-Student Relationship: Rabbeim as Secular Instructors 231

Restrictions on Secular Teachers Making Connections to Religion 232

Behavior in Secular Studies Classes 235

The Practice of Hiring Rabbeim as Secular Instructors 237

Case Studies: Data and Methods 241 Two Teachers 251 Mrs. Weiss 252 Rabbi Aberman 266 General Conclusions 277

Addendum: Behavior and Connections in Other Classes 280

12 Behavior 281 Connections 286

Chapter 6: Conclusions: Worldview Formation in School 289

Worldview 294

Ultra-Orthodox Identity 303

Rabbeim and the Changing Pattern of Worldview Formation 308

Final Thoughts 314

Appendix A. Interview Coding 326

Appendix B. Catalogue of activity nodes 336

Religious Class activity nodes 336 Cluster of Chumash activity nodes 338 Cluster of Gemara activity nodes 349 Standard activity nodes (non-Chumash, non-Gemara) 361 Idiosyncratic activity nodes (non-Chumash, non-Gemara) 377

Secular-class activity nodes 381 Standard activity nodes 381 Idiosyncratic activity nodes 399

Appendix C. Frequency and Distribution of Activity nodes 407

Appendix D. Worldview Dimensions 410

References 413

13 List of Tables

Table 1: The Number of Interviews Conducted...... 46

Table 2: Tests Collected...... 50

Table 3: Classroom Observations...... 52

Table 4: Examples of different categories at different post-high-school stages ...... 84

Table 5: Parent Education by Child’s School ...... 91

Table 6: Parent Religious Education by Child’s School...... 97

Table 7: Parent Occupation...... 100

Table 8: Fathers’ Occupation by Elementary School Attended...... 102

Table 9: Parent Lifestyle...... 103

Table 10: Parent Lifestyle by Elementary School...... 104

Table 11: YESHIVA/ 1996/ SAT8 All Grades Combined...... 108

Table 12: YESHIVA/ 2000/ SAT8/ All Grades Combined...... 109

Table 13: YESHIVA/ 2004/ SAT9/ All Grades Combined...... 110

Table 14: Yeshiva 3-Year Test Scores...... 110

Table 15: Chassidic/ 2001/ SAT8/ All Grades Combined...... 112

Table 16: Chassidic/ 2004/ SAT8/ All Grades Combined...... 112

Table 17: Chassidic 2-Year Test Scores ...... 113

Table 18: Lubavitch/ 1999/ CTBS4/ All Grades Combined...... 114

Table 19: Lubavitch/ 2002/ CTBS4/ All Grades Combined...... 115

Table 20: Lubavitch/ 2004/ SAT10/ All Grades Combined ...... 115

Table 21: Lubavitch 3-Year Test Scores...... 116

14 Table 22: Test Scores for Three Schools ...... 117

Table 23: Distribution of Interviews...... 123

Table 24: Sample Interview Array ...... 125

Table 25: Classroom Observations...... 156

Table 26: Reliability Testing...... 248

Table 27: Example of Case Study Coding...... 250

Table 28: Mrs. Weiss Behavior Ratings ...... 257

Table 29: Rabbi Aberman Behavior Ratings ...... 274

Table 30: Rabbi Friedman Behavior...... 281

Table 31: Mrs. Prince Behavior...... 282

Table 32: Mrs. Hart Behavior...... 283

Table 33: Rabbi Markowitz Behavior...... 283

Table 34: Rabbi Aberman Behavior--Chassidic...... 284

Table 35: Rabbi Carmen - Rabbi Aberman Behavior...... 284

Table 36: Rabbi Klemworth Behavior...... 285

Table 37: Rabbi Kutler Behavior...... 285

Table 38: Rabbi Newman Behavior...... 286

Table 39: Activity Nodes ...... 293

Table 40: Components of Worldview Expressed in the School Day ...... 303

15 List of Figures

Figure 1: Kearney's Model of World-View ...... 33

Figure 2: Emergent Worldview...... 36

Figure 3: Parent Education by Child’s School ...... 93

Figure 4: Parent Occupation - Men...... 102

Figure 5: Yeshiva Percentiles...... 111

Figure 6: Chassidic Percentiles ...... 113

Figure 7: Lubavitch Percentiles...... 116

Figure 8: Worldview Bubble in the Outside World...... 304

Figure 9: Secular Bubble in the School Day...... 305

Figure 10: Worldview Mechanics ...... 306

Figure 11: Ultra-Orthodox Emergent Worldview ...... 307

Figure 12: Emerging Model of Worldview Mechanics ...... 312

16 Chapter 1: Isolation or Exposure

In today’s global society there are numerous cultures that struggle to maintain a unique identity, and not to be absorbed into the world around them. Yet for many communities, particularly in the United States, the exposure to, and adoption of, Western values and mores is an inevitable byproduct of living and working within the larger society. These communities, therefore, often try to find ways to ensure that their own practices, values, and worldviews, which may conflict with those of the surrounding society, are not lost through absorption into that society.

The ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in North America (sometimes called the Haredi or Charedi community) negotiates this tension in a particularly interesting and complex manner.

This community has long inspired some degree of fascination in popular culture, from depictions in movies and books to newspaper articles concerned with the internal politics of different sects.

Yet the truth is that the overall ultra-Orthodox worldview and approach to life is poorly understood, and barring a small number of sociological investigations, (e.g. Heilman’s Defenders of the Faith (1992a), and Helmreich’s The World of the Yeshiva (1982)) has not been the subject of extensive research.

The current study aims to help fill this research void. This study examines the process of worldview formation in the ultra-Orthodox community as expressed in the culture and daily functioning of ultra-Orthodox boys’ elementary schools. The general perception of the ultra-

Orthodox community is that it adopts what Heilman and Cohen (1989) have previously called “a contra-acculturative stance” towards the secular world. This view suggests that the ultra-

Orthodox reject the intrinsic worth of the secular world and distance themselves to whatever

17 degree possible from it. As El-Or (1994) notes, “(they) establish boundaries between themselves and their surroundings. They dress differently, preserve their own internal language, send their children to different schools, eat different food, and so on” (p. 136). Yet at the same time the ultra-Orthodox live in highly urban settings, and participate in many aspects of modern life: “Haredi Jews in general accept the conveniences of modern technology and are willing to adapt to the urban environment to the extent that it does not contradict their spiritual values”

(Comenetz, 2006, p. 41). Assuming that the gross characteristics of these descriptions are correct, there must be an unusual tension placed upon this community, to live within secular society, but not to be of that society.

This tension may be part of what makes the community so fascinating to outsiders, as they notice Chassidim walking on the streets of Manhattan in their long black coats and fur hats, talking on cell phones in Yiddish while going up to their offices to run their businesses. In this very common scene one sees at once a community that has in some ways removed itself from the larger society, but is still somehow actively functioning within that society.

This study will argue that the ultra-Orthodox elementary educational system plays a central role in the development of communal and individual responses to this tension. In particular, this dissertation will articulate the argument that the central purpose of elementary education in the ultra-Orthodox community is the inculcation of the ultra-Orthodox worldview and culture, and that this is accomplished in two ways:

1. A religious education that is oriented around apprenticeship into communal practices and

beliefs, rather than the acquisition of conventional content knowledge.

18 2. A secular education that is conceptually isolated and restricted in content, whose

purpose is limited to the acquisition of basic skills necessary to function in daily life.

This study will describe and explore these two features of ultra-Orthodox education, while making the case that they are predominantly responsible for the complex and nuanced worldview maintained by the larger ultra-Orthodox community.

This approach is fundamentally in line with work that has been conducted in the schools of other segregated communities, such as the Old Order Mennonites (Cowles, 2001), which has seen the role of such schools as integral elements of a larger community of practice (Lave &

Wenger, 1991), providing the community with a structured environment where students can begin to learn how to function as members of the community (an adaptation of what Lave and

Wenger term engagement in ‘legitimate peripheral participation’). Similarly, socialization has been widely noted as one goal of schooling—particularly in religious environments. As Rapoport et al. (1995) have noted: “Religious educational frameworks act simultaneously as educational institutions and as religious socializing agencies” (p. 48).

A secondary argument presented in this study, which will frame and inform my analysis, is that socialization and inculcation into a community of practice are essential components of the development of worldview. This study will present a particular definition of the concept of worldview, as embedded in daily practices and beliefs. This approach will serve as a theoretical framework for my analysis. It is my hope that the utilization of this general approach will successfully provide legitimate insight into the workings of the ultra-Orthodox school system, and thus serve as an empirical confirmation of this construct.

19 Ultra-Orthodox School: A Brief Introduction

Outside of Israel, which has numerous diverse religious and political groups, there are three main branches of contemporary Judaism: Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. This division can be traced back to the eighteenth century. Roughly speaking, at this time the Reform movement broke away from traditional Jewish practice and belief; those who retained those traditions and formulated a conscious ideology in opposition to Reform became known as

‘Orthodox’. Reform Judaism aimed to modernize and update the tradition to be more in line with enlightenment practice, values, and beliefs; it did away with much of the ritual in Orthodox

Judaism, and went so far as to deny the Divine origin of the Bible. Conservative Judaism emerged in the late nineteenth century as a breakaway from Reform, readopting certain more traditional practices and beliefs, but it accepted, in principle, the possibility of legal and theological change. Orthodox Judaism has remained fundamentalist and traditionalist; that is, it takes certain fundamental ideas to be true and unchanging, and advocates the strict adherence to a religious tradition as it is handed down from generation to generation.

In America today, Reform Judaism is the largest major denomination (~1.4 million,

34%), with Conservative the next largest (~1.1 million, 26%), and Orthodox the smallest (~0.5 million, 13%). These numbers are changing, however, as Orthodox Judaism has experienced growth over the last twenty-five years in large part due to a high birth rate, (Orthodox Jews make up 10% of the adult population but a full 23% of the child population), and both Reform and

20 Conservative have seen their numbers drop due to high intermarriage rates (Kotler-Berkowitz et al., 2003)1.

The American Jewish day school movement originated in the early part of the 20th

Century with the opening of a handful of schools located on the East coast (mostly in the New

York area). In 1944 an umbrella organization called Torah U’Mesorah was created to promote the development of, and provide support to, new Orthodox day schools throughout the country

(Kramer, 1984). This organization was quite successful in its endeavors as the 1940’s through the 1960’s marked a period of rapid growth in Jewish day schools. During this period the

Orthodox lead the way, as very high percentages of Orthodox students began attending Jewish day schools. By the 1980’s nearly all Orthodox children were attending day school (Schiff,

1987).2 Overall, in the United States, a recent census of Jewish day schools determined that as of the 2003-04 school year there were 205,000 students in 759 Jewish elementary and high schools.

Over 80% of the students were attending Orthodox schools, and 68% of those in Orthodox schools were in ultra-Orthodox schools (Schick, 2005).

During the 80’s and 90’s Orthodox schools began to branch and splinter as the communities became large enough to support multiple schools, catering to different niches in the community.3 The American Orthodox Jewish community is quite heterogeneous, and there are

1 These population numbers have a number of complex issues associated with them, which render them imprecise. The major obstacle to clear numbers is that there is no single standard for determining who is a Jew; the different denominations all have different criteria for this. This makes counting Jews across denominations difficult. There has been much discussion in the popular press and in scholarly journals over the sampling and justified conclusions of this data, as well as its predecessor, the NJPS in 1990 (Kosmin et al., 1991). (See for example, Sheskin, 2003; Wein, 2004). 2 (For a detailed, but concise, overview of the development of Jewish education in America that deals with both the history and theology of Jewish education, see Segal (2005), in particular pages 9-38; for a comprehensive historical overview extending through the 60’s see Schiff (1968)). 3 To see how the schools have splintered over the last 30 years, we might note a description of the types of Orthodox schools given in the early 1980’s (Diamond, 1982):

21 many sub-groups within the larger denomination. The largest group distinction can be made between modern-Orthodox Jews and Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Broadly speaking modern-Orthodox

Jews perceive traditional Judaism to be compatible with modern secular society; they not only believe that it is possible to adhere strictly to all of the dictates of the faith while at the same time participating fully in the surrounding society, but that this synthesis is praiseworthy. Ultra-

Orthodox Jews (again, painting with a broad brush) do not believe that this is possible. They believe that for the most part the values of the secular world are incompatible with true adherence to the Jewish faith and consequently strive to remain separate from the larger society.

They do not go to the movies or to the theater, they tend not to go to college in great numbers, and for the most part, they do not see great value in any knowledge other than religious knowledge.4

Schools in the ultra-Orthodox community naturally reflect this ideological perspective.

The bulk of the school day is spent learning and practicing the Jewish religion. The schools

The first models itself after the great pre-war yeshivot of Eastern Europe...The primary goal of these institutions is to imbue their students with piety, humility, a love for Torah and.... an intense commitment to Torah study. Secular studies are valued mainly as tools for better understanding the Torah.... A second group...confront(s) the challenge of secular ideology to Torah values... It is assumed that most graduates will attend college, and general studies are taught on a level reflecting this expectation... The third type (consists of) community schools which draw their students from a wide range of backgrounds.... While the administration would like to emphasize Torah study, many of the less observant parents are concerned primarily with obtaining top-drawer college preparatory education for their children. (p. 297-298) By 2003-04, however, those 3 groupings had been replaced by 6 categories, Yeshiva-world, Chassidic, Centrist, Modern Orthodox, Chabad, and Immigrant/Outreach (Schick, 2005), and each of these categories can easily be divided into subgroups of its own. 4 Another historical distinction exists between Yeshivish, or Litvish, Orthodox Jews and Hassidic Jews. Litvaks come primarily from Lithuania, and their ideology draws on that of the great Yeshivas in Lithuania, which emphasized Torah study above all else. Hassidism emerged in the 18th century as a populist response to the elite Yeshivas, and promoted mysticism and activity over intellect. At the outset the divide between the two groups was quite severe, but today the two groups, as represented in the ultra-Orthodox community, have more in common with each other than they do with the modern-Orthodox, and the boundaries between the communities has faded. The Yeshivish – Hassidic distinction is orthogonal to the modern-Orthodox – ultra-Orthodox distinction, as both modern-Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews have roots in both the Yeshivish and Hassidic worlds.

22 understand their role as being a bulwark against the pressures of the outside world; their goal is to produce traditional ultra-Orthodox students who will continue living in accordance with the dictates of the religion. As Heilman (1992a) has noted with regard to the historical development of ultra-Orthodox identity, “the yeshiva… became the embodiment of haredi life… It provided isolation and protection from the evils outside. The traditional Jewish concern with ritual learning was reconstructed as a defense mechanism, an inoculation against the dangers inherent in the encounter with the virus of modernity” (p. 35). Yet despite their antagonism to the secular world, ultra-Orthodox communities, and by extension ultra-Orthodox schools, recognize that people need to earn money to support their families, and need certain basic levels of secular education in order to gain employment. These schools therefore provide a minimal curriculum of basic secular subjects during a small portion of the day.

Given this interesting historical and theological context there are a number of possible approaches that can be taken when exploring the educational system. I would like to be clear that the purpose of this work is not historical; I do not wish to explore in great detail the genesis of the ultra-Orthodox day schools. Nor is the approach taken here theological; that is, I will not focus on the underlying religious dictates in regard to education or try to explain the current system of education in relation to Jewish legal codes and traditions. The goal here is to understand how the current system functions sociologically today, and how it impacts, and is impacted by, the worldview that is adopted by community members. Naturally this involves considerable discussion of religion (and religious views of education) but that is not the focus of the analysis.

23 Previous Research on Ultra-Orthodox Education

As I have noted, very little research has dealt directly with ultra-Orthodox education. The overwhelming majority of research on Jewish education takes place within the context of the

Reform and Conservative movements. Large Jewish education research projects such as the CIJE study of Jewish Educators, (Gamoran, Goldring, Goodman, Robinson, & Tammivaara, 1994;

Gamoran, Goldring, Robinson, Goodman, & Tammivaara, 1997), and the Cooperative Research

Project of Chicago Area Jewish Schools, (Schneider, 2003), are indicative of most general

Jewish education research in that they do not focus on Orthodox education, and to the extent that they address Orthodox schools little attention is paid to the school differences within Orthodoxy, which can be quite substantial.

Within Orthodoxy, educational research has been mostly confined to modern, or centrist,

Orthodox schools. One of the central motivations for much of the modern-Orthodox research was to build a model of schooling that synthesized the religious worldview with the embrace of secular knowledge, without abandoning either. Bieler (1987) discussed the centrist yeshiva high school, and the compartmentalization that seemed to take place there between secular and religious studies. He discussed at length how the attempt in these schools at a “separate but equal” attitude towards the two curricula necessarily lead to a devaluation of one or the other, and proposed the integration of the two as a possible solution. Along these lines, Goldberg

(1982) wrote that centrist schools were not educating from a religious perspective very well, identifying religious education as the devalued element.

Somewhat paradoxically, at the same time that some researchers worried about a devalued religious curriculum, other researchers and educators noticed that within the modern-

24 Orthodox community there had been a move to the right, (that is, towards ultra-Orthodoxy).

Grysman (1989) noted that, increasingly, the students that remained in the centrist schools were those who didn’t have a religious background at all, as students with religious backgrounds were moving to more “right-wing” schools. As early as 1981 Irwin Schiff (1981) noted that centrist

Orthodoxy was having trouble breeding future educators, and that most principals of centrist schools were personally committed to a position that was ideologically to the right of the school itself. Recently, Samuel Heilman has asserted that, indeed, ultra-Orthodoxy has all but taken over as the “dominant mode of Orthodoxy” (Heilman, 2005, 2006).

These two sets of observations, that modern Orthodox schools had not been teaching religious material well, and that they are undergoing a shift to the right, describe a fundamental tension that exists in the modern-Orthodox school system. Modern Orthodoxy must find a way to integrate the secular and the religious without sliding too far in one direction or the other. In

Orthodoxy Confronts Modernity (1991) Jonathan Sacks brings together a collection of writers who address the issue of trying to define and delineate the borders of modern Orthodoxy as an entity in and of itself, and not as a compromise ideology, (i.e. not just as a supposed halfway point between "real" Orthodoxy and secularism). One of those essays directly addresses the modern Orthodox educational system (Rosenak, 1991), and examines the curriculum of a modern Orthodox school as a lens for defining the unique relationship that secular and religious studies have in the modern Orthodox world. Recently, Alex Pomson (2001) continued to grapple with this relationship with a new proposal for the integration of secular and religious studies in the curriculum, and presently there will be a special issue of the Journal of Jewish Education devoted to the topic of integration.

25 I bring up the general thrust of modern-Orthodox educational research here to highlight the fact that the major issue at stake in the modern-Orthodox educational literature is to define a coherent identity in the modern world, and to make that identity sustainable over time. The research in this area makes it clear that the sustainability of a communal identity is intimately tied to issues of schooling, and schooling’s impact on students’ worldview and epistemology.

Modern-Orthodox educators must grapple with a delicate balancing act in order to promote a nuanced and sophisticated ideology in their schools. Because their goal of an integrated worldview is direct opposition to the ultra-Orthodox goal of isolation, the conclusions that these researchers come to and the recommendations that they make are not relevant to the ultra-

Orthodox context. Nevertheless, the ultra-Orthodox community is essentially engaged in a very similar balancing act that shares important features with the modern-Orthodox counterpart. For the ultra-Orthodox the balancing act comes from trying to function in the world while remaining apart from it.

Yet in contrast to the modern-Orthodox context there has been very little literature on ultra-Orthodox schooling, and even less literature that assesses what takes place within classrooms themselves. This may be due to lack of access, but it may also be due to a tendency to simplistically view the ultra-Orthodox community as monolithic and static, and to ignore the fact that the ultra-Orthodox must also negotiate modernity in their own way. Commentary on ultra-Orthodox education tends to come in the context of wider historical or sociological studies such as the works by Heilman (1992a) and Helmreich (1982) mentioned above. By their very nature these works do not focus on the details of what takes place within individual classrooms, but instead deal with schooling only peripherally, making arguments about the structure,

26 function, and purpose of communal education within a larger context. These are worthwhile accounts, but they do not address many of the detailed in-class issues that may be of interest.

Other studies that have been done in exclusively ultra-Orthodox settings have also tended to ignore actual classroom activity, instead focusing on items that can be measured on out of class surveys, such as Steinberg & Hayman’s (1990) look at students’ attitudes towards aspects of Judaism, Glaubman and Lifshitz’s (2001) examination of teacher attitudes toward special needs children, and Goldberg’s (2004) study of the relationship between Hebrew literacy and problematic behavior.

Two early studies did draw on in-school observation. Bullivant (1983) conducted a detailed case study of a Hasidic school in Australia. That paper, however, reported on research conducted 35 years ago in a different cultural context, and the ultra-Orthodox community has changed considerably since then. Similarly, Schneller (1980) looked at the ultra-Orthodox schools in the old yishuv5 in Jerusalem. The study was done over the course of three years with the author immersing himself in the community and its schools. Schneller concluded that “the leaders... are concerned above all else with preserving the integrity of their religious and cultural heritage” (p. 44). For this community, the function of education was the preservation of the “old ways”, and for boys at least, secular education played no role at all. This is not quite the case in

American ultra-Orthodox schools, however.6 While preserving the integrity of a cultural heritage is also of utmost importance, secular studies are part of the curriculum. Moreover, Schneller’s work did not offer a detailed portrait of the classrooms he observed; instead he drew on his experiences to provide a general description of the community’s approach towards education.

5 “The older, pre-Zionist, settlement in Palestine... (whose members) came to settle in Jerusalem in the early 1800’s” (p.35). This is an extremely ultra-Orthodox community. 6 There are some exceptions to this statement—but not many.

27 One work that does stand out, in that it examines recent American ultra-Orthodox classrooms themselves, is Lois Safer’s exploration of girls’ identity formation through religious texts. This research comes closest to the level of analysis that I have undertaken, though her work deals with the girls’ relationship to text, which is a substantially different process of identity formation than that of the boys. Nevertheless, her work is situated in the classes themselves, she examines the material that the students are learning, the discourse that takes place in the class, and the impact that this has students’ socialization into ultra-Orthodoxy. A further distinction (other than the fact that she is dealing with girls) arises from the fact that the students in her study did not all come from ultra-Orthodox homes, even though the administration of the school she examined was entirely ultra-Orthodox.

To my knowledge, the present study thus represents the first attempt to systematically examine contemporary American ultra-Orthodox schooling at the classroom level, and the first to approach American ultra-Orthodox communal dynamics and worldview formation from the perspective of detailed ethnographic work in ultra-Orthodox elementary schools.

A Sketch of a Worldview Framework

As noted above, this dissertation will employ a particular theoretical construct of worldview in order to analyze the internal functioning and overall impact of ultra-Orthodox schooling. In this section I would like to briefly give some background to the construct, to at least make the initial case that the stance that I adopt is plausible. The reader should be aware that this dissertation does not primarily consist of a cognitive analysis, and the cognitive structure described in this section is meant to function purely as a frame for making sense of the data. Therefore, my description of worldview in this section should not be taken as representative

28 of a complete theory of worldview, but rather, should be taken as a set of commitments underlying a general approach towards worldview. Many of the details of the system will be left unspecified.

The concept of worldview derives from the German philosophical term Weltanschauung, and refers to a cognitive mechanism for filtering, categorizing, and making sense of the world.

This notion is closely related to another philosophical term, epistemology (the study of the nature of knowledge), which has been utilized in educational literature to refer to students’ orientation towards knowledge and knowledge gathering. Weltanschauung is a broader, and more comprehensive term, as it includes both beliefs about knowledge and beliefs about the world more generally. Importantly, it includes more than just explicit beliefs, as an individual’s

Weltanschauung determines the interpretations his mind gives to events, and the actions he deems appropriate to take.

The use of epistemology to talk about what happens in school is pervasive in educational literature. Epistemology is sometimes discussed in the context of a particular content domain,

(for example, “students’ epistemology of science” (Carey & Smith, 1993)), but it is also understood as a broader stage-like orientation (King & Kitchener, 2004; Kuhn, Cheney, &

Weinstock, 2000), with students progressing from relatively unsophisticated epistemologies towards more sophisticated epistemologies. Often, in these conceptions, the epistemology that an individual has is treated as a unitary belief, or set of beliefs, across all domains, which progress over time.

Recently, some researchers have critiqued stage-like approaches to epistemology on the grounds that the researcher-defined sophisticated epistemology may not be the most productive

29 for students (Elby & Hammer, 2001), or even that the actual content of these definitions are incorrect (Gottlieb, 2002). On the basis of his own empirical work, Gottlieb argues for a view of epistemology that is dependent on the particular question that students are being asked; thus, a student may take a naïve-realist position on one issue, but take a relativist position on another issue. This model assumes that the particular nature of different domains affects the larger epistemological beliefs that students will express.

Similarly, Louca et al., (2004) have recently tried to frame the discussion of epistemology, not in terms of unitary epistemological beliefs, but rather in terms of much smaller, and more diverse types of epistemological resources that people accumulate through their interaction in the world. In their view, these resources can be activated in different circumstances, leading people to exhibit a wide range of epistemological stances, depending on the content and context.

These views progressively move in the direction of greater and greater complexity of individual epistemology, from simple, explicit, unitary beliefs in all domains, to a multitude of cognitive resources at the individual’s disposal. In addition to the recognition of epistemological complexity, I would further argue that it is unproductive to single one particular type of knowledge, epistemology, for special consideration. The factors that push students to take one epistemological approach or another in a particular domain cannot be explained only by looking to explicit knowledge-orientation cognitive resources, but must include content-specific cognitive elements as well. My view is that a more general underlying worldview dictates when and how different orientations to knowledge are taken.

30 For example, a student in an ultra-Orthodox school may have experience with a religious content area that privileges knowledge by authority. Under what circumstances will this knowledge orientation be expressed? For an ultra-Orthodox student it is obvious that his belief that the world is less than 6,000 years old would prevent a knowledge-from-authority orientation from being expressed in a science class, as this would conflict with his (non-epistemological) beliefs. We must look to something larger than just knowledge orientation in order to understand when and where an approach to knowledge will be expressed; we have to look at the beliefs that make up a particular worldview.

But what is a worldview? Many authors, particularly those talking about religion, use the term worldview un-problematically without definition simply to describe a way of looking at the world. For example, (Bennett, 2003), discusses the worldview of the Amish in regard to farming practices by simply asserting that they believe particular things about farming. Those statements about farming are taken to be representative of their worldview. In a discussion of religion and health Hall et al (2004) use the term worldview to distinguish between the webs of meaning and interpretation given to reality by secularist and religious people. This, at least, is more comprehensive than opinions about farming, but it still assumes that the nature of these webs of meaning is already well understood.

In a discussion of worldview and religion, Peterson (2001) argues that religions are orienting worldviews, and attempts to identify some of the elements particular to religious worldviews. In Peterson, as well as in many other scholars of religion, there appears to be an assumption that we know what worldview is already—the only question is how it impacts religion. In this work, however, I maintain that worldview does not only impact religion and

31 religious activity, but that it is also impacted by activities—I understand the worldview, at least in part, in terms of the activities that contribute to it.

In this regard, I am following Kearney’s understanding of worldview. In his book, World

View (Kearney, 1984), Michael Kearney sets out to define and describe worldview content and formation as part of a critique of classic anthropological approaches. In Kearney’s view the classical anthropological approaches were part of the mistaken research orientation, cultural idealism, which led them to look only at the ideas expressed in cultures without attention given to cultural behaviors, and the resulting environment that together are shaped by, and help shape, those ideas. In a critique of Robert Redfield, Kearney writes that Redfield “seemed to assume that most people sit around and speculate at length on existential issues. He had little concern with how the contents of a world-view shape people’s behavior in everyday life, and how this conduct of their lives constructed their world” (p. 66)7.

In the book, Kearney’s goal is to set out a complete theory of worldview that articulates how worldview is formed, and what it consists of. Kearney does a remarkably complete job in this regard, and here, I will only illustrate the aspects that are relevant to the work that I am conducting, and I will only provide the basic outline of his approach. He describes a model wherein experience with the world is perceived and categorized by internal structures of the

7 The over-attention given to ideas and ideology, as opposed to the nuts and bolts of everyday life, is also remarked upon by Berger and Luckman (1967) in a critique of classical sociological approaches: The sociology of knowledge must concern itself with everything that passes for “knowledge” in society… Theoretical thought, “ideas,” Weltanschauungen are not that important in society… Only a very limited group of people in any society engages in theorizing, in the business of “ideas,” and the construction of Weltanschauungen. But everyone in society participates in “knowledge” in one way or another. Put differently, only a few are concerned with the theoretical interpretation of the world, but everybody lives in a world of some sort… The sociology of knowledge must first of all concern itself with what people “know” as “reality” in their everyday, non- or pre-theoretical lives. (15)

32 mind (universal modes of conceptualization whose content can vary) in addition to the mind’s contents from previous experience. The experience and categorization of that experience takes place at multiple levels, from basic perceptual schemas all the way up to what Kearney calls

“logico-structurally integrated assumptions and images”, which are higher level abstractions. At every level, however, the perceptions direct activity (at the lowest level this consists of simple perceptual exploration and at the highest it consists of “physical, social, and symbolic behavior in general” (p. 45)) and that activity both samples from, and modifies the overall environment.

The environment, then in turn modifies the perceptual schemata, taxonomies and paradigms, and logico-structurally integrated assumptions and images—that is to say, the environment then modifies the worldview.

The model of worldview that Kearney adopts is depicted in Figure 1, reproduced from

Kearney’s book.

33

Figure 1: Kearney's Model of World-View

Kearney writes of this model “The dynamics of this model are dialectic: Perception of the total environment occurs, and is in part determined by the nature of that environment. These perceptions are organized systematically into a set of assumptions about the nature of that total perceived reality—into a world view. This world view in turn becomes the basis for socially and physically relating to that environment, and in this way alters the environment; the altered environment in turn will affect the way in which it is perceived” (p. 120).

The approach that Kearney takes with respect to worldview has been adapted and utilized in other contexts, such as counseling (e.g. Trevifio, 1996), as well as by education researchers, often in the context of science education. For example, Coburn (1989), though he explicitly does not accept the materialist and Marxist elements of Kearney’s writings (which are not discussed here), does adapt the Kearney model for use as the basis of a theoretical framework for directing

34 science education research. George (1999) has used Kearney’s model as an orienting framework as well, in looking at the way the worldview of villagers in Trinidad and Tobago interacts with the science that they are taught in school. In her work she looked at the content of their universals—basic modes of conceptualization, much in the same way that Kearney does in the later chapters of his book8. In a fairly recent review of research on multiculturalism in the science classroom, Kearney’s understanding of worldview is provided as the baseline definition of worldview (Slay, 2001).

As it is a remarkably complete treatment of worldview, researchers have utilized different aspects of Kearney’s approach. In this work I am chiefly concerned with the elements of his approach that recognize the dialectical nature of worldviews, the way in which they impact activity, and are impacted by activities (in Kearney’s model, through changes to the environment9). Though Kearney discusses worldview formation at multiple levels, and is concerned with the nuts and bolts of the basics of perception and the internal structuring of the mind, this work deals with worldview at the level of what Kearney would call

“presuppositions”—explicit, second-order assumptions. In his model, first order assumptions concern themselves with things like the nature of time and causality, and make up the content of the universals (referenced above). Second order assumptions “can be seen as permutations of the underlying culturally specific forms of the universals”. They are typically describable by the individuals that maintain them, and involve an understanding of things like “creation, human

8 Interestingly, though you would expect more of a focus on activity given the model he articulates, Kearney (and George) focuses on universals, which can be discussed relatively independent of the specific activities and environment that shape their content. Much of the analysis is conducted at the level of perception, belief, and language use, while less attention is given to an analysis of activity. 9 At the very outset of this chapter I noted that a secondary argument in this study is that socialization and inculcation into a community of practice are essential components of the development of worldview. In this model the community of practice might be associated with Kearney’s environment and can be seen as in this way impacting individual cognitive structures.

35 nature, reproduction, and proper behavior” (p. 48). But because I take seriously the idea that activity impacts worldview, my analysis is not confined to an analysis of explicit propositional statements, but focuses on the activities people engage in along with the beliefs (both explicit and implicit) that they maintain.

This study, then, will adopt the approach that worldview is embodied in the nexus of beliefs and activities that an individual engages in. I am not concerned here with documenting the processes by which the activities and beliefs contribute to worldview, or the processes by which worldview impacts activity. I am more concerned with the fact that they do in fact impact each other, and in understanding the content of that impact. I understand worldview as an emergent property, distributed over individuals’ activities and beliefs, which makes sense of new information and activity, and directs further activity.

As depicted in the graphic below, ‘worldview’ is the cognitive mechanism that filters, categorizes, and generally makes sense of an individual’s experience of the world. Each experience joins the millions of other activities and implicit and explicit beliefs that a person retains to contribute in some small way to this overall worldview.10

10 It should be noted that this model draws on Kearney, but is clearly not exactly the same. Most prominently, I have put activities and belief together, rather than leaving beliefs (or what Kearney terms images and assumptions) to be the content of worldview. In addition, I have sidestepped the issue of environment. Nevertheless, the recognition that activity impacts worldview as well as being directed by it is a central feature of his approach, and is the major element of his thinking that I wish to draw on.

36

Figure 2: Emergent Worldview

Though, in truth, every experience contributes in some small way to the emergent worldview, when researchers have talked about worldview they have mostly described worldview in terms of beliefs that are of the same nature as Kearney’s presuppositions

(Kearney’s examples, quoted above, include beliefs about creation, human nature, reproduction, and proper behavior). In this framework, therefore, the analysis of emergent worldview consists of an exploration of attitudes, feelings, and beliefs inherent in activity, and explicit beliefs about

37 the world that exist at the level of Kearney’s presuppositions. As with Kearney, in this model, the emergent worldview will in turn dictate appropriate behaviors.11

There are good reasons to believe that if this view of worldview has merit, schools (and in particular religious schools) provide a particularly useful locus for examining worldview. In schools, students acquire a tremendous amount of information about the world while engaging in highly structured activities. In religious contexts, where socialization is often an explicit goal, the activities and beliefs contained in instruction are likely to work in concert with the activities outside of school, establishing and reinforcing a particular worldview.

In the educational and anthropological literature, other constructs, similar to my conception of worldview, have been used to explore aspects of phenomena comparable to those explored in this work. One construct that has been given a tremendous amount of attention is that of culture. There has been extensive literature on culture, with varying definitions and approaches to its study, including many anthropologists who argue against the utility of using the construct of culture at all (e.g. Abu-Lughod, 1991; Barth, 1994).12 In summarizing a wide range of definitions of culture (and in offering a defense of the construct) Brumann (1999) identifies culture as “the set of specific learned routines (and/or their material and immaterial products) that are characteristic of a delineated group of people”. This definition of culture (a shared set of

11 I have so far merely provided a sketch of a worldview approach—there are many other possible ways of looking at worldview and many details of this framework have been left unspecified. For example, how is it that the nodes of activity and belief coalesce into a coherent whole? Do all nodes contribute equally to the system, or are there a wide range of weightings? Is there actually a separate cognitive “worldview” structure, or is it just shorthand for describing what happens when new nodes are introduced into the system? These questions are among a host of questions that would need to be answered before complete picture of worldview is obtained. However, it is my view that for the purposes of this dissertation these details do not need to be spelled out. What is important for this work is the general structure that sees the activities and beliefs as the central contributors to an overall approach towards understanding the world. 12 Often on the grounds that it overly reifies dynamic and multifaceted things and essentializes groups in ways that it shouldn’t.

38 learned routines) seems reasonable, and is related to my understanding of worldview in that I understand worldview to be the cognitive imprint of these routines. In my view, much of what makes cultural activity interesting is the way in which particular ways of seeing the world emerge from these activities, and through a dialectical process, operate internally to further direct cultural activity.

In the research that follows I employ the construct of worldview to explore issues pertaining to ultra-Orthodox education. I will examine the construction of student worldview in ultra-Orthodox schools using case studies and interview data. In order to provide a more targeted analysis of the impact of activity on worldview I will also utilize a construct called the activity node, which is a unit of activity in the classroom. The activity node is a script-like construct that divides the classroom into units of analysis based on the content and structure of activities, while highlighting the worldview significant aspects of those activities. Analysis of the total spectrum of activity nodes observed in ultra-Orthodox classrooms will allow us to see the development of many aspects of worldview in practice in the classroom context. The construct of the activity node will be developed in greater detail in the fourth chapter.

Before moving on I would like to be clear about two points relating to worldview in this dissertation. The first point is that the approach to worldview that I have described in this section has identified worldview as a property of individuals, rather than schools or communities. It is a primarily cognitive construct. Throughout the work, however, I will often refer to the worldview of the community or school. This is not meant to suggest that worldview is a property of schools or communities; rather I use those terms as a shorthand way of stating that the individual members of a school or community share many of the same practices and beliefs.

39 The second point is that having defined worldview in this way, there are a number of different aspects of worldview that I could have explored. In particular I could have delved deep into specific content of the students’ worldviews, examining their perceptions and beliefs of a whole host of issues, such as morality, the validity of their religion, popular culture, and gender and race, among many other things. This is not the approach that I have adopted in this work. I am chiefly concerned with understanding the overall dynamics of the school and community and how they relate to worldview formation. Given my stance that individual worldviews can be understood through an analysis of activity and belief, I have focused on how the design and execution of the school day, which dictates activity, shapes the students’ worldviews, and how the community members (including the students) perceive the function and impact of school.

Worldview is used in this study to as a tool to understand the social and organizational dynamics, not to provide a comprehensive account of all of the nuances and details of a student’s worldview.

Because much of the analysis that I will describe in this dissertation deals with the worldview significance of the activities and beliefs promulgated by the school and, as noted, there is little elaboration of the cognitive mechanisms for the adoption of worldview, there may be a tendency to assume that I am either describing a construct that is a property of the school

(which I have just stated is not the case) or that I am uncritically assuming that students will uniformly adopt the worldview that is inherent in the school practices. This is not my intention in this work. It is clear that individual students will adopt highly personalized versions of the worldview that is inherent in the practices and beliefs of the schools day, and that the specific mechanisms of worldview adoption will play a prominent role in the extent to which specific

40 elements of a worldview are internalized. Some students will likely reject the worldview that is promulgated by the school.

Because I believe that activity and belief play a major role in the development of worldview, however, and students in schools engage in the same activities and are exposed to the same beliefs, I believe that there will be substantial similarities in the basic components of worldview. When I discuss worldview in this work I am referring to those general components of worldview—components that a typical student will adopt through participation in specific practices, and exposure to specific beliefs. The worldview of any individual, however, will have its own idiosyncratic character.

The Data: Collection and Analysis

Research Context: Three Boys’ Schools

The research in this dissertation was conducted in a large Midwestern city with a fairly large Orthodox community. In this city, which I will refer to as Midwest, day schools began to open in the 1940’s, and currently there are 9 Orthodox elementary schools in the larger metropolitan area (excluding special schools for disabled students), and a handful of non-

Orthodox elementary schools. In a traditional ultra-Orthodox environment boys and girls are kept separate throughout their childhood and teenage years; naturally, the schools are therefore strictly segregated by gender. This research was conducted in boys’ schools only, due to the difficulty of accessing the girls’ schools. Other work that treats girls’ schools in this community includes S. Bechhofer’s analysis of the Bais Yaakov girls school movement (2004), S. Levine’s ethnography of a Lubavitch girls’ high school (2003), and Safer’s examination of middle school girls’ construction of identity (2003).

41 Three schools were included in this study. One of the schools is a mainstream13

Yeshivish school, a non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox school that draws on the tradition of the pre-

World War II Yeshivas in Lithuania. Another school is mainstream Chasidic; that is, it belongs to a tradition that has its roots in the 18th century populist mystical movement known as

Chassidism. The third is affiliated with Lubavitch, a particular Hasidic group that differs in a number of respects from both of the two other groups, most notably in its focus on the Messiah and its commitment to religious outreach. Though the movements with which these three schools are associated are historically distinct, (indeed Chassidism initially arose in opposition to the

Lithuanian Yeshiva system), in many important respects they are culturally uniform today. In this paper I will refer to the three schools as Yeshiva, Chasidic, and Lubavitch.

Because labels that refer to different sub-groupings of Orthodox Jews, such as “ultra-

Orthodox”, “Haredi”, “modern-Orthodox”, and “centrist Orthodox” refer to somewhat amorphous cultural entities, and because the character of the communities they designate has been the subject of much contention in books and articles (such as Heilman’s (2006) most recent work, in which he departs somewhat from his previous characterizations of the ultra-Orthodox) the choice of these three schools as solely representative of the ultra-Orthodox in the city being studied needs to be explained.

The term ‘ultra-Orthodox’ is not generally used as a religious identifier by adherents, but is rather employed by outside observers to reference a broad spectrum of Jewish communities with some similar underlying features. Many important markers of ultra-Orthodoxy are negative—that is, they can be defined by what they are not. One such marker is antipathy

13 I use the term “mainstream” to indicate that the school is fairly representative of this wider designation.

42 towards the modern-Orthodox approach of “Torah U’Maadah”, (Torah and secular knowledge intertwined). Another important marker is the general discomfort with (and depending on the exact community, hostility towards) Zionism. By and large the ultra-Orthodox do not recognize the non-religious State of Israel while the modern Orthodox are usually fervent supporters of

Israel.

These categories can be difficult to apply at the community level, but using schools as the analytic lens makes the task much easier, as schools often have clear defining characteristics. In the city where this study was conducted there are six Orthodox elementary schools that accept boys. Two of the schools are mixed-gender schools, which is a clear marker of modern-

Orthodoxy and, as noted, anathema in ultra-Orthodoxy. Another marker is the amount of time devoted to secular education; schools that believe in the Torah U’Maadah principle are unlikely to only offer secular education in a small fraction of the day. Of the four segregated schools in the Orthodox community, one divides the school day equally between religious and secular education, and is explicitly Zionistic, and the other three only offer secular education for less than a quarter of the day, and do not acknowledge Zionism.

The schools selected for this study share these features: they are non-Zionist, gender- segregated, and not oriented towards a Torah U’Maadah approach, are those that were included in the label ultra-Orthodox. This choice of dimensions is supported by the AviChai Foundation’s

Census of Jewish Day Schools (Schick, 2005), which broke Orthodox education into six different subgroups. Their explanation of their choice of categories relies heavily on support for

Israel, mixed-gender, and devotion to secular education, as important markers of affiliation.

Based on their classifications the three schools in my study would fall into three sub-categories

43 of what I am calling ultra-Orthodox, namely Chassidic, Yeshiva-world, and Chabad

(Lubavitch). Of the other three schools in the city, based on the AviChai classification, two would be considered modern Orthodox and one would be considered centrist Orthodox. In their discussion, they note that many of the essential features of Chassidic, Yeshiva-world, and

Chabad schools are the same and can be grouped into a larger category of “Chareidi”, the Israeli grouping that roughly corresponds to the American “ultra-Orthodox”.

Overview of Methods

In the following sub-sections I will describe the data collection in more detail, but before a detailed description, I would like to discuss the rationale for the chosen methods. The question of worldview development in ultra-Orthodox schools could have been approached in many ways.

One approach would have been to do a traditional ethnographic study, spending a year or two as a participant observer in the school. Peshkin (1982) writes that “such research requires the type of association that ethnographies exemplify: long term, in-depth, personal, intensive, and encompassing” (p. 54). In many ways the research presented here resembles such an ethnography. As I will describe in detail at the end of this chapter, I am a liminal member of the community under study, I attended one of the three schools described in this research for eleven years, and my daughter currently attends the girls’ division of another of the schools. In this respect I have a “long term, in-depth, personal, intensive, and encompassing” relationship with the schools and the community that I am studying. In addition, in this research I spent considerable time in the schools themselves, talking to people, observing daily life, and taking field notes on everything I experienced.

44 However, there are ways in which this study is not like an ethnography, both by omission of some of the features of ethnography and by the inclusion of other features that go beyond ethnography. To begin with, the time spent actually in the schools amounted to three months, rather than a year or more. In addition, the methods utilized in the schools drew more on an external research structure than those of traditional ethnography, which tend to take their structure from the flow of life in the observed community; as I will describe, I conducted targeted observations of particular classes, and conducted analyses of those observations that are focus on very specific features of the class environment. Similarly, the interviews that I conducted were clinical interviews designed with specific goals in mind.

Another approach that I could have taken with respect to the study of worldview would have been primarily quantitative in nature. I could have designed an instrument to measure worldview and distributed the instrument to the members of the school community. In this model

I could have analyzed the data for systematic differences in worldview orientation, and drawn broader conclusions from these differences. This approach, however, would have been inconsistent with my theoretical stance that activities are an essential component of worldview, and that we cannot simply examine how people respond to specific questions in order to understand their worldview. In addition, in order to design such an instrument in a way that would accurately capture the beliefs of participants, I would have had to have some preconceived ideas about the nature of the beliefs participants held14. In this case, the paucity of literature on

14 For example, the Gamoran et al. study cited above consisted of numerous survey items designed to measure religious engagement. However, the authors had to have some preconceived ideas of what religious engagement consisted of. What this meant, practically, was that certain items, such as celebrating the Israeli Independence Day, made little sense when applied to the ultra-Orthodox context—as many ultra-Orthodox communities do not support the state of Israel for religious reasons.

45 ultra-Orthodoxy and worldview made it more desirable to proceed from the ground up, building a picture of worldview through in-depth interviews and observations.

The approach that I have taken has been driven by the desire to both introduce the ultra-

Orthodox school system, that is, conduct basic foundational descriptive work, and to make a particular argument about worldview within the community. In order to provide a well understood setting for the study, I used some of the tools of ethnographers, spending time in the schools while making use of my insider status. I also utilized some quantitative methods in providing the basic description of the community, conducting a survey of parents’ education and occupation, and looking at standardized test scores of students in the three schools. In order to pursue my interest in the question of worldview development, and how the schools might contribute to that development, I utilized interview protocols that were designed to explicitly elicit responses having to do with worldview and the role of education, and I conducted a detailed analyses of a number of classrooms, with the question of worldview and socialization in mind. These analyses do not offer as comprehensive a view as a pure ethnography might, but they do dig deeply in the few areas that are of interest to me in this study.

Clinical Interviews

One of the two major components of the data collection was the clinical interview, which was conducted with a wide range of community members (the other was classroom observation, described below). These interviews serve a wide range of functions in this work. They inform everything from the history of the community and the schools to the beliefs and worldviews of individuals in the community.

46 In order to get as comprehensive a picture as possible I conducted interviews with all segments of the community. I interviewed administrators in all three schools, both religious and secular teachers, students, and parents of students—both those who had children in classes that I had observed and parents who had children in other classes. In general I tried, wherever possible, to arrange interviews with members of the classes that I was observing. This allowed me to ask questions that were driven by what I saw in class, and to compare interviewee responses to set questions with my own observations in the classroom.

Overall, the interview data consisted of fifty interviews, with each interview taking between twenty minutes to an hour. In total there was just under 25 hours of interview data. The breakdown of the interviews is shown in Table 115.

Lubavitch Chassidic Yeshiva Administrators 2 1 3 Teachers and rabbeim 7 2 4 Students 15 3 8 Parents 2 0 4 Table 1: The Number of Interviews Conducted

The number of interviews may seem haphazard because, like many aspects of this research, my choices were often dictated by what was possible in my research setting, including the time available to me, and the access permitted. I conducted more interviews in Lubavitch than in the other two schools. This was for a number of inter-related reasons. It was the school that I was initially most familiar with, and I had a previous relationship with some of the administration. As such, it was the school in which I first began my pilot work, and had established a level of trust with many of the people there. Finally, as a general rule the Lubavitch

15 If one totals up the numbers in the table, the sum will be 51, not the 50 interviews mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph. This is because one of the interviewees was a teacher at one of the schools and a Rebbe at another. He was interviewed about both experiences and is counted in two categories in the table.

47 community is much more open to outsiders than other ultra-Orthodox groups, in part because they are very active in Jewish outreach. Conversely, I conducted very few interviews at

Chassidic. The community associated with this school was harder to access and more nervous about being studied. I was able to observe only one grade at Chassidic, whereas at the other two schools I observed two different grades; there were therefore less subjects to draw from. The natural limitation of this distribution is that we have less information about Chassidic, and an overrepresentation of Lubavitch in the data (particularly among the students). This should be kept in mind when interpreting the interview data16.

Demographic Survey

In order to gain a demographic understanding of the communities associated with these schools I conducted a telephone survey intended to map out background information on the parent body, with particular attention to parental education, employment, and general economic status. I was given the complete parent list for the 2005 school year by the administrations of each of the three schools. Yeshiva had 159 households, Chassidic had 111, and Lubavitch had

100. Of these, I selected at random a total of 105 households to telephone, which is approximately 28% of the total number of households (this number is not exact as some parents send their children to more than one school and thus show up on multiple lists). Responses were received from 95 households, resulting in a 90% response rate. Each survey asked for information regarding both parents in the household; taking into account two single parent

16 Note, however, that I interviewed all of the relevant administrators in each of the three schools; I was comprehensive in that regard.

48 households, the total number of subjects was 188. The parents were called over the course of two months in the summer of 2006.

In the chapter on demographics I will argue that the data show a wide degree of variation within the community associated with the three schools, ranging from choices of occupation to previous education. Indeed, all three schools are not created equal: while most of the data in this dissertation reveals a great deal of uniformity, the survey data shows that the parents in the three schools are very different, and have had very different life experiences. The implications of these differences on the overall findings of the study will be discussed in the final, concluding, chapter.

Standardized Test Scores

An additional source of quantitative data was standardized test scores from the students in the three schools. The test scores have multiple functions within the dissertation. To begin with, because ultra-Orthodox schooling is understudied it is helpful to present some background information on the school and the community; knowledge of the schools’ success at teaching secular material is an integral part of that background information, considering the fact that general antipathy towards secular knowledge and culture is often considered to be a hallmark of the ultra-Orthodox. Further, knowledge of test score success can provide context to classroom observation and interviews.

Another reason to look at test scores is that an understanding of how well the students are doing in the secular domain is an important part of the story about the worldview that the students maintain. If the students perform extremely well we might have to explain how that is possible given the small amount of time and attention given to the subject matter, and the limited role (I will argue) secular knowledge has within their worldview. If they perform extremely

49 poorly there might be an implication that they are maintaining their worldview at the expense of secular knowledge and instruction, and this possibility would have to be explored in greater depth.

It was not easy to gain access to the test scores of students in this community, however. This is for two reasons:

1. As Glaubman and Lifshitz (2001) point out, the ultra-Orthodox community is tightly knit and

quite averse to being studied by outsiders, making research in this area difficult and rare.

Though I was able to get access to community members for interviews and classroom

observations, it was more difficult to get access to test score data, as this was considered to

be even more sensitive than regular data collection. Administrators were rightly concerned

with giving me access to students’ files, many of whom I personally knew.

2. Just as secular instruction is not given primary attention in the school day, the administration

and analysis of standardized test scores is not considered to be as important as it might in

other schools. Practically speaking, this means that the schools kept very poor records and

switched tests frequently, making it difficult to track down full sets of test scores for different

years and grades. In one school, I was led to a giant closet filled with files and was instructed

to start digging.

Ultimately, I was given access to paper records of a range of test scores over multiple years and grades in all three schools. I was allowed to photocopy the scaled scores and percentiles, and I was required to whiteout the names on all of the documents before leaving the building (each student was given a number instead). The data was then entered by hand into both an excel spreadsheet and SPSS 13 for Mac.

50 Because of the poor record keeping at the schools, the often outdated tests (such as the

SAT 8, when both the SAT 9 and 10 were already available), and the switching between tests, it did not turn out to be feasible to use the scaled scores in a productive way. Instead, the test score analysis relies on the percentile scores of each student. This has the benefit of allowing some comparison across different tests in different schools, though it makes traditional tests of significance problematic.

The test score data collected is listed in the table below. ‘SAT’ stands for the Stanford

Achievement Test and ‘CTBS’ stands for the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills.

1996 SAT 8 Yeshiva 2000 SAT 8 2004 SAT 9 2001 SAT 8 Chassidic 2004 SAT 8 1999 CTBS 4 Lubavitch 2002 CTBS 4 2004 SAT 10 Table 2: Tests Collected

Classroom Observation

Perhaps the most important source of data for this study was the videotaped observation of classrooms in all three schools. Videotaping the observations allowed me to explore activities, content, and discourse in both secular and religious classes. Over the course of three and a half months, (March – June, 2005) I spent nearly every day in one or more of the three schools. The time spent in these schools was divided into three parts. I spent time interviewing students, teachers, and administrators; videotaping both religious and secular classes; and walking around,

51 hanging out, talking to people in hallways, observing recess, and taking field notes. During the time I spent in the schools I also gathered class materials such as worksheets and assignments, as well as administrative materials such as school rulebooks.

I observed eleven different classes over five grades (1,3,5,6, and 8) over three schools. I visited each class between five and seven times for five – six hours total for each class. In regards to the sampling of the classes I tried my best to get a wide range of grades, and to construct the sample to be as accurate a reflection of the school as possible. However, arranging observation was quite difficult as many teachers had reservations about having a camera in the classroom, and parents in this very insular community were extremely wary of the entire project

(as mentioned, I was unable to secure permission to observe more than one class at Chassidic).

For each of the grades that I arranged to observe, I had to come to agreements with both the religious teachers and the secular teachers. Sometimes the split between the religious part of the day and the secular part of the day meant that not all of the students observed in one part of the day would be observed in the other. The net result was that in the fifth grade of Yeshiva I arranged to observe two different religious studies classrooms, each with half the grade, and one larger secular classroom with the entire grade. In the first grade of Yeshiva I arranged to observe one unified religious classroom, but was only able to arrange to observe half of the students in the secular part of the day.

One factor that influenced the structure of the observation was the structure of the classes themselves. In all three schools there are no clearly distinct periods;17 rather, time is structured around recess and lunch, and in the blocks of time in between these events the teachers organize

17 With the exception of the three upper grades of Yeshiva, which have distinct periods for secular subjects.

52 the material as they wish. Some teachers keep a very regular structure, always teaching the same subjects at the same time, and other teachers vary what they teach on a day-to-day basis.

This made it difficult to arrange to come in for specific periods of the day. Instead I structured my observation around the total number of visits to the class and the total number of hours observed. My hope was that by varying the times that I entered the classes I would, over the course of multiple visits, manage to catch all of the different subject matter that was taught.

Although I observed two grades in two schools and one grade in one school, I observed eleven separate classrooms in all, as each grade had both a secular and religious classroom, and

Yeshiva’s fifth grade had two religious classrooms.

School Religious Classes Secular Classes Yeshiva Grade 1: 7 visits, ~6 hours Grade 1-A18: 5 visits ~5.5 hours Grade 5-A: 5 visits ~5 hours Grade 5: 5 visits ~5.5 hours Grade 5-B: 6 visits ~5 hours Chasidic Grade 6: 6 visits ~6.5 hours Grade 6: 5 visits ~5.5 hours Lubavitch Grade 3: 6 visits ~5.5 hours Grade 3: 6 visits ~4.5 hours Grade 8: 7 visits ~5.5 hours Grade 8: 5 visits ~5 hours Table 3: Classroom Observations

Structure of this Study

The first goal of this dissertation is to provide a basic ethnographic and demographic sketch of three ultra-Orthodox boys’ elementary schools and the communities associated with them. Given the lack of prior research on these schools, this background is necessary to lay groundwork for further analysis, and will provide needed information on this unstudied educational system as well as providing a foundation for my own discussion of worldview formation in these schools. This primary examination of the schools will form the subject of the

18 An “A” or “B” indicates that the grade was split into 2 classes

53 second chapter of this dissertation. Because of my focus on the relationship of the schools to the community’s negotiation of communal identity in relation to secular knowledge and

American society, I devote special attention to the education and employment of the parent body and the quantifiable academic achievement of schools in secular studies.

The second goal of this dissertation is to examine worldview formation of ultra-Orthodox students in the context of classroom and school life. Chapter 3 will use the interview data to provide a sketch of the worldview significant and educational beliefs put forward by the subjects in the study: the administrators, rabbeim, students and teachers. Given my stance that we must be attentive to activities as well as beliefs when considering worldview, Chapter 4 will consist of a detailed study of activity nodes in classrooms. In this analysis I will illustrate the way in which the schools help construct ultra-Orthodox identity and its relation to secular American society by comparing the secular and religious classrooms, and giving special attention to differences between secular and religious class nodes.

Chapter 5 will use two case studies to examine the way in which the schools restrict aspects of secular studies classes, effectively rendering the secular material less meaningful to students. This analysis will take place in the context of comparing student behavioral differences exhibited in secular classes taught by a rebbe and a secular teacher. Finally, the last chapter,

Chapter 6, will bring together the different strands of data, and utilizing the worldview framework described above, will try to assemble a the data into a coherent representation of the community worldview and its genesis in the school system.

Personal Coda

54 Before moving on to the next chapter I would like to describe my own relationship to this research, and how I came to conduct this study. I grew up in the community being studied here, attended one of the three schools for eleven years (nursery through eighth-grade), and went to camp in the summer with children from another of the schools. I attended ultra-Orthodox high school both in Midwest and in New York, and as a married adult I now participate in many of the communal institutions within the community, such as synagogues and institutes of higher

Talmudic learning. For example, like many ultra-Orthodox men I study Talmud every evening at a Kollel—in this case a branch of the Lakewood Yeshiva system. As noted earlier, my daughter attends the Beis Yaakov, the ultra-Orthodox girls’ counterpart to the boys’ school that I have labeled ‘Yeshiva’.

Yet at the same time I am not entirely integrated into this community. Unlike many men I did not spend many years studying Talmud after high school; instead I spent two years studying in a Yeshiva before moving on to a top ranked college—something that is seldom (if ever) done in the ultra-Orthodox community. (I make note of the top ranking only because sometimes people in the community do attend community colleges and other smaller institutions). I have also pursued advanced research at the doctoral level—something that is generally not done.

When I began this doctoral research I felt that I was in a unique position to offer something to the ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools that they have not previously had: rigorous training in the area of learning and education, with the ability to translate that training to the ultra-Orthodox context. Because I was familiar with both the larger secular world and the ultra-

Orthodox world, I felt that I would be able to take the knowledge that I acquired in my graduate training and apply it to struggling schools in the ultra-Orthodox community. I say, “struggling

55 schools” for indeed, that was my perception, as well as the perception of many people who I knew in the community. Much as in wider society there is constant grumbling about the state of education, my experience in the ultra-Orthodox community was such that I heard a steady litany of complaints about the education that students were receiving.

The perception that I had from my experiences within the community was that people were most concerned with the secular education, which receives only a small amount of time and attention in the school day. The common complaint seemed to me to be that the secular education was weak, and that the students were not acquiring the necessary skills to function in life. I heard this complaint more vehemently from those who had had greater exposure to secular knowledge themselves. Thus I began this research with the goal of identifying ways to reform and otherwise improve the secular education within these schools, while remaining sensitive to the religious needs and constraints of the community.

Because I am, in many ways, a part of the ultra-Orthodox community, the leaders of the three schools were mostly receptive to my request to study their schools. It was clear that some administrators did not expect to gain a great deal of new insight from my work, but they were nevertheless willing to accommodate my belief that the work would be of some benefit to the community. This accommodation extended to most areas of educational interest, but precisely because I am a member of the community, I was restricted from accessing certain types of data.

For example, I was unable to access any type of financial data, as that information is closely guarded in a small community. Were I an outsider, I might have some chance of obtaining that information.

56 In my initial formulation of the study I felt that there might be some educational ideas and methods that I could help implement in schools that, without demanding greater time or resources, would still make better use of the time that was devoted to secular education. Yet, as I began to investigate the schools, spending time and gathering data, I realized two things. The first was that the schools may not be doing as poorly as advertised, and the students may be learning enough in the secular part of the day to satisfy the goals of the school. As I will demonstrate in the next chapter, though the test scores are not high, they are not below average either (in the core domains being studied), and in general members of the community are able to function in the secular world. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, what I began to discover was that to the extent that there were problems in the ultra-Orthodox schools, and in particular the secular education, these problems were not of the same sort as those that might be found in other contexts, such as public schools, but were a direct result of the role and purpose of secular education within the larger school day. But in order to truly understand the role of secular education within the school day, I had to first have some understanding of the overall purpose of school in this ultra-Orthodox community, which, it was becoming increasingly clear, was not the same as schools in other contexts.

This realization, that the problems and processes at play in the ultra-Orthodox schools were not random, but were the consequence of much larger cultural and religious pressures, forced me to turn my attention to those pressures to uncover the dynamics that caused the school day to look the way it did. It was in this shift that I started to see the role of schools as primarily socializing students into a particular religious worldview, and helping to isolate the students from the larger secular worldview. This study then moved to explore and illustrate this process of

57 worldview formation in the schools, with an eye towards understanding how the secular education fits into the larger system. Given what I have discovered in this study, however, it is clear to me that the reforms that I would have enacted must, for the most part, be sadly left behind, as they seek to give meaning to the secular material in a way that runs directly counter to the worldview that I believe is being developed in the school day. To be clear, I am not arguing that reform is impossible in these schools. Rather, that the most obvious reforms, such as making the material more meaningful, and trying to introduce authentic activity that ties the material to the students lives, would not work in this context. In order to understand which reforms will work we have to understand the function of school within the communal worldview, to find reforms that are both consistent with the communal goals and compatible with the communal worldview.

This dissertation, then, attempts to uncover the elements of the school day that contribute to the ultra-Orthodox worldview, and tries to present a model of what that worldview consists of.

One lesson that may emerge from this dissertation is that if one is to address problems in an educational system one must first have a clear understanding of the function of the education in the worldview and culture that it is situated; otherwise educational reforms will likely be unsuccessful. This is a moral that should carry weight beyond the ultra-Orthodox context, to other reform endeavors and other contexts of school improvement. This dissertation can serve as model of the ways in which worldview may be manifest in the school day—the way that it impacts what is learned and how it is learned—as well as a model of how the education itself may impact the overall worldview of the students. Taking these factors seriously is essential in any educational research effort.

58 Chapter 2: Background

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with a basic demographic introduction to, and assessment of, the ultra-Orthodox schools in Midwest. I will first provide a general history and description of the schools, their institutional relationships to the local and national communities with which they are associated, and their daily functioning, including schedules and curricula. This description will come from my own experience with the schools, the extensive observation and field notes taken during the study, and my interviews with community members.

I will then provide detailed demographic information on the parent body of the schools, focusing on their educational background, current employment, and general economic lifestyle.

Access to parents’ educational backgrounds sheds light on a number of other pieces of information, such as the percentage of parents who did not grow up Orthodox themselves, the numbers of parents who grew up ultra-Orthodox, and the degree to which parents in this community were themselves exposed to secular knowledge and education. This section thus provides a basic demographic sketch of these school communities, and helps illuminate their relationship to secular knowledge and the secular world.

Finally, this chapter will provide a basic assessment of academic achievement by analyzing standardized test scores from the students in the three schools. Test score data gives us a uniform measure of accomplishment in secular subjects. Having this information allows us to put school attitudes toward secular subjects in context and to compare the data we have about the parent body of particular schools with student achievement in school. Perhaps most importantly, test score data gives us some way (perhaps imperfect) to assess how well students are ultimately

59 doing in their secular subjects. Considering the fact that these communities do not appear to value secular education greatly, and as will be demonstrated, spend little time on secular instruction, it is of great interest to know how well they are faring relative to national norms.

The three components of this chapter are meant to lay the groundwork for the analysis of worldview that follows in the subsequent chapters; they provide basic contextual knowledge that will render subsequent chapters of the dissertation more understandable. The survey data on parents’ education and occupation will also be helpful in understanding the students’ worldview formation, as it sheds some light on a major out-of-school input to worldview—the parents.

Finally, the three sections of this chapter will all highlight a number of between-school differences. Though the dissertation is mostly concerned with the shared features of the three schools and how those features contribute to worldview, the differences that do exist could have an impact on worldview as well, and this chapter serves to identify those potential impact points.

Section 1: Three Schools Described

The Organization of the School System

Before describing each of three schools in detail, I would like to give a brief overview of the larger school system. In Midwest, all of the Orthodox schools are under the umbrella of a central agency, the Talmud Torah Organization, or T.T.O. (a pseudonym). T.T.O. negotiates contracts for teachers in the schools, arranges benefits such as health care, and provides curriculum resources and teacher development. However, despite these services T.T.O. does not have as big of an impact as it might in determining the direction that schools take. Founded in the depression to raise money to pay teachers that had not been paid in a year T.T.O. was

60 initially crucial in helping to establish an Orthodox day school presence in the city (Mishkin,

1961). In the early years of the organization day schools were fragile institutions that required a great deal of support, and there was very little infrastructure in place to provide that support. As the numbers of day schools exploded in the post-war years the shortages of cash were joined by shortages of qualified religious teachers, which the T.T.O. helped fill. Indeed, in the early Sixties the president of a prominent Rabbinical college wrote “If the (college) could triple the number of its graduates over the next 10 years, it would hardly meet the requests of the religious schools for educators… The next decade may well be decisive” (Fasman, 1961, p. p. 147).

However, as the community developed, the day schools became more solidly entrenched

(though cash shortages are an ongoing issue) and their need for a unifying agency lessened.

Today, each school adds or subtracts as it desires to base contracts provided by T.T.O. for teachers, many schools provide their own healthcare, and the teacher development offered by the organization is widely considered by the teachers to be a burden at best, or at worst, a joke19. The schools currently follow their own council, though they still jump through whichever hoops the

T.T.O. requires. According to many of the people I spoke to in this research the sole reason the

T.T.O. still exists as an agency is that it is the gatekeeper that distributes money provided by the

Jewish Federation, and the schools cannot afford to turn down these substantial sums. As a matter of practice, however, the T.T.O. exerts little influence on the schools.

Each of the three schools in this study has a slightly different locus of administrative power. One man, the founder and current dean of the school, generally makes all of the decisions in Chassidic. He hires a principal to oversee the daily operations of the school, and a staff to deal

19 This was communicated to me by many teachers in the course of my interaction with them, and not one offered a countervailing view.

61 with payroll and other monetary issues, but both the ultimate financial and educational decisions rest with him. Lubavitch is similar in some ways, as there is a dean of operations who founded the school. There are two differences from Chassidic, however; more power resides in the hands of the principal to make educational decisions, and as a member of the Lubavitcher movement, the dean is constrained in some ways by some of the decisions made at the nationwide Lubavitch organizational level.

In contrast to the two schools affiliated with Chassidic sects, Yeshiva works on an altogether different model. There is an independent board of Rabbis who make decisions about the religious direction of the school, which include educational decisions such as curriculum and scheduling and have some relevance to financial decisions, and there is a board of lay-people who serve as the board of directors—they too make some decisions about curriculum and scheduling, but they are typically more involved in financial decisions. Underneath these two boards there are a variety of administrators and staff members, such as the principal and the financial office, who make the pragmatic decisions in line with the overall vision of the two boards.

Though the schools have different organizational structures, in my interviews with administrators I generally received a uniform response when I asked about the logic of different decisions that are made. All of the administrators described their schools as being responsive to the needs of the parents; they asserted that the decisions that they made were a direct product of the demand from the parents. One administrator at Yeshiva put it succinctly, “We’re consumer based”. Considering the variety of perspectives among parents, and the pressures of the school’s own religious perspectives (or the board’s, in Yeshiva’s case), a number of the administrators

62 acknowledged that it was difficult to balance the needs of all the parents. As the same administrator noted, “we can tell you that certain kids are destined to go into the Yeshiva system and many won’t even have secular education in high school; and there are also parents who are bent on sending kids through college and seeing successful professionals—and that dichotomy puts strain on the system”.

Lubavitch

There are generally three types of Lubavitch day schools. The first type is the outreach elementary school. Students in this type of school generally come from homes that are not

Orthodox or are only loosely affiliated with the Orthodox community. The primary purpose of these schools is to bring the students and their families closer to Orthodox (and specifically

Lubavitch) beliefs. The structure of the day in these schools is less like a standard ultra-Orthodox school and more like a beginners version of the same. The second type is the community school.

In this type of elementary school there are many Lubavitch students but there are also many

Orthodox students who are not Lubavitch who attend this school because it is the only Orthodox school in town, or because there is no other ultra-Orthodox school in the city. These schools tend to have a curriculum much like those of other ultra-Orthodox schools, though they include

Lubavitch specific material as well. The third type of Lubavitch elementary school is the purely

Lubavitch school. The students are all from Lubavitch families, there is considerably less secular education, the language of instruction is almost always Yiddish (though in the other types of elementary school Yiddish is also taught), there is a greater emphasis on Lubavitch Chassidic teachings, and the students all follow the same trajectory after elementary school.

63 The Lubavitch school in Midwest, founded in 1979, has undergone a shift over its existence, from a community school to a purely Lubavitch school. When it was originally founded there was only one ultra-Orthodox school in the city, Yeshiva, and parents who were looking for a smaller, potentially warmer environment (one that taught their children Yiddish) sent their children to Lubavitch. These parents were not necessarily personally affiliated with the

Lubavitch movement. Responding to the demands of the parents the school offered a small amount of secular education. Initially that amount was an hour and twenty minutes, in keeping with other, purely Lubavitch elementary schools, but as the school went through many early struggles with a parent body that demanded more, they increased the secular education to 2 hours a day. As the principal noted in an interview, “honestly, when the Cheder (children’s school) started there was a demand for it”.

As time went on, however, the school changed. This was likely for two reasons: the first was that Chassidic opened its doors in 1985 and it too offered a small, ostensibly warm, Yiddish speaking environment, thus drawing away non-Lubavitch students who might have gone to

Lubavitch. The second reason was that the Messianism that was prevalent in Lubavitch for many years began to take a more prominent role in the Lubavitch community, particularly after the

Lubavitcher rebbe’s death in the early 90’s. This turn towards Messianism, which is not shared by other Orthodox denominations, likely turned away most of the non-Lubavitch families in the city.

As such, the school became a purely Lubavitch school, and adopted many of the features of such a school. The secular studies part of the day, having been previously established at 2 hours with the approval of the now deceased rebbe, remained that way, even though it could

64 have been more limited had there been some overwhelming push. When asked about parents’ desire for more secular education the principal quickly asserted, “Nobody wants more time— today. That is (pause) history. Nobody wants more. No. Nobody asks for more time… Many years back we had a lot more of a push about it--we don't have that now.” Today there are only a handful of families affiliated with the school who are not affiliated with the Lubavitch community.

As part of the Lubavitch Chassidic group, the school has connections to a wider network of other schools, including elementary, high school, and post high schools. Typically, the religious teachers, the rabbeim, are drawn from this network. The rabbeim in Lubavitch are all

Lubavitch themselves, and come from various Lubavitch institutions that act as feeders to a wide variety of Rabbinic functions, from being a rebbe in a school to running a “Chabad House”, an outreach post often found on college campuses. These rabbeim do not generally have any specific pedagogical training, but are usually very fine religious scholars. Whatever training they receive is provided as they go along, whether in-school or from the T.T.O.. The secular instructors come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and, like the rabbeim, typically do not have a great deal of teacher training (or they would be teaching in better paying public schools).

Most of them are either not Jewish or not Orthodox, though a few are modern Orthodox.

As noted, there is a dean of the school, Rabbi Fox20, who is also the founder of the school. The school essentially belongs to him; however, though he has power over all aspects of the school he generally confines himself to the financial aspects of running the school. The day- to-day educational operations, at the time of this study, were conducted by Rabbi Perlman, the

20 This name, as with all other names mentioned in the study, is a pseudonym. Unless I specifically mention otherwise, the reader should assume all of the names to be pseudonyms.

65 principal. He had been principal in the school for 15 years (he left to take charge of the growing boys high school just as the study was ending) and had not originally been a member of the Lubavitch Chassidic sect. Previously he had been a rebbe at Yeshiva, but when he became involved in the Lubavitch community he moved to Lubavitch as the principal.

In his capacity as principal he confined himself to the religious part of the day. During that time he would engage in standard administrative activities such as working on issues of curriculum, meeting with teachers, observing classes, and dealing with student behavioral issues, but he would also do religious things such as running the prayer services in the morning. During the secular part of the day, he made his presence felt by walking the hallways, so that the students would know that he was still there, but he deferred all other responsibility to a separate

Secular Education Principal (usually referred to as the “English Principal”).

During this study there were two different English principals. The first, Mrs. Harosh, moved away shortly after I first began working with the school. The second, Mrs. Lewin, was promoted from 1st grade teacher to take over the position. Mrs. Harosh, who I interviewed initially, described her responsibilities as involving primarily curriculum development and teacher oversight. She looked at teacher lesson plans each week, and tried to keep them oriented around a life-skills based track. In addition, Mrs. Harosh was the special needs coordinator, working with an outside agency that helped students in the school who had special needs.

Finally, she was in charge of applying for, and keeping track of, any money that the school was entitled to from the State (generally for things like new textbooks).

The school itself is housed in an old Suburban public school building, a long low lying L- shaped building, with a gym and a large amount of land attached. The offices sit at the meeting

66 point of the two wings of the school, allowing the principal to stand at one spot and observe the behavior of the students in both hallways. Upon entering the school I noticed that the hallways were quiet and orderly. I also noted that the classrooms were designed for much larger classes, as the number of students in the school is fairly small; there are only 120 students (there are another 100 in the girls division and another 50 in the preschool), and as such, most classes contained 15 students or less. The benefit of the small size was that it allowed the possibility of one small class per grade, and one teacher per class (there was no need for assistants).

As with the other schools in this study the school schedule differentiated between the lower grades (usually 1-4) and the higher grades (usually 5-8)21 in a number of ways. The two most prominent differences, which were found in all three schools to differing degrees, were that the older students began their day much earlier to participate in the morning prayer service, and they stayed later in the afternoon/evening than the younger students. At Lubavitch the day begins at 7:25 AM for the older students. The service takes 45 minutes to an hour, and is followed by breakfast. (The schools do not provide breakfasts or lunches, but the students can store their own food at the school).

The morning class period begins at 8:45 AM, with religious studies. In Lubavitch, as with the other schools, there is only one rebbe who teaches them religious subjects, as there is no concept of curricular division by subject matter. The morning period goes until 12 PM, when they break for lunch. They also have a 15-minute recess somewhere in the middle of the morning session (the different classes have recess at different times in the morning to prevent overcrowding). After lunch the students have another period of religious instruction followed by

21 Over the course of the research, the school was considering changing the grades for the older students’ schedule to begin in 6th rather than 5th. This was indeed enacted after I finished the study.

67 a 15-20 minute afternoon prayer service and a 15-minute recess, before they begin the secular part of the day at 2:15 PM. The secular instruction lasts until 4:15 (no recess in the middle) and is followed by a short recess, and another period of religious instruction until 5:30. The secular part of the day is also not divided into periods; there is only one teacher for all of the subjects that they study.

Like many things in ultra-Orthodox schools, the schedule has a great deal of informality to it. Things bleed into one another, rather than having sharp demarcating lines. The length of the morning and afternoon prayers (called Davening) is not determined by the clock, but by how long the prayers happen to take. If for some reason they take longer, the schedule gets pushed back a bit. Students go out to recess and are called back in when the rebbe pleases, rather than the bell (the bell acts as more of a suggestion than an order), and rabbeim often make impromptu schedule changes to fit their needs.

The younger students follow a similar schedule as the older students, but they have a shorter day. They begin school at 8:45, rather than 7:25, and say the morning prayers as part of class time (they are still learning the prayers). In the evening, they leave at 4:15, and do not stay for an extra period of religious instruction.

On Fridays, the schools typically get out early, as the students must prepare for Shabbos

(the Jewish Sabbath), which begins at sundown (this is particularly pressing in the winter months). At Lubavitch, the students stay until 2 PM on Fridays, and every other Friday they have

English for the last two hours.22 On Sundays the boys have school until 12:45 but they do not have secular instruction.

22 Secular teachers at Lubavitch are hired to teach in both the boys and girls schools. On an ordinary weekday they first teach at the girls’ school from 12-2, and then drive to the boys’ school to teach from 2:15 to 4:15. On Fridays, this is obviously not possible in a short day, so they alternate schools each Friday.

68 The content that the students cover in the religious part of the day naturally varies with age. During the younger years the students focus heavily on learning to read and translate the

Hebrew words in the Chumash (the Bible), and to make sense of the Biblical story. As they get older, they learn to read and translate the writing of Rashi (a critical medieval commentary on the Bible, written in a different script), and they begin to study Mishnayos, a small part of the

Talmud, which is the basic Jewish legal text that Orthodox men study throughout their lives. By

5th grade the main activity that the students engage in is Talmud study (called Gemara), and both

Chumash and Mishnayos recede to the background, though they are not altogether abandoned.

Though Chumash and Talmud are the two major components of instruction throughout the school, there are other smaller components that receive some time as well. Students study a little bit of Jewish law23, some Navi (the Prophets component of the Bible), and some of the

Lubavitch Chassidic teachings (called Chassidus), in the form of ethical and spiritual essays known as Sichos and Ma’amarim. At Lubavitch, most classes make sure to do some small amount of Chassidus a day, at a minimum. As part of Jewish law, some classes also study the laws of prayer, learning the meaning and practices associated with the Davening that they say every day.

During the secular part of the day, in the limited time available, the school tries to ensure that the students get the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. Mrs. Harosh, the English principal at the start of the study, described the breakdown of subject matter as, “English 30%, math 30%, (and) social studies 20-25%”. Though the English principal has a general outline for what the teachers are supposed to accomplish, the teachers have great leeway in deciding what

23 Though the Talmud is a legal text, it is a very long and complicated foundational text and there is no way for students to know what actual practice ought to be by the little Talmud that they study. It would be somewhat akin to trying to determine the interstate highway speed limit by reading the constitution.

69 they will spend time on during the day, often resulting in idiosyncratic classes. For example, the eighth grade teacher did not spend a great deal of time on math or writing, and instead did a great deal of current events and American history. None of the classes at Lubavitch had science built into the curriculum, as science is not considered a key domain, and there are many areas of science that may conflict with the school’s religious beliefs. Occasionally, during the year, there would be special science events, such as a school-wide project on weather, but the classes themselves tended to ignore science. In addition to the core domains taught in class, each grade would have library and computers at least once a week for a half an hour; this took place out of class.

Chassidic

There are very few truly Chassidic schools outside of the New York area. In the New

York metropolitan area, however, the Chassidic school is a very common type of school, one that makes up a major portion of the full set of ultra-Orthodox schools. Chassidic schools are affiliated with particular Chassidic sects, which have their own Chassidic rebbes who are the spiritual leaders of the group. Each school generally caters to children who come from that sect alone. The language of instruction in the schools is Yiddish and the amount of secular education is very small, even relative to other ultra-Orthodox groups. Outside of the New York area, however, it is often the case that there is not a large enough population of any one particular

Chassidic sect, and as such, when there are Chassidic schools, they tend to take on a different character than those in New York. They don't study as much Chassidus as the purely Chassidic schools would, as the students in the school come from a variety of Chassidic sects. In addition, they tend to have more students who are not themselves Chassidic participating in the school.

70 Often, because they have this variety in the classroom, they have to cater to parents who may not share all of the same values as the Chassidic group that runs the school, resulting in some changes such as more secular education and less Yiddish.

The Chassidic school in Midwest is run by Chassidim from a sect that is closely related to the large Satmar sect. Because the city does not have a large Chassidic population to begin with, when the school opened in 1985 it catered to the entire population of non-Lubavitch Chassidim in the city. As the school grew, families who were not Chassidic at all began to send their children there as well, drawn from Yeshiva by the smaller size of the school and the Yiddish instruction, and from Lubavitch due to dissatisfaction with the Messianism of Lubavitch. The school reflects the wide range of student backgrounds in that it has a larger secular program than many Chassidic schools, and though the religious instruction is in Yiddish, most of the students are not fluent in Yiddish, and the rabbeim explain a great deal of the material in English as well.

The dean and founder of the school, Rabbi Unterman, is in charge of the entirety of the school, but he tends to take a very hands-off approach to the daily running of the school. At the time that I visited the school the person in charge of the daily running of the school was the principal Rabbi Liebberg, who had been there 2 years. Unlike Lubavitch, there was no separate position for a secular-studies principal, instead Rabbi Liebberg filled both the secular and religious principal roles. Rabbi Liebberg was not Chasidic, but was ultra-Orthodox; he had come to the school as a temporary replacement for a Chassidic principal who died of cancer the previous year. The year after the study concluded, Rabbi Liebberg went on to be a rebbe at a high school that was opening in the city and was replaced by a Chassidic principal of Rabbi

Unterman’s choosing.

71 The rabbeim in Chassidic were primarily drawn from the main congregation of the

Chassidic sect in the New York area. They were brought in to the city specifically for the job.

There were a few rabbeim, however, who were not from the Chassidic sect, but who were, of course, ultra-Orthodox scholars. Much like Lubavitch, these rabbeim did not have a great deal of teacher training. Unlike Lubavitch, the secular instructors in the school were not drawn from the wider population of teachers. Instead Chassidic only hired rabbeim, or other ultra-Orthodox community members, as their secular instructors. This gave the secular part of the day a very different character than Lubavitch, as there was an ultra-Orthodox presence in the classroom the entirety of the day. Some of these teachers had had pedagogical training, some had had experience in the classroom as rabbeim, and some had no teacher training at all.

Chassidic is a small school, both physically and in terms of its numbers. There are approximately 110 families who have children in the school (including the pre-school), though many have more than one child attending. Each class had between 15 and 20 students, which meant that like Lubavitch the school needed only one class per grade. Unlike Lubavitch, however, the school building was small and cramped. The building is a split-level converted synagogue on a main street in the Jewish neighborhood. Aside from the two floors the school is divided into two small wings, one housing the younger grades and the other the older grades. On the lower level there was a Beis Medrash (a room for religious study and prayer services) and a lunchroom. The classrooms were very small and the students barely fit into the space provided.

Like Lubavitch, the school schedule is divided between the older and younger grades.

The older students begin the day at 7:45 AM, with Davening in the Beis Medrash; this typically takes an hour, and is followed by breakfast in the lunchroom. Students generally have food

72 stored at the school. Breakfast takes about 20 minutes and is followed by the first class period of the day, which begins anywhere from 9:05 to 9:20. Scheduling in Chassidic is not exact, as

Davening can take different amounts of time depending on the day, and rabbeim are not exact in how quickly they begin the day. The first class period can serve as an example of this imprecision as the 6th grade rebbe informed me that class goes until 12 or 12:15, though another student said that the real time was 12:15. The students then have lunch and recess until 1:05, followed by another period of religious study until the afternoon prayers at 1:50. The secular part of the day begins after Davening at 2:15 in the afternoon.

Unlike Lubavitch, which has the secular part of the day in a two hour uninterrupted block, followed by a religious studies period, Chassidic has secular studies from 2:15 to 5:15

(when the day ends) and has a 20 minute to half hour recess in the middle. Unlike Lubavitch, however, there is no secular education offered on Fridays (school ends at 12:30 in the winter months and at 2:00 in the fall and spring). This results in secular instruction only 4 days a week, as on Sunday the students have religious study until 1:00, but do not have any secular instruction.

The younger students (K through 4th) have a shortened day; they begin the day at 8:50

AM with prayers in their classrooms (as opposed to with the quorum in the Beis Medrash), and instead of ending at 5:15, they end at 4:15.

The content that they cover in the religious part of the day is not very different than the content covered at Lubavitch. During the younger years the students focus heavily on learning to read and translate the Hebrew words in the Chumash, as they get older, they learn to read and translate the writing of Rashi and they begin to study Mishnayos, and by 5th grade the students are heavily engaged in the Talmud study. The students also spend time studying Jewish law,

73 Navi, and some form of ethical and spiritual instruction, whether in the form of Chassidus or

Mussar (non-Chassidic religious writings on ethical topics). They do not spend as much time on

Chassidus as Lubavitch, and the Chassidus that they learn is not Lubavitch Chassidus.

During the secular part of the day they try to focus on the “three R’s, so that in the principal’s words “we give them basics for whatever they do (in life)”. The school had had an outside consultant come in and write a curriculum that would extend from 1st through 8th grades, however, this curriculum was not followed by the teachers. Indeed, many of the teachers did not know that it existed. Instead teachers would work on whichever aspects of the basic subject matter they felt most comfortable with. In the class that I observed (6th grade) the teacher, who was a rebbe himself, focused on math, history, and vocabulary. As with Lubavitch there was very little commitment to the study of science, for essentially the same reasons. One grade had received a donation of science textbooks put out by an Orthodox publisher that dealt only with scientific topics that were not problematic from a religious perspective. Other than that, there was almost no science in the curriculum.

Yeshiva

While the other two schools are affiliated with Chassidic sects, Yeshiva is affiliated with the Litveshe community, the non-Chassidic ultra-Orthodox with historical roots in Lithuania.

The current center of the Litveshe community in America is in Lakewood, NJ, where there is a large ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva. The school was actually originally founded 45 years ago by a

Chassidic Rabbi, though it was not established as a Chassidic school. The primary impetus for the school’s founding was to provide a more religious atmosphere than was available in the

74 existing schools, and to provide a strict separation between girls and boys, at all grade levels

(something that had not been available).

Initially the school catered to a small group of very religious Orthodox Jews; as the community grew so did the school, and it came to include both a wider range of families and many more ultra-Orthodox families. During different periods in the school’s history the school included elements of different communities; for example, after an initial wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union, the school included a number of Russian students, who had not had any previous religious education. As that wave of immigration passed the school reverted to its previous character. As it stands now the parent body is almost exclusively ultra-Orthodox.

The Mashgiach (religious counselor) at the school described the families in this way: “The families are of more ultra-Orthodox or orthodox bent than the more ‘modern’ day schools. They won’t go to movies are not integrated into general culture. They are often engaged in religious work, whether teachers in Kollel… There is a working parent body but even they subscribe to a general Yeshiva philosophy and insulate homes from media.”

As noted earlier, the organizational structure of the school differs from Chassidic and

Lubavitch in that there is no single locus of power. Rather, there is a religious board and a primarily financial board, both of whom articulate the general vision of the school, and below them are the principals, administrators, and financial offices that deal with the day-to-day running of the school. As the largest of the three schools, Yeshiva is more top-heavy with administration than the others. Aside from a large financial office (which also deals with the finances for the girls’ elementary school a few miles away) there are three primary

75 administrators at Yeshiva: the principal, Rabbi Merzel, the Secular Studies Principal, Rabbi

Kugelman, and the Mashgiach, Rabbi Malick.

Rabbi Merzel is a very active and alert principal who had retained the position for nine years at the time of the study. In an interview he informed me that he woke up at 3:30 in the morning so that he could be at the school at 4 AM every day24. Throughout the early morning he takes care of administrative duties such as writing memos, and also does a run-through of the school to make sure that it is clean. Throughout the rest of the day he described his duties as including the observation of classes, monitoring recess, dealing with student fights and behavior problems, conducting assemblies, meeting with parents, talking to the board, and conducting professional growth exercises (such as teacher coaching) with the rabbeim.

During the secular part of the day Rabbi Kugelman is the administrator who is primarily in charge of the immediate functioning of the school (it is during that time that Rabbi Merzel generally schedules meetings and teacher training). Rabbi Kugelman is also the 8th grade rebbe, and in his capacity as rebbe he commands more respect from the students than the individual non-Orthodox teachers. As the secular principal he tries to make sure that the teachers are following the curriculum, and spends some time walking into different classes throughout the day. In this capacity he also deals with textbooks and funding. One major element of his job, which he was surprised we did not talk more about in the interview, was dealing with behavior problems throughout the secular part of the day. He informed me after the interview that he had just given a talk at the Torah U’Mesorah convention (a convention of an umbrella organization for Orthodox day schools) on dealing with poor student behavior in the secular part of the day.

24 Amazingly, he was not the only person who told me they started their day that early; another Rebbe mentioned that he follows an essentially similar schedule.

76 The third major administrative figure in the school is the Mashgiach, Rabbi Malick.

The position of Mashgiach is one that is generally not found at the elementary school level. The

Mashgiach is usually someone in an advanced post-high-school Yeshiva who is very learned, and who is responsible for the spiritual well-being of the students in the school. Often the

Mashgiach will give Mussar shmoozen (talks pertaining to ethical instruction) to the students on a regular basis, and will be available to the students if they have any issues they need to discuss.

The position of Mashgiach at Yeshiva is not quite the same but shares many of the same features, and adds a few responsibilities to the job.

In essence, the job was created specifically for Rabbi Malick. Rabbi Malick had been a very successful rebbe at the school and had left to pursue other work. The school, however, felt that they were having trouble dealing with all of the students’ emotional needs, and wanted to create a position that would lure Rabbi Malick back to the school. Thus, despite the fact that at the time they hired him they were in a financial crisis, they created a special position that was to be a cross between a guidance counselor and a true Mashgiach. In Rabbi Malick’s words: “The reason my job was created even though the school had no money and had fired 5 teachers—they created a position for me for this point: The yeshiva has been very inflexible and has not been able to meet the needs of kids; it hasn’t been equipped with resources and doesn’t understand the needs of all the kids in the community.”

Rabbi Malick described his job as one of a backroom administrator and dean of students.

On the administration side of things he helps the principal set the school calendar, the daily structure, and general policy, speaking as the voice of the students and parents in the discussion.

(For example, he rewrote sections of the parent handbook because he felt that it was talking

77 down to the parents). He also runs the Title 1 program in the school, “which involves red tape and paperwork”. In his interaction with the students he gives a 5 minute Musar shmooze to the students after Davening every morning, just like a real Mashgiach would, trying to get them to focus on and understand different personal behavioral skills and their relationship to appropriate religious behavior. Throughout the day he has kids lined up at his door coming to talk to him about any issues they might have. He is also the coordinator of the resources department dealing with students with special needs. In this capacity he has meetings with students and with therapists, he collaborates with diagnostic centers, and will help map out special programs for individual children.

The rabbeim at Yeshiva typically come from the larger Yeshiva system. Many of them have learned in Lakewood, NJ, and all of them have gone to Yeshivas that are similar to

Lakewood. When the school was founded it was very difficult to get rabbeim for schools, but in today’s day and age there are many potential rabbeim waiting for the chance to get a job. This is part of the culture of ultra-Orthodoxy, as there is a high prestige associated with someone who is able to support himself in such a way as to still be involved in religious study. As such, the recent, younger rabbeim tend to have more exposure to pedagogical training, as they pursue different ways of separating themselves from the pack, as viable candidates for positions. The secular teachers at Yeshiva come from a wide range of backgrounds. Some are not Jewish and if

Jewish not Orthodox, some are modern Orthodox, and there are a few secular teachers who are themselves rabbeim in the school as well. The practice of having rabbeim teach secular subjects is a recent one, and has been met with a good deal of success (in the eyes of those who were interviewed).

78 As noted, the school is the largest of the three schools in the study. At the time of the study there were approximately 160 households affiliated with the school, many of which had multiple students in the school. There were generally two classes per grade, with 15-20 students in each class, though some of the grades only had one, larger, class (the school let some rabbeim go in the year prior to the study due to financial difficulties).

The school is housed in two small buildings on a busy street in the city. The buildings are separated by a relatively small concrete play yard, and on the other side of one of the buildings there is a smaller play space for the kindergarten students and 1st graders. The younger students are housed in one building, a cramped two-story storefront that has the financial office on the top floor, and the older students are housed in a larger split-level building. There is a former garage between the two buildings (but is not attached to either building) that serves as a self-contained classroom, as well. The larger of the two buildings has had its internal space maximized in every conceivable way. When entering the building there are offices to the right and left and there are steps going up and down. The steps up lead to a large lunchroom/assembly-hall. The sides of the room have been chopped off to create tiny classrooms, and the walls have been lined with locked cupboards that, when opened, reveal the library (such as it is). The stage at the far end of the hall has been walled up to create a small teachers’ lounge. All along the walls are posters and projects that the students have made. If one goes down the stairs, one sees a hallway leading towards the back of the building. The hallway is lined with small classrooms, and at the end of the hallway is a small computer room. Some of the classrooms have retractable walls in order to reconfigure the space throughout the day, as different sized classes will inhabit the same spaces.

79 The atmosphere in the school can probably be best described as loose. There are many kids running around at different times, and it is sometimes hard to find an authority figure. The first time I entered the school there were literally children hanging from the rafters over the steps

(the ceiling is low there and this is apparently a fun activity if nobody is looking) and it took me twenty minutes to find an adult. It is likely the case that the cramped quarters don't help, as the students do not have room to spread out. For all of the disorder and informality, however, the school clearly radiated warmth; the flip side of the loose behavior was that many of the students appeared quite at home in the school. While waiting for a meeting with the principal one morning while the students were eating breakfast, I entered his office to find a 6th grader sleeping at his desk. When Rabbi Merzel arrived (late), he gently nudged the boy awake, told him that he had to leave, as a meeting was about to start, and without a word the boy got up and left. The boy clearly felt comfortable enough in the school to take a nap at the principal’s desk.

The daily schedule at Yeshiva is a generally complex affair. There are numerous differences by grade and by day, differences that change rather frequently. Like the other schools the younger grades and the older grades have different schedules, but rather than have a clear demarcating line there is a transition to the older schedule that takes place over the 4th and 5th grades. Grades 5 through 8 come to school at 7:40 AM for Davening, followed by breakfast from

8:30 to 9, after which the first class period begins. This period lasts until 12:15 and has one 15- minute recess contained within it. From 12:15 to 12:45 the students eat lunch in the lunchroom and then have another religious period until 1:25, when they have another 15-minute recess and then daven Mincha (the afternoon prayers). From 2:00 until 4:45 they have secular studies, with a 20-minute break in the middle (though in practice it’s usually about a half an hour). The 6th, 7th,

80 and 8th graders have departmentalized secular instruction in 45-minute blocks, but the 5th graders follow the model of the younger grades and have one teacher for all of secular studies.

The younger students begin the day at 8:30 with Davening in class. In grades 1 through 3 they have lunch in class with their rebbe at 11:30, and at 12:30 they begin the secular part of the day, which ends at 3:45. In the 4th grade the students begin to make the transition to the older schedule. Though this has changed slightly since I conducted the study, during the time that I was there the 4th grade began at 8:30 like the younger students, but continued their religious study until 2, like the older students. (Currently they are trying a model in which the students start secular studies earlier and then have an hour afterwards from 3:45 to 4:45 for more religious study). On Sundays the students only have religious study, which runs until 1:15, and on Fridays the school day goes until 2, with secular education from 12 to 2 in the older grades and beginning at 11 in the younger grades.

Like Lubavitch and Chassidic, the religious content is geared towards Chumash in the younger grades and Talmud study in the older grades. They cover Jewish law, Navi, and the study of the Davening, as well. They do not study Chassidus (not being a Chassidic school) but they do have some Mussar instruction. During the secular part of the day they cover the basic areas of reading, writing, and math, along with some social studies. Unlike Chassidic and

Lubavitch there is some science in the curriculum, though in the classes that I observed it was generally neglected. Teachers told me that they spent less time on science than they felt they should have. In the very young grades, such as 1st grade, they do more exploratory study that includes science, such as looking at caterpillars growing and learning about plants and animals.

81 Summing Up

The three schools are similar in a lot of important ways. They share a similar focus on religious and secular content, and they organize their day in roughly the same way (with the first part of the day and the majority of time spent on religious study). The differences that exist are differences of emphasis and flavor; one school will have slightly more secular education, another will provide ethical instruction through Chassidus rather than Mussar, and another may have a stronger commitment to instruction in Yiddish. None of the schools deviates too far from the other schools. The rabbeim come from different schooling backgrounds, but the differences between those backgrounds are not much greater than the differences between these schools. In one respect, however, there is a school that stands out: While Chasidic and Yeshiva share a similar set of religious and communal reference points, Lubavitch remains somewhat isolated as a community. Both Chassidic and Yeshiva draw students from the same community (they go to the same synagogues and participate in the same communal events), and discuss and value the same set of gedolim (great religious figures), while the Lubavitch community does not interact with other elements in the community, and only focuses on great religious figures in Lubavitch itself. This isolates Lubavitch in a way that is unique in the ultra-Orthdodox world.

Section 2: Education and Occupation

This section will provide a demographic analysis of the parent bodies of the schools.

This demographic information illustrates the ways in which the communities associated with these schools interact with the broader American society, revealing their level of secular education, employment in various sectors, and economic achievement. This analysis also

82 illustrates the internal complexity present in the ultra-Orthodox community, as the similarities between the three schools (similar daily structures, comparable content) actually mask some interesting differences in the populations affiliated with the schools.

This analysis is based on the results of my telephone survey of a sample of the parent bodies of the three schools (see Chapter 1).

Data Categories

The telephone survey was designed to gauge basic information about the education, employment, and broad economic status of the parent bodies of the schools.

Education

I asked parents to give me the names of the schools that they attended as well as the type of school (public, private, modern Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox); in addition, I asked them whether the school had more or less secular education than the school their child attends. By asking these questions I was able to place the schools into different categories, all of which were created after the survey had been completed. As a general rule the categories produced were emic in nature, that is, they were categories that reflected the existing social and institutional structures of the ultra-Orthodox community, rather than categories imposed by an external coding scheme that might not capture the interesting communal dynamics.

Parent Primary and High School: The first two questions in the survey asked where the parents went to elementary and high school. The parents were instructed to give the actual name of the institution and the answers were subsequently grouped into four categories:

o Public:

83 Public school (even in Israel, unless it was a dati (religious) public school).

o Jewish—More—Secular:

This category designates Jewish schools that offer more secular instruction than

the ultra-Orthodox schools included in my study. This category therefore includes

modern Orthodox schools, Israeli dati public schools, and community schools.

(Community schools are Orthodox schools in communities that are too small to

accommodate multiple schools, in which most or all Orthodox children, even those from

ultra-Orthodox families attend). Also included in this category was the very rare

occurrence of someone attending a Conservative movement day school.

In practice, parents who fell into this category attended modern Orthodox and

community schools, as the numbers of parents in Conservative and Israeli schools were

negligible.

o Jewish—Same or less secular:

This category designates Jewish schools that offer the same amount of secular

instruction as the ultra-Orthodox schools included in my study, or less. This category

therefore primarily includes ultra-Orthodox yeshivas. Some of the Chassidic schools

mentioned by parents have less secular education than the schools in my study, (for

example, Belz and Bobov likely have less).25

o Foreign, unknown, and other:

25 There are some borderline cases. For example, any school named Beis Yaakov was included here; however, given that girls generally receive more secular education than boys, some of the most modern Beis Yaakovs may not be distinguishable in this respect from their centrist-Orthodox counterparts. Nevertheless, Beis Yaakovs are usually considered to be ultra-Orthodox.

84 There were a few instances where someone attended school in a foreign

country and due to lack of information it was not possible to exactly determine the

amount of, and attitude to, secular education that they had received. These cases went in

this category along with several other miscellaneous cases. There were very few parents

in this category.

Parent Post-High-School Education: The third question in the survey asked for any post-high-school education, whether secular or religious. Responses were broken into three different stages as many parents had more than one educational stop on their way to employment. For example a parent might have gone to Yeshiva for a few years before getting a

Bachelors degree, and also have subsequently received a Masters degree.

The categories within those three stages are listed below. Note that some of the categories exist at multiple stages (See Table 4). For example, someone might graduate high school and go straight to college, in which case the first post-high-school stage would be coded for college. In another case, however, someone might go to Yeshiva for a few years and then attend college, in which case the same category, college, would be coded at the second post-high-school stage, while the appropriate Yeshiva category would be coded at the first stage.

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Parent 1 College Masters Yeshiva Parent 2 Yeshiva College -- Parent 3 Seminary College Masters Table 4: Examples of different categories at different post-high-school stages

The following categories cover all three post-high-school stages.

o Yeshiva/College:

85 This refers to Yeshivas that are in the mold of Ner Yisroel in Baltimore, where

a student can attend Yeshiva while also going to a “real” college at another institution

such as Johns Hopkins. o Yeshiva < 5:

This category designates less than 5 years of Yeshiva attendance. Often this

reflects a combination of time spent in different places. When coded at the second post-

high-school level, it should be clear that there was no Yeshiva at any previous level and

this is the first Yeshiva experience. This category generally refers to boys, except at level

2, for reasons that will be explained in the seminary entry below. o Yeshiva > 5:

This category designates more than 5 years of Yeshiva attendance. In many cases

the survey indicated that people in this category participated in lifelong yeshiva study. In

a typical case a large chunk of the years spent attending Yeshiva were spent in one

institution. When coded at level 2, it should be clear that there was no yeshiva at any

previous level and this is the first yeshiva experience. o Community, Jewish, non-degree college:

This category is designed to capture a common phenomenon in the Orthodox

world. Because the community does not approve of students having the typical “college

experience”, people often participate in just enough education necessary to get the

degrees they need, or the education they need to get jobs. This often means enrolling in

some courses at a community college, taking some night classes, or going to an Orthodox

Jewish college (at the same academic level as community college). Sometimes people

86 receive their Bachelors degrees by combining several of these together, sometimes

people don’t get Bachelors degrees at all, and sometimes they stay in one institution for

their Bachelors degrees.

o “Real College”:

This refers to those who go to college in the traditional secular way.26

o Seminary:

Seminary is the equivalent of Yeshiva for girls, and it is considered to be the

standard educational choice for Orthodox girls coming out of high school. These girls

typically go to seminary for one or two years before getting married or getting some type

of degree.

Sometimes girls do not go to seminary right out of high school; usually this is

because they are not from an ultra-Orthodox background. When they go to seminary later

in life it doesn’t have the same social and religious function as it does for those who

attend seminary straight out of high school. Therefore, when seminary took place at any

later stage it was just folded into the Yeshiva category, as it basically functions in that

way, and not in the highly specific “seminary” way.

o Professional School:

This refers to Medical school, Law school, and Business school.

o Masters:

26 Also included here is college attendance that is on the border between this and the previous category. For example, some lower level universities function as community college for people, even though they also exist as regular 4-year colleges. Their function to individuals, however, is borderline; people sometimes use them as regular 4-year colleges and sometimes use them by taking a few classes here and there. In general, this was included in the real college category, though there are plausible arguments for either category.

87 This category refers to those who received an MA.

o PhD:

This category refers to those who received a PhD.

o Yeshiva at Post high 3:

In instances where a subject attended Yeshiva for the first time after having

attended two other post-high-school stages, he was put in one catch-all Yeshiva category

rather than designating whether his attendance lasted more or less than 5 years. This is

pattern of post-high-school education was extremely rare.

Parent Occupation

The next question asked of parents was what they did for a living. Responses were grouped within eight possible categories. As noted in the introduction to this section, the categories were emic, and were constructed based on communal social patterns and perceptions.

This stands out most prominently in the following section, as the breakdown of occupations does not match up to general occupation coding schemes. For the most part, the accuracy of these categories as true emic categories is based on my own experience as a community member. I could have used absolute categories, such as census categories or other emic categories such as

‘blue collar’ vs. ‘white collar’, but those categories would not have captured the occupational breakdowns that are meaningful to this community. For example, the category of Klei kodesh, described below is a category that is unique to this community, and as a low-paying but high prestige job would not be easily captured by other category schemes.

o Business:

88 This refers to people who, in the wording used in the Orthodox community,

“are in business”. This typically indicates that they own a business such as real estate or

nursing homes, or are working as an employee in this type of privately owned business

with the ultimate goal of achieving ownership. This category does not include people

who work for large corporations, but does include white-collar work such as starting a

financial planning business. o Professional:

This is a wide category; it includes people with professional degrees (such as

doctors and lawyers), as well as people who work in big corporations (e.g. management),

as well as people who work in speech or occupational therapy. This category includes

most of the people who are neither “in business” nor in low-level employment (as defined

below). o Klei kodesh:

This category designates people who are employed in some religious capacity.

Most prominently this includes rabbeim (religious study teachers), shul (Synagogue)

Rabbis, kollel members (people who are paid to study religious material in a religious

study hall), and people involved in kiruv (Jewish outreach). These jobs often do not pay

well, but they are accorded great respect and there is a high level of prestige given to

someone who is employed in this way.

Of these sub-categories, only kiruv work applies to women, as even religious

studies teachers who are women don’t count in this community as being engaged in a

89 religious activity in the same manner as the men (no one in the community would refer

to a woman teacher with the term “klei kodesh”). o Academia:

This category includes professors and researchers employed at a university or

research institution. o Low Level Employment:

This includes a wide variety of work that pays very little. This work is usually but

not always part-time, and if full-time typically features flexible hours. Common examples

would be part-time secretary or bookkeeper, and any of the many, many micro-businesses

that people run out of their homes such as shaitel-maching (making and styling wigs),

selling clothing, tutoring, and day-care. Also included in this category are people who

work as mashgichim (kosher certifiers) in supermarkets or restaurants. o Teacher:

This category designates men who work as secular studies teachers (as religious

studies would be included in klei kodesh). For women, this could be either religious or

secular. o None:

This category includes parents who have no formal employment, and is only

applicable to women. This reflects an individual’s conscious choice to stay at home,

rather than her unemployment. o Student:

This category includes graduate students.

90 Style of Life

In a small and very tightly knit community, people are very reluctant to give out private information (particularly to someone who they know). Asking about income, therefore, was not feasible. In order to get a sense of the quality or style of life that people maintained within this community, however, I drew on my own experience as a member of this community, having noticed that people do not place much of a value on buying a new car, preferring instead to buy cars used. On the other hand, I was also aware of the fact that people did place a high value on home ownership. I did not think that people would withhold this information on a survey, so I used those two questions as markers of the upper and lower bounds of lifestyle. I reasoned that only the fairly wealthy would have bought brand new cars, and that only the very poor would not have bought a house. The answers were grouped into the four possible categories: house and new car, house and no new car, no house and no new car, and inexplicably new car but no house.

Results

The survey data was entered into SPSS 13 for Mac. The data presented in this section was analyzed using the cross-tabulation function in SPSS. The software package indicates whether the differences in the distributions in each table is significant, and in analyzing the data here, I have only included data from tables that were significant at the .05 level.

Elementary and High School

The first table displays the elementary and high school education of parents in the ultra-

Orthodox community, broken down by the schools that their children attend.

91 Total Yeshiva Chassidic Lubavitch Elementary School UO elementary school 41.5% 30.4% 86.5% 15.8% Jewish-more secular elementary 28.2% 40.5% 13.5% 24.6% Public elementary 25.5% 21.5% 0.0% 54.4% High School UO high school 59.6% 53.2% 98.1% 33.3% Jewish-more secular high 14.4% 26.6% 1.9% 8.8% Public high 24.5% 17.7% 0.0% 56.1% Table 5: Parent Education by Child’s School

As Table 5 makes clear, roughly the same percentage of parents went to public elementary school as went to public high school. This is to be expected given the dynamics within the Jewish community. Someone who goes to public school is more likely than not, not

Orthodox, and someone who is not Orthodox is unlikely to switch to an Orthodox school for

High School.

We do, however, see a large increase between ultra-Orthodox elementary and high school, (41.5% to 59.6%) and a large decrease from Jewish-more-secular elementary to High

School (28.2% to 14.4%). This would suggest that many of the parents who went to Jewish- more-secular elementary schools later went on to ultra-Orthodox high schools. Indeed, 45% of those who started out in Jewish-more-secular elementary school went on to Jewish-more-secular high school, but a full 53% went on to ultra-Orthodox high school. That is, more people who started out in a Jewish-more-secular school ended up in ultra-Orthodox schools than in Jewish- more-secular schools. On the other hand, 100% of the students who start off in ultra-Orthodox elementary school stayed in ultra-Orthodox high schools.

This pattern makes a lot of sense in light of the fact that many of the parents who send their children to ultra-Orthodox schools in Midwest grew up in the smaller cities in the larger

92 Midwest area. These cities have not traditionally had large enough Jewish communities to support more than one Orthodox elementary school. Thus, children who came from ultra-

Orthodox backgrounds would nevertheless attend the one Orthodox school in their community, which functioned as a community day school and catered to the full spectrum or Orthodoxy.

These schools would have more, and more serious, secular education than ultra-Orthodox schools. When these children reached high school age, however, they would be sent off to larger

Yeshivas in other cities that catered more specifically to ultra-Orthodox students. This follows a long-standing Jewish tradition of sending boys off to Yeshiva in high school, and while it is still mostly boys who follow this pattern some girls now also live away from home during their high school years.

Table 5 also illustrates several differences between the three schools, which are represented in the graph below as well.

93

Figure 3: Parent Education by Child’s School

Given that the Lubavitcher movement has long been concerned with Jewish outreach, and many, if not most, of its adherents did not grow up Orthodox, it is understandable that close to

55% of the parents went to public elementary school and just over 55% went to public high school. At Yeshiva the splits are fairly even, with ~30% going to ultra-Orthodox elementary school, ~40% going to Jewish-more-secular, and ~20% going to public school. Following the pattern noticed in the overall numbers, in high school the ultra-Orthodox numbers jump to 53% and the Jewish-more-secular drop to ~26%. The most remarkable result, however, shows up in

Chassidic, where 86.5% of the parents went to ultra-Orthodox elementary school, and not a single parent went to public elementary school. Even more radically, 98% went to ultra-

Orthodox high school, and still not a single parent went to public high school. Though the

94 schools might be fundamentally similar in some important ways, nevertheless, there are some differences that attract certain parents to one school and certain parents to another.

Post High School

Secular Education—4-year College: In the ultra-Orthodox community having a typical

American college experience is not valued; in fact, the idea of going away to college for four years is looked down upon. For a variety of reasons the community sees this type of college experience as incompatible with ultra-Orthodoxy. This does not mean that students do not receive any secular education after high school, however; it is only the typical college experience that is problematic. Often, some education is necessary in order to get appropriate job training, or to have the requisite degree to apply for some jobs. Therefore, people in the ultra-Orthodox community often take classes in various types of college settings, but often not immediately after high school, and usually in conjunction with other educational or employment activities.

In the sample of parents that I surveyed 41.5% attended what I referred to as “real college”, that is, a typical 4-year college. However, 55% of these originally attended public elementary school, 25.6% attended Jewish-more-secular, and only 15% attended ultra-Orthodox elementary schools. Among parents who attended public elementary school, 90% went on to a 4- year college, as opposed to 37% of those who attended Jewish-more-secular, and 15% of those who attended ultra-Orthodox elementary schools.

If we look at the distribution by child’s school, a similar pattern emerges. Given that

Lubavitch had the highest percentage of parents who attended public school it makes sense that they also have the highest percentage of “real college” goers, at 61.4%. 48% of Yeshiva parents went to a regular college. At Chassidic, however, only 9.6% went to regular college.

95 Secular Education—Community and Other Colleges: As described above, many members of the ultra-Orthodox community do receive some secular education after high school, even if it is not at a regular 4-year college. Many people take classes at community colleges, night colleges, or Orthodox colleges geared specifically to Orthodox students. What percentage of parents received any post-high-school secular education, including these many different types of education? Overall, 61.7% had some form of post-high-school secular education. 98% of those who attended public elementary school went on to have some form of post-high-school secular education, 72% of those who went to Jewish-more-secular elementary school had some form of post-high-school secular education, but only 36% of those who went to ultra-Orthodox elementary schools went on to receive some form of post-high-school secular education.

Exploring these numbers by school we see that Lubavitch and Yeshiva are much closer together than in the other data. 73.7% of Lubavitch parents had some form of post-high-school secular education and 68.4% of Yeshiva parents had some form of post-high-school secular education. Once again, however, Chassidic, lags behind with only 38.5% of the parent body having had some form of post-high-school secular education.

Secular Education—Post Graduate Education: 18.6% of the parents have some form of graduate degree, including professional degrees (i.e. law or medicine), Masters degrees, and

PhDs. 31% of those who went to public elementary school received a graduate degree, as did

24% of those who attended Jewish-more-secular schools; in contrast, only 7.7% of those who went to ultra-Orthodox elementary schools received a graduate degree. Looking at school differences, as with the category “any post-high-school education” we don’t see that much difference between Yeshiva and Lubavitch, although notably 24% of Yeshiva parents have a

96 graduate degree, which is more than the 21% of Lubavitch parents. Chassidic comes in well behind the other two at 7.7%.

Secular Education—Gender Differences: Are there any differences between men and women in any of these categories? There are well-defined gender roles in ultra-Orthodox

Judaism, some cultural and some religious, which may have an impact on post-high-school education choices. In regards to “real college” attendance there is not much difference between genders: 43% of men and 40% of women attended “real college”. This is reasonable; considering the large portion of “real college” attendees who came from public school, we would not expect ultra-Orthodox cultural norms to have much of an impact here. If we look at any post-high- school secular education we see that 67.4% of women have some form of post-high-school education compared to 56% of men. Looking at graduate degrees, however, we see that 24.7% of men have some graduate degree, but only 12.6% of women have a graduate degree.

There are some plausible explanations that may explain these numbers, the one I offer here is pure speculation, though I believe it to be plausible. Ultra-Orthodox men spend many years after high school engaged in religious study and may be less inclined to obtain a secular education while already engaged in religious education. When they do decide to pursue some form of higher education it is possible that they are doing so with the clear intention of getting a job, and thus might be more likely to pursue a professional degree. Women, however, do not spend years in Yeshiva after high school; the norm is for them to spend a year or two in a seminary. After seminary, however, they go on what is referred to in the community as “the shidduch market” (dating in order to get married), which can take some amount of time.

Additionally they must often wait for the boys to finish Yeshiva before they can get married. It is

97 therefore possible that more women attend some form of secular classes during this waiting period, with the idea of getting some useful degree, while they are trying to get married. Once they do get married, however, they would be more likely to drop their education and focus on their families instead. While these do not represent certain conclusions, I believe they represent a plausible explanation of the data.

Religious Education: Religious knowledge and religious education is a fundamental value in Orthodox Judaism, and within the ultra-Orthodox community there is a cultural and religious expectation that people will be involved in some form of religious learning all of their lives. This only moderately applies to women, however. For men religious learning is an absolute requirement, and men are expected to pursue this learning to whatever extent possible.

Post-high-school Total Yeshiva Chassidic Lubavitch Overall 71.8% 70.8% 90.3% 56.1% Any Religious 76.3% 79.5% 96.2% 53.6% Education Men Women 67.4% 62.5% 84.6% 58.6% More than 5 years Men 41.9% 41% 73.1% 14.3% Religious Education Overall 34.5% 27.8% 57.6% 22.8% Only Religious 44.1% 30.8% 80.8% 28.6% Education Men Women 25.3% 25% 34.6% 17.2% Table 6: Parent Religious Education by Child’s School

Overall, just under 72% of the parents in this survey had some post-high-school religious education. Close to 42% of the men had more than five years of religious education, and 34.5% of all the parents had only religious education but no secular education after high school. It is extremely rare for women to obtain more than 5 years of religious education; as such, the category of more than five years of religious education only applied to men.

98 Of those parents who went to public elementary school 41.7% had some amount of religious education after high school; of those who went to Jewish-more-secular the number was

75.5%; and of those who went to ultra-Orthodox elementary school the number was 84.6%. In regards to the numbers of parents who only had religious education, of those who went to public elementary school only 2.1% had religious education exclusively; of those who went to Jewish- more-secular the number was 22.6%; and of those who went to ultra-Orthodox elementary school the number was 59%.

If we look at the breakdown by school, the trend that we have noticed so far still holds.

70% of the Yeshiva parents had some religious education, mirroring the overall numbers,

Lubavitch, drawing as it does on many parents who went to public school had 56%, and

Chassidic once again topped out at 90%. In the category of “religious education only” we see the same pattern once again: 28% of Yeshiva parents had only religious education, not far from the overall totals; 23% of Lubavitch parents; and in Chassidic close to 58% of the parents had only received religious education after high school.

Given the ultra-Orthodox perspective that the obligation of religious study falls more heavily on men than women it makes sense that 76% of the men had some religious education to

67% of the women, and that 44% of the men had only received religious education to 25% of the women. Most obviously this explains why 41.9% of the men had more than five years of religious education as opposed to none of the women. It is interesting to note that when we look at the breakdown of men and women by school in Table 6, we can see that in each school in each category more men than women had religious education, with only one exception: In Lubavitch

58.6% of the women had some form of religious education, whereas, 53.6% of the men had some

99 form of religious education. Though not a significant difference, it nevertheless stands out as being different than all of the other data. One possibility is that because many of the parents in

Lubavitch have come to Orthodoxy later in life they may not have had the opportunity for formal religious study. This might affect the men who would be more likely to already be working in jobs than the women who might be at home.

One other gender difference that stands out is the percentage of men and women at

Chassidic who only had religious education. The difference there is far greater than the differences at the other schools. This gap is made more interesting by the fact that at Chassidic a very high percentage of women have some amount of religious education. It seems that what is happening is that a very high percentage of the men who have religious education only have religious education, but most of the women who have religious education also have some other education as well.

Occupation and Style of Life

The occupations chosen by men and women in the ultra-Orthodox community are so different that it is not productive to view them in aggregate; they will be examined separately.

100

No Level - Student Teacher Business Academia Low Occupation Klei Kodesh Employment Occupation, men: Professional Total 25.8% 31.2% 36.6% 1.1% 5.4% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Yeshiva 20.5% 38.5% 41.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Chassidic 46.2% 3.8% 46.2% 0.0% 3.8% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Lubavitch 14.3% 46.4% 21.4% 3.6% 14.3% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Occupation, women: Total 4.2% 13.7% 2.1% 0.0% 26.3% 24.2% 26.3% 3.2% Yeshiva 2.5% 17.5% 2.5% 0.0% 30.0% 30.0% 17.5% 0.0% Chassidic 3.8% 11.5% 0.0% 0.0% 30.8% 15.4% 30.8% 7.7% Lubavitch 6.9% 10.3% 3.4% 0.0% 17.2% 24.1% 34.5% 3.4% Table 7: Parent Occupation

By gender: As Table 7 demonstrates, the total distribution of men is heavily skewed towards business, professional, and klei kodesh occupations. The plurality of men were klei kodesh, that is, they worked in some religious field, whether it be as a rebbe, (a religious instructor) or as a Kollel member. The second highest occupational percentage was being a professional, and just behind that was being in business. There were very few men (and no women) who were in academia, and only a handful of men worked in low-level employment.

For women, business was not a common choice of occupation although there were a fair number of professionals. There were almost no women who could be called klei kodesh, as that term doesn’t really apply to women. Women were included in that category, however, if they were involved in kiruv (Jewish outreach) for a living. The two largest categories of occupation for women were low-level employment and none. These two categories reflect the fact that in the ultra-Orthodox community most women are busy raising families. This means that they either don’t work at all, or they find innovative or part-time ways to make money and to run businesses

101 from their homes. For example, many women will run small clothes businesses from home, catering to the modest types of clothes that ultra-Orthodox women wear; some women will work as part time secretaries or bookkeepers. Another big category for women is that of teacher. This might be a slightly higher paying job than the low-level employment but it also affords some flexibility of schedule and offers part time work as well.

By Parent Body: For men, Chassidic is heavily skewed towards business and klei kodesh, with very few professionals. This makes sense given the fact that Chassidic parents have the least amount of post-high-school secular education and come from the most ultra-Orthodox backgrounds. Going into business doesn’t require a degree of any kind, and in the ultra-Orthodox community that is seen as an excellent choice of occupation—it’s a way to make money without having to go to school. Klei Kodesh, of course, also requires little to no secular education. In contrast to Chassidic, Lubavitch has the highest percentage of professionals among the men, once again, reflecting the background of the parents, as described above. For women, although there are differences among the three schools, there are no meaningful patterns in the variation.

102

Figure 4: Parent Occupation - Men

By Elementary School Attended: Similarly, if we examine the occupations of parents by elementary school attended there are no meaningful patterns that characterize women’s occupations as categorized by elementary school. This is not the case for men, however:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Public 12% 64% 20% 4% 0% 0% 0% 0% Jewish- more- secular 25% 37.5% 25% 0% 12.5% 0% 0% 0% Ultra- Orthodox 40.5% 10.8% 45.9% 0% 2.7% 0% 0% 0% Table 8: Fathers’ Occupation by Elementary School Attended

Men who attended ultra-Orthodox elementary school were much less likely to be professionals and much more likely to be in business or to be klei kodesh. Those who went to public elementary school were much more likely to be professionals. Those who attended

Jewish-more-secular elementary schools were fairly evenly distributed; they had slightly higher

103 numbers of professionals, but they also had more low-level employment than either of the other categories.

Lifestyle: As discussed above, the general style of living was gauged by two questions, whether the family owned their home and whether either parent had ever purchased a brand new car. These questions yielded four possible categories: 1 = house and car; 2 = house, no car; 3 = no house, no car; 4 = no house, car.

Lifestyle Total Yeshiva Chassidic Lubavitch 1 43.2% 55.0% 23.1% 44.8% 2 47.4% 37.5% 73.1% 37.9% 3 7.4% 5.0% 3.8% 13.8% 4 2.1% 2.5% 0.0% 3.4% Table 9: Parent Lifestyle27

As expected, the plurality of parents owned their own homes but had never purchased a brand new car. The number of those who both owned their own homes and had purchased a new car was a close second, however. Together, these two categories demonstrate that over 90% of the parents in this ultra-Orthodox community own their own homes, though only 45% have ever bought a brand new car. These numbers suggest that at the very least the community is maintaining a certain minimal quality of life, and maybe even doing quite well.

As broken down by school, Yeshiva has more parents in the car and house category than in the “house, no car” category, whereas Chassidic has relatively few in the highest category but has the highest level of home ownership, due to very large numbers in the second category,

“house, no car”. Lubavitch is more evenly distributed, and has the highest number of parents who neither own their own home nor have bought a new car.

27 Numbers are by household, not by individual. This creates some very slight difference in numbers as two households had only one parent.

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How did elementary school attended function as a predictor of lifestyle?

LS1 LS2 LS3 LS4 Public 60.4% 22.9% 10.4% 6.3% Jewish-more-secular 45.3% 43.4% 11.3% 0% Ultra-Orthodox 32.1% 62.8% 3.8% 1.3% Table 10: Parent Lifestyle by Elementary School

There is a clear progression in Table 10 in the percent of parents who have a house and new car. 60% of parents who went to public elementary school are in LS1 (Lifestyle 1), 45% of parents who went to Jewish-more-secular are in that category, and 32% of those who went to ultra-Orthodox schools are in that category as well. Conversely, in LS2 the progression works in the reverse, 23% of parents who went to public elementary school are in LS2, 43% of parents who went to Jewish-more-secular are in LS2, and 63% of those who went to ultra-Orthodox schools are in that category as well.

There could be a number of possible explanations for this pattern. One possibility is that this is confirmation of my assumption that the ultra-Orthodox do not value buying new cars but do value buying homes. Thus, those who grew up least ultra-Orthodox would be most likely to have bought a new car at some point in their lives, and those who grew up most ultra-Orthodox would be least likely to have bought a new car at some point in their lives. Because they are all living in the ultra-Orthodox community now, however, they are all similarly likely to have bought a house—that is, very likely. Another possibility, however, is that these numbers reflect differences in affluence. It might be the case that those who went to schools with more secular education are on the whole richer than those who went to schools with less secular education.

105 Some evidence that values are at least part of the story here can be found in the fact that though all three categories are similarly likely to have bought a house, they are not exactly uniform. If we tally up LS1 and LS2 we see that 83.3% of public school educated parents own a home, 88.7% of Jewish-more-secular educated parents own their homes, and 94.9% of ultra-

Orthodox educated parents own their own homes. Thus, there is some progression in home ownership alone, even though the progression of the percentage of parents that have also bought new cars goes in the opposite direction.

Summing Up

The survey demonstrates some clear differences in the background education of parents between the three schools, with Chassidic drawing students whose parents had grown up with a more right wing Orthodoxy than parents in the other two schools. There were occupation differences as well, with male Chassidic parents going into business and Klei Kodesh, Yeshiva parents choosing Klei Kodesh and professional work, and Lubavitch having the widest distribution of job choice. In regard to material success, the survey results indicate that 91% of the parents are able to own their own home in this community, and of those who went to ultra-

Orthodox elementary schools themselves the total is 95%.28 What this means is that the community structure has not been negatively affecting the ability of its members to provide for themselves and their families.

The survey furthermore reveals Chassidic to be somewhat of an outlier amongst the three schools, as it appears to be the most right wing of the schools; it has the highest levels of

28 By contrast, in this same city the census data from 2005 indicates that only 48.5% of the overall households are owned by the residents (American Community Survey, 2005). In addition, the median value for homes in the community-area where most of Orthodox Jews live is in the 75th percentile for the overall city ("Census 2000 Profiles of General Demographic Characteristics: Illinois;" 2002).

106 religious education amongst the parents, the lowest levels of secular education, and the highest percentage of native ultra-Orthodox parents. Yet, there are ways of grouping the schools such that any of the three can be an outlier. As explained at the end of the last section, Chassidic and Yeshiva participate in the same religious community, and Lubavitch in another—in that respect, Lubavitch stands out. On another metric, however, it is Yeshiva that stands out. Yeshiva is the one non-Chassidic school, it is the one school that is governed by boards, rather than by a single person, and it is the school with the most secular education for the students (though in the older grades, it only exceeds the others by a very small margin). In truth, as one might expect, each of the schools is unique in some way, though they all share some very similar attributes.

The first section of this chapter has provided a basic description of the three schools, and this section has examined the parents who send their children to these schools; to complete the chapter providing background information on the community, the next section will look at student achievement in secular education.

Section 3: Standardized Test Scores

This section will examine and assess the schools’ academic achievement in secular studies by examining students’ standardized test scores. This analysis sheds light on the schools’ treatment of secular education, and helps illuminate differences between the schools that illustrate their individual character.

In Yeshiva they used the Stanford Achievement Test to assess student performance.

Scores were collected from 1996, 2000, and 2004. In 1996 and 2000 they used the SAT 8

(Stanford Achievement Test 8) and in 2004 they switched to version 9. The data consisted of the scaled scores and the percentiles relative to the total population of test takers for a wide range of

107 subject areas. This work will report on the major content areas, math, reading, language, science, and social science. In grades 1 and 2 the students received scores in a subject called environment instead of science, and they did not have scores in social science.

Chassidic also used the Stanford Achievement Test to assess student performance.

Though every effort was initially made to only select years that matched with Yeshiva the only years where complete data was found were 2001 and 2004. In both years they used the SAT 8.

The data received consisted of the scaled scores and the percentiles relative to the total population of test takers for a wide range of subject areas. As with Yeshiva, this paper will report on the major content areas, math, reading, language, science, and social science. Also as with

Yeshiva in grades 1 and 2 the students received scores in a subject called environment instead of science, and they did not have scores in social science.

Lubavitch used different tests in different years and not every grade took the test in every year. Scores were gathered from 1999, 2002, and 2004. In 1999 and 2002 they used the CTBS

(Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills) and in 2004 they switched to the SAT 10. The data received once again consisted of the scaled scores and percentiles. As with Yeshiva and

Chassidic, this paper will report on the major content areas, math, reading, language, science, and social science. In 1999 and 2002 Lubavitch tested grades 2 through 8, but in 2004 they only tested grades 3, 5, and 7.

As discussed in Chapter 1, the schools’ administration of standardized tests and their record-keeping were erratic, and I encountered difficulty gaining access to scores. Ultimately the data collection was driven by what was available in each school. Because each of the schools used different tests and had data from different years it was difficult to use the scaled scores in a

108 productive way, as there were no easy points of comparison. Instead, the analysis below relies on the percentile scores of each student, which has the benefit of allowing some comparison across different tests in different schools.

The format that will be followed for presenting the test score data is as follows: For each school and year there will be a table of the percentage of students over the whole school that were below the 25th, 50th,and 75th percentile markers. Because the scores are being presented as percentiles, the assessment of the students’ performance will be conducted by reviewing the percentage of students that fall above or below the percentile markers. To perform at average levels, 50% of the students should fall above the 50th percentile and 50% below. The additional use of the 25th and 75th percentiles as markers gives us some estimation of the distribution of scores.

Yeshiva

In 1996 there were 219 students who took the test. This number excludes special needs students, and students who took the test un-timed.

Percent under 25th Percent under 50th Percent under 75th Math 7.3 24.7 42.9 Reading 7.3 18.7 46.1 Language 11.4 26.9 49.8 Social Science 11.3 33.1 56.3 Science 19.3 44.5 70.2 Table 11: YESHIVA/ 1996/ SAT8 All Grades Combined

Table 11, above, shows the percentage of students below the different percentile thresholds. Note that at the top end of the class (the highest achieving students) the scores are getting successively worse going from math to science, and while the middle and bottom of the

109 classes do not have a clear progression, they do best in math and reading while language and social science follow. Science, however, is clearly the worst—it was the only subject that had many grades with students falling below the national percentiles at 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile markers, although as the table demonstrates, the school taken as a whole still performed slightly better than average.

In 2000, Yeshiva did not give the test to 1st graders, instead beginning in the second grade. Again, environment substituted for science in that grade, and there was no social science category for that grade. Overall, 187 students took this test excluding special needs students and students who took the test un-timed.

Once again, as the table below demonstrates, science was the worst subject, although in this year social science was closer to the science than to language.

Percent under 25th Percent under 50th Percent under 75th Math 10.7 24.1 52.4 Reading 9.1 32.3 58.6 Language 8.6 34.1 62.2 Social Science 18.0 41.0 61.5 Science 23.1 43.0 69.9 Table 12: YESHIVA/ 2000/ SAT8/ All Grades Combined

In 2004 Yeshiva switched to the SAT9 and once again did not give the test to 1st graders.

As before, science was replaced by environment in the second grade, which also did not have social science. In all, 173 students took the test, excluding special needs students and students who took the test un-timed.

110 Percent under 25th Percent under 50th Percent under 75th Math 17.3 39.9 67.6 Reading 11.0 28.5 62.2 Language 12.9 38.7 63.8 Social Science 23.2 44.4 71.5 Science 20.3 45.3 70.9 Table 13: YESHIVA/ 2004/ SAT9/ All Grades Combined

In Table 13 one can see that the scores are a bit worse than the previous two years, and there is generally more consistency across subject matter. Whereas in the previous two years of tests math and reading had the best scores, language and social science were slightly worse, and science was the lowest, in 2004 the scores are much more closely grouped. While science does appear to be the worst there is not as wide a gap between science and the other subjects.

If we look at the three years of tests next to one another, this is what we find:

Year Math Reading Language

%<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75

1996 7.3 24.7 42.9 7.3 18.7 46.1 11.4 26.9 49.8

2000 10.7 24.1 52.4 9.1 32.3 58.6 8.6 34.1 62.2

2004 17.3 39.9 67.6 11.0 28.5 62.2 12.9 38.7 63.8

Science* Social Science

%<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75

1996 19.3 44.5 70.2 11.3 33.1 56.3

2000 23.1 43.0 69.9 18.0 41.0 61.5

2004 20.3 45.3 70.9 23.2 44.4 71.5

Table 14: Yeshiva 3-Year Test Scores

Though in all three years the overall scores were above average there appears to be a downward trend in all of the major subject areas, with the exception of science, which was

111 uniformly lower than the others in the first two years. Nevertheless it is important to remember that over all the grades in each year, Yeshiva is still scoring higher than the total body of test takers, that is, more than 50% of the school is above the 50th percentile in all of the major subject areas.

To see the data over all three years a little more clearly:

Figure 5: Yeshiva Percentiles

Chassidic

In 2001 there were 124 students who took the test. This number excludes special needs students, and students who took the test un-timed.

112 Percent under 25th Percent under 50th Percent under 75th Math 9.8 31.7 54.5 Reading 20.3 40.7 66.7 Language 18.7 39.8 66.7 Social Science 28.0 60.2 73.1 Science 30.1 63.4 82.9 Table 15: Chassidic/ 2001/ SAT8/ All Grades Combined

In Table 15 we see that math stands out as better than the other subjects, reading and language seem grouped quite closely in the middle, and social science and science are the worst—both below average. One point of interest in comparison to Yeshiva, is that in the first two years of testing in Yeshiva math and reading were closely grouped, language and social science were closely grouped and science stood out as separate. Here the grouping works slightly differently, though the general progression in scores remains the same.

In 2004 137 students took the test, excluding special needs students and students who took the test un-timed.

Percent under 25th Percent under 50th Percent under 75th Math 12.0 33.8 65.4 Reading 17.0 34.1 68.9 Language 14.9 36.6 64.2 Social Science 30.3 51.7 80.9 Science 32.4 63.2 83.1 Table 16: Chassidic/ 2004/ SAT8/ All Grades Combined

In Table 16 we see that in the scores for the 2004 test math was once again their best subject, and was grouped closely with reading and language, which were just below math. There is then a big drop-off, however, to social science and then further to science, which are both below average.

113 If we look at the two years of tests next to one another, we see that both years are fairly similar:

Year Math Reading Language %<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75 2001 9.8 31.7 54.5 20.3 40.7 66.7 18.7 39.8 66.7 2004 12.0 33.8 65.4 17.0 34.1 68.9 14.9 36.6 64.2 Science* Social Science %<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75 2001 30.1 63.4 82.9 28.0 60.2 73.1 2004 32.4 63.2 83.1 30.3 51.7 80.9 Table 17: Chassidic 2-Year Test Scores

Indeed, this is clear if we look at the data in graph form as well:

Figure 6: Chassidic Percentiles

114 Lubavitch

In 1999 there were 102 students who took the test. This number excludes special needs students, and students who took the test un-timed. Unlike the other two schools, math was not the strongest subject for the students; reading was better than math, and was the students’ best subject, and the students did well on social science with scores similar to the math scores. On the other hand, the students performed below average on the language test and quite poorly in science. The poor grades in science are reasonable considering the fact that they receive no science instruction; in fact, every grade except for 7th underperformed at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile markers, and in the 6th grade half of the students in the class were in the 1st percentile.

Percent under 25th Percent under 50th Percent under 75th Math 23.0 47.0 73.0 Reading 14.0 41.0 65.0 Language 29.0 53.0 79.0 Social Science 21.8 46.5 73.3 Science 35.6 62.4 89.1 Table 18: Lubavitch/ 1999/ CTBS4/ All Grades Combined

The distribution in Table 18 is interesting, as it is not clear why there should be such a separation between reading and language. One possibility is that the students have decent reading comprehension skills that are not language specific, which they have cultivated in their religious classes, but that they still do not have a facility with the English language.

In 2002, Lubavitch gave the CTBS 4 again, and there were 95 students who took the test.

This number excludes special needs students, and students who took the test un-timed. Again, as is evident in Table 19, math was not a particularly strong subject for these students (it was actually below average), but they did do well in reading and social science, and unlike the previous year, also language. Science was once again quite weak.

115 Percent under 25th Percent under 50th Percent under 75th Math 17.9 56.8 82.1 Reading 14.9 44.7 67.0 Language 16.8 48.4 80.0 Social Science 19.1 43.6 73.4 Science 32.3 67.7 91.4 Table 19: Lubavitch/ 2002/ CTBS4/ All Grades Combined

In 2004 Lubavitch made some changes in its testing practices. They switched to the SAT

10 and they administered the test to every other grade starting with third. There were, therefore, only 37 students who ended up taking the test in 2004 (The grades in Lubavitch tend to be small). The 3rd grade was very weak in every category, the 5th grade was strong in every category and the 7th was strong in reading, middling in social science, and weak in the other subjects.

Overall, this led to math and reading scores that were slightly above average, and language and social science scores that were mostly below average. Science was once again the worst subject for these students.

Percent under 25th Percent under 50th Percent under 75th Math 27.0 43.2 73.0 Reading 32.4 48.6 73.0 Language 36.1 52.8 75.0 Social Science 32.4 51.4 67.6 Science 48.6 67.6 91.9 Table 20: Lubavitch/ 2004/ SAT10/ All Grades Combined

As Table 20 demonstrates, science stands out as an outlier, while the other subjects are grouped more closely together. If we look at the three years of scores together, this is what we find:

116 Year Math Reading Language %<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75 1999 23.0 47.0 73.0 14.0 41.0 65.0 29.0 53.0 79.0 2002 17.9 56.8 82.1 14.9 44.7 67.0 16.8 48.4 80.0 2004 27.0 43.2 73.0 32.4 48.6 73.0 36.1 52.8 75.0 Science Social Science %<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75 1999 35.6 62.4 89.1 21.8 46.5 73.3 2002 32.3 67.7 91.4 19.1 43.6 73.4 2004 48.6 67.6 91.9 32.4 51.4 67.6 Table 21: Lubavitch 3-Year Test Scores

Over all three years the reading scores remained consistently above average while the science scores were uniformly below average. Social science scores were generally good, as were the math scores, while the language scores hovered around the averages, but were mostly just below them. There do not appear to be any real patterns over the years.

Figure 7: Lubavitch Percentiles

117 Summing Up

In Table 22 below we can see how the three schools stack up. The numbers in bold indicate that the averages were below the percentile markers.

YESHIVA

Year Math Reading Language Science* Social Science

%<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75 %<25 %<50 %<75

1996 7.3 24.7 42.9 7.3 18.7 46.1 11.4 26.9 49.8 19.3 44.5 70.2 11.3 33.1 56.3

2000 10.7 24.1 52.4 9.1 32.3 58.6 8.6 34.1 62.2 23.1 43.0 69.9 18.0 41.0 61.5

2004 17.3 39.9 67.6 11.0 28.5 62.2 12.9 38.7 63.8 20.3 45.3 70.9 23.2 44.4 71.5

CHASSIDIC

2001 9.8 31.7 54.5 20.3 40.7 66.7 18.7 39.8 66.7 30.1 63.4 82.9 28.0 60.2 73.1

2004 12.0 33.8 65.4 17.0 34.1 68.9 14.9 36.6 64.2 32.4 63.2 83.1 30.3 51.7 80.9

LUBAVITCH

1999 23.0 47.0 73.0 14.0 41.0 65.0 29.0 53.0 79.0 35.6 62.4 89.1 21.8 46.5 73.3

2002 17.9 56.8 82.1 14.9 44.7 67.0 16.8 48.4 80.0 32.3 67.7 91.4 19.1 43.6 73.4

2004 27.0 43.2 73.0 32.4 48.6 73.0 36.1 52.8 75.0 48.6 67.6 91.9 32.4 51.4 67.6

Table 22: Test Scores for Three Schools

A quick glance at the three schools together will reveal that Yeshiva is the only school that consistently scored above average at the three percentile markers, in all of the subjects, over all of the years examined. Chassidic did poorly in science and social studies, but otherwise performed acceptably (although worse than Yeshiva), and Lubavitch was the worst. In all three schools science was the worst subject.

I would suggest that these differences reflect the difference in character between the three schools. Although all had science as their worst subject, only Yeshiva was still above average in

118 science, unlike Chassidic and Lubavitch. This reflects the fact that of the three schools

Yeshiva is the only one to offer science as a regular (if small) part of the curriculum.

Overall Yeshiva and Chassidic are fairly similar to one another in terms of the subjects that the students do well on, and Lubavitch seems to be the outlier. Now, it is possible that some of the differences between Lubavitch and the other two schools can be attributed to the use of the

CTBS the first two years, which is a different (although very similar) test. There are, however, other factors that could influence the difference in performance. For one, as noted in the first section of this chapter, the curriculum in Lubavitch was organized around “life-skills”, and in a number of grades the math did not line up with traditional content organization. For example, during the observation of the 8th grade secular studies classes, in one math lesson the students learned how to calculate mortgages and in another they learned how to track stocks. These are skills that the school felt were important for the students, but they are taught at the expense of skills that might match up more evenly with the questions asked on the standardized test.

Aside from the fact that the three schools had different patterns of test score performance, it is also clear that even though they only devote a small amount of time to secular studies and don’t value that study as much as the religious part of the day, they nevertheless manage to perform at the national averages for the core subject areas. Even in science, the subject that is the weakest, the scores are only slightly below average. There is no doubt that if the schools devoted their full energy to secular education the students would do better, but as it is currently they are not drastically falling behind. This is important, because, as I will argue throughout this work, for this community the major goal of instructing students in secular knowledge is so that they can function in the secular world. They don't have to perform above average to function, they simply

119 need to be at, or even slightly below average, and that is likely sufficient for them to receive the tools necessary to get jobs.

The Three Schools and the Community in Review

The collection of broad commonalities that unite the three schools in this study as being fundamentally similar relative to the larger world should not obscure the many differences that exist between the three schools. Throughout the dissertation I treat these schools as representing one particular communal approach, and in the most important respects this treatment is justified; however, I hope that one of the impacts of this chapter is to demonstrate that there is still a great deal of complexity within the ultra-Orthodox community itself, as evidenced by the many points of difference between the schools and their populations29.

The initial descriptions of the schools demonstrate the different histories of the schools, the differences at the organizational level, along with the differences in educational emphasis.

The survey and test score data, though only one window into the internal structure of the community, nevertheless demonstrate a complex and varied community: The students in the three schools performed differently on standardized tests, with Yeshiva students outperforming those from Chassidic and Lubavitch; there were differences in the background education of parents, with Chassidic drawing students whose parents had grown up with a more ultra-

Orthodox than parents in the other two schools; there were differences in occupation as well,

29 Throughout much of the rest of this work, I discuss the worldview of the community as a unitary entity facilitated by the structure and content of the school day. The differences between schools and the overall complexity of the community presented in this chapter should make it clear that there must be underlying sub-structure to individuals’ worldviews that varies from school to school and from individual to individual. At the same time, however, the many similarities that will be discussed in the next few chapters serve to provide a basic higher-level worldview structure that I believe is common to all three schools.

120 with male Chassidic parents going into business and Klei Kodesh, Yeshiva parents choosing

Klei Kodesh and professional work, and Lubavitch parents choosing from a wider range of jobs.

In regard to the general characteristics of the community associated with all three schools we might note that despite the general perspective that does not place great value on secular education just under two thirds of parents in this community had some form of post-high-school secular education, and over 40% of the parents had a traditional college experience.

Finally, on a number of metrics examined here the community is relatively successful.

Though the community does not assign primacy to secular knowledge, choosing instead to devote school-time to the study of religious knowledge, the schools are still capable of providing the students with enough skills to perform at or above average in the core domains of reading and math, and close to average in other domains. This may seem like a low bar to set for bright, devoted students from committed and involved families, but we must remember that the students only devote a small amount of time to secular study.30 Communal success would also appear to be borne out by the data on material comfort in the ultra-Orthodox community. As noted above,

91% of the parents are able to own their own home, and of those who went to ultra-Orthodox elementary schools themselves the total is 95%. This is radically different than the home ownership rate of the overall population in the same city, which is only 48.5% (American

Community Survey, 2005).

30 It is worth noting that the test score data do not necessarily indicate that the students are performing up to their potential in secular studies, or that they would perform above average if their scores were normed against a comparable population (in regard to factors like SES, race, or geographic location), rather the scores show that they are performing above average in certain subjects relative to the overall population of test takers. Given that the students will be competing for jobs with the overall population, not just one subset of that population, this may be acceptable to the community, though it may not indicate a very high level of achievement.

121 In general this chapter has tried to provide some background information on the schools and the community that I am examining. As we turn to focus on elements of worldview in the school day it is important to note the relative success of the schools in regard to secular test scores, as the nature of that secular instruction will be one of the major elements under consideration. In the next chapter, as well as in later chapters, I will argue that the schools limit the secular instruction to those areas that they feel will be helpful for getting jobs, and try to ensure that the secular instruction does not have a large impact on the worldview of the students.

This may be reflected in this chapter, as science (which often conflicts with the religious content) and social sciences (which are not seen to have a benefit to future employment) are the weakest subjects in the schools. However, there does seem to be some evidence that the goal of preparing students for future job success and material comfort is being met, as this is something the survey indicates that the parents appear to enjoy.

122

Chapter 3: The Accommodation of Secular Material:

Administrators, Teachers, and Students

In the previous chapter I described the three schools and their attendant communities and demonstrated that on some measures they are relatively successful. That chapter made clear that secular instruction occupies a limited position within the ultra-Orthodox school day. In the next few chapters we will see that the schools’ administrations and religious teachers understand the schools’ function primarily in terms of religious socialization; within this larger context, the small amount of time devoted to secular studies represents an uneasy accommodation with secular instruction. The following three chapters will examine the ways in which the schools’ complex negotiation between religious and secular instruction shapes and illustrates students’ emerging worldview.

This chapter will introduce this question by examining the belief statements expressed by participants during the course of clinical interviews. The statements made by participants during these interviews reflect aspects of beliefs that they maintain, and thus constitute one component of their worldview, as described in the opening chapter (activities are the other major component). In my treatment of the interview data I will be examining the ways in which the self-understood goals of the schools, and their accommodation of secular studies, are mediated and experienced by administrators, rabbeim, teachers, and students. In this chapter I will demonstrate how these different members of the community perceive the role of school and the function of secular education within the school.

123 The interviews themselves were designed to provide a set number of specific questions, but to allow a wide range of responses to these questions, as well as digressions and unstructured discussion. There were a number of questions that were asked in every interview, and each of these questions had sub-questions that could be asked depending on the response of the interviewee. For example, I asked participants what they felt were the most important subjects in the school day. Depending on their responses I would ask for elaboration or justification, or I might prompt them with a specific alternative, asking them whether they thought the subject they had mentioned was more important or less important than the one I suggested. In general, the questions followed a set order, but this order was often not followed as the responses sometimes pushed the interview in different directions. The logic behind the interview questions, in the broadest terms, was to get a sense of the interviewee’s experience with the school, and to uncover some of the interviewee’s worldview.

As noted in the first chapter, I conducted fifty interviews, each of which ranged from twenty minutes to an hour.

Lubavitch Chassidic Yeshiva Administrators 2 1 3 Teachers and rabbeim 7 2 4 Students 15 3 8 Parents 2 0 4 Table 23: Distribution of Interviews

This table of the distribution of interviews, also presented in the opening chapter, demonstrates that I did the most interviews with participants from Lubavitch, followed by

Yeshiva, and then Chassidic. In general my approach was to do as many interviews with as many participants as time allowed. I did, however, make sure to interview all of the relevant

124 administrators in each of the three schools. In Chassidic, where Rabbi Liebberg acted as the sole principal for both the secular and religious parts of the day, he was the only administrator interviewed. In contrast, in addition to secular and religious principals, Yeshiva had an extra position—mashgiach—which meant that I conducted three administrator interviews there.

The interviews were videotaped and transcribed, and then analyzed by theme. The themes that I was looking for in analyzing the interviews were closely related to those that motivated the design of the interviews. Specifically, I was looking for instances where people discussed their views of:

• Secular knowledge and culture

• Religious knowledge and culture

• The role (and content) of secular education

• Overall importance of school

• The history and description of the schools

• Their expectations for their children and communal norms

• The appropriateness of connecting secular and religious material in the school day

• Jobs

The interview transcripts were placed in a vertical column and the themes were arranged along a horizontal row at the top of an array. Because I was not concerned in this analysis with counting the number of times a particular theme was mentioned, but rather with building an interpretation of what the views associated with those themes meant, the unit of analysis of the text could consist of a few utterances at a time. For each box of text I would mark off each box that had some relevance to that theme. Table 24, below, provides an example.

125

Secular Religious Secular School Jobs History/ Norms/ Connecti Knowledge/ K/C Ed. Purpose Descript. Expect. ons Culture Rabbi INT: What careers will X X X M, they have? RM: We Admin teach to objective that they will go to a rabbinic yeshiva of higher learning, and will be married and learn in Kollel, and then at that point they will consider what skills they need to raise a family and support family. Rabbi INT: How does the X X X M, English (secular Admin instruction) relate to picking up later skills? RM: English covers the 4 basic areas that they need in the future: math, language, social studies and science— and we limit it to that, no liberal arts, nothing extra. Rabbi INT: Is that a good X M, model? RM: That is the Admin model.

Table 24: Sample Interview Array

In the first row of Table 24 Rabbi M. asserts that the objective of the religious knowledge that they are learning in the school day is for them to follow a particular life course, where they will study in Yeshiva for a long time before thinking about getting a job and raising a family. As such, the themes that were marked as present were the religious knowledge and culture theme, the jobs theme, and the norms and expectations theme, all of which were addressed by his statement.

After identifying which themes were present throughout any individual interview, I took each interview and sorted the array by theme, so that for each individual I ended up with a

126 collection of statements pertaining to each of the themes. I then summarized those statements based on my interpretation of what the subjects were saying, thus creating a new document that had a summary of what each individual said about each theme. That summary was then condensed into a prose paragraph.

The overall process was interpretive. I began with my own judgments of what to look for in the data, based on the issues that I was interested in. I relied on my own understanding of what the subjects were saying in order to identify which themes were present in any given utterance, and I relied on my own interpretation to accurately summarize the statements that were made. It should be noted, however, that this process of identifying themes did impose a systematicity on the analysis, to ensure that data was not missed or overlooked. Moreover, the categories were value neutral—I wasn’t looking for every instance of a positive statement about secular culture in the initial categorization—I was, rather, identifying any statement about secular knowledge and culture, using the summaries to describe the nature of these statements. (In Appendix A. I have included a complete interview with the coding of themes and notation as to the rationale).

After completing summaries for each of the subjects I looked at the complete body of summaries to see if there were commonalities or differences across and within different groups of interviewees—did all of the administrators respond similarly to questions about the schools’ purpose or did the school they were in impact the way that they responded? Did the secular teachers and Rabbeim understand the function of secular education similarly, or were there some basic differences? As we will see there were interesting commonalities as well as interesting differences, and while on many topics groups of subjects would seemingly respond with one

127 voice, there were also topics where a lone individual, such as Rabbi Malick at Yeshiva discussing the importance of secular knowledge, appeared to have a different perspective.

In the rest of this chapter I will try to demonstrate that the administrators and rabbeim view the religious education that dominates the school day in terms of molding and shaping the character of their students, while they perceive the value and purpose of secular education purely in terms of the pragmatic benefit it confers, in that students will be able to find gainful employment and generally function in the secular world. Further, the administration limits the material that can be taught in the secular part of the day so that it does not conflict with the religious, and explicitly forbid the secular teachers from referencing any religious ideas in the classroom. Nevertheless in interviews it was clear that some of the secular teachers try to break down the boundaries that separate the secular and the religious. Finally, this chapter will look at the students’ perceptions of the role of secular and religious study throughout the school day.

Though interviews were conducted with parents as well, there were only six such interviews, and the data that was received did not add much to the analysis. There were no interesting patterns, and parents were concerned, for the most part, with issues unique to their own children, such as whether their son liked a particular rebbe or teacher. This is an area that will hopefully be explored more in future work.

The Purpose of School

Interviews with administrators at all three schools revealed that their self-perceived primary purpose is socialization into the ultra-Orthodox community and preparation for the normative “ideal” ultra-Orthodox life course. Thus, the principal of Yeshiva, Rabbi Merzel, stated quite simply that the purpose of school is “to create Rabbinic scholars”, and when asked to

128 elaborate on this he added, “We teach to objective that they will go to rabbinic yeshiva of higher learning, will be married and learn in kollel, and then at that point they will consider what skills they need to raise a family and support (a) family.” I asked him whether he thought this was a good model for students and he replied “that is the model”.

For Rabbi Merzel there was no question that the purpose of school was to prepare his students to follow the standard model that is expected of them. He didn't mention curricular skills, or knowledge that they ought to have, there was no set of standards in his description— rather the goal was to produce students who would follow the appropriate model of future behavior. Of course, there are specific curricular goals that must be met to follow this life-path, but the purpose of school was expressed in terms of following this path rather than in terms of the curriculum.

The secular studies principal at Yeshiva, Rabbi Kugelman, like Rabbi Merzel, gave an initial description of the purpose of the school in terms of the path that students would take in life: “(a student) should come out with knowledge to go on to Yeshiva”. He also articulated the same expected life-path for the students: “Most will spend the next 10 years at least in learning—

(in) Yeshiva beyond high school—most, after marriage, will do Kollel and at some point after they’re married they’re gonna have to make a decision about what they’re gonna do with their life”.

That the schools aim primarily to socialize students for ultra-Orthodox life, rather than promote academic achievement in any area for its own sake, was also reflected in my interviews with rabbeim. Many of the rabbeim who I interviewed understood the primary purpose of religious studies not to be the acquisition of skills, but to instill a feeling of warmth and

129 belonging in the students, and to mold them as human beings. Rabbi Carmen, a rebbe at

Chassidic explained the purpose of school in this way: “The overall goal of the school should be to develop the Talmidim (students) to be Yirei shamaim (those who maintain a fear of G-d),

Baleh midois toivois (masters of ethical behavior), which includes achrayus for klal Israel

(taking responsibility for one’s fellow Jew) and limud hatoira (the study of Torah)”. Later in the interview he noted, “the school prepares them for life… the Torah that we teach prepares them for life”.

A rebbe at Yeshiva, Rabbi Lederman, said that his role as a rebbe was “to focus on 1— instill not just knowledge but the geshmak (sweetness) of learning, but also, 2—to teach them how to learn on their own.” A rebbe at Lubavitch, Rabbi Markowitz, said that the most important thing the students should be getting out of the school day was “midos (ethical behavior) and chasidishkeit (the flavor of Chassidus), how to learn how to open doors for people and relate to each other.” He went on, “I very much consider academics secondary and everything that we teach has to be muser haskell (pragmatic ethical guidance) to prod them in that direction.”

Responding to the same question, Rabbi Aberman, a rebbe at Yeshiva and a secular teacher at Chassidic, said: “It goes without saying that we want the students to get the education, whatever education we’re teaching them—the subject matter. But most of all we’d like them to learn how to be good citizens, be a mentch—how to talk to people and treat people.” He continued: “I think all you try to do at the elementary level is to give the children a good background of general knowledge and of learning, a desire to want to learn; to be respectful to their parents. I think we focus a lot more, certainly in my classroom, on what the kids do at home. I talk about it a lot; I give homework—every Thursday night my homework is, I may be

130 the only rebbe in the school, but on my daily sheet, every Thursday it says help (your parents) prepare for Shabbos (the Sabbath).”

In this context, the self-perceived rationale for the inclusion of secular studies in the school day is purely pragmatic: these subjects serve to prepare students to earn a livelihood, within the context of their future lives as ultra-Orthodox adults. Thus, Rabbi Merzel stated that for him, secular education was there to provide the basic skills that the students would need later on, “English covers the four basic areas that they need in future: math, language, social studies, and science, and we limit it to that—no liberal arts, nothing extra.” Rabbi Kugelman took a similar approach, though as the secular principal he explained the presence of secular education in greater detail: “we do want to provide a quality secular education so that those who want to go on to one of the professions have the ability to do so”. He also explained that a person needs a certain amount of secular knowledge to generally function in life, beyond the acquisition of jobs:

“(One) can’t just be totally isolated from what’s been going in world for thousands of years— math is another thing… and English is essential in terms of communication. I tell them all these things will be of benefit and you should take them seriously—now do they all? No, because they pick up an attitude that its unimportant, some get it from parents some from an older brother in

Yeshiva where it is more common to put down secular, but we try to fight that attitude.”

It is interesting to note that Rabbi Malick, the Mashgiach at Yeshiva, described rabbeim who also taught secular subjects as presenting the students with very different attitudes in the religious and secular parts of the day.

But rabbeim sing a different tune in afternoon, they are more aggressive, they

show less understanding, in the morning they are much more nurturing… when

131 you sit in his (a rebbe’s) classroom in the morning he’s much more friendly and

accepting of certain things… (but in the afternoon) he’s playing a different role in

his mind; in the afternoon he’s purely just an educator not a pedagogue, not

person who there to mold and shape, (he’s) just there to get math and science in,

whereas in morning the Hebrew is there to establish child’s personality and goes

the extra mile… I call that downloading, where I just have to get that into your

head, someway somehow, no matter where the chips fall.

This observation was consistent with the fact that though the rabbeim all stressed that secular education was important, they justified it in terms of the acquisition of basic skills in life; they did not see secular instruction as having the ability to mold or shape the personality of the student. On the other hand, the religious material was considered to be essentially a tool for producing the proper feelings and behaviors in students. (Notably, Rabbi Malick was the one

Rabbi interviewed who did not take this approach; he felt that the entire day should be a molding experience for the students).

The Tension Inherent in Secular Education

The presence of secular education in the school day, justified in purely pragmatic terms, creates a tension in the school that directly affects the community worldview. This tension was reflected in interviews with students, administrators, and teachers in various ways, which will be outlined below.

132 Secular Teachers and Accommodation of Secular Material

The school administrations attempt to isolate secular education within the school day in various ways (which will be examined in more detail in the following chapters). In particular the schools all removed a great deal of the content from the curriculum and forbade the teachers from making any connections to religion, whether positive or negative. The administrators that I spoke to uniformly reflected the approach that the religious and the secular are separate domains, and that religion and religious concerns should be kept out of the secular part of the day. When asked how secular studies teachers should approach religion, Rabbi Kugelman, the secular studies principal at Yeshiva, stated simply: “They shouldn’t. The English teachers are given very clear instructions not to discuss religion at all. That is the domain of the rabbis in the morning and even the Jewish teachers are told not to discuss it.”

The rationale for this policy, however, was not expressed in terms of epistemological confusion, or worldview conflict (very few administrators think so abstractly about these issues), rather, they were concerned that the teachers would say something religiously inappropriate or would expose themselves to disruption by the students. Rabbi Kugelman felt that they might say something inappropriate: “Sometimes in science religion can come up—evolution, the age of the world—someone has to have the philosophy we do because they may say something incorrect, that we don’t believe in, and you can’t trust every outsider to tell things to our kids that we believe are untrue.”

Rabbi Malick on the other hand felt that the rationale was disruption:

The school policy, that I agree with, is that they should avoid religion altogether.

Either they will say something inappropriate which the kid will run home and

133 tell parent about—even though its usually harmless—(and) also it demonstrates that

they have an area of vulnerability and the kids will hone in on that. Right now

there’s an irreligious Jewish teacher who is very friendly to the kids and wants

to discuss, and I told him not to. It’s in the teacher handbook to avoid it or any

discussions of what the Torah says.

Is it because inappropriate, or because it gives opportunity for kids to disrupt?

The latter, because it highlights his lack of knowledge, or even the kids will

distort it and use it against him.

Both the principal, Rabbi Merzel, and the secular studies principal, Rabbi Kugelman, felt that there was no intrinsic problem with rabbeim who were secular instructors referencing religious material in the class, however. As Rabbi Merzel put it: “They are encouraged not to do so. If they’re not religious then they’re not allowed, because it’s incorrect, and so that there is no double standard—no-one can. I would say the religious probably do, but they are not supposed to. If all of the teachers were religious teachers at our level it would be ok, but since many are not… even modern orthodox would be a problem.”

The principal at Lubavitch, Rabbi Perlman, echoed the other administrators throughout his interview, and even felt that modern Orthodox religious teachers (non-rabbeim), rather than also being a problem, could actually be much worse:

I--we always impress that upon them, that if an issue comes up that has anything

to do with religion, they have to be very forthright and say, 'It's not my

department'... Don't touch it. Because it's gonna create confusion, and it's, it's, a

the, the message you wanna get to the children is that this is, this is not where

134 you discuss religion. And, and believe me, if they can, they would waste a lot of time

doing it and it's not healthy…

The problems that we have, unfortunately, are the ones who are, who have a

feeling that they have a serious religious perspective, um, for instance the non-

Jewish teachers have rarely had a problem… From the very Frum (religious)

teachers we'll run into issues. For instance: the kids love to get the teachers into

discussions as to why do we have to learn this, and a Frum teacher believes that

she has a Frum reason why they have to learn it, and it doesn’t sell, because

there is no Frum reason that you can tell a ten-year-old or a eight-year-old or a

nine-year-old or a thirteen-year-old that he will understand—I'm not saying that

there is no Frum reason, but that’s not (pause) maybe in a modern-orthodox

school, it would be different, but here you cannot sell it to them, and uh, when

you try you are inevitably gonna get into a problem.

Rabbi Perlman felt that religious teachers would be worse than non-religious teachers precisely because they felt that the secular material had more significance than the simple acquisition of skills. These teachers would come in with a religious agenda, he felt, and would try to communicate, from a religious perspective, why this material was important. Rabbi

Perlstein did not seem as concerned with the idea that this might corrupt the students as much as he felt it would provide opportunities for the students to waste time.

Within this context, the tensions that the accommodation of secular studies creates within the schools were highlighted by the attitudes expressed by secular studies teachers who were not rabbeim. In contrast to the model put forth by the administration, these teachers felt strongly that

135 the secular material they taught had intrinsic importance and significance, and were sometimes resentful of the denigrating attitude expressed by the students, and the restrictions placed upon them by the school.

Secular teachers negotiated these restriction in complex ways; while not all acknowledged following the schools’ rules, they all made reference to the wide range of restrictions and the injunction not to discuss religious issues.

• H: “There can be no magical animals; there can be no magic; there can be no romance at

all; even old fairy tales are out—even old fairy tales like Cinderella are out because

Cinderella and the prince dance at the ball. Even to that level, the children have very little

familiarity with fairy tales and other cultural contexts of literature… And they prefer that

any books where a boy and a girl spend a significant amount of time together they be

related like cousins or brother and sister… There can't be religious celebrations that aren't

Jewish.”

• P: “novels on tape—there’s a problem with fiction, documentaries are ok, but not

fiction… Sometimes there are things that I enjoy in my life that I think that they would

appreciate, and I can’t show them: videos, songs… The kids always find the pictures of

dinosaurs, and I tell them we are not talking about that now—they should talk to their

morning teachers”.

• W: “Like no talking about dinosaurs—they don’t believe in it… Our book was chosen

because it has very little mention of the gods of the Indians—I can skip the paragraphs

that deal with it… They won’t cover evolution.”

136 • MP: “Some things I have found out from rebbe, like dinosaurs… If they ask I say talk

to a rebbe… With Columbus I have to be careful not to have symbols of the cross…

They’ll tell me if I do it wrong. In one case there was picture of circus acrobat that they

pointed out me so I just colored a dress on her.”

• MW: “Well the videos are a big problem, for instance ‘12 Angry Men’—we do a court

case and we have recently decided we can read the book ‘12 Angry Men’ and it's

fascinating; it's very well done. There is of course an Oscar winning video out on it and

I'm not allowed to show it. The only videos they are allowed to see are documentaries

and this is a Hollywood movie; it's a very good Hollywood production, but it is acted…

One story, which is excellent—(but) because at one point a boy and girl talk to each

other—we can't read that one. Some of them I just can't incorporate, and then there are a

number of stories which are excellent but there are some words in there I have to edit. I

actually Xerox the pages and change some of the wording. There are very few stories that

would be acceptable as a whole, so I censor them.”

In regards to the schools’ desire to keep religion out of the classroom, one teacher at

Lubavitch gave the following example: “As for the school perspective there is one project that the school does where the kids publish a book together and they must all write a story; the kids wanted to write about religious rabbis and other religious topics, and I asked the administrator and was told, no, really this is an English project and it should be about English things.”

However, these teachers were strongly motivated to impart an appreciation of the intrinsic importance and significance of the material that they were teaching, in ways that ran directly counter to the administrations’ self-perceived goals. These feelings were partially

137 triggered by the fact that the students would not be getting much more secular instruction in their lives, and by a desire to demonstrate to them an alternate way of looking at the world. For example a 3rd grade teacher at Lubavitch31 noted: “I'm not a Lubavitcher and I'm not a member of their community, but I really like the school. I enjoy the kids and I feel like I'm bringing a perspective to their lives that they wouldn't get otherwise, and that I personally think is extremely important that they see.” A fourth grade teacher similarly said, “I wanted to be a secular studies teacher even though I am Orthodox because I wanted to show these kids that it is not a contradiction to be Orthodox and also to be a part of the secular world”.

Like the rabbeim, the eighth grade teacher in Lubavitch also described molding the students’ characters: “I would like for their characters to develop into young men that will responsible and we can be proud of. I want their minds to develop as much as possible. I have been told that this is the last time they will do English studies and so I sometimes feel a heavy weight of responsibility to get as much into them as I can before they go into Hebrew.”

The feeling that there was an essential worldview conflict that had to be managed somehow, whether internally or otherwise, was one that cropped up in a number of interviews.

The first grade teacher at Yeshiva confessed a certain awkwardness when students asked her about religious issues, but tried to deal with it without being explicit. “I want them to feel comfortable that they could say things to me like that, and that some of the basic things in our religion are the same—I just can’t go in to the details”. Other teachers shut off their own worldview entirely while in the school, “I have a world until 4:15 and a world afterwards. And I

31 The majority of the examples of secular studies teachers who are not rabbeim come from Lubavitch, where none of the secular teachers were rabbeim. All of the teachers at Chassidic were rabbeim, and Yeshiva was mixed.

138 realize that a conflict doesn't occur—because they do conflict. And still others, like the 3rd grade teacher at Lubavitch, actively tried to bring the students around to their way of seeing things:

For all the hours they spend in school they have an extremely limited

worldview. They have no context to put things in outside—for instance after

talking about two months of the elections I took them on a field trip to a

polling place that happened to be their own synagogue. They were all shocked

because they had never seen anything secular happening in their synagogue—

it just blew their minds that there was something secular happening in their

synagogue, and it also blew their minds that they could put these two together;

they aren’t completely separate things. Despite the fact they live in such a

limited closed community, they are still American citizens. And they are part

of American culture whether they like it or not. I think they really try to keep

these things separate.

They have a complete separation between 'this I do because I'm Jewish' and

'this I do because I'm an American' and it doesn't occur to them is that these

two things actually go together. So to see them mesh at times really disrupts

them in a minor way. It takes them aback.

The teacher actively tried to push them to see the connections that she felt were inherent in being a Jew and being an American citizen (by taking them to the polling place), while acknowledging that the students did not come from a culture that saw things in this way. The idea of keeping the secular education separate was one that a number of other secular teachers

139 mentioned as well. “I have heard of schools where they integrate more—like they reference state of Israel in math. We don’t do that—teachers here are open to talking to morning teachers about all sorts of things—strategies, discipline—but not content” (6th grade teacher).

Student Reactions

Student formulations of, and reactions to, their dual curriculum demonstrate the tension and complexity of this situation. To begin with, student explanations of the respective purposes of their religious and secular classes were consonant with the self-perceived goals of the administrations and rabbeim. Students often could not readily explain why they studied religious material, as it was so foundational and internally unarticulated. The response of one student, KL, was typical of many students, in that he did not realize that the question, “why do you think it’s important for you to go to school?” could apply to religious education and gave an answer instead that explained the presence of secular education. The religious education required no explanation; it was a fact of life. Indeed many students struggled to put their feelings about why religious education was important into words, as the question itself seemed to imply some practical bent. Other students simply responded as KL did: “You just need to. It’s about the

Jewish religion, we’re Jewish.”

In contrast, many students revealed active awareness of the need for a justification for secular studies. As something that was definitely not internal to their worldview, they felt the need to justify its presence in the school day. When I interviewed students in the three schools they had mostly resolved themselves to the ‘employment and functionality’ explanation of secular education:

140 • AG (8th grade): The main mission (of school), the main reason is Hebrew. What it

means—the Jewish aspect, is you need to learn (Torah) but when you grow up and bring

up a family, basically you need skills to make a parnassah, living—make money so you

can survive.

• BB (5th grade): Interviewer: Why do you need math? B.B.: it depends sometimes,

depends on what you will do for a living; I will be a shliach (religious emissary), you

need a little for that… Some other subjects are important: spelling and English, you will

need to know how to write things about your Chabad house. Don’t know about science

but not history. Especially at the beginning of the year we learned about these Pueblo

people. It was interesting, but there was no point—it’s a waste of time.

• B (5th grade): Interviewer: Why do you need to learn English? B: You don’t have to, but

its good to know, if you need a job.

• SD (5th grade): Interviewer: So why do you learn reading, vocabulary? S.D.: So I can talk

and know what words mean. Interviewer: And what about math? S.D.: So when I grow

up I’ll know all this bank stuff.

• D (6th grade): Interviewer: What would happen if you didn’t learn math or history? D.:

Without math, then I don’t know what type of job I could do if I don’t learn kollel.

History—I don’t think nothing much, unless I work for the government maybe I’d have

to know something about it.

• G (5th grade): We argue about the learning—why do we have to learn this it won’t help us

in life—like history. Mrs W says you will see in later years that it will be helpful. I

believe her half way. Also spelling we don’t believe will be helpful.

141 • KL (5th grade): Interviewer: Why do you think it’s important for you to go school?

Kl: So I can be educated, so when I grow up I can get a job and make money and know

things in life… Like if I go to a store and I have to buy something I have to know how to

add things up. If it’s a 50 percent sale I have to know how to divide. Interviewer: Does

that explain why you learn limud kodesh? No we learn limud kodesh ‘cuz it’s a mitzvah

(commandment). You just need to. It’s about the Jewish religion, we’re Jewish.

In this handful of examples (there were many more along these lines) one sees the students engaging in a type of epistemological reasoning stemming from the explanation they are given for the secular education. These students know that the material is only in the curriculum for practical purposes, and as such, they are only willing to accept those topics that they can see a clear purpose for. They try to figure out which knowledge is truly necessary and which is not. In contrast, the religious education is simply accepted as the basic activity that the students are supposed to be engaged in.

A particularly interesting manifestation of the tension created for students by the schools’ accommodation of secular material was an ongoing conflict between administrators and students in all three schools over the inclusion of secular studies in the school day. In my interviews with administrators, they described themselves to varying degrees as engaged in a battle for the hearts of the students to convince them that secular education was worthwhile. At Chassidic, Rabbi

Liebberg, the principal, noted with dismay that the students were constantly trying to find ways in which the secular material might not be “kosher” so they could avoid learning it:

I made a copy off the internet of something they should read and some kid said

I’m not reading it because it came from the internet which is traif (not kosher)—

142 and that is filtered from the parents… I’m not telling them to read the newspaper, but

if I come with an article, they could read it. It’s fine not to get newspaper, but

don’t reject it. The talent is to be able to teach it even though they reject it, that’s

a talent, I know you don’t like it, but this is what you have to know for the test,

etcetera. You have to make it as relevant as possible, but you will always have

kids who think it’s stupid, (pause) and most come around when you confront

them.

The principal of Lubavitch, Rabbi Perlman, noted that he personally felt that the secular education was mostly not necessary (he said that he could understand having an hour of secular education for reading and math), but that the school does not communicate this position to the students. Instead, when they meet with complaints from the students they simply assert that the spiritual leader of Lubavitch, the Lubavitcher rebbe, dictated that the school have two hours a day, and they therefore must comply. “We can come along and say to them, that this is the rebbe's cheder, and that the rebbe's cheder, that, that, we started with limudei choil (secular studies) with a blessing from the rebbe, so therefore [makes dismissive hand gesture] it's over with. No discussion, you know? [laughs]”. His approach was to impose the authority of the rebbe to get the students to comply with the dictates of the school, even though he personally was sympathetic to the students’ attitude.

Rabbi Perlman felt that other schools, such as Yeshiva, would have more difficulty battling student attitudes because there was a mixed message being sent: “there's a lot more confusion there, because they go into Yeshiva, and all they hear is that 'you guys are going to koillel', and that, uh, that, college is treif… On the one hand they're telling you that if it's there

143 you have to study it, but on the other hand they tell you that it's not worth anything, because you may—you can't go on to college, it's treif to go to college”.

It is particularly noteworthy that the administrations in each of the three schools had the perception that they were battling a pervasive communal attitude of disregard for the secular education, which was making their jobs more difficult. Despite his very own disregard for the material, it didn't occur to Rabbi Perlman, nor to any of the other administrators, that there might be something in the structure of the system that was providing that element of worldview, despite the explicit contrary belief statements urging the students to take their studies seriously that the administrators routinely fed to the students.

Summary: Secular Studies in the School Day

The interviews reveal an interesting tension within the school day, which is perceived and dealt with differently by the different actors in the school. The religious administration and rabbeim understand the role of school to be that of preparing students to follow the correct model, or the good path, of an ultra-Orthodox life. They provide a basic secular education in order to allow students to generally function in secular life, but most do not by and large perceive the secular education to have intrinsic worth, and they seek ways to limit its impact on the students’ worldviews. Secular teachers, however, do see the content that they are teaching as being intrinsically valuable and thus have to manage their own internal epistemological conflict in order to abide by the schools’ rules, which serve to limit the significance of the material, both by removing content and by limiting the teachers’ ability to make connections to religious material that might have intrinsic meaning to the students.

144 For their part, the administrators see the restrictions as being more a function of preventing the students from disrupting the classroom. Indeed, the students themselves, having acquired the worldview that is being imparted by the structure and content of the day, think critically about which secular material is relevant to their lives and which is not, while accepting the religious path they are assumed to follow in life without critique.

So far I have talked about the beliefs and perceptions of the administrators, students, rabbeim, and teachers, regarding the purpose of school and secular education. In the next chapter

I will examine the activities (another major component of worldview) that take place in classrooms themselves to understand how this worldview is expressed in the school day, and what this worldview consists of.

145 Chapter 4: Classroom observation: an activity node

analysis

In the last chapter I mostly explored the higher-level beliefs that school members have regarding the nature and purpose of education, and the role that they understand the secular education to have in the school day. These beliefs seemed to indicate that the schools are trying to mold a particular type of person, who will lead a particular type of life, in accordance with the ultra-Orthodox perception of the ‘right path’. To the extent that energy is devoted to secular education it is solely to provide the students with skills to function in the secular world, but its intrinsic meaningfulness is deliberately limited.

In this chapter I will explore the question of worldview formation in the ultra-Orthodox schools through an analysis of the practices that I observed in the course of my classroom observation and the educational content transmitted through these practices. In the first chapter, I argued that along with beliefs, activities are a major component of worldview. Educational settings provide a unique context in which there is a nexus of belief and activity, as beliefs are explicitly transmitted by way of in-class activity. I will, therefore, examine the ways in which classroom activities reflect and reinforce the belief-statements about religious and secular studies presented in the previous chapter, with a special focus on the differences between the religious and secular classes.

I will analyze classroom activity using the construct of activity nodes, briefly introduced in Chapter 1. I will first elaborate on this construct and its function in analysis of classroom activity. Following that I will provide a complete catalogue of the activity nodes that were

146 observed in this study. The conclusion of this chapter will offer a comparative analysis of the activity nodes observed in secular and religious classrooms, and will explore their implications in context of the question of worldview construction.

The Activity Node Construct

In many respects, the notion of activity nodes builds on the well-known cognitive construct: the script (Schank & Abelson, 1977). An activity node is very similar to a script in that it takes place on a time-scale of minutes to hours, has a set form, and involves activity of some kind. However, while scripts have been used to explore how knowledge is stored and accessed in different situations, the construct of the activity node is designed to explicitly highlight the cultural and worldview orienting nature of activity.

Let us consider, for example, a generic ‘first date’ in 1950’s America. This activity follows a particular script, and might also be considered an activity node. Note the specific form of the interaction that is often closely followed: The boy may ask the girl out at school and pick up the girl at her house, they may go to a dinner and a movie, while doing this they might have a

“getting to know you” conversation, they might kiss, and he would likely drop her back home at a reasonable hour. This script would likely have some consistency of form over multiple iterations, and over multiple individuals.

However, beyond following a consistent script, this activity also implicitly embodies assumptions about how courtship ought to be conducted, and in a small way shapes the participants’ views of relationships, interaction between the sexes, and on a broader scale, what normal behavior looks like. The activity node construct is designed to include evaluation of these assumptions and their roles in analysis of specific activities.

147 To see these elements of culture and worldview more starkly, imagine the activity as carried out in a traditional non-western culture. The form might be very different: in some cultures the boy would not have met the girl, instead a marriage broker would suggest a match to the parents, the parents would agree that their children were an acceptable match for marriage, the boy would come to the girl’s house and meet with her parents, they would eat some light snacks while the girl’s father asked the boy questions, the girl would then come in and talk to the boy with the parents in the next room, and if they got along reasonably well they might agree to get married.

This disparity of form reveals a deep disparity of function between these two activities nodes, and these form and function distinctions structure very different understandings of a wide variety of topics. Considered as activity nodes, these two events thus involve implicit notions of appropriate interaction between the sexes, the role of parents in the dating process, and broader considerations, such as the norms for expected life trajectories and the place of sexual activity and pleasure within a larger value system. The function of the date in the traditional culture is very specific: to immediately arrange a marriage between two people. The function of the date in the 1950’s America example is more vague, it is to have two people get into a relationship of some kind, to spend time together, to be intimate, and maybe, maybe get married down the road.

These elements both reflect and help construct two very different sets of norms and worldviews.

The activity node analysis utilizes an activity-oriented approach to the study of worldview, much as many educational researchers have urged a focus on students’ everyday practices (e.g. Gutierrez, 2002) in order to understand school and culture. The idea that drives the activity node approach is that the many activities that we engage in on a regular basis structure

148 the way that we view, experience, and understand the world in some very important ways. In this approach, the worldview that an individual has is seen to be the aggregate result of the multitude of activities that the individual engages in; we can thus identify a worldview by looking at the emergent result of all of those activity nodes.

At the same time, however, each activity node is conducted in a particular way as a result of the worldviews maintained by the participants, and is, in a way, an expression of that worldview. In the two examples of a first date mentioned above, the purpose of the practices and the way that they are structured derive from a particular view of the world as much as they contribute to that worldview. The actual practice of going on a first date is in some sense an expression of this larger worldview, as the way that the practice is conducted is driven by all of the cultural assumptions that the participants maintain. In this conception, then, activity nodes and worldview are mutually constitutive: the worldview maintained by individuals affects the activities that they engage in, just as the engagement in those activities, all of which have their own ritualized structure and are build around particular purposes, develops in the individual a sensibility about the world, a way of perceiving and interacting with the world, in short, a worldview.

For the purpose of analysis the size and scope of an activity node must be determined.

The literature on scripts and schemas has tended to pick out repeated activities that are of a grain size of minutes to hours, but are generally not much larger (such as the well-known case of the restaurant script). For example, building a high-rise is an activity that takes place over months rather than hours or minutes, and contains many, many other practices as components. Such an activity would not be considered an activity node. One reason for this is pragmatic: it is much

149 easier to analyze smaller discreet elements that take place over an observable time-frame and do not consist of many other analyzable pieces, than to analyze complex endeavors that span months and years. There seems to be a strong intuition however, that the activity grain size of minutes to hours is special for reasons that are more than just pragmatic. For one, there is the sense that large-scale activities do not provide the same sort of insight into the day-to-day impact on an individual’s worldview. These projects are not repeated as often as smaller activities, and may not be as firmly embedded in the fabric of an individual’s life. Precisely because of their size, these large practices may not contribute to the structure of a worldview in the way that more everyday activities do.

In addition, the time-scale of minutes to hours appears to be a natural unit of activity in human life. Very few activities last longer than a few hours without breaks of one kind or another. We don’t schedule meetings for much longer than a few hours (and if we do, there are usually breaks at regular intervals), we separate our meals by this length, and sporting events are of this length, to name a few examples. When we turn to focus on school activity nodes we will see that much of the school day is broken up into these chunks of activity as well. On the other end of the time spectrum, we very rarely refer to our actions as coherent activities if they take place in less than a few minutes.

Naming the size of the activity is not the only criterion for identifying an activity node.

Part of the identification process for activity nodes relies on recognizing the cultural markers that indicate that something is itself a coherent activity. One such marker is whether the activity has a name. For example, driving a car, though it has a few certain repeatable elements, and can be very script-like would not be considered an activity node. One major reason for this is that for

150 most people (with the exception of some driving enthusiasts) driving a car is not a coherent activity unto itself, but is an element of some other activity like going shopping or driving car- pool.

This emphasis on the activity having a name is consistent with a wide range of literature that recognizes the assignation of a name to an activity is an indication that the activity exists at that basic level and is appropriate as a unit of analysis (similar to the insight that drove Rosch’s

(1976) basic level categories). For example, in an article on classroom tasks Stein et al (1996) define the unit of analysis for the task set up as the “task that is announced by the teacher” (p.

460). In a study of culture in the classroom Erickson and Mohat (1977) recognize the utility of bounding units of analysis of activity based on the labels that members of the cultural group give to those activities. In organizational literature on routines Feldman (2000) writes that each of the routines that she was studying contained sub-routines, but that the grain size of analysis was chosen based on the fact that “organizational participants would have a good understanding of the rules and actions implied if one were to say, ‘now we are doing budgeting’” (p.614). The fact that the routine was named at the level of budgeting (as opposed to “arithmetic” or “resource allocation”) was sufficient reason to localize the analysis at that level. (If someone informed us that he was going driving, we might reasonably ask “where to?” but if someone informed us he was going to take the car-pool to school in most circumstances we would understand that this activity involves driving).

Activity Nodes in Schools

The activity node analysis presented in this work is localized in schools, and in particular in school classrooms. What are some of the features of activity in the classroom? Many

151 researchers have approached their analyses of schooling by examining classroom activities, with much of the analysis broken into units that are akin to activity nodes. The next few paragraphs will review some of this literature as a point of departure for exploring the exact features of activity nodes in the classroom. The review is intended to illustrate the ways in which units of “activity” in the class have been studied, and in one form or another have been considered to be an important unit of analysis for the study of classrooms. The notion of activity nodes in the classroom draws on these conceptions.

The previous section noted that activity nodes are like scripts. In the study of classrooms there is a body of literature that has identified the routines and scripts that teachers make use of.

For example, Yinger (1979) explored the routines that teachers used in the classroom to minimize the number of decisions they would have to make. In a well known article Leinhardt and Greeno (1986) made the observation that classroom teaching practices were very script (or schema)-like, and they used that fact to analyze how scripts were different for teachers of differing levels of expertise. In other work that utilized Leinhardt’s and Greeno’s observations to look at expert teachers, Berliner (1986) accepted that a script for “opening homework review” would be an ideal unit of analysis in the classroom. Similarly, Borko and Livingston (1989) cite an address given by Shavelson (1986) that identifies three different types of schemata that teachers appear to have, among them scripts such as checking homework and conducting discussions32.

The literature cited above notes the script-like nature of activities in the classroom, particularly in teachers’ planning and execution of lessons; a related body of literature has looked

32 The other two are scenes, spatial relationship schemata for common class situations, and propositional structures, which represent “factual knowledge about components of the teaching-learning situation” (p. 475).

152 at the way that the tasks and activities are situated in classroom behavior settings. Kounin

(1970) asserts that the components of classroom behavior settings are boundaries of time and space, a physical setting, a repeated pattern of behavior, and an interaction between the pattern of behavior and the physical components. Yinger’s (1979) conception of an “activity” in the classroom was one of a controlled behavior setting, and he asserted that these “activities functioned as the basic structural units of planning and action in the classroom”. More than just focusing on scripts and routines, this literature also takes the physical organization and setting into account, in identifying units of activity in the classroom.

Another related body of literature, the literature on activity structure and segmenting in class, does perhaps the best job of identifying units of activity, with the activity itself being the central locus of the research (as opposed to the setting or the teachers’ schemata). Gump (1967) first identified the activity segment as the natural unit of classroom activity; since then, many other researchers have focused on activity segments. Susan Stodolsky (1988) does the most comprehensive job of this task, looking at the activity structure of classes, that is, “how classroom tasks are organized in a lesson”. She breaks the lessons within a content area into activity segments, which are characterized by both an instructional format such as recitation, seatwork, or group work, and a student behavior pattern such as answering questions, listening, or solving problems at one’s desk. In a book on tasks and social relationships in school, Bossert

(1979) uses a scheme similar to Stodolsky’s for his analysis, which he calls task activities: “a classroom’s organization of instruction”. In his work he identified recitation, class task activities

(work sheets and other assignments), and multi-task activities as the three patterns of task organization most commonly observed.

153 In much of the work on activity segments, researchers note that one can assess the amount of time spent on particular content as well as the amount of time spent utilizing a particular instructional form, and that can be largely independent of one another. Stodolsky and

Bossert conducted studies that were localized within one or two subject domains, and thus focused mostly on distinctions in the form of the activities. Other researchers, such as Ross

(1984) and Burns (1984) address both elements. Ross writes that each activity segment has a concern (what the segment is about) and an activity pattern. Both agree that the subject matter and the activity are the basic components of activities—that is, it is important to attend to both the content and the form of a classroom activity.

The activity segment literature does not seem to be in opposition to a scripts view of classroom activity; rather, a focus on activity segments appears to fill in more (classroom specific) details than are usually identified in scripts. For example, a description of script for checking homework might not require any elaboration on the content of the homework being checked, whereas a description of the same event in terms of activity segments would treat the content presented as one of the two major elements described. Thus, the specific content and its relation to specific forms is given more attention and broken down in greater detail. The basic phenomenon is not in question; it is instead a matter of choosing to focus on aspects of the activity that are considered important.

So far we have seen research that identifies the script-like nature of classroom activities as well as research that divides the classroom into units of analysis based on the content and structure of activities. These elements closely conform to the essential elements of activity nodes. However, as mentioned at the outset, an important hypothesis underlying the construct of

154 the activity node is that these activities have some significance for the construction of worldview. Though classroom activities are not explicitly mentioned in relation to worldview, there is a body of literature that explores the cultural and socializing impact of classroom activities, of which worldview must be an essential component. In this literature, culture sometimes refers to the interaction of school with the culture of the students outside of school

(e.g. Erickson et al, 1977) and sometimes refers to the culture within the classroom (e.g. Yackel,

Cobb, & Wood, 1991), but in both the cultural aspects of the classroom activities are attended to.

Gutierrez (2002), in an article on culture in educational contexts, writes that “classroom activity is a particularly important nexus for understanding cultural processes”. For Gutierrez, it is the participation structures in class, the patterns of talk and interaction, which give meaning to the accomplishment of tasks. Lampert (1990) argues that classroom interactions and participation structures are a major element of what teaching is all about, that when classroom culture is taken into consideration it becomes clear that teaching is not only about content, but also about what a lesson is and how to participate in it. Many researchers have taken a similar approach, exploring the components of the norms that lie beneath school activity, looking at what it means to “do school” (see for example Nathan & Knuth; Westby, 1997).

In work that explored the cultural assumptions about the epistemology of different content areas, Stigler and Hiebert (1998) dug deeper into classroom scripts and, in comparing

American and Japanese mathematics classrooms, noticed that teaching-scripts reflect deeply held cultural assumptions—even for something as apparently culturally neutral as math—and that these scripts will look different depending on those assumptions. This work involved attention to culture beyond participation structures.

155 The existence of numerous wide-ranging research that is attentive to aspects of culture in classroom activities should be an indication that there are likely major worldview implications as well. There are some limitations to the existing body of research on culture in schools, however. To a large degree, the research that examines the classroom culture tends to focus on participation structures, and the norms of interaction in the class. Alternatively, there are those who look at the epistemology inherent in the way that particular content is taught. In these studies, culture is limited to the implications of a particular discourse pattern, or to the implications of a teacher using a particular script for teaching mathematics. When the culture of the students’ themselves is addressed it is often because of a disconnect between the school and home cultures, and the home culture is taken as a given against which the school culture is examined.

What is lacking in all of this is the sense that culture, and in this research particularly, worldview, involves more than just discourse patterns and epistemology. The content itself contains numerous assertions about the way that the world works and the way that people interact with one another, which is sure to shape students’ perceptions of the world. In addition, I believe that the participation in activity segments has more of an impact than just learning to do school. The following section will detail the range of worldview significant detail that is attended to in the activity node approach.

To sum up: Research has identified the script like nature of classroom practices, with particular attention given to activity segments, which are defined by both their content and form.

In addition, many researchers have been attentive to the fact that classroom practices are cultural, and have implications for students’ cultures. The study of activity nodes in the classroom thus

156 draws on three basic elements: the content of the activity, the form of the activity, and the worldview significance of the activity.

The Methodology and Development of Activity Nodes

As mentioned earlier this research took place in three ultra-Orthodox schools. For the classroom observation portion of the research eleven different classes were observed over five grades (1,3,5,6, and 8) distributed over the three schools (see Table 25). Each class was visited between five and seven times over the course of a few weeks, a total of five to six hours in each class. All of this observation was videotaped. The sampling of classes was driven by two concerns: The first was to get a wide range of grades so as to explore as much of the variety of classroom experience in ultra-Orthodox schools as possible. The second concern was accessibility—a purely pragmatic concern, but one that was extremely pressing in this close-knit and insular community. It was extremely difficult to gain access to the schools, and though the principals agreed to the study, many teachers felt uncomfortable with a researcher (with a camera, no less) in the classroom. (Only those who were completely comfortable were actually observed).

School Religious Classes Secular Classes Yeshiva Grade 1: 7 visits, ~6 hours Grade 1-A: 5 visits ~5.5 hours Grade 5-A: 5 visits ~5 hours Grade 5: 5 visits ~5.5 hours Grade 5-B: 6 visits ~5 hours Chasidic Grade 6: 6 visits ~6.5 hours Grade 6: 5 visits ~5.5 hours Lubavitch Grade 3: 6 visits ~5.5 hours Grade 3: 6 visits ~4.5 hours Grade 8: 7 visits ~5.5 hours Grade 8: 5 visits ~5 hours Table 25: Classroom Observations33

33 An “A” or “B” indicates that the grade was split into 2 classes.

157 The videotaped observations were digitized and were then analyzed in a multi-step process. I utilized an array similar to that used to code the interviews; along the left hand side I placed a timeline (broken up by minute) and across the top I placed the data categories that I wanted to take note of in this study. In keeping with the discussion of activity segments above, the categories that were relevant to the formation of activity nodes were the activity structure, the content of the activity, and the worldview significance34. Using the timeline I was able to note when the class would shift from one activity structure to another and from one area of content to another. For example, as I watched the video of the classes I would note when the class shifted from whole class discussion to deskwork, or when the class switched from math to vocabulary.

In regard to worldview, at this first stage of coding I filled in any possibly relevant information into the worldview category, marking places where I felt there might be some worldview significance. In later stages, as I will describe, the worldview significance was winnowed down to four particular types of potential worldview impact.

After the entire corpus of video was coded, each unique combination of structure and content was identified and each of the specific instances of that combination counted as an instance of that activity node (for example, whenever ‘lecture’ and ‘math’ were both present in the coding array at the same time it was considered an instance of the activity node, math lecture). The worldview significance for all of the instances of any activity node was then collected and summarized for that activity node category. Finally, a complete catalogue was assembled of each and every activity node observed in the corpus of classroom observation. The entirety of the catalogue can be found in Appendix B.

34 Other categories were coded as well, but are not relevant to activity nodes. These will be discussed in the next chapter.

158 At each stage of this process there were some important decisions that I made which affected the resulting activity nodes. If I had made different choices in any of these places the catalogue may have looked different (though I suspect that the underlying reality would have been evident no matter how the slicing was done). The first important decision came in response to problem at the very beginning of the process, when I was identifying the content in the classroom. I refer to this problem as the abstraction problem:

1. The Abstraction Problem

What is the appropriate level of abstraction at which one ought to classify an activity node? For example, a math lecture activity node could also be described as a fractions lecture node, or alternatively as a generic lecture node. How does one determine whether three nodes, one a lecture on fractions, another a lecture on grammar, and a third a lecture on long division, ought to be classified as two instances of a math lecture node and one instance of a grammar node, three instances of a lecture node, or one instance each of fractions lecture, grammar lecture, and long division lecture?

Here, the general heuristic followed was based on the names that were given to the content by the teachers and students, in keeping with the perspective detailed above that there is something significant in the level of abstraction at which participants name and describe their activity. Thus, most students and teachers referred to the lesson as a math lecture, not a fractions lecture, or just a lecture. For example, Mrs. Weiss would put her schedule on the board at the beginning of the day and in listing the schedule she would write: “Math – 2:15 to 2:45,

Vocabulary – 2:45 to 3:15… etc.”. This middle level of abstraction is also one that is used by many of the activity segments researchers cited above. Ross, for example (p. 71), provides some

159 examples of the ‘concern’ of different activity segments; these examples are arithmetic, reading, science, art, music, and cooking (she also includes some classroom maintenance concerns which are not of relevance here). These concerns are all at an intermediate level of abstraction—she doesn’t use fractions, photosynthesis, or portrait painting, nor does she jump up a level to generic lecture, as that is the provenance of her ‘activity pattern’ (similar to my activity structure).

The second problem where an analytic decision had to be made came at the point of taking the raw codes with the start and stop times of the structure and content and transforming them into specific activity nodes. I call this problem the nesting problem:

2. The Nesting Problem:

Imagine you have a lesson in a math class in which the teacher first lectures for fifteen minutes about the subject matter, gives the students desk-work for fifteen minutes, and then engages in whole-class question and answer to review the answers. How should we classify this lesson, as one activity node or three? This problem is not unique to this study, as Stodolsky

(1988) writes: “the choice of sampling unit can be an acute problem in classroom research” (p.

11). In work such as Stodolsky’s, as well as that of Burns (1984), cited earlier, the key features that separate one activity segment from another were a change in focal concern or a temporal boundary—a clear starting and stopping point35. Stein et al (1996), however, explicitly note that in their conception an activity (in math) does not change over to another activity until the

35 Stodolsky actually identifies five different ways to distinguish one activity segment from the next: “Membership change, instructional format change, change of physical location, discontinuity of time, and change of instructional topics or materials” (p. 26). Membership change, location change, and discontinuity in time were not present in my data.

160 underlying math idea switches; thus, math lecture followed by desk-work on the same content would consist of one activity.

Because of the attention given to both the form and content of activity nodes, the approach adopted in this work is more in line with Stodolsky. A new activity node is marked by a change in the structure of the activity or the content of the activity, where the change has a clear starting and stopping point. In terms of the example above, this catalogue would treat the class as having three different activity nodes, as lecture, desk work, and question and answer review represent three different activity structures. Similarly, had the teacher simply lectured for an entire class, but had covered three different subject areas, that too would be considered three different activity nodes.

There was one final analytic decision that came at the final level of the process of building the activity nodes, which was identifying the relevant worldview significant material.

3. The Worldview Significance Problem

In the previous section it was argued that the aspects of culture in the classroom attended to by researchers is often of a limited type, and that there is surely more cultural impact of classroom activity than discourse patterns and epistemology. Even though this research is not concerned with all of culture (just one aspect of culture—worldview), there is still a great deal of potential worldview significance to be found in any given activity. How does one decide which aspects of an activity have worldview significance that is worth mentioning, and how does one determine what the impact of any given activity node is on the overall system of nodes?

It may be that there is no clear way to determine the impact of a given activity node because worldview in this framework is so diffuse, and is spread out over the entire set of

161 activity nodes. Nevertheless, there are certain aspects of the activity nodes that clearly have significance, even if we cannot definitively determine what the actual impact of that significance may be. In the initial coding I noted every point in the video where there was some clear worldview significance present, but for the purposes of the catalogue this was narrowed down.

Four different types of classroom content and activity were considered to be markers of worldview significance:

1. Content about the natural world: This type of content was often found in science class

and in religious explanations.

2. Content about how the human world works: This refers to cultural knowledge and norms

(such as romance, for example) and is often found in literature and religious explanations.

3. Moral and ethical content

4. Epistemological content: This includes information about what knowledge is important to

know, what the best way of learning different types of knowledge is, what the character

of specific knowledge is (e.g. practical, religious, philosophical, a hoop to be jumped),

and when and how the knowledge is to be used.

In the section that follows, the direct worldview descriptions will detail instances of worldview significance that fall into one of these four categories. Cases that fall into one of the first three categories are generally very clear and unambiguous, but nearly every activity node has some amount of epistemological significance contained within it. The significance could be limited to the simple fact that the subject matter was chosen to be studied, conveying the sense that this is a subject worthy of study, or it could be more developed, articulating an explicit theory of knowledge. Though I have tried to be comprehensive in my descriptions below of the

162 worldview significance of the first three categories, because of the widespread presence of epistemological significance in each category, I have only provided a highlighting of the more explicit and obvious epistemological elements of the practice, but have not aimed for comprehensiveness (nor do I think such comprehensiveness is possible).

Catalogue of activity nodes

As noted, ultra-Orthodox schools have two parts of the day, which are not given equal weight; religious study takes up the morning and early afternoon and secular study takes up the mid and late afternoon. Within these two categories there is one further division. There are classroom activity nodes that are longtime standards, recognizable to anyone who has attended school. The defining feature of standard activity nodes is that they function as the basic building blocks of instruction; they are repeated frequently in the class, and tend to follow an arc with some progression and development. The other type of activity node is the idiosyncratic activity node, which may be an activity invented by the teacher or rebbe which is not widely found in other classes, or one that is found in other classes but is not an essential component of instruction throughout the school year. An activity node would be called idiosyncratic if it has one of two features: 1. It is not found in other classes, or 2. It is common in other classes, but rarely serves as a basic building block, but is instead an activity that may be conducted only a few times a year.

A detailed description of each activity node can be found in Appendix B, where each activity node is divided into four sections. The first is the form and execution of the activity node, the second is the content contained in the activity node, the third describes the direct worldview significance of the activity node, and the fourth is a catalogue of how often and in

163 which classes the activity node was observed. Appendix C contains a table (independent of the catalogue) of the frequency and distribution of the observed activity nodes. In this section I will present a summarized version of the catalogue, and the following section will provide an analysis of the activity nodes.

We will begin the summary of the catalogue with the religious activity nodes:

Religious Class activity nodes

During religious study there are two major subject areas that dominate study, depending on the age of the students. For younger students Chumash (Bible study) is the major activity, and for older students Gemara (Talmud study) is the major study activity. Each of these has one central activity node associated with it, but also has several other, more minor activity nodes that can accompany the central activity node. In this section I refer to the group of activity nodes as a cluster of activity nodes around a particular topic. (The secular activity nodes observed did not tend to have very many activity nodes grouped together on the same subject matter; there were usually no more than 2 or 3 at the most.)

The first cluster of activity nodes discussed will be the Chumash cluster. This cluster contains eleven activity nodes; seven of them are standard activity nodes and the other four are idiosyncratic. A brief description of the nodes in the Chumash cluster is provided here, followed by a longer discussion of the form, content, and worldview significance of the group of nodes.

o The central Chumash activity node is the learning Chumash activity node. This node has

two basic variations depending on the age of the student. For younger students, they take

out the chumashim and combine aspects of lecture, sing-song reading and translating of

the text, and learning new Hebrew vocabulary words and grammar concepts. These

164 components will be intermingled and the rebbe will often cycle through them numerous times. For older students, the grammatical study tends to recede and there is more individual reading. Aside from the reading and translating skills the students are learning a tremendous amount of Biblical content. This content is described in the discussion below.

The six standard activity nodes attached to this activity node are:

o Chumash Desk-work: The rebbe gives the students a worksheet or the students

open a workbook to a certain page and they fill in the answers. This is very often

done in pairs (Chavrusa, which is explained below) and is also often part of a

review (Chazara, explained below).

o Chumash Chavrusa: Students get together in pairs and read and translate the

Chumash to each other. Each one reads and the other follows and interjects, until

they are both certain they understand the material.

o Chumash quiz: The rebbe reads questions and the students write them down on

their papers. The quiz is but one element in a suite of assessments used in the

religious part of the day that range from short written quizzes to frequent short

oral Bechinas (explained below), to even more frequent Socratic dialogue with the

class. Large written tests are not as common. In the one example observed the

content was Chumash vocabulary and the rebbe gave the students an English

word or phrase and the students had to write down the Biblical word in the text

they had studied that corresponded to the English word.

165 o Chumash Bechina: The rebbe will grill the students orally using a

combination of straightforward questions and Socratic back and forth to assess

student understanding. Often these Bechinas do not involve number or letter

grades—students can tell how they’ve done because the right answer is always

told to them, and the rebbe can see how much the students know. Sometimes the

rebbe will give prizes or raffle tickets for right answers.

o Chumash question and answer: The rebbe asks the students questions about

Chumash and they answer together as a class or individually, as the case may be

o Chumash Chazara: Students review the material that they have learned, either in

pairs (Chavrusa) or by themselves. They read and translate text and try to

memorize vocabulary.

The four idiosyncratic activity nodes observed were:

o Chumash party practice: Students stand in a line and each student recites a little

speech or poem about the Parsha that they have studied, as part of a performance

that they will put on for the parents. This activity node is typically done in the

younger grades when students are just starting to learn Chumash.

o Chumash Baseball: There are a number of variations on this classic activity node,

but the basic structure is that the rebbe asks questions to the students on Chumash

that they have already studied (often vocabulary, but also sometimes content), and

the students get hits or strikes depending on their response, leading to runs. In the

version observed the content was Chumash vocabulary and the students received

RBI’s for right answers; the greater the number of students who did not get a

166 particular word correct, the greater the number of RBI’s received when the

correct answer was finally given.

o Chumash Individual work: students read and translate Chumash to themselves

(material that they have not studied before). For any word that they can’t figure

out the meaning of, they raise their hand and ask for help; when the rebbe tells

them what the words mean they write it down on a sheet of paper. This sheet can

be used on any Chumash quiz. In some variations the rebbe limits the number of

words he will translate.

o Rashi Perfection: The students have flashcards that are numbered and

progressive. The flashcards contain both Chumash vocabulary and individual

Rashi selections with the translations on the back of the card. The students work

on their own or with other students to master the content on the cards. When they

reach a certain level of proficiency they get tested and can move on to the next

card. There is also a higher level of proficiency for each card that allows the

student to become a “tester” himself.

Cluster of Chumash Activity Nodes: Detailed Discussion

The learning Chumash activity node is the central activity node of a cluster of activity nodes that are based on the text of the Chumash. As noted, there are two basic variations of this activity node, one for younger students and one for older, but they are similar enough to be grouped as one. In the younger grades the rebbe tells the students to take out their Chumashim and they then engage in any one of a series of components. The rebbe might begin with some amount of lecture, introducing new Hebrew words that they will encounter in the text, or

167 prefacing some of the content that they will be learning, and might also review what they had previously done. Another component that he might begin with is one in which they engage in out loud call and response reading and translating of the text, word for word. When the verse is new to the students, the rebbe will do it a few times with them before having them do it on their own.

The rebbe might also call on individual boys to read and translate the verse. In preparing them for the upcoming verses, the rebbe has to teach them a good deal of biblical Hebrew grammar, so as they go along in the text the rebbe teaches them about roots of words, what certain prefixes and suffixes indicate, and what tense and gender words are. The rebbe also has to explain the content of the Chumash to them—biblical texts are not simple; the rebbe has to do a lot of scaffolding to give the students the proper interpretations. All of these components are typically used in this activity node to varying degrees.

In a typical class the rebbe will operate in a cycle, giving some content explanation and grammatical help, having them read together in call and response, and going back and doing it again. In the older grades the grammatical lecturing tends to fall to the background as vocabulary becomes a more central issue, and the students are asked to do more individual out-loud reading of the verses than group reading. Also, in the older grades the content becomes more important than at the younger grades.

Different rabbeim add their own flourishes to this activity node. For example, the 1st grade rebbe at Yeshiva had a system of large flashcards that he held up for the students to see.

On the cards were the Hebrew words with the roots, prefixes, and suffixes all in different color ink, so that the students could see it visually. One 5th grade rebbe added a writing element: in

168 between verses the students would write down translations of the Chumash text from the whiteboard.

The different elements that are used in this activity node are not separated by clear temporal boundaries; rather, the rebbe will flow between different elements, switching between them in a matter of seconds. In addition, they are perceived by the rebbe and the students to be parts of one activity, and are not individually named. Each component is not, therefore, a separate activity node, but taken together make up a complex but unified whole.

Aside from Biblical grammar and Biblical vocabulary, which are skills that are developed in the course of learning Chumash, the students are also learning content. In the 1st grade at yeshiva they were learning the section of the Bible that deals with G-d’s increasing anger at the wickedness of man, leading up to the flood and Noah’s Ark. In one of the 5th grade classes at

Yeshiva the students were learning a section of the Bible that dealt with the different parts of the

Tabernacle (a sort of traveling Temple). In the other 5th grade class the students were learning about a plague that descended on the Jews in the desert that was cured by looking at a statue of a snake wrapped around a staff. In another class the Chumash section dealt with Jewish holidays throughout the year, and in yet another the Chumash dealt with the laws of leprosy.

There is an incredible amount of worldview significant material in this activity node, some of this material is contained in the specific content being studied, some is implicit in the practice regardless of content, and some is contained in the way the content is studied.

There are a lot of ways that one can study the Bible. Most academics treat the Bible critically, and there is a long tradition of Biblical criticism that has its own assumptions and contains specific ways to study the Bible. Christians would study the Bible from a Christian

169 perspective, and non-Christians might study the Bible in order to draw life lessons from it, or for other reasons. In the Orthodox Jewish community, and in its schools, the Bible is studied in a particular way and this way represents certain assumptions about the text. One assumption that is prominent in the way that Chumash is studied is that the meaning of the text is determined by a chain of tradition that is organized in the Talmud, goes through the medieval commentaries, and continues until today. Individuals cannot find meaning in the text on their own, they must appeal to previous sources such as the famous medieval commentator, Rashi, to discern the proper meaning of the text. In classrooms, this is how the correct interpretation is arrived at. Another assumption is that there are multiple layers of meaning within the text; that there is the straightforward interpretation, the mystical interpretation, the legal interpretation, and the moral interpretation, among others. These differing interpretations are treated differently and are accorded different status within the class.

Also inherent in the classroom study of Chumash is the purpose of the study. Study of

Chumash is not typically skill-based in ultra-Orthodox schools. You could imagine a structure for study that would not begin in-depth study of the Chumash text until the students have mastered biblical grammar and have some foundation of a vocabulary. This is in fact the way that some modern Orthodox and Conservative schools teach Chumash. Alternatively, you could just focus on the stories contained in the Chumash and not bother with the Hebrew at all—there are schools that do this as well. Because, however, this very activity node is meant to be a basic building block of students lives—done in essentially the same way for the rest of their lives—it is reasonable that they begin to work on the activity node itself immediately. This is a form of apprenticeship, and in this model the skills are developed by way of participation in the actual

170 form of the activity, rather than independent of the activity. The students’ Chumash skills will not be needed for some other content, or for some wider knowledge of grammar systems; the students are expected to be studying this exact text, in a roughly similar way for their entire lives. Ultimately, the goal of the class is that the students develop sufficient familiarity with the text and with the practice of studying the text that they are able to read and study the text independently.

Another aspect of their Chumash study that is implicitly worldview relevant is that the approach taken in teaching the material assumes that all of the events described really truly happened the way they are described and are not allegorical (except in rare instances where the chain of tradition dictates that the correct interpretation is allegorical). Some of the observed examples of this include: the flood really truly happened, the sacrifices in the temple were taken by G-d, before the flood there were giants on earth, miracles really happen (for example, looking at a snake cured the plague), and angels appear to people.

In addition the content of the Chumash contains many basic principles, norms, and beliefs that structure how students understand the way that the world works. Some examples of this from the classes that were observed for this research are that G-d gets angry or happy at people based on their good and bad actions, repentance can change G-d’s mind so that he would not punish someone, people can die because of their sins, if you act bad, bad things will happen to you, G-d doesn’t really have a heart—that is just an expression, the worst thing in the world to happen to a woman is not to be able to have children, and that taking revenge is a sin.

171 Finally, the practice of studying Chumash (and all religious texts) is given great importance and is treated quite seriously, thus the students maintain a reverence for the material that is not typically found in other contexts.

In addition to the general worldview significance of Chumash study, the form of some of the individual Chumash activity nodes also contains worldview significance. The Chavrusa is the basic structure for lifelong religious learning in the Orthodox community; most learning that these students will engage in as adults will be done in this format. By participating in Chavrusa learning in class the students are being socialized into a particular methodology for acquiring religious knowledge. The goal is that they will come to see this as a normative practice, almost inseparable from the material itself. Similarly, the Chazara activity node is a central element of all religious learning throughout life. Review of material actually has religious significance in this community, and this is reflected in the treatment of the activity node in the school day.

Another Chumash activity node that has worldview significance is the Bechina, which contributes to a developing sense that the material has intrinsic value, as much of the time they are not trying to get the answers right for grades, but just to know the material. This is reflective of a cultural attitude that is then reinforced by this activity node. Along these lines the fact that they have a party when they finish a Parsha conveys a sense of importance and religious reverence that the students are being socialized to have for the material.

Cluster of Gemara activity nodes

The second major cluster of activity nodes is the Gemara cluster. This cluster contains seven activity nodes; five of them are standard activity nodes and the other two are idiosyncratic.

172 As with the Chumash cluster, a brief sketch of the nodes in the cluster is provided here, followed by a more complete description.

o The central Gemara activity node is the Gemara learning activity node. The Gemara is

the extensive commentary and elaboration of the Mishna (which consist of relatively

short summations of Jewish law). Together, the Mishna and Gemara make up the

Talmud, which is the central document that Orthodox Jewish men study throughout their

lives.

At the outset of a class a rebbe will typically begin in one of two ways. If the class

is beginning a new section of Talmud the rebbe will begin with a lecture that sets up the

basic background laws that are necessary for an understanding of the text. If the class is

in the middle of a text, however, the rebbe will usually begin by engaging in a Socratic

back and forth dialogue with the students on what they have already learned to ensure

that they understand the material before moving on. This back and forth can sometimes

take the entire class, particularly when the material is difficult. As the students get older,

the amount of Socratic back and forth decreases and the amount of learning directly from

the text increases.

Once the rebbe is confident that the students understand the logical flow of the

text they will turn to the text itself. At this point the process is designed to teach the

students to match the short and cryptic text (that has no punctuation or capitalization) to

the logical flow that has just been elaborated. This is done by having the students all read

out loud and translate together, with the rebbe guiding them, or having the rebbe read and

translate out loud, explaining the text in terms of the previous discussion.

173 Four standard activity nodes were observed attached to this node: o Gemara Chavrusa: Students get together in pairs and read and translate the text of the

Gemara to each other. Each one reads and the other follows and interjects, until they are

both certain they understand the material. Students in elementary school mostly use the

Chavrusah time to do Chazara. Sometimes Chavrusa is not text based, but worksheet

based. This activity node can range from a few minutes in length to a half an hour. o Gemara Chazara: Students review the material that they have learned, either in pairs

(Chavrusa) or by themselves. They read and translate text and try to memorize

vocabulary. o Gemara desk work: Unlike Chumash and other religious subjects, desk-work is not a

major part of Gemara study. Most Gemara work is text based and oral; students work

with original text and are assessed by the rebbe in Socratic back and forth conversations

with the rebbe. In some cases however, the rebbe will assign the students worksheets of

some kind. The students will work on this at their desk, like all other desk-work. o Gemara chart-filling: The rebbe will put up a table or chart on the board, or will give the

students a sheet with the table on it, and the class will fill in the chart together. These

charts generally deal with the flow of the logic in the Gemara, or a breakdown of the

different opinions in the Gemara.

The two idiosyncratic activity nodes observed were: o Gemara tape: The rebbe tapes his Gemara class for the students and they bring in blank

audiotapes for him to make copies for them to take home. The students get credit in

various raffles for listening to the tape at home.

174 o Writing down Gemara answers: The students have questions about the Gemara

written down on a sheet in front of them and the rebbe asks different students to answer

the questions. Regardless of what the student answers the rebbe then gives the answer in

his own words and dictates to the students the exact language that they should use on

their sheets when filling in the answers.

Cluster of Gemara Activity Nodes: Detailed Discussion

To understand the activity node of classroom Gemara study one must first have some understanding of what Gemara itself is, and what its study looks like outside of the classroom.

The Gemara is the extensive commentary and elaboration of the Mishna (which consist of relatively short summations of Jewish law). Together, the Mishna and Gemara make up the

Talmud, which is the central document that Orthodox Jewish men study throughout their lives. In the Orthodox community the entire Talmud is simply called the Gemara, because only a small portion of the text is Mishna.

The Talmud is an exceptionally long and complicated Aramaic text, and it is cryptic as well. It is not unusual for those who study Talmud regularly to spend numerous days trying to understand just a few lines of text. This is because the Talmud is actually a written down account of numerous conversations and arguments over Jewish law that took place over 500 years as part of an oral tradition. When upheavals in the Jewish community began to cause the law to be forgotten it was written down as the Talmud. The Talmud thus compresses 500 years time into one text, with differing opinions presented on the same page by people who lived hundreds of years apart. The central task for those studying Talmud is to reconstruct the back and forth

175 argumentation in the text, to come to an understanding of the underlying legal principles that drive the debate, and to determine what the law would be in any given situation.

In the Orthodox world, the Talmudic text is never studied on its own, but rather, it is studied through the prism of the countless commentators who have written down their interpretations of the Talmud over the millennia. Most prominently among them is Rashi, whose commentary appears on the side of the Gemara, and is central to any Talmud study. Rashi’s commentary has become so standard that it is often perceived as nearly part of the Talmudic text.

In school, students usually begin to study Talmud in the 5th grade. Once they begin

Talmud study it increasingly becomes the main focus of the school day, as it requires the most intensive study, and will ultimately be the text that these students will be engaging with throughout life. By ninth or tenth grade the goal is for the students to be able to “make a

Leining”, which means to be able to read a piece of Gemara and figure out what it is saying without assistance. This is the ultimate goal that the schools are working towards even in 5th grade, and it structures the way that the activity node is conducted in the classroom.

At the outset of a class a rebbe will typically begin in one of two ways. If the class is beginning a new section of Talmud the rebbe will begin with a lecture that sets up the basic background laws that are necessary for an understanding of the text. The structure of the Talmud is such that any one text may have references to laws from a wide variety of topics—all of the law is deeply interconnected—and as such the students are unlikely to have enough knowledge to understand the text without a basic primer. If the class is in the middle of a text, however, the rebbe will usually begin by engaging in a Socratic back and forth dialogue with the students on what they have already learned to ensure that they understand the material before moving on.

176 This back and forth can sometimes take the entire class, particularly when the material is difficult. As the students get older, the amount of Socratic back and forth decreases and the amount of learning directly from the text increases.

The Socratic dialogue is usually structured around an understanding of the “Shakel

V’Tarya”, which literally means “the question and answer”. Because the Gemara is made up of a series of complex back and forth arguments, one of the most difficult things for a rebbe is to communicate what the different positions of the argument are, and how the progression in the

Gemara reflects those positions. What are the proofs being brought, what are the counter-proofs?

What is the nature of the proof: is it textual, Rabbinic, or logical? What did this opinion originally state and how did it change? These are some of the questions that a rebbe must make sure the students know the answers to. In order to aide in student understanding the rebbe will often map out the structure of the argument on the whiteboard, using charts and tables to keep track of different opinions.

Once the rebbe is confident that the students understand the logical flow of the text they will turn to the text itself. At this point the process is designed to teach the students to match the short and cryptic text (that has no punctuation or capitalization) to the logical flow that has just been elaborated. This is done by having the students all read out loud and translate together, with the rebbe guiding them, or having the rebbe read and translate out loud, explaining the text in terms of the previous discussion. Students are then asked to read individually to ensure that they can read the text well.

After reading the text inside with the students, the rebbe might return to the Socratic dialogue with the students, as repetition is necessary to avoid confusion, and then might have

177 them read the commentary of Rashi, together as a class, to see his opinion of the text (which is usually the opinion that the rebbe has already presented to them). In older grades this might be followed by an analysis of select other Talmudic commentators, such as the Tosafos, who might raise objections to, or questions about, the interpretation of the text.

The content of Gemara in general is wide ranging. Even a piece of Gemara that is focused on a single subject will nevertheless bring in many other subjects as part of the textual dialogue. There are certain tractates of the Talmud that are traditionally taught to Talmud beginners. These generally come from the tractates dealing with responsibility for damages and one’s responsibility to return lost objects under different circumstances. These are considered more accessible to students because they deal with issues that students have some familiarity with. Topics such as ritual impurities and technical rules for the kosher slaughter of animals are not generally taught to students at the elementary level; nevertheless because the Talmud is so interconnected, these topics show up even in discussions of damage responsibility.

In the four classes where Talmud study was observed, two were studying the same tractate which dealt with how one identifies lost objects and when one has a responsibility to try and track down the owner. Another class was studying a tractate that dealt with who is responsible for the damages when there is a collision between oxen in the street. The fourth was studying a section that dealt with what quality of produce one can use to pay a debt, and whether it mattered if the produce was dedicated to a Priest or to the Temple.

Finally, because the Talmud is written in Aramaic, the students are learning some

Aramaic, albeit a version that contains a great deal of Hebrew in it. They are also learning to

178 translate and decipher a text, and they are learning how to make and understand complex logical arguments.

As with the Chumash activity nodes there is an incredible amount of worldview significant material in the Gemara activity node, from the way that the material is studied to the content that it contains.

As with Chumash, students in these classes do not study the Talmud from the same conceptual paradigm as an academic might; their assumptions about the text are very different.

In this context, the class is not concerned with the historical implications of the text, or the personalities of the different sages giving their opinions. That contextual background is flattened out, and all that is important is the arguments and the law. An academic would not be particularly troubled if there was a contradiction in the text and would not treat all of the text as equally valid; in these classrooms, however, the text is uniform and a coherent interpretation of all its parts must be arrived at. In addition, the way to arrive at the correct interpretation is understood to be through the commentaries that have been written, and the oral tradition that has been handed down—not through isolated analysis of the text.

Like Chumash, the students do not begin their study of Talmud with a primer on

Aramaic, and do not focus on Talmudic reading skills. They also do not focus purely on content either; it is not expected that the content that they learn in the fifth grade will be remembered years later. Rather, the students are being taught how to engage in the activity node of Talmud study; that is, how Orthodox men are expected to engage with this particular text. Because they are being socialized into a particular practice, it is necessary for them to engage in that practice

“for real”. The structure of classes is set up to teach the students the activity node of Talmud

179 study, not the actual content of Talmud itself. This activity node therefore contains a great deal of focus on learning to argue, learning to appreciate the logical structure of the text, and learning to make connections between different areas of law and to understand the implications of one area on another.

Though the function of class may not be geared toward lifelong remembrance of the content, the activity node cannot take place in a vacuum, and as such there is a great deal of

Talmudic content being absorbed by the students. This content also has worldview shaping significance. To begin with, Talmudic material concerns itself with Jewish law, and how people must behave. Contained in the study of this law is the understanding that these laws are truly relevant today, and are not just of interest as historical relics. Thus when they learn about responsibility for crashes in the street, they understand that this is the law today as well. In addition, like Chumash, the content of Talmud contains a great deal of basic beliefs and religious principles, which are absorbed by the students in their study of the material.

Finally, the practice of studying Talmud (just like Chumash) is given great importance and is treated quite seriously, thus the students maintain a reverence for the material that is not typically found in other contexts.

Much like the Chumash the specific form of certain Gemara activity nodes has additional worldview significance beyond the general significance of the topic. Both Chavrusa study and

Chazara, like the Chumash, have additional significance in that they prescribe particular ways of study, which are the normative study practices in the adult community as well. The idiosyncratic

Gemara Tape node likely conveys the sense that Gemara learning is something that is important

180 in one’s home life and that it is important to spend time at home reviewing what one has learned in Gemara at school.

Standard activity nodes (non-Chumash, non-Gemara)

Other than the Chumash and Gemara activity nodes, which are the central activity nodes in the religious part of the school day, there is a wide range of activity nodes around other subject areas. There were seventeen standard activity nodes observed in the religious classes of the three schools. I have presented them below, grouped by content area.

Jewish Law

There were two nodes that dealt with Jewish law: Inyonie D-yomei Halacha and Halacha

Lecture. The study of Chumash and Gemara in school is primarily geared towards socializing the students into the practice of religious textual study so that they will engage in the practice throughout life; Jewish law (Halacha), however, is studied in order to know the rules for how one must act in any situation. The term Inyonie D-yomei refers to the “issues of the day”; as such, as the Jewish year runs its course the topics covered in Halacha shift to keep up with the year. Thus, before Jewish holidays such as Passover the students will learn the rules of Passover.

Typically, the rebbe will read and translate from a Jewish legal text and will explain the material to the students, engaging them in discussion around the topic. Occasionally there will be worksheets accompanying this lecture.

A non-Inyonei D’Yomah Halacha lecture is essentially the same as one that does deal with the Halacha that is relevant at that time of the Jewish calendar. The structure is the same: the rebbe reads and translates the text and explains the laws to the students. The only difference

181 is that the topic is not tied to the time of year, but is based on a progression through some

Jewish legal text such as the Mishna Berurah or the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch.

The content of both of these nodes could be any area of Jewish law—though the Inyonei

D’Yomah Halacha content usually related to the Jewish holidays. Due to the time of year that this research was conducted the classes that were observed studying Inyonei D’Yomah Halacha were studying the rules of Passover, and then after Passover, the rules of Sefira (a period of semi-mourning and ritualized counting up to the holiday of Shavuos). In a class where a regular

Halacha lecture was taking place the students were learning about the different customs that people have during prayer, and what some of the rules of prayer are. This includes content about when one must say certain prayers, when to stand during Davening and when to sit, and what to do if you forgot to say a particular prayer.

This material directly relates to the students’ lives and explicitly structures the way that they conduct their religious lives. Learning about practices that all of the students participate in every day, such as prayer, also makes the content more meaningful. The students will actually be practicing, on a daily basis, what they are taught in this class. When the students go home they will all share the same knowledge about how the holidays should be conducted and what the various customs of the holidays might be; this activity node therefore has an impact well beyond the classroom. In addition, the practice of studying Halacha implicitly conveys the sense that

Jewish law is fixed and unchanging, that there are specific rules that remain the same over time.

Prayer

There were four activity nodes that dealt with prayer: Davening out loud, Bentching,

Lubavitch pre-Davening ritual, and learning about Davening. Davening is a ritual that is

182 practiced every day, and is generally the first thing that the students do in the day (as it is for adults). The students begin at the beginning of Davening and start reading together from the prayer books in a sing song out-loud. Depending on the rebbe’s preference and the age of the students he might have them read some of the Davening to themselves quietly and some out-loud in sing-song. There are certain parts that are always said quietly and others that are always said out-loud. In addition there are different rituals for different parts of Davening; students stand up at certain points, hold their Tzisis (ritual fringes) at certain points, and kiss their Tzisis as well.

Many student Shukle (shake) back and forth like adults often do when they Daven. When they are a little older these students will come to school an hour early and Daven together with the adults.

At the end of Davening there are some end of Davening rituals. During the time of the year when they count the Omer, there is a small ritual at the end of Davening where a different student each day will put the next number up on a chart and they will all count together.

Sometimes rabbeim incorporate Tehillim (Psalms) into the end of Davening.

After the students eat lunch they recite Bentching, (grace after meals). In this node, the students open their Siddurim (prayer books) to the right page and they all sing the Bentching out- loud together in a sing-song. The students often do not understand the meaning of all of the

Davening and Bentching that they say every day, though they know the general gist of the prayers, and are taught to read it from the prayer books. The node, learning about davening, is designed to fill in some of the gap between their ritual repetition and their understanding of the words. In this activity node, either the rebbe or the students will read and translate the text of the

Davening. The rebbe will pause frequently to explain what the Davening means in greater detail.

183 Depending on their age, students will follow along or take notes. This node is different than the example of the Halacha lecture mentioned above in that the Halacha lecture relates to the laws and rules of davening, while this node is the textual study of the meaning of the davening.

The fact that in general Orthodox Jews pray together three times a day structures their view of the world. These students are learning how to pray—they are not doing the activity node exactly in the way that adults would, but they are getting used to doing large chunks of what the adults do. Inherent in the practice is the assumption that there is a G-d who controls the world and who must be prayed to. In addition, the repetition of the ritual every day provides structure to the day, in the same way that any morning ritual might (like brushing teeth and getting dressed); if you are praying to start your day you are not doing something else at that time.

As students get older and become more aware of the content of the prayers, the specific content also has an impact. Contained in the prayers are supplications, descriptions of G-d and of the Jewish people’s obligations towards him, beliefs about the messiah and Jerusalem, and other biblical and Talmudic content. When someone repeats these things word for word on a daily basis, they must in some way have an impact on the way that they see the world. And just as in prayer itself the students are accepting some major beliefs about the world and are acting on them, in learning about the prayers the students are delving into those beliefs. As they read the text of the prayer they are reading about G-d’s greatness in the world and about our role in the world and what we ask of G-d when we pray, and how it is supposed to affect our character.

There are similar implications to the Bentching ritual. Inherent in saying these blessings is the notion that all the food ultimately comes from G-d and He must be thanked for it. It also makes eating a more formal activity; you cannot just eat on the fly because there are rituals that

184 dictate how you must eat. This must change the way that people see the world in some small way, as the practice of eating on the run is never engaged in—because one will have to Bentch at the end. The impact of this, as well as many of the other nodes, is that because the students cannot just act, but must say prayers, and recite blessings over even mundane activities (there is even a blessing recited when one is done going to the bathroom) the students must behave with a level of deliberateness and purpose that is very broadly encompassing.

Finally, the Lubavitch pre-davening ritual is an activity node that, as the name implies, is unique to Lubavitch. In this node the rebbe leads a call and response with a select group of verses from the Torah, then reads and explains one small section of Jewish law from the

Rambam’s (Maimonadies’) code of Jewish law, and finishes by lecturing one small mystical tidbit about the coming of the Messiah. The ritualized nature of this activity prior to the morning prayers, highlights these items as being of great importance. The Rambam lecture signifies that following Jewish law is of great importance, and the study of the Messiah highlights the fact that the Lubavitcher movement has always promoted the study of the Messiah as a major area of interest. Engaging in this ritual is also a way of signifying that these students are Lubavitch and are concerned with issues that are important to Lubavitch, if not to other ultra-Orthodox groups.\

Parsha

Unlike Chumash, where students spend a great deal of time on one segment of the Bible, in Parsha, the students learn the content of each week’s Torah portion, though they do not delve into the text with any great depth. This allows them to gain broad familiarity with the content of the Bible, though it usually does not contribute to the skills inherent in Chumash study. Three nodes concerned the weekly Torah portion; these were: Parsha desk-work, Parsha lecture, and

185 Parsha study. In Parsha study and Parsha desk-work the students review the content of the week’s Torah portion (Parsha) and fill out worksheets related to that content together as a class.

Sometimes the desk work is conducted with a study partner (Chavrusa). Parsha Lecture is, as the name implies, Parsha content presented in pure lecture form, rather than with discussions or worksheets.

Depending on the age Parsha study can range from simple knowledge of what happened in the Parsha to more in depth knowledge that deals with what the different laws in the Parsha are, and how we practice them today. The content varies based on the week. The Torah portions that are read early in the school year are much more story based than those later in the year.

(They contain, for example, the story of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, Joseph and his brothers, etc.). The later Parshas contain many more laws and descriptions of Temple worship.

The activity node is typically conducted on a Friday, as the Torah portion is read in the synagogue on Saturday. In this way, the study of the Parsha directly relates to the students’ life outside of school as they are going to be hearing the Parsha read on Saturday in the synagogue.

This is likely to give the material more weight and importance to the students. In addition, much of the worldview significance of the study of Chumash applies here as well, as it is the same text.

The difference here is that they are not learning to read and understand the text as a text—they are not being taught to engage in the activity node of Chumash study—rather they are being taught the content of the text in broad survey format, with the aim of keeping pace with the weekly readings. Thus, all of the worldview significance dealing with Chumash content, such as the belief that all of these events really happened, and that G-d controls the world in the way described in the Torah, also apply to this activity node.

186 Mishnayos

As noted in the discussion of the Gemara cluster nodes, Mishnayos is one small part of the Talmud, consisting of relatively short summations of Jewish law. It does not receive a great deal of attention in the school curriculum as an independent topic; it is, rather, usually encompassed in Gemara study. There are circumstances, however, where Mishnayos is studied on its own. One place where Mishnayos is studied is in the third and fourth grades, where some amount of Mishnayos is studied as a precursor to Gemara study in fifth grade. In addition there are certain tractates of Mishnoyos that receive their own independent treatment because of some unique content that they contain. One such example is the tractate Avos, called Pirkei Avos, which contains a great deal of moral and ethical guidance. The three activity nodes that dealt with the study of Mishnayos were Mishnayos learning, Pirkei Avos desk-work, and Pirkei Avos lecture.

In Mishnayos learning the students will read and translate the text together in class, or the rebbe will do it for them, and then they will have a Socratic back and forth about the content of the text. The content is essentially the same as that described in the Gemara learning activity node, but is generally simpler, with a less difficult logical flow, and the worldview significance is essentially the same as Gemara as well. When the students are studying Pirkei Avos they do not utilize the text as much, the rebbe will either lecture or assign the students worksheets to fill out. As noted, much of the content involves moral and ethical edicts, such as the statement that that one must open one’s house to guests. The worldview significance is essentially the same as the Vertlach activity node, which will be described immediately below.

187 Morals, Ethics, and Spirituality

Throughout the school day the students receive a tremendous amount of instruction in morals, ethics, and spirituality, often independent of any larger content or subject area. In my observation I identified three activity nodes where this type of content was the primary object of the lesson, Vertlach, Chassidus, and Dvar Torah. Vertlach are short religiously or morally oriented lectures given by a rebbe that are liberally sprinkled throughout the school day. The structure of a Vertle can vary. One common structure for a Vertle is that the rebbe presents a problem with or question about a verse in the Torah and then answers the question by elucidating a religious or moral point. Another common type is the Gadol story (a Gadol is a great sage), which is a story about a Gadol that demonstrates some act of piety or lesson in how we should act. Sometimes the Gadol story doesn’t really have a moral point, but is just interesting because it is about a great religious figure and how he behaves.

Vertlach are different from other activity nodes in that they are often (but not always) practiced as part of an aside within another activity node. While learning Chumash the rebbe might notice a connection in the text to some moral point and use the opportunity to expand on that point. When it is within the context of another activity node the line between that activity node and the Vertle activity node can sometimes be blurry, as some activity nodes naturally contain many Vertle sized nuggets of information. In this respect, Vertlach constitute a slight violation of the heuristic of clear temporal boundaries; nevertheless, as they have strong worldview significance and do have their own form and script they are worthy of analysis in and of themselves. It should be noted that there are also times when the Vertle is indeed a practice unto itself. When that is the case the content and structure of the activity node is usually quite

188 clear, and the time frame for the node extends from 2 to 3 minutes to something closer to 5 or

6 minutes.

The Dvar Torah is closely related to the Vertle, but is slightly larger and more developed.

The lesson being recited is usually a bit more complex than in a Vertle; it might contain more than one question and answer, and may bring multiple sources to make its point. In classrooms, this activity node is often conducted on a Friday, so that the students can go home and repeat the

Dvar Torah at the communal meal on Shabbos. Thus, part of the activity node contains some instruction and practice in reciting the Dvar Torah. The basic format, then, is that the rebbe tells the students the Dvar Torah and then has a few students repeat the Dvar Torah to the class; this ensures that they understand the material, as well as providing them with a platform to practice their recitation of the Dvar Torah.

The Chassidus activity node is closely related to the Vertle and the Dvar Torah, but is larger than both. The rebbe typically lectures the material, reading and translating from a text

(usually a Chassidic essay called a Mamar or Sicha), and pauses to explain the material to the students. The content of Chassidus ranges from explanations of commandments and religious practices, to insights into the Jewish holidays, to moral and ethical instruction. A key feature of

Chassidus is that it uses many mystical Kabbalistic concepts in its explanations of religion. In the classes that I observed most of the Chassidus was concerned with explanations of aspects of the holiday of Passover.

In the Vertle and Dvar Torah the content tends to be less complex and developed—they are often quite explicit about the one simple moral, ethical, or spiritual point that is being made.

The list below provides a sampling of the range of content found in the Vertlach and Dvar Torah

189 activity nodes that I observed for this research. I have grouped them using a rough typology for the sake of clarity.

Stories: A rebbe will tell a story that illustrates some moral point. A couple examples of this

were a story about how it is bad to take revenge and a story intended to illustrate the point

that in order to understand and sympathize with other people one has to share in their

experiences.

True Stories: Often rabbeim will tell stories using the format of a “true story”, starting off

by saying something like, “ there was once a woman by the name of Mrs. Horowitz who

lived in Israel, and one day…”. Some examples of this that I observed were a rebbe telling

the students about a woman he knew who had a rattlesnake in her closet, but through divine

intervention did not get bitten. Another story told by a rebbe was about not cheating, and

involved a man who swindled people by selling them “car phones” which were really just

phones shaped like cars. A third rebbe told a long and involved story about the importance

of getting Matzoh on Pesach from a great sage, which involved the rebbe himself and the

late Lubavitcher rebbe.

Gadol Story: This is a variant of the true story category involving a great sage. One such

story was about the Talmudic sage, Hillel, who did not ever get angry, another story

demonstrated the honor one must show to a great sage, another involved the great sage

known as the Vilna Gaon, and expressed the point that anyone could become as great as him

if they tried, and a final Gadol story involved the sage known as the Chofetz Chaim, and

illustrated the way in which one must meticulous in business so as not to cheat anyone.

190 Connection to material being studied: Often the vertle will arise in the context of other material being studied. One example of this came up in the context of a chumash lesson and made the straightforward point that it is wrong to steal, and another made the slightly more complicated point that one wears clothes, not only for comfort, but to show that one follows the Torah. A yarmulka’s function is not just to protect a person from the elements but to act as a symbol; thus, the word yarmulka really means yorei malca (fear of G-d).

Contained in Talmud: Sometimes the vertlach were actually found in the Talmudic text, and the rebbe would pause for a moment to expound on the point being made. Two examples of this type of point include the idea that learning Torah in order to do Mitzva is the highest level of learning, and the moral dictum that one must always greet friends with panim yafos (a friendly face).

Question and Answer on Jewish Law: Some vertlach are framed as questions on Jewish law. For example the Talmud explains that a thief who stole a sheep pays less restitution than someone who steals a cow—why is this? The answer is that this demonstrates that G-d has pity even on a thief, because the sheep thief had to suffer the indignity of carrying the animal on his shoulders while stealing it, whereas the cow had only to be led. Another example of this type of vertle that was observed came in conjunction with the Passover preparations. The question was why one can’t have any leaven at all on Passover? Thee answer given was that leaven represents haughtiness and one’s character cannot have even a trace amount of haughtiness.

Straight moral point: Finally, there were times when the rebbe simply made a moral point without context or greater elaboration. Three examples of this are that one must be

191 extremely careful not to take in any way from the poor, one must treat the Torah with

great seriousness, and that the gemara says that a man can be beaten until his will is such

that he wants to grant his wife a divorce, similarly a class can be punished until they truly

desire to behave.

All of these examples demonstrate that this activity node is quite powerful in its ability to frame the students understanding of a wide range of content, primarily within the domains of religion and morality. The way in which they are constantly peppered throughout the day also has significance in that these Vertlach become part of the fabric of the students’ lives. They are used to hearing Vertlach at all times and connected to all subjects (in the religious part of the day). Their sheer ubiquity in the school day makes going to school an explicitly worldview filled experience. In addition, the Dvar Torah activity node is deeply embedded in the students religious observance at home—there are expectations that there will be a forum at home for them to recite the Dvar Torah, and that the students will all be participating in the same activities at home. In practicing their recitation, the students are also developing skills for future presentations of religious knowledge when they are adults, as the Dvar Torah is commonly presented in a variety of communal gatherings.

Finally, in addition to the worldview significance contained in the Vertlach and Dvar torah, the Chassidus activity node has significance in that inherent in the practice of studying

Chassidus is the idea that mystical Kabbalistic explanations can be the right sort of explanation for religious law. The Yeshivish ultra-Orthodox would likely not give these sorts of explanations, preferring legal explanations instead.

192 Navi Learning

The Navi (Prophets) makes up the second of the three sections of the Tanach (The Jewish

Bible). In the ultra-Orthodox community, this is typically studied more in depth by girls than by boys. When boys do study Navi they move quickly through the text, studying it in order to gain broad familiarity with the content. The rebbe will typically read, translate, and lecture about the content in the Navi. The students will follow along in their texts and listen. In the one class where this node was observed the students were studying the portion of the Navi that told the story of Samson.

The epistemological import of this activity differs from other textual study such as

Chumash and Gemara in that it is familiarity with content that is important, not the socialization into the activity node of Navi study. Thus, for the students this material does not retain the same significance as the other subjects. They know they are not going to be spending time in life studying this material, and are not as engaged as a result. This represents a marked difference from the way that Navi is approached in modern-Orthodox or Israeli contexts, where Navi is a much more central element of the religious curriculum.

As for the content itself, much like Chumash, there are a great number of significant religious beliefs that are promoted by the text, such as the existence of miracles. In addition, however, there is also the sense (explicitly promoted by the rebbe) that the events described in the text are extraordinary, and do not have immediate practical relevance to Judaism today. Thus, when Sampson marries a non-Jewish woman, that event is explained in terms of the particular context of that time and place, and as coming directly from G-d’s will, but not in terms of any relevance to today’s day and age.

193 Raffle

In all three schools the students get raffle tickets throughout the week for doing a variety of things ranging from ordinary good behavior to doing extra credit work. At the time of the raffle, often held once a week, the students get out their tickets and the rebbe picks tickets from bowl. Students who win the raffle receive a variety of small prizes, from doughnuts and other sweets, to little toys from the dollar store, to extra recess or computer time. Some rabbeim customize the raffle into elaborate games where students can trade a number of tickets for tickets into a bigger raffle or turn down a prize for a chance at a different prize. The inclusion of raffles into every part of the religious school day, likely reflects an attempt to convey the sense that this material should be fun and to increase the students desire to participate.

Idiosyncratic activity nodes (non-Chumash, non-Gemara)

There were five non-Chumash and non-Gemara idiosyncratic activity nodes observed in the religious classes in the three schools. They were:

o Secular activity node: This is not a node in the classical sense, but represents the very

occasional instances where the rebbe teaches the students something secular during the

religious part of the day. This could take any form in theory; in the case observed the

rebbe lectured on writing. This node is really a slot that many different types of secular

nodes could fill. By having the rebbe, who is the source of religious authority for these

students, teach secular material in the religious class, the students are likely to see this

material as more significant and relevant than it would be if they had learned this material

in secular class.

194 o Coloring project: Students (in younger grades) color pictures that have religious

content that relates to their work. The content varies by the topic that the picture is

accompanying, but typically involves some writing of both Hebrew and English. o Mock Seder: The students and rebbe set the table the way that it would be set at the

Passover Seder, and the rebbe conducts the Seder, telling the students when to do the

various rituals, and asking the students to occasionally recite the Vertlach that they have

learned. The content includes the many Vertlach that are associated with Passover (some

mentioned above in the Vertlach activity node description). In addition there is the Seder

itself—the students are learning how to act at a Seder.

This is another practice whose purpose is apprenticeship. The students are

learning how to conduct a Seder, they are not learning about the Seder. o Mishnayos game show: The rebbe gets out an electronic game show device that has

multiple buzzers that the students can push, as in a game show. He asks them questions

on the Mishnayos that they have learned and whoever hits the buzzer first answers the

question. One student keeps score on the board while they play. In addition to the

worldview significance of the Mishnayos content (which is itself essentially the same as

the Gemara content detailed above) the fact that they use the form of a game show, which

is an activity drawn from secular culture (in particular, from TV, which most of the

students don’t watch) implicitly sends the message that some elements of secular culture

can be adopted for religious purposes, and are at least neutral from a religious

perspective.

195 o Daily sheet: The rebbe hands out a sheet to the students that contains information

about what they are studying, what their obligations are, and how well they have been

doing in class. The students bring it home and have to have the parents sign it and then

they bring it in the next day.

Secular-class activity nodes

Standard activity nodes

There were twenty-one different standard activity nodes observed in the secular classes at

Yeshiva, Chassidic, and Lubavitch. I have grouped them by content area, below.

Science

There was only one observed activity node in the domain of science, which was science group deskwork. In this node the students were told to arrange themselves in groups of two or three and to open their books to a certain page. They read the text of the science textbook together and then answered the questions that were at the end of the chapter. Those questions contained both science content and science vocabulary pertaining to rainforests and ecosystems.

Knowledge of ecosystems must structure, at some level, an understanding of how the world works. It is difficult to ascertain the exact impact of the material on a worldview both because it was desk-work and the content was not clear to me, and because it is hard to assess the overall impact of this knowledge on a worldview system. One possible impact of this activity might be in the specification of rainforests as an ecosystem, in a context where the students do not study a great deal of science, which might misleadingly convey to the students that ecosystems are only in exotic places like rainforests, and not everywhere. The fact that the

196 students do not study a great deal of science, and the teacher did not bother to lecture or assign them a project, might also indicate to the students that science is not an important subject.

Math

There were three activity nodes in the subject area of math: math deskwork, math lecture, and math group review. Math content was observed in four classes in this study. In one of the grades the students were studying fractions, in another grade they were studying factors, in another division, and in another the teacher put a range of questions on the board, some dealing with fractions, others dealing with mortgage calculation, and others with division.

In math deskwork the activity node can begin in one of two ways. Either the teacher begins to write on the board, putting up a list of questions that the students must answer, or the teacher tells the students that they must get out their books and turn to page x, where they will do, for example, all of the odd problems from number one through number twenty-seven. At that point the students will proceed to follow directions (in an ideal world). While the students work the teacher will either walk around and help students or will do some other type of work such as grading spelling tests. Often (but not always), math deskwork follows a math lecture where the teacher might lecture, write on the board, and lead a discussion, and it often precedes math group review. In math group review the teacher asks one student after another to read the answer that they have for different math problems that they have worked on, either for homework or as part of in-school work. The teacher corrects and explains wrong answers, and occasionally elaborates on correct answers.

Both implicitly, through the choice of math as a subject of study, and as explicitly mentioned by many teachers, these activity nodes convey the belief that knowledge of math is an

197 important skill that is necessary for functioning in daily life. In addition, as math in the classes observed was presented as a series of procedures to be followed, there may be a sense conveyed to the students that the rules of math are immutable rules of the universe—this is how math works and it cannot be changed. Also, the choice of form conveys the sense that a way to become skilled in math is by doing many math problems.

One teacher, the 6th grade teacher at Chassidic, incorrectly gave the students the impression that some math had no formula—you just had to figure it out by common sense. His assertions must be taken as contributing to the epistemological character of the activity node. In addition, this same teacher conducted the activity node in such a way as to allow students to run around and not do the work, simply saying that if they do the work they get credit and if not, not.

This too, must contribute to the underlying epistemology, conveying the sense that this material is not intrinsically important, but that doing the work is just one of the hurdles students must jump over to get through the school day. The eighth grade teacher at Lubavitch, however, conducted this activity node in such a way as to push for deeper understanding, telling the students that she did not want to know what answer they had, but what that answer represented, thus giving a very different epistemological character to the activity node.

Reading Comprehension

In the domain of reading comprehension there were two activity nodes observed. In the book report activity node the teacher gives a short lecture to the students on how they should present their reports and then each student comes to the front of the class and reads their book report and answers the teacher’s questions. In the one class where this was observed the content consisted of books that the students chose to read for the report. This ranged from Jewish

198 religious stories and fables to standard secular books like the “The Boxcar Kids”. The teacher’s questions asked the students to summarize the books and to explain why they did or didn’t like the books.

This activity node implicitly (and in this case also explicitly) conveys the opinion that the ability to digest written information and communicate one’s understanding of it to others is an important skill. The content of the worldview significance varies depending on the book that a student chooses. One student gave his report on a book of religious fables, which had direct religious significance, as their content was explicitly concerned with appropriate religious behavior and moral behavior. Another student chose a popular secular young adult book, and that choice must also be seen as having some worldview significance, as all literature must in some way impart a perspective—a way of seeing the world.

The reading comprehension and discussion activity node was similar in some ways to the book report, though geared towards much younger students. In this node the students read a story out-loud one by one, or the teacher read it to them, and throughout the story the teacher asked the students questions about the content and lead a discussion with the students. During this research the students read four different stories. An example of a fiction story they read was about a girl who gets in trouble with her cat in a museum. A non-fiction book they read was about butterflies.

Aside from the actual content of the stories the students are also learning how to understand stories in general (thus the label, reading comprehension). For example, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction was something that the teacher discussed with them before beginning each story.

199 The story about the girl in the museum raised many issues that could have worldview significance; issues having to with what appropriate behavior looks like and why one might get in trouble, as well as issues of human nature and how people sometimes do the wrong thing and what the consequences are in those case. The book also served to generally inform the students about how the world works (e.g. that there are such things as museums). The story about the butterfly had more information-based worldview shaping, as it related to the butterflies that they are studying in nature; it may have promoted the feeling that things in nature are interesting and worth telling stories about. In general, stories are very powerful tools for conveying worldview, as they reflect the author’s perspective on how the world functions.

Language Use and Grammar

There were three nodes that dealt with language use and grammar. In language arts lecture the teacher introduces a topic having to do with grammar, writing, or language usage.

Often the teacher will remind the students what they had previously covered. The teacher puts words on the board and asks the students questions about those words, following those questions up with explanations. This activity node is often accompanied by language desk-work, where the students are instructed by the teacher to open their books to a certain page and to do certain problems, or the teacher will hand out a work sheet for them to fill out. Sometimes the students work individually and sometimes they are allowed to work in groups. While the students work the teacher walks around helping students and explains material.

There was a range of content observed within these activity nodes. In the classes observed they learned when to use words like “more” and “most” and “better” and “best”; they learned about haikus and palindromes; and they learned about using apostrophes in contractions.

200 These activities convey the sense that there are rules of grammar and language use that must be followed in order to communicate properly with others. This is implicit in the activity, but it was also mentioned by the teacher at times. Because the teacher in the classes where these activity nodes were observed was also a rebbe, he was able to make use of the students’ knowledge of Hebrew and religious material to explain grammatical concepts. For example, he used Hebrew words to demonstrate what a palindrome was, and to illustrate the difference between “the” and “a”. These connections appeared to give weight and legitimacy to the subject matter in the students’ minds, and more firmly cement the necessity of grammatical rules, for if they are there in their religious material they must be important.

The first grade class observed had a similar activity node, called reading— writing/lecture—desk work. In this node the teacher conducts a variety of reading and writing exercises with the group, sometimes requiring them to write on their own papers and sometimes requiring them to respond to her questions. This activity node is very similar to the language arts lecture activity node, but geared towards younger students. The content observed ranged from alphabetizing words and spelling to constructing sentences together as a class.

Vocabulary and Spelling

There were a number of similar nodes in the domain of vocabulary and spelling. In vocabulary deskwork the teacher either gives the students a worksheet, refers them to a list in a book, or identifies the words in another text, such as a history or social studies textbook, and asks the students to write the words, usually with sentences attached to them. Sometimes the worksheet is in a novel form, such as a crossword puzzle, sometimes the practice is connected to spelling (they are graded on the spelling as well), and sometimes it is connected to topical

201 subjects such as history. The teacher typically walks around helping students or sits at the desk doing other work. Occasionally, this activity node will involve some degree of lecture while the students are working; for example, when the students are having a hard time with the material, the teacher might begin to explain, using the board, and the students who want to would listen. Sometimes this activity node is followed by vocabulary out-loud review, where the teacher asks the students, one by one, to provide a sentence for each vocabulary word in a list.

These activity nodes may convey the sense that having a large vocabulary and being able to use it is an important skill. In addition, the fact that the words often come from history textbooks demonstrates implicitly that vocabulary is useful in a variety of domains (not just within the category of “vocabulary”) and that history words are useful to know. The fact that the form of the activity node is to provide a sentence for the word conveys the epistemological knowledge that to know a word is to be able to use it in a sentence.

In addition, in one class that was observed, the teacher, who was a rebbe, used the opportunity to make connections to religious elements of the students lives. For example, he defined the word “inauguration” using the Jewish concept of the dedication of the Temple. In other classes, secular teachers avoided making those very same connections when they presented themselves. This type of connection implicitly designates the material being studied as more relevant to the students than other secular material because it has relevance in their religious lives. Also, connections of this sort may also help them understand the material better than they would otherwise.

In spelling I observed deskwork and spelling tests. In deskwork the teacher tells the students to turn to a certain page in a book, or hands out a worksheet, and the students complete

202 the work there. In younger grades (1st, in this case) the teacher scaffolds the instruction and the answering of questions on the sheet with greater detail than in older classes. Sometimes the worksheet is in the form of a crossword puzzle. During a spelling test the students sit in their desks with sheets of paper and pencils. The teacher reads a word, recites a sentence using the word, and repeats the word. The students quietly write the word on their sheets of paper. In some variations the students get extra credit for also writing the word in cursive, and whether or not the teacher invents a sentence or reads a prepared sentence also varies.

Like the vocabulary activity nodes the words are chosen from a variety of sources. In some cases the words are chosen from a spelling book with the purpose of building particular spelling skills, in other cases the words are chosen from a history or social studies text, and the relationship between the words on the test are topical rather than being based on spelling similarities.

At an elementary level the choice to focus on spelling in a classroom conveys the belief that it is important to spell words correctly. In addition, working on spelling conveys the sense that there are set rules for written communication which ought to be followed, and that there is some value attached to following these rules. In the 1st grade enactment of the spelling desk work activity node the teacher told the students that one has to read a lot to know how to spell in

English. She also informed them that at this stage in their development of English skills it was more important for them to sound out the words than to get the actual spelling correct. This is a very different epistemological message than that conveyed in older grades.

History and Government

203 In history there were three activity nodes, History desk work, history reading and lecture, and history question and answer, all of which were on the topic of 20th century American

History. In History desk work the teacher tells the students to answer questions at the end of a chapter in the history book, or to take relevant words from the text and find the sentence in the text that defines those words. The students do the work while the teacher walks around helping other students. During history question and answer the teacher goes around the classroom asking each student another question pertaining to the history they studied and intersperses lecture on the subject in between some of the questions. In history reading and lecture, the teacher has the students each read a paragraph from a history text and intersperses lectures and stories related

(sometimes only loosely) to the text. Often these activity nodes are connected to one another.

History has a great deal of worldview significance in these schools. In particular, in the classes that were observed in this research the rebbe who was teaching the material told them explicitly that they could understand the present in greater depth by looking at the past. In addition, the study of history depends heavily on the choices made as to what in the past is important to know, and this reflects the values of those who are writing the history texts and teaching the class. In this case the teacher was a rebbe, which meant that he was communicating his values to the students, for example, by skipping material that he did not think was important

(the rise of pop-music), or going off on tangents that he thought were important for them to know as Jews (civil rights and its relevance to Jews). Because he was a rebbe he also made the material more meaningful to them by connecting it to religious content. All of this must have the cumulative effect of making history seem like a topic that has more significance to the students

204 than other topics. (For example, this is the same teacher who did not convey a strong sense of the importance of math).

Another class had a pair of activity nodes that were similar to the history nodes, constitution desk work, and constitution reading and lecture. In the reading and lecture node the students have a textbook (or pages copied from a textbook) that contains information about the specific content of the constitution, that is, the laws, as well as the historical context within which the writing of the constitution took place, which they read from out loud. Either the teacher calls on different students to read each paragraph or the teacher reads it herself to the students. She frequently pauses to talk to them about the content contained in the text, asking them questions and prompting discussion. In the deskwork node the teacher tells the students to take out their constitution sheets and the students sit at their desk and fill in the answers to questions about the constitution by referring to the text on the sheets.

In the school where these nodes were observed the students will not study more secular knowledge after graduation as they will go to a full time religious study school. They do take their GED’s, however, and according to the school are required to pass an exam on the constitution given by the State of Illinois in order to advance to that stage. Thus, in an important respect their study of this material might not convey the usual impression that this is something that one must know; it might rather convey the impression that this is a hoop they must all jump through in order to advance along the trajectory that they (and their parents) have chosen.

At the same time, however, the content does contain a great deal of information about how systems of government can be erected and what types of communal organization are good or bad. At some level this information must have some impact on the students worldview. This

205 impact might be positively oriented, or negatively (they may come away from this class believing that the American system of government is no good), but it is unlikely to have no impact.

Current Events

There was one node involving current events, discussion of current events. In this node the teacher hands out newspapers to the students with an article in it that the students will read, either together out-loud or by themselves, and the teacher leads a discussion of the content. The newspapers are stapled together so that the students can only see the selected article and not other pages. In the examples observed the newspaper articles ranged over topics that involved

Israel and racism. The teacher explicitly stressed to the students that it is important to know what is going on in the world. Her choice of subject matter reflected the perspective that knowing about Israel was important for these students. The discussions themselves also involved argument over morals and norms, right and wrong, the role of the media and its biases—all things that are important in reflecting and shaping a worldview.

Nodes Unique to Young Students

There were two standard activity nodes observed that were entirely unique to the young students in the 1st grade. These were centers and coloring. During centers students go to different stations in the classroom in small groups where they can engage in a variety of activities, depending on the station. These activities include art, reading, music, and puzzles. During coloring students color pictures that are determined by topics covered in class. The one time this activity node was observed they were coloring butterflies, which was the theme of the science

206 and nature topic that they had been studying. The different stories and games all have content that shapes worldview; however, the nature of the activity made it difficult to determine the worldview content with any great specificity.

Idiosyncratic activity nodes

There were ten different idiosyncratic activity nodes observed in the secular classes at

Yeshiva, Chassidic, and Lubavitch. Recall, that idiosyncratic activity nodes are those that are either not an essential part of the curriculum or are unique to the particular teacher.

Reading, Language, and Spelling

In the domains of reading, language, and spelling there were five idiosyncratic activity nodes, Spelling Bee, Correcting a paragraph, Reading/writing/grammar correction, Daily sentences, and Library. In the spelling bee node the students arrange themselves in a big circle and the teacher reads a word that the students must spell. They begin with one student and move around the circle. If the student cannot spell the word correctly he leaves the circle and watches the remaining students. The form of their response is to state the word, spell it, and then state it again. They also sometimes ask for the word to be used in a sentence.

In the correcting a paragraph node the teacher puts a paragraph up on the board that is filled with writing mistakes, such as not having commas in the right place or not capitalizing letters that should be capitalized. The students are told that there are mistakes and she goes around the room asking each student to identify a new mistake, which she then corrects on the board. The students are supposed to write the new mistake-free paragraph on their papers as they go along.

207 In the Reading/writing/grammar correction node students who have written short essays that respond to some aspect of a story that they read in class go to the front of the class and read their essays to the class. As a group, the class then discusses the content of the essay as it relates to the story, and also corrects any grammar and language mistakes that the student has made. In the instance that this activity node was observed, the story that the essay was about involved a man who hired a young boy to work for him. The writing corrections involved basic grammar and word choices.

In all three of these nodes the choice to focus on each topic conveys a sense that that topic is important. In the Reading/writing/grammar correction node there is the additional significance contained in the content of the story; as a story about realistic events it structures students’ understanding of good and bad behavior and helps develop an understanding of how people behave in different circumstances and what their motivations might be.

The daily sentences node was an everyday ritual in the 1st grade class that was observed.

In this node the students come into the class, sit down, and take out a blank sheet of paper. The teacher starts writing sentences on the board that the students copy on their papers. The first few sentences are standards that repeat each day (such as the day of the week and month), and the students suggest the next few sentences. The student-suggested sentences pertain to things that are going on in their lives. The teacher then adds a few more sentences that vary depending on the day, but which might include some prefacing of what they will be doing in class that day. In this node, though they work on writing and spelling, much of the content is an exploration of their personal lives. For example, a student suggested a sentence about his baby sister’s first birthday, and on Friday the teacher put up a sentence about that evening being Shabbos. In

208 addition, she would integrate other subject areas into this activity node, such as science and nature. During some of the observations she took out the caterpillar chrysalis that they were raising and had some students measure it so that they could write the sentence “Our chrysalis is four centimeters long”.

This is one example of a secular activity node that contains a good deal of real meaningful content as it draws from the students’ lives in significant ways. The activity node incorporates aspects of classroom life and the students’ home life into an activity that teaches the students to write. Its ritualistic nature also provides a certain amount of stability to the opening of the day and transitions the students from recess to school-work. The worldview significance of these aspects of the activity node are difficult to pin down, but because so much of the material is concerned with topics that are of immediate interest to the students, the activity itself must necessarily structure their understanding of those things. The choices that the teacher makes about what student sentences they will write and the way that she presents them must have some impact on the students’ worldviews.

Finally, the final reading, language, and spelling node was Library. In this node the students all line up and go to the library where there are books they can read and projects that they can work on. In the one example observed the students were working on projects in the library (posters) on the 50 states in the USA.

Social Studies

There were two activity nodes that were in the domain of social studies, Biography reading and lecture and WWII video. Like other social studies reading and lecture activity nodes, the Biography reading and lecture node involved the teacher reading the text (or asking the

209 students to do so) and pausing frequently to discuss the content with the students. In the one case observed, this content was a biography of Harry Houdini taken from a book on famous

Jewish Americans. The teacher also asked the students to define words in the text as they read, adding vocabulary to the content as well.

For the teacher, who was Jewish but not Orthodox, being an American Jew is a source of pride, and she felt that it was worth acknowledging those who became famous in class. The students do not necessarily share this outlook, as they are more divorced from Americanism, but this activity conveys the sense that it is worth being proud of such Jews. The text itself also made parallels between Houdini and the Jews more broadly, talking about finding ways to escape when there appeared to be no way out. This structures a particular way of thinking about Jews throughout history.

The same teacher allowed the students to bring a large TV and VCR into the classroom during the last 10 to 15 minutes of each day, to watch a PBS documentary series about World

War II. The students sit and watch while the teacher gets herself organized to finish the day. The students recognize that the war has a relevance to Jews, and this content helps structure their understanding of that war. As they don’t watch TV at home, this is also fun for them and may convey the sense that there are some legitimate, fun, uses of television. The teacher also asserted in her interview that she felt that the students did not understand that World War II involved much more than just the holocaust. This activity node would appear likely to broaden their understanding in that regard.

Math

210 There was one idiosyncratic math activity node, Stock Analysis. In this node the teacher hands out business sections from three different newspapers dated a week apart, to each student. The students spread out at their desks or on the floor and are supposed to track the stocks that they have chosen to follow, marking down the prices and determining how well they are doing by comparing to previous prices. As noted in the interviews, the students are studying math for the purpose of being able to function in the world as adults, and this fact is conveyed by the choice to work on stocks as part of math. (They similarly study mortgage calculations in math as well). The activity allows that there is value in being able to make money and invest successfully, and that this is something students should know how to do.

Miscellaneous

Two other nodes observed were Achievement test, and Free desk work. During the

Achievement test the students sit with their achievement test booklets at their desks, and the teacher reads the instructions (and questions, when called for). The students fill in the bubbles with number 2 pencils, ostensibly in a totally quiet classroom, but in practice in a slightly noisy class. There is some sense conveyed by this node that this is a necessary hurdle to pass school, but not intrinsically valuable. In the classes observed the teacher was sloppy about treating the activity with the seriousness that it typically gets in other schools.

In the Free desk work node the students all work on different projects at their desks and the teacher walks around and helps them with their work. In the one class where this was observed some students were writing stories, and others were reading or finishing a worksheet.

For some of the time some about half the students were listening to a story while the other half continued to work.

211 Activity Node Differences

It may already be apparent to the reader that there are some major differences between the secular and religious activity nodes that make the secular and religious parts of the day two very different experiences. In this section I will articulate some of the ways in which the two sets of activity nodes differ. One of the major themes that I will try to argue for is that in many important ways the religious activity nodes constitute authentic activities (Brown et al, 1989) while the secular activity nodes do not. (As per Brown et al, authentic activity is defined as “the ordinary practices of the culture” ones that are the activities of practitioners and would be

“endorsed by the cultures to which they are attributed” (p. 34)).

In addition, I will try to demonstrate that the religious activity nodes are more difficult and complex than the secular nodes. To be clear, this is not an argument that religious material is inherently more advanced or authentic than secular material generally. The arguments that follow are limited to the schools observed in this study. That is to say, these are the differences observed in the activity nodes in these three schools, but there is no reason why secular activity nodes generally could not be as authentic and sophisticated as the religious activity nodes described here. They simply weren’t observed to be in this case.

Activity Nodes Within a Broader Context

One important difference between the two sets of activity nodes can be found in the intended function of the practices: What is administration trying to accomplish in having the students engage in these practices? The perceived overall purpose of schooling, both religious and secular was explored in the analysis of the interviews conducted described in Chapter 3. It was clear from the interviews that the secular education was present in the school day for a very

212 narrow purpose: to provide the students with the basic skill-set to get jobs at some unspecified point down the line. The religious education, on the other hand, had a much broader purpose. The rabbeim felt that it was their job to mold the character of the students, and the administrators wanted to make sure that the students would ultimately follow the correct religious path in life—one that included religious textual study and the overall observance of the wide range of communal norms.

These goals are reflected in the activity nodes present in the school day, as there is a tremendous amount of context that informs the religious activity nodes, while the secular activity nodes do not appear to be driven by a great deal of detailed context. There are a few ways in which this is true. One way in which the religious nodes appear to be informed by a broader context than the secular is in the fact that the religious nodes are built around socialization into a fairly complete, specific, and well-articulated model of human behavior. There is a particular model of behavior that involves lifelong participation in particular forms of Talmud study, strict adherence to Jewish law, engagement in a host of cultural and normative practices such as prayer and synagogue attendance, specific styles of dress and personal interaction, and marriage and family expectations.

The religious nodes are built with this model in mind. The two major clusters of nodes, the chumash and gemara clusters, have nodes that are explicitly modeled on this model of religious learning. The general Gemara and Chumash learning nodes are conducted with an eye towards preparing the students to follow this particular path, (as noted in the discussion of those nodes, that is why they are conducted without a great deal of grammar or historical context) and nodes such as Chavrusa and Chazara are explicitly modeled on this particular model. Nodes

213 dealing with Jewish law and the holidays prepare the students for the strict observance of

Halacha that is expected of them, while practices such as Davening and Bentching socialize the students into those elements of this model of Jewish life. There is no part of the religious curriculum that does not reference a very specific model of how to live life, and there are very few parts of that model that are not covered by the religious curriculum in some way.

The secular nodes, by contrast, do not reference a complete and clearly articulated model of life. Instead, they are generic and flexible, intended to be generally useful for the acquisition of jobs, but without any clear specification of what jobs they might be, how those jobs will be conducted, or which of the skills acquired in the secular part of the day will be helpful for the job. Math lecture and math deskwork are taught because the perception in the school is that math skills will be useful in getting a job, but the schools do not have in mind a clear model of human life that would require math, instead they are making an educated guess, on the principle that math is an important skill in a wide range of jobs.

This point is closely related to another point of distinction. In the secular part of the day, content that is geared towards prescribing behavior is rarely found. The closest equivalent might be when the students study math problems dealing with mortgages, or look up stock prices, but even those activity nodes are of uncertain utility for the students, and even if the utility was certain, there is still no mandate for them to be trading in stocks or calculating mortgages. The religious material is all prescriptive. Not only is the curriculum based on a clear and coherent model, but it is a model that they are all expected to follow. Nearly every node in the religious part of the day involves socialization into practices that they are being taught they must engage in

214 for the rest of their lives. They must engage in religious study, they must Daven three times every day, they must say the appropriate blessings over food, and so on.

This may be in part why when parents were asked what they hoped their students would get out of school and when rabbeim were asked what they hoped to give to their students, the most common response was not content based, but was that the students should have a love for learning (the term refers to the act of religious study) so that they should have the desire to continue to learn throughout their lives. Because the model that the students are being socialized into is prescriptive it is important to develop in the students a love for the material so that they will be more likely to continue along the path that is being prescribed.

Another point, related to the first two, is that in addition to the fact that the religious activity nodes reference a well-articulated and broad model of human life, the model is one that the students have active experience with. The religious activity nodes all assume that the students will be engaging in the practices that they are being taught at the same time, in essentially the same way. There is, therefore, a coherent frame of reference that can be pointed to, and the teacher can say: “When you all go to Shul (Synagogue) tomorrow, this is how you should behave…”. The content is thus intimately tied to the students’ lives. Of course, they will all utilize their math and reading skills in daily life as well, but there is no uniform expectation as to when and how those skills will be used; they may come up in a variety of contexts and can be used in myriad ways. They have active experience with math, but not uniformly.

In many ways the differences described so far are reflective of the fact that the secular activity nodes are teaching knowledge at the grain size of skills, while the religious activity nodes are conveying knowledge at the grain size of practices. Skills are smaller components of

215 things like practices, they tend to be things that can be accomplished without others, and they tend not to be the basic level descriptive category given to activity. A carpenter, when asked, will likely tell you that he is building a garage, when in fact he is doing long division to measure out the length of the two by fours, or screwing in one of the screws. Both of those sub-components are skills necessary for building the garage, but the task itself is the building of the garage.

In the religious part of the day the tasks that the students engage in are conducted at the grain size of tasks, and the tasks are often done exactly as they would be outside of school. Even when the task differs in some way (so that the students can learn the task) they would still name the task with the name of the outside of school task. For example, in the adult world Gemara learning is mostly conducted in Chavrusa, and only a small amount of time is in lecture, while the reverse is true in schools—yet if asked, students would tell you that they are learning Gemara just as the adults would. Similarly, in the younger grades the Davening is not conducted with a quorum of men the way adults conduct Davening (though it is starting in 5th grade), but the practice would still be referred to as Davening. In contrast, very few adults would say that they are doing math, or fractions, they would say that they are calculating the expense report, or figuring out their tax liability.

This reality reflects the fact that the orienting tasks in the secular part of the day are not reflective of larger authentic practices. (This is often true in the secular schools as well). In order to teach the specific skills and content in the secular part of the day, generic tasks are utilized to direct the acquisition of these skills and content. Thus, lecture, discussion, worksheets, and question and answer become prevalent, as they are efficient means of conveying information and developing skills, even if they do not reflect any real practices that exist in the world outside of

216 school. At the level of the task, the particular form of the activity node is unimportant in the secular part of the day, whereas in the religious part of the day the larger task is tied in to the practices of the ultra-Orthodox community, and the way that the task is conducted in school is very important.

Finally, because the religious activity nodes reflect a comprehensive model of behavior that is prescriptive, and the practices are conducted at the same grain size as the practices in the real world, there is a strong feeling of the intrinsic worth of the practices conveyed through participation in those practices. Students engaging in real practices, which are considered to be mandatory, will likely recognize the practices as valuable in and of themselves, rather than for some educational goal. As the student cited in chapter three responded, when asked why they need religious studies, “we learn limud kodesh ‘cuz it’s a mitzvah (commandment). You just need to. It’s about the Jewish religion, we’re Jewish.” The principal of Yeshiva reflected this perspective when he said:

We believe that the purpose of the school is to have children learn… It would

make sense to say that theoretically a child could be academically

accomplishing nothing, but the fact that they’re sitting and learning, even

though they forget everything that they learn, and they’re not really going any

place with it, that would be purposeful in our environment…. In our system the

purpose of children being in school is to learn—whether or not they grow and

actually accumulate the learning, obviously its preferred, its important… but

there is value in learning whether or not it sticks… That’s because that’s the

religious philosophy: that learning is an end unto itself.

217 Worldview and Belief Construction

Another major difference is directly tied to the religious – secular distinction, but does not address the authenticity or grain size of the activities, but their content. In the religious part of the day there is a great deal of explicit worldview and belief instruction, as well as an even greater amount of implicit worldview influencing content. As detailed in the activity node descriptions the religious content is full of assumptions about how the world works, about how

G-d engages in the world, what type of explanations are appropriate for things that happen in the world, and what types of moral and ethical behaviors are acceptable. In addition to worldview influencing material found within content such as Chumash and Gemara, there is also an entire, incredibly frequent activity node, the Vertlach activity node, which consists almost solely of ethical and religious worldview influencing material.

In the secular activity nodes, other than the epistemologically worldview relevant content, there is very little in the way of belief statements or implicit worldview assumptions that deal with the way that the natural world works, the way that the human world works, or morals and ethics. (See the table in Appendix D for a detailed breakdown). In part this is due to the nature of the subject matter. For example, math is often considered a “neutral” subject area that doesn’t stake a real claim to any particular worldview orientation. But in part there is also a conscious choice by the schools to avoid any of the areas where worldview formation and belief statements might be found. For example, literature is an area that is full of implicit assumptions about moral and ethical behavior, and about how the world generally works. There were very few examples of students reading literature in the catalogue of secular activity nodes; for the most part the schools focus on spelling and vocabulary in isolation, and concentrate on reading in

218 the context of history and social studies texts. When they do read literature it is heavily screened for acceptable content, and the students often choose religious books to read (as in the case of the 3rd grade book reports described above).

In addition, there was a conspicuous absence of any science among the secular activity nodes. In all of the classes observed the only science content noted was one example of group work on the topic of ecosystems, and another example of the 1st grade students growing butterflies in their class. That these are the only examples of science is a reflection of the fact that most science content is simply avoided in the ultra-Orthodox schools. Administrators give a variety of reasons for this fact, some expressing regret that they cannot do more science, but they all note among their reasons that science becomes incredibly difficult to teach from a religious perspective because there are many things in science that tread on religious territory and are either contradictory to religion or require complex explication in order to be consistent with religion. The schools avoid that hornet’s nest by leaving out much of the science one would see in other schools.

This is significant from a worldview perspective because science is a major domain that deals with how the world works and what sorts of explanations are appropriate to explain phenomena; according to many it also has deep implications for what constitutes moral and ethical behavior. As such, the opportunity for the schools to provide a complimentary worldview to that provided in the religious part of the day is avoided entirely. This is quite reasonable from the schools’ perspective, as they would hardly be interested in promoting a worldview that is in conflict with the religious worldview. But the significance goes beyond the absence of the worldview content; by avoiding material that contains worldview significant content the schools

219 leave only the driest and least meaningful material to be taught in the secular part of the day.

It is possible that this could isolate the secular material from the students’ lives, implicitly promoting a view of secular knowledge as inherently meaningless, and not relevant to the real world.

Taken together, an analysis of the relationship of the activity nodes to a broader context, and the relevance and worldview significance of their content, demonstrates that the religious activity nodes are situated within a larger, meaningful culture while the secular activity nodes are not. According to Brown et al engaging in authentic activity is “the only way they (learners) gain access to the standpoint that enables practitioners to act meaningfully and purposefully”. The religious activity nodes are conducted precisely in this way, and consequently give the students the tools to act meaningfully and purposefully in the ultra-Orthodox community, whereas the secular activity nodes are not situated in any particular culture or community of practice, and have little connection to authentic practices. (One might note, however, that they are perfectly suitable for allowing students to gain access to the standpoint of the ultra-Orthodox community).

Difficulty of Content

Another major difference between the secular and religious activity nodes is that in most cases the primary religious activity nodes in ultra-Orthodox schools are much more complex and difficult than the secular activity nodes. The major activity node for first grade boys is the study of Chumash. Recall what this involves: The students are studying a dense Biblical text, in

Biblical Hebrew. They are learning how to read Biblical Hebrew, how to translate and increase their vocabulary in Biblical Hebrew, and they are learning Biblical Hebrew grammar, which is not at all simple. In addition, the students are learning the content of the text, and are expected to

220 remember the story being told in the text and the explanations given by their rebbe for the events that take place in that story. Each of these types of knowledge acquisition is difficult on its own (except for remembering the Biblical story, perhaps), and yet 1st graders are expected to do all of them in one activity node. In their secular classes there is no one activity node that has the same level of difficulty. Each activity node is relatively simple, with very few types of content, presented at a low level.

It is difficult to express exactly how one area of knowledge is more difficult than another.

In the next section I will discuss the structural complexity of the activity nodes, which contributes to the issue of difficulty. In theory, one could also suggest counting the number of operations required to solve a problem as a way of assessing difficulty, but not all content is presented in the form of problems with discrete operations. Perhaps within a subject area we can recognize that the acquisition of some skills require knowledge of other more basic skills, and potentially rank the difficulty in that way. Across subject areas, however, assessing difficulty is not an easy task, particularly given individuals’ differences in interest and ability—some students may find literature easier than math and vice versa.

Nevertheless, the argument here is that the level that the chumash and gemara are being presented at is a higher, more difficult, level than that of the secular activity nodes. Because making this sort of comparison is inherently difficult what I will attempt to do here is to present an episode from one gemara class, which I hope will give the reader a sense of what the study of

Gemara is like, and will allow the reader to see the complexity inherent in that study. This cannot decisively prove the point, but I suspect that many readers will recognize the inherent difficulty in what the student are being asked to understand.

221 What follows is a transcription of two and a half minutes of a Gemara class in the 6th grade at Chassidic. In the section being presented here the rebbe is leading the students through the Shakel V’Tarya (the back and forth logical flow) of a Gemara that they have discussed multiple times, prior to examining the argument directly from the Gemara text itself. The section presented here is a relatively simple piece of gemara, as some of the more intricate pieces are so complex that they may lose a reader who is unfamiliar with the Jewish religious and legal concepts.

Because the material is in fact difficult, before actually examining the classroom interaction it might be helpful to have a prior understanding of the content of the material that they were studying. The Gemara that the students were studying consisted of an argument between two sages regarding a case where a person fell in the street and others banged into him and received damage to themselves or to their property. Rav Yochanan, the first sage, maintains that if the person who fell did not have time to get up before others crashed into him then he is not responsible for their damages. Rav Nachman Bar Yitchak, the second sage, argues that he is still responsible for any damages because he should have warned those behind him that he had fallen.

The Gemara then cites a Braisa, (the Braisa is a collection of Mishnaic rulings that are cited by the Gemara, but do not appear in the Mishna itself) that states three rules: The first rule states that if a man fell down and a second tripped on him and a third on the second, the first is obligated to pay the second and the second to pay the third. The second case states that if the second and third people tripped on the first he is obligated to both. The third rule makes the

222 general statement that if someone who fell gives a warning he is not obligated to pay for damages.

The Gemara then asks a question, that Rav Yochanan would appear to be inconsistent with this Braisa, as the first person should not be obligated to pay according to Rav Yochanan.

The Gemara, in its question, assumed that the Braisa was discussing a case where there was no time to get up, and consequently provides the answer that the assumption was incorrect; the

Braisa is discussing a case where he did indeed have time to get up, which is why the Braisa ruled that the first person was obligated to pay. Thus the Braisa would be in accordance with Rav

Yochanan.

The Gemara then poses a problem with this response. If, as the Gemara’s answer says that Rav Yochanan maintains, the entire Braisa is discussing a case where he had time to get up before being hit, why did the Braisa bring up the issue of warning others as the case in which to say that one is not obligated, it should have said more simply that one is not obligated when one didn’t have time to stand up. If the first part of the Braisa is delineating who has to pay in circumstances where the first person fell, but had time to get up, it makes sense to finish with the conclusion that if he did not have time to get up he would not be obligated—why bother saying that if he warned he would not be obligated, as the Braisa does? Given that the Braisa does conclude by identifying the case where one is not obligated as one in which he gave a warning, it would seem that not having time to stand up would not have helped the first person’s case—he would still have been obligated to pay! Thus, it would seem that the Braisa is still irreconcilable with Rav Yochanan.

223 The Gemara answers that according to Rav Yochanan the case of the Braisa is indeed where he had time to stand up, but the reason that the Brasia concluded by saying you are not obligated in the case where you gave a warning, was to convey the specific point that even in a case where you had time to stand up (which Rav Yochanan would agree makes you obligated to pay), if however, you warned the person behind you, you would still not be obligated to pay.

Thus, according to Rav Yochanan the Braisa ended with this point to say that either warning or not having time to stand up removes your culpability. (Whereas, according to Rav Nachman Bar

Yitchak your ability to stand up is entirely irrelevant, your obligation is solely dependent on whether you warned the people behind you).

It is important to recognize that all of this discussion in the Gemara is conveyed in the space of four or five narrow lines of text, a total of thirty to forty words. Much of the background is not elaborated upon, and assumptions are not made clear. One of the tasks that the students have (and indeed any student of the Talmud has) is to decipher what is being said in the Gemara.

What follows is an excerpt of the rebbe leading the students through the flow of this Gemara, which they have already discussed, before turning to the text itself.

(Note: some parts of the discussion were unintelligible, due to mumbling or loud noises near the camera. The overall flow of the discussion is still apparent).

The rebbe begins by asking the students to state the three rulings of the Braisa:

Start at 37:00

Rebbe: Ok, Ephraim Reuven vus shteit in di reisha in di braisa? (what does it say in the

first part of the Braisa?)

Student: Az di ershte mentch shteit un di tzveite mentch (unclear) ois di ershte un di drite

(unclear) ois di tzveite, di ershte mentch is chayuv (unclear) zu di tveite un di tveite is

224 chayuv (unclear) zu di drite. [That the first person is standing (note: the actual case is that the first

person fell) and the second person (unclear) the first, and the third person (unclear) the

second. The first person is obligated (some type of payment) to the second and the second

is obligated (some type of payment) to the third.]

Rebbe: Fine, Mordechai what’s the second din (rule) in the Braisa?

Student: That, um the first person tripped, that uh, the second and third person tripped over

the first person, that uh, and the first person is Chayuv (obligated to pay).

Rebbe: Good, the second and third person both tripped over the first person, so the first

person is Chayuv to pay the second and third person. Tzvi, vus is di drite din in di Braisa?

[What is the third rule in the Braisa?)

Student: Unintelligible

Rebbe: What’s the din (rule)?

Student: Patur (not obligated).

The rebbe then turns to the first question that the Gemara asks, asking a student to first identify what the Gemara’s unstated assumption was, and then the question that was based on that assumption. In addition, the rebbe highlights the argument between the two sages (which is referenced but not repeated in this text) to make clear why the question is a problem according to one sage and not the other:

Rebbe: Patur, fine. The Gemara made an assumption over here, what did the Gemara

assume Shmiel Yakov are we talking about that he had time to get up or he didn’t have

time to get up?

Student: He did not have time to get up.

Rebbe: The gemara assumed he did not have time to get up—who’s the Gemara asking a

Kasha (problematic question) on Gavriel?

Student: Um, Rev Yochanan

Rebbe: What’s the Kasha on Rev Yoichanan?

225 Um that, that, why should he be Chayuv if he didn’t have time to get up?

Rebbe: Why should he be Chayuv if he didn’t have time to get up! Why is it (the Braisa)

good according to Rav Nachman Bar Yitchak, Eliyahu?

Student: Because according to Rav Nachman Bar Yitchak you’re Chayuv even though you

had time.

Rebbe: Why?

Student: Because, it’s a Posheia (legal status of being negligent).

Rebbe: It’s a Posheia, because you should’ve…?

Student: Because you shouldn’t have tripped…

Other student: (yells out) you should have warned!

First student: you should have warned.

Rebbe: you should have warned! So it’s a Kasha on Rav Yoichanan. Entfert di Gemara,

Eli Meir… [The Gemara answers, Eli Meir…]

In the explanation of the argument between the sages note that one student gave the wrong reasoning and another student immediately chimed in to correct him—this is fairly typical in Gemara discussion. The rebbe then asks for the Gemara’s answer and then moves on to the next question and answer of the Gemara:

Student: That he did, he did have time to get up.

Rebbe: He did have time to get up! So Rav Yoichanan says it’s talking about where he did

have time to get up. So that’s why he is Chayev. Freged di gemara, (The Gemara asks)

Efraim Reuven, what’s Shver (difficult) on that?

Student: According to Rav Yoichanan why is he Chayuv, he should be Patur?

Rebbe: What do you mean “why is he chayuv he should be patur”? He is Chayuv because

he had time to get up—the gemara answers, he did have time to get up!

Here, the student had lost track of where the class was in the progression of the Gemara, and when the rebbe asked him what the question was he initially gave the Gemara’s first

226 question, which had already been answered. When this is pointed out to him, he procedes to give the correct question, which the rebbe then repeats before asking another student for the answer:

Student: Oh, that (unintelligible)

Rebbe: So explain the gemara’s Kasha…

Student: So the Sefa (last part) of the Braisa (should have) said that…(unintelligible) you

will be Chayuv when you had time to get up but you will be Patur when you didn’t have

time to get up

Rebbe: Uh! Instead of saying what?

Student: That when he warned he’ll be Patur, just stick by standing up and not standing

up.

Rebbe: Right! Why do you have to say in the Sefa of the Braisa you’re Patur because you

warned, say better, say your Patur because you didn’t have time to get up! Entfert di

gemara Yosef Eliezer… (The Gemara answers, Yosef Eliezer…)

Student: That um, he’s trying to teach you a Chidush (a new non-obvious insight, more

extreme than the simple law).

Rebbe: Uh! What’s the Chidush?

Student: The Chidush is even though you can’t stand up, but if you warned him you’ll still

be Patur.

Rebbe: Even though you can’t stand up, or you could stand up?

Student: Um, even though you could

Rebbe: Even though you could stand up—so really you did something wrong—but if you

warned you would still be Patur. That’s the Shakel V’tarya from the Gemara. Gut (Good)

End at 39:31

In this excerpt the rebbe leads the students through the logical flow of the Gemara by asking each individual student to say what the next step of the logical flow is. Because the text

227 does not state all of its assumptions, and does not quote text that it has stated earlier, the rebbe must fill in that information adding it in to his explanation of the flow of the Gemara. He also must explicate the implications of various arguments, as the implications are not explicitly stated. In this case, the reason why there is a problem with Rav Yochanan and not with Rav

Nachman Bar Yitchok, is not explicitly mentioned by the Gemara, but is implied, and is important for a complete understanding of the text.

It may be apparent from this relatively simple passage that the study of Gemara is a complex endeavor requiring the students to keep track of a wide range of different arguments and opinions, and to think through the implications of numerous different statements in order to ascertain whether they are consistent with each other. Unlike the practice of going around the room asking students questions one by one in other contexts, here, the questions are all part of a larger coherent set of arguments and logical inferences. This means that in order to answer the questions correctly the students must pay attention to each of the other student responses, to understand the overall back and forth of the text.

The study of the Gemara in this way highlights the Talmudic sensitivity to nuances in speech and language. The students must be able to draw subtle inferences from what is actually said in a text, as opposed to what could have, or should have, been said. In part, this reflects the epistemological underpinnings of the Gemara itself, which Orthodox Jews still take seriously, that the text as written is extremely precise and exact, and that when the Mishna or Gemera says something in a certain way it was not the result of sloppy editing or not careful language, but that it was said that way for a specific reason. The assumption is that one is expected to derive

228 numerous laws and rulings from just these sorts of apparent imprecisions, as they are written that way in order to convey specific opinions.

In the ultra-Orthodox schools there is really no secular activity node that provides an appropriate analogue to the study of Gemara. In their secular classes these students are still working on math worksheets, where they fill out ten to fifteen problems of a similar type, or vocabulary sheets where they write sentences for ten different words—my feeling is that these are tasks that do not approach the level of difficulty found in a Gemara class. It is possible that as a result of this the students (and perhaps many of the teachers) begin to see the secular material in a cheapened light. They might believe that the secular material is not something even worth working on; it only consists of a series of hurdles to get through—another math sheet, another chapter of history, another book to read—each is a hurdle that must be jumped, but there is no challenge in it.

This intuition is supported by Stodolsky’s work on activity segments, where she posited that students become more involved in cognitively complex and more novel tasks than in easier, less novel tasks. “We also believe that complex tasks are intrinsically more interesting to pupils than low-level intellectual activities… Students should be more willing and more motivated to attend to cognitively complex tasks than to those at a lower level” (p. 17).

Religious Integration and Secular Isolation

It is apparent from the description of the activity nodes that the religious activity nodes are deeply intertwined with religious life. Students are being taught the underlying moral and ethical axioms of their religion, they are learning about their own religious practice, in a manner that permits the creation of continual and mutually reinforcing mental connections between the

229 classroom and their daily lives, and they are also actively participating in Jewish practice, during prayer and in the cluster of Chumash and Gemara activity nodes. The existence of activity nodes such as Inyonie D’Yoma, which is the study of the Jewish laws that are relevant at a given point in time, demonstrates the way in which the curriculum bends and branches to fit with what takes place religiously in students’ lives. As the Jewish holidays approach, the material being covered in class switches to deal with those holidays. This variability is not seen as resulting in deviations from the “real” curriculum; rather, it is part and parcel of the curriculum. By participating in school activity nodes students are participating in ultra-Orthodox Jewish life, and by participating in ultra-Orthodox Jewish life students are building an ultra-Orthodox worldview.

During the secular part of the day, however, students are not participating in secular life.

The activity nodes that exist during this part of the day are generally stripped of worldview significance, either by avoiding topics that might have some significance such as science, or by the cumulative effect of having the content be simple and disconnected from students lives and the function be the acquisition of select skills, rather than the socialization into learning practices. Taken as a whole, these factors create an extreme version of compartmentalization

(Bieler, 1987) where the secular part of the day has little relevance to, or impact on, the religious.

Because it is the religious part of the day that is well integrated into students’ lives, the compartmentalization of secular studies in the school day results in the secular material becoming thoroughly isolated from the students’ lives.

One way in which this isolation is apparent is by looking at the connections that teachers make to aspects of life outside of the classroom such as students’ home lives, or to their studies in the other part of the day. It is obvious given the description of the religious activity nodes that

230 by their nature they are connected to the students’ religious lives, but the rabbeim also make connections to the secular part of the day and to aspects of the students’ home lives that are not religious in nature. In contrast, the teachers in the secular part of the day, when they are not themselves rabbeim, rarely make connections to the students’ religious lives or to the religious part of the day (they are actually not allowed to do so, by school rules), and some don’t even make connections to the students’ secular lives.

The conceptual and actual disconnect of secular education from the students lives can also be identified by the behavior of the students in class. Heilman (1992b) has identified the behavioral characteristic of “flooding out” (Goffman, 1974) in Conservative and modern

Orthodox students in religious classes, as a result of a disengagement with the material. This lack of seriousness and disruption in class is also present in ultra-Orthodox schools, but not in the religious part of the day, rather, in the secular part of the day. Unlike the differences described so far, which are primarily driven by the activity node itself, these two markers of isolation

(connections to student life and student behavior) vary depending on whether the secular studies teacher is a rebbe or not. In the next section, these two issues will be examined by way of two case studies of teachers observed in this research.

231 Chapter 5: Worldview, Isolation, and the Teacher-Student

Relationship: Rabbeim as Secular Instructors

Following Chapter 2, which provided background information on the community and schools, Chapters 3 and 4, began the task of uncovering the process of socialization and worldview formation in the school day. Chapter 3 looked at the statements made by community members in interviews to explore their beliefs about the purpose of school and the role of secular education, while Chapter 4 looked at the activities and practices in the classroom, and tried to describe the way in which the religious curriculum is built on meaningful, authentic practices of the community and the secular curriculum is not. But the degree to which the secular material might be isolated from the students’ lives is not fixed; as noted at the end of Chapter 4, it may be dependent in a small way on whether the teachers of the secular material are themselves rabbeim.

This chapter will explore the isolation of the secular material in the school day in some depth, using two case studies: that of a rebbe teaching a 6th grade class and that of a non-rebbe teaching an 8th grade class. In particular, I will look at two markers of isolation that vary in the classroom, the extent to which teachers make explicit connections to the students’ lives and student behavior in the classroom. An analysis of student behavior is useful in this context as a signifier of students’ worldview orientation as they engage in the practices of the secular class. In comparison to activity nodes, which appear to remain the same across different teachers and which describe the actual activities the students engage in, an analysis of behavior sheds light on the nature of that engagement. A focus on the connections to students’ lives made by the teachers

232 provides context to the behaviors observed, and will serve as a partial basis for an explanation of the observed behavior.

Following the case studies I will provide a short addendum detailing the students’ behavior and the connections made by the teachers in all of the other observed classes as well.

Before beginning the case studies, however, it is necessary to know something about behavior in secular classes, the practice of hiring rabbeim to teach secular subjects, and the school rules for what types of connections secular teachers can and cannot make in class.

Restrictions on Secular Teachers Making Connections to Religion

The previous chapters discussed the absence of many activity nodes, particularly in subjects such as science and literature, in the secular part of the day. Some of the curriculum choices that drive the presence or absence of activity nodes are based on time constraints and perceptions of what is critical and what can be ignored. However, as I discussed briefly in

Chapter 3, the schools also provide explicit rules that govern what can and cannot be taught; these rules are based on religious constraints and beliefs. For example, students cannot see pictures of people dressed immodestly (from an ultra-Orthodox religious perspective) which limits the book selection for the younger students, as well as precluding science textbooks that may have pictures of the naked body. Sexual discussion is considered off-limits, so the teachers cannot engage the students in “discussions of sex, love, general relations between the sexes, or any form of sex education”.36 This precludes a great deal of literature that one would normally study in class, as relations between the sexes, and romance in general, are major themes

36 Quoted from the teachers’ handbook of Yeshiva.

233 throughout the literary canon. Many areas of science are forbidden because they conflict with the religious beliefs of the community—with evolution being an obvious example.

This phenomenon is not unique to the ultra-Orthodox schools. In his research in a modern

Orthodox school, Lubin (1996) describes the way in which the religious element of the school controls what is and isn't taught in the secular studies classes. In one example, Lubin describes the ripping out of "inappropriate" pages of books in the school library as a way to avoid religiously harmful material. In another, Lubin quotes a teacher who substituted the phrase

"many years" instead of "billions of years" when talking about the age of the universe. The article describes the religious teachers' varied perspectives on the validity, usefulness, and relevance of science, and the non-Jewish teachers' perspectives on these same issues vis-à-vis their role in teaching the Orthodox students. Similarly, in looking at the way in which teaching secular studies in a Jewish day school was very different than teaching in public school, Pomson

(2000) highlighted the extent to which the teachers had to shoehorn the curriculum into the time allotted, and make sure that it conformed to all of the constraints that the school imposed upon them.

In ultra-Orthodox schools, however, there are further constraints imposed on secular teachers, beyond the removal of material from the secular classes: Teachers cannot engage in any discussion that might be of religious import. This means that secular teachers cannot make connections to the students’ religious lives or to material that the students are studying in their religious classes. It also means that they cannot cover topics that discuss religion in any way— thus, even material that has real religious meaning to these students, or that supports religion in

234 some way, must be avoided by teachers37. Two examples given by the secular studies principal at Lubavitch, Mrs. Harosh, illustrate this point:

______

The 8th grade teacher says that she doesn't teach it (the Holocaust) from a

religious perspective, she doesn't teach, in fact she davka (deliberately) stays

away from that… to make sure that, that the right hashkofa (religious worldview)

comes across from their Hebrew (religious studies) teachers as opposed to from

their English (secular studies) teachers, so she—when a conversation starts to

cross that bound—she says "talk to your rebbe, talk to your Morah (the religious

teachers).

______

So they do explorers—so one parent called up and complained, “my child got

this explorer but he was an awful person, why do you have to pick people who

killed people? You know? What kind of…” So Rabbi R. and I actually had a

meeting with the family and it was about something else...and this came up, we

said, you know, we try to avoid making those judgment calls… We try to avoid

doing that, because sometimes the perspective of the teacher is not always

exactly in the derech (path).

In the first example, the Holocaust represents a topic of potential religious import, and in fact, the students are sometimes exposed to its significance in the stories and vertlach that their religious instructors tell them. Nevertheless, the secular teacher could not discuss this with the

37 The teachers’ handbook at Yeshiva stated: “Religious Topics: secular studies teachers should not discuss these topics. They are best avoided in discussions. If they appear in texts, they are to be omitted or discussed with the principal.” Examples of this restriction will be discussed in the case studies contained in this paper.

235 students; she had to teach the class from an entirely secular perspective. In the second case, the subject actually touched on an important religious value. The students were learning about an explorer, and the parent was upset that the secular teacher did not make a value judgment about this particular explorer, who was by all accounts a terrible person. The school, however, explained that although refraining from such assessment created a situation potentially counter to religious values, actually expressing it would be even worse, because values are religious in nature and thus belong in the religious part of the day. Thus, the teachers are explicitly asked not to comment on matters pertaining in any way to religion, whether these involve questions of belief, value, or practice. The principal of that school told me that when hiring new secular teachers he always insists, “that if an issue comes up that has anything to do with religion they have to be very forthright and say, ‘it’s not my department’”.

Behavior in Secular Studies Classes

Historically, student behavior in secular studies classes in ultra-Orthodox schools has been extremely bad. When concluding a long interview with the assistant principal in charge of the secular education at Yeshiva (who himself was a rebbe in the school) the assistant principal commented that he was surprised that he wasn’t asked about the students’ misbehavior in secular studies—he thought that was what the researcher would be naturally interested in, as it is his most pressing concern. He had recently given a talk at an Orthodox education convention (Torah

U’Mesorah) on this very issue, and had begun to implement a school wide program to work on proper derekh eretz, (respectful behavior).

Another administrator at Yeshiva, Rabbi Malick, attributed the misbehavior to the fact the students know and respect the rabbeim as purveyors of Torah, so the rabbeim have little to do

236 in the way of class management. In the secular part of the day, however, the students feel that the teachers are outsiders. Therefore, as he put it, “unless they are very skilled they are gonna have a very hard time; and they do… they do. Most of them express a tremendous disappointment that they came to a religious school expecting that the kids will be better behaved and they find it to be exactly the opposite. That’s something I find terribly troubling.”

As we will see in this chapter students in the classes observed constantly challenged the perspectives implied by the secular material. Students were expert at challenging the teacher with questions such as, “why do we have to know this”, and with luring the teachers into extended discussions of the value of the material. More than one teacher attempted an explanation in response to a prompt, only to give up in exasperation, and refer the students to their religious teachers. It appeared that both the teachers and the students know that the teachers’ response to these challenges is necessarily limited, and that the students know that they can disrupt the class in this way with impunity.

The 4th grade rebbe at Yeshiva said in an interview, “let’s be real—that stuff is harder to teach—when we teach the kids will go home and see the stuff in action, they will go home and have Pesach (Passover) they won’t go home and see a math problem… From the kids’ perspective everything points to Hebrew, and it’s hard to take it seriously in English.” The principal of Chassidic asserted that for secular teachers “the talent is to be able to teach this stuff even though they [the students] are trying to reject it”. He further stated that the student rejection of the material stemmed from a feeling of a lack of relevance: “(the students think) this teacher doesn’t mean anything to me because he’s teaching me subjects that are totally irrelevant as far as I’m concerned”.

237 This perspective on the misbehavior reflects the conceptual isolation of the secular studies in ultra-Orthodox schools. As documented in the previous chapters, the secular activity nodes were simpler in content, were not tied to the students lives, and were stripped of a great deal of worldview significance. The inability of teachers to connect to the students’ religious lives only exacerbates the problem. To a large extent there is a fundamental disconnect between the secular material and these students’ lives, which likely causes a great deal of the misbehavior found in secular classrooms.

The Practice of Hiring Rabbeim as Secular Instructors

In recent years the ultra-Orthodox schools have instituted the new practice of hiring rabbeim themselves as secular instructors. According to administrators interviewed in this research the practice is the result of a number factors. First and foremost the schools are trying to combat student disrespect and misbehavior in every way possible. They reasoned that when the secular teacher is also a rebbe, the very source of religious authority for these students, the discipline problems stemming from an epistemological disconnect with the material would be greatly reduced. And whereas thirty years ago schools struggled to find rabbeim to come and teach, today there is a culture in the Orthodox community that highly values rabbeim, and the schools can pick and choose among the many applicants for rabbeim who are also capable of teaching secular material. Furthermore, for the rabbeim, who earn small salaries, teaching secular studies affords them an opportunity to have a full-time job.

Of the three schools included in this study, only Chassidic has fully adopted this model.

All of the secular studies teachers are Orthodox, and many of them are themselves rabbeim. In contrast, Lubavitch has not hired any rabbeim as teachers, and only a few of its teachers are even

238 nominally Orthodox. Yeshiva lies somewhere in between, as in recent years the school has increased the number of secular classes taught by rabbeim. Currently, about half of the classes are taught by rabbeim at Yeshiva.

This shift raises a number of questions. In the religious part of the day the rabbeim are free to make connections to whatever they please; the material is intrinsically deeply connected to the students’ lives. What about the secular part of the day? Though the schools forbid teachers from making any connections to religion, it would seem that rabbeim might naturally make these connections. Indeed, my interviews with administrators revealed that their restrictions on religious content in the secular part of the day were relaxed when the secular instructors were themselves rabbeim. As noted earlier, the administrators explained their desire to prevent religious discussion in the school day in terms of the students taking advantage of the teachers and disrupting the classroom. Because the administrators were not explicitly concerned with a blending or shifting of worldviews in secular class (they took the stability of the religious worldview for granted) the rabbeim and administrators at Chassidic, where all of the secular teachers were either rabbeim or ultra-Orthodox, did not initially see any problem with discussing religion in the secular part of the day. It was only when I asked them if this would be true as well if the teacher was not a rebbe that they backtracked and said it would not be okay. For example,

Rabbi Liebberg, the principal at Chassidic, initially said, “Teachers should try to make these connections; if I open a book about huts in Tibet, ask about whether it would be a Kosher Sukka

(ritual hut on the holiday of Sukkot), you want to be able to know whether he is plowing or seeding then you know what Melacha (restricted Sabbath activity) he is doing for Shabbos.”

When I followed by asking if this was true for non-rabbeim as well, he immediately said, “No

239 then they can’t make connection, a Limudei Kodesh teacher could, but not—you don’t want negative transfer; modern Orthodox could even be worse.”

It seems that the administration attitude toward secular education is more complex and ambiguous than simple isolation, as they appear to take the position that secular education should be strong and should be meaningful. They seem to be saying, however, “What can we do? If secular teachers try to create connections to religion and make this meaningful it will lead to all sorts of behavior problems and wasted time, and they may even manage to impact the students in a way we don’t approve of. If, however, we had rabbeim in the classroom the behavior would be better, we wouldn’t have to worry about inappropriate content, and the students would take the material seriously when rabbeim made connections to religion.” How might this shift in attitude, which carries the potential for greater student engagement with secular content, affect worldview development in the schools?38

38 Given this attitude, one might ask how, if at all, is this practically different than a modern Orthodox approach, one that tries to synthesize religious and secular knowledge?

That there is a difference can be seen immediately by the fact that both Rabbis Liebberg and Perlman specifically mentioned modern Orthodox teachers as potentially being the most troublesome, and Rabbi Merzel also stated that modern Orthodox teachers should not discuss religion. One way in which the ultra-Orthodox approach differs is in the framing, the mutual understanding of the meaning of the activity. In the ultra-Orthodox context it is taken as a given that the secular material is entirely subordinate to the religious material, whereas in the modern Orthodox context it is assumed that there is great value in secular knowledge. In the ultra-Orthodox context the goal is to show the relevance and meaningfulness of the secular knowledge only in places where that knowledge happens to provide insight or support to the religious worldview, very much unlike a true modern Orthodox perspective that would see secular knowledge as having its own independent truth and validity.

In practice, the ideal connections described by Rabbi Liebberg would not necessarily be substantially different those that might be found in the modern Orthodox context, apart from one important difference, found in the structure of the activities themselves—a direct result of the larger framing. In the ultra-Orthodox context the activities are designed around the ultimate goal of the acquisition of skills and support of ultra-Orthodox life, and as such, their overall structure is not built with religious-secular synthesis in mind, but rather, when the opportunity arises in the course of study Rabbi Liebberg would expect these connections to be made. In a religious environment that values secular knowledge religiously and intrinsically, these types of connections are an essential part of the curriculum, as the discussion of integration in the modern Orthodox literature makes clear. (As noted by above, however, Lubin (1996) has shown that at least some modern Orthodox schools also exclude material that is directly contrary to religion; as such, even in that context the secular is still not treated as entirely independent of religion.)

240 First, we might ask whether the presence of a rebbe in the secular class has the effect of improving student behavior in the classroom. This is of interest both because the use of rabbeim is intended to have this effect (and it would be interesting to know if the solution is successful), and because improved behavior may represent an increased sense of engagement with the secular material, which could significantly affect the overall impact of the secular studies. Fundamentally, if indeed rabbeim make more connections to religion in the school day and student behavior is improved, this might represent a shift in the overall impact of the activity nodes found in the secular part of the day.

In addition, the appointment of rabbeim as secular teachers appears to ensure that at some level the isolation of the secular material must be penetrated. Even in the secular-studies classroom, these figures represent a source of great religious authority to the students. This has many possible consequences. On the one hand, the rabbeim have, in some sense, already filtered the secular material through their own religious understanding, and thus the output in the classroom might no longer reflect a secular worldview—the material would be pre-sanitized. On the other hand, it is possible that by having the rabbeim teach secular material, the schools would implicitly legitimate this material. This new arrangement might convey to the students the possibility of secular and religious knowledge not only coexisting, but even serving to mutually reinforce each other—however fragmentary the presentation of the former may be.

The case studies that follow will be used to examine these issues. Specifically, the case studies will focus on the connections made by the teachers and rabbeim in the secular part of the day, the behavior of the students in class, and will compare the activity nodes found in the two

241 classrooms. It is the nature of case studies that each case has its own peculiarities and nuances, which makes it unwise to generalize too broadly from limited data; this is of course true here as well. Even a case study presentation of all six secular studies instructors included in this study would not provide a basis for broad generalization; each teacher is unique, and the six secular instructors in the study represent only a small non-random sample of the total number of instructors. Rather, the purpose in presenting these cases here is to explore the dynamics at play in two classrooms, and to see how those dynamics relate to the larger questions. Some rabbeim may make more or less connections than the one described here, and some non-Orthodox teachers may handle the students better or worse than this teacher. Nevertheless, these two cases can still function as detailed existence proofs for the types of dynamics that we might expect to find in the classrooms, given the larger cultural and educational context.

Case Studies: Data and Methods

For these case studies two teachers who taught similarly aged students were chosen from the observed classes. Mrs. Weiss* taught eighth graders in Lubavitch and Rabbi Aberman* taught both religious studies to fifth graders in Yeshiva, and secular studies to sixth graders in Hasidic.

Both teachers taught secular studies for about two hours Monday through Thursday, with a schedule that varied by season on Fridays39. In both schools there was a rough outline of a curriculum that the teachers were supposed to follow, but the curriculum did little more than prescribe which books they would use. For the most part, the in-class time was divided as the

39Because the Jewish Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday, there is very little school time available on Friday during the winter months.

242 teachers pleased. This setup was common to all of the classes visited; teachers had great leeway in deciding what would be taught, and how much time would be spent on each topic.

These classes were visited over the course of April and May of 2005, and each class was videotaped. Each of the teachers was videotaped for approximately five hours, spread over multiple classes, and each teacher was interviewed as well, along with some of the students in each class. In Chapter 4 I described the process of building the catalogue of activity nodes. As part of that process all of the videotaped observation was reviewed and marked for start and stop times of content and structure, and worldview significant material. Throughout the review of the classroom data there were additional categories that were noted as well; these were: behavior, teacher skill, connections to the religious part of the day or to the students lives, and a marker of non-instructional time. These categories helped impose some structure on the process of reviewing the many classroom observations. (The methods of analysis for the interviews were discussed in Chapter 3, and Mrs. Weiss’s interview can be viewed with the interview coding in its entirety in the appendix).

The first category that I would like to describe is that of student behavior. Measuring behavior in classrooms is a complicated matter. It is not simply a question of the degree to which students engage or disengage, interrupt, listen to instructions, act rudely, or make noise in class; it is also a question of the nature of the engagement, the content of interruption, the tone taken, and the degree to which the teacher accepts some amount of disorder and chaos. As such, in the case studies that follow I have tried to describe in as great detail as possible, the nature of the behavior that was observed in the two classrooms. Through these descriptions I hope to depict the tone and atmosphere of the classes in a clear and convincing way. To provide some context

243 to the qualitative descriptions, however, I have also conducted some targeted coding of student behavior, the nature of which I will now explain.

A large percentage of classroom behavior or climate research relies on surveys and other forms that are filled out by teachers outside of class. One prominent example of this is the

Classroom Behavior Inventory (CBI) (Schaefer, Edgerton, & Aaronson, 1978) which has been used to examine classroom dimensions such as task orientation and distractibility, extroversion and introversion, considerateness and hostility, and creativity and curiosity (e.g. Howes, 2000;

McKinney, McClure, & Feagans, 1982). Other teacher-assessed measures40 looked at interest and participation (Alexander, Entwisle, & Dauber, 1993) and at “environment” (Raviv, 1990).41

Other efforts to gauge classroom behavior that have been administered out of class, but to students rather than teachers, include Chavez’s use of My Class Inventory and Learning

Environment Inventory (Chavez, 1984), and Pekarik’s use of the Pupil Evaluation Inventory

(Pekarik, 1976).

What all of these measures have in common is that they tell us something about participants perceptions of classroom behavior and environment, summarizing many, many days of class into one overall measure. At the other end of the spectrum are coding schemes that are scored by researchers during class observation and which measure specific target behaviors or types of engagement. One early example of this was the OScAR instrument (Medley & Mitzel,

1963) which attempted to reduce observer judgment to a minimum, focusing on clearly observable behaviors. Many of the in-class observation protocols that have been used since focus on very short time segments, and are targeted on individual students, rather than the whole class.

40 Meaning: the measurement assesses teachers’ perceptions. 41 See Blunden et al. (1974) for a list of other teacher assessed behavioral measures, and chapter 11 of Schloss and Smith (1998) for a detailed examination of methods for teachers to assess behavior in their classes.

244 For example, the SCAN protocol (McKinney, McClure, & Feagans, 1982) consisted entirely of a ten minute chunk of class, with scoring recorded every five seconds, the Peer Play Scale

(Howes & Matheson, 1992) used three 5 minute observations of 2 children (chosen over the course of three hours of observation), and in a coding scheme looking at challenging behavior

Chandler et al. (1999) looked at ten 3-minute observations per small group of children. Other similar, short time scale observation protocols include Perkins (1964) (two-minute samples taken weekly) and Blunden (1974) (coding at 15-second intervals).

Unlike out of class surveys, which are quite broad, these instruments provide immediate specific data about behaviors that take place in class. What they gain in specificity, however, they naturally lose in generality. The measures tend to be limited to frequency counts of very narrow behaviors, and there is deliberately little flexibility in the ability of the researcher to make judgments beyond the very visible behaviors that are targeted. Because these measures often do not measure the entire class at the same time, they don’t give us a sense of the class as a whole.

In this research, I was looking for data that would help to structure and corroborate my qualitative sense of what the overall class climate was like, how the students interacted with the teachers, and how the teachers ran the class. This type of data is difficult to systematize, and, to be convincing, really depends on the independent existence of a detailed qualitative analysis. The descriptive, ethnographic account fills in the numerous details that surveys and narrow observation protocols miss. All that being said, one would still like to impose some systematicity on the protocol for the analysis of data.

As such, in order to support the analysis of the overall behavior and discipline in the observed classes I modified a technique employed by Fred Hess in the Classroom Observation

245 Protocol (2005). The observation protocol essentially blends the strengths of out of class surveys and in class observations by having the in-class observer fill out what amounts to a small survey for every 10 minutes of class. Along with continuous note taking regarding the variables of interest to the observer, at every ten minute marker the observer fills out a form indicating the most frequent or dominant rating for a variety of variables, such as depth of questioning or numbers of students actively engaging. In addition, at the end of every class the observer fills out a detailed survey that asks for overall data on the class. This format is similar to a survey in that it is a generalization of specific data; one doesn’t mark down and rate every question asked by a student or teacher for its depth, rather, the observer determines what the most frequent or dominant mode of questioning was for every ten minute period. This essentially functions as a compromise between the two types of behavior analysis. Ultimately, this approach relies on the judgment of the observer (it is perception based in this respect), but it also imposes a structured framework onto the observations, increasing the rigor and systematicity.

The adaptation of this instrument for the purposes of this study consisted of narrowing the time-frame of the observation segments and changing the questions to suit the needs of the study. Because I was interested in a more limited number of classroom phenomena and had access to videotapes of the classes, the time frame for coding the variables of interest was shortened to every five minutes. During each of the five-minute segments a few different measures of behavior were assessed, using a five-point scale, with 1 representing the best behavior and 5 the worst. The first measure of behavior tracked was chaos, this was a measure of how chaotic, wild, and noisy a class was. This measure was assessed without considering whether the teacher permitted the chaos, as is sometimes the case. There were three variables

246 that were used to attend to the chaos in a classroom: student movement, noise, and organization. Student movement and noise are self-explanatory; organization refers to whether the behavior of the students is organized around a coherent task or is scattered and, for lack of a better word, chaotic.

The three variables were not assessed independently, but were the factors considered when giving a chaos rating to any five-minute period. It was the interplay between the variables that produced the result, so that if the class was very noisy, students were running around, and their movement and noise was not organized in a meaningful way, the chaos rating would be a 5.

If the students were quiet, sitting in their seats, and were organized in a particular task the rating would be a 1. Levels 2, 3, and 4 indicated the presence of these three variables in greater or lesser degrees.

The second measure of behavior assessed for each five-minute segment was class functioning. This measure aimed to assess how well the class functioned relative to the teachers’ own goals for the class. This measure was independent of the chaos measure, which meant that it was possible to have a class that rated highly on the functioning scale, but poorly on the chaos scale, as some teachers allow (indeed, even encourage) movement and noise in the class. This measure once again used a five-point scale. The primary factors attended to in this rating were teacher control and student participation. Teacher control was assessed by looking at how the students responded to instructions from the teacher; was the teacher able to get the students to do what he or she wanted, or did the teacher have to ask numerous times, and possibly threaten or yell at students to get them to do the task? Related to this is the question of whether the teacher was able to get the students to participate in the academic tasks at all, or whether class was

247 derailed by a lack of student participation. As with the chaos measure, these were not measured independently, but were taken into account in assigning a number (1 – 5) to any one five-minute segment. To be clear, if the teacher did not have any particular academic task in mind, and did not attempt to get the students to engage in an academic task, the segment was not considered to be an example of poor classroom functioning; classroom functioning was measured in relation to the goals of the teacher.

The final measure was Chutzpah, which is personal rudeness towards the teacher. Poor behavior can take many forms, from very passive disinterest to ignoring instructions to out-and- out rudeness. For this measure, I was interested in identifying behaviors that have been referred to as active resistance, acts of “overt defiance (that) can chip away at a teacher’s authority and the legitimacy of tasks until all official sanctions and controls at the teacher’s discretion are depleted” (McFarland, 2001 Pg. 614). In most cases this type of defiance takes the form of what would be referred to in this community as Chutzpah, rude comments, personal questions, and brazen disobedience. This measure was included as a result of having initially observed the presence of Chutzpah in a number of classes, and was rated on the same five-point scale as the other two measures. In this case the rating was assigned based on the interplay between the frequency of the Chutzpah and the severity of the Chutzpah. To arrive at a measure for each class, the rating for each five-minute segment was averaged over the course of the whole class.

The three measures, chaos, functioning, and chutzpah, are meant to serve as an additional lens with which to view the behavior in the classes. To some extent the ratings in these categories are only convincing to the extent that they correspond to the qualitative descriptions that make up the bulk of this chapter. Nevertheless, I also attempted to conduct a small amount

248 of independent reliability testing on the ratings. I picked fourteen five-minute segments from the total corpus of classroom video, and after training another researcher on three of the five- minute segments, had the researcher code the remaining eleven. The segments were chosen to provide some range in the coding results, and to be understandable to outsiders (many classes are in Yiddish and many others cover topics that would be difficult to follow without some background knowledge). The coder was not told how the segments were chosen.

Based on the eleven segments, the independent researcher shared the same essential perceptions of the behavior in the classrooms as I did. There was only one measure for one teacher (out of a total of thirty three possible) where the researcher deviated from my code by more than one point (on a scale of 1 to 5).

Chaos Function Chutzpah IR Me IR Me IR Me 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 2 1 1 1 1 3 3 2 2 1 1 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 4 3 5 4 1 3 1 1 Table 26: Reliability Testing

The area where there was the most consistency in coding was chutzpah. One of the major arguments in this chapter is that chutzpah was rare in the classes observed, and was only present in secular classes taught by secular teachers. Though there was a substantial amount of chaos in many classes the independent researcher only noted the chutzpah in the one case where there was substantial chutzpah, and recognized the absence of chutzpah in the other cases. In the

249 functioning category there was agreement in seven of the eleven classes; in three classes the coding was off by one, and in one class the coding was off by two. Though there were no large differences in the ratings for the level of chaos, there was only exact agreement in six of the eleven cases.

This small test of reliability does not, on its own, indicate an independently valid system of coding. It does demonstrate, however, that the independent coder and myself perceived the behavior in the observed classes similarly—where I had a high rating, so did he, and where I had a low rating, he did as well. But to be clear, this process of coding the behavior in class, like the rest of the dissertation, relies heavily on qualitative interpretation. Throughout the reset of this chapter I attempt to describe in great detail the nature of the behaviors observed in class, and I provide examples of the different phenomena observed. The two types of data should be seen as mutually reinforcing one another—the qualitative descriptions should provide some measure of legitimacy to the numbers, and the numbered ratings should provide some assurance that the qualitative data was treated comprehensively and systematically42.

The other categories that were noted in the review of the observations were connections, teacher skill, and the amount of non-instructional time in class. These categories, along with the three behavior categories were placed along the top of an array, with the a minute by minute sequencing running vertically down the left hand side of the display (Table 27).

42 Given the basic agreement in the interpretation of observations in the eleven five-minute segments, I am confident that were a test of reliability conducted with the entire corpus of video data, the results would be essentially the same as those provided here, as the differences in this small reliability test were ones of calibration, rather than interpretation. Unfortunately, I did not have the resources to hire another investigator to conduct a complete analysis.

250 Time On/Off Chaos Functioning Chutzpah Behavior Skill Connections Instruction notes 1 Off 2 On She chooses a bio of Harry Houdini because he was Jewish, then kid says Houdini’s father was a Rabbi in WI 3 Kids argue about word meanings with her 4 Pushes for deeper understanding: “I want to know what does it represent” 5 2 1 1 A good deal of yelling Table 27: Example of Case Study Coding

The table above compresses a wide time range into five minutes to provide real examples of the different categories. The time is marked on the left of the table, followed by the instructional time. The first minute of this five-minute segment is coded as non-instructional time, followed by four minutes of on-task class time. The three measures of behavior are to the right; in this case, chaos is given a two, indicating some amount of movement and disorder, but the functioning and Chutzpah are given 1’s indicating that there were no problems in those areas over the previous five minutes. The behavior description category allowed me to take notes on specific examples of behavior, and the teacher skill category provided me with the same ability for that category. Similarly, the connections category allowed me to note any instance of a connection to their religious classes or lives.

251 Two Teachers

As noted above the two teachers were Mrs. Weiss and Rabbi Aberman. Mrs. Weiss is an elderly non-Orthodox Jewish lady. She dressed in suits and blouses, clothing that is considered standard for women in the ultra-Orthodox community, but she did not cover her hair as is expected of married women in the ultra-Orthodox community. When asked how long she had been teaching she informed the researcher that it was “longer than you’ve been alive”. She had been a teacher in non-Jewish schools for many years, with a B.S. in education and, in her words,

“almost a Master’s”. She had been retired from teaching and initially took the job at Lubavitch as a favor to a teacher who was leaving to have a baby, and when the teacher did not return the following year she stayed on in her stead. At the time she was interviewed she had been teaching in Lubavitch for thirteen years.

Rabbi Aberman is a Chassidic man who dresses in a traditional long black coat, a bekeshe, and has a long grey beard with side locks that go down to his toes, (though he rolls them up and tucks them under his Yarmulka). When interviewed, Rabbi Aberman had been a rebbe at Yeshiva for 36 years. He first became a rebbe at a time when schools were having a hard time finding rabbeim willing to teach. He had just been married and had had no particular experience or training, but the school was desperate. In his view he had to learn on the job and innovate in order to be successful. He took great pride in his close relationships with his students and the easy, low-pressure atmosphere of his classes. Eight years prior to the interview he took the job at Hasidic as a secular teacher in order to supplement his income to pay for the expenses of marrying off his daughters. He had had no training as secular teacher, but in his view had done well in high school, and enjoyed learning secular content.

252 Mrs. Weiss

The classes in Lubavitch tended to be smaller than in the other schools, ranging from ten to fifteen boys per grade. The eighth grade had 12 students in it, although one student did not participate in the secular part of the day, because his parents objected on religious grounds.

During that time he would do religious work in another part of the school. Mrs. Weiss’s classroom was visited six times for a total of almost five hours. The students were interested in the research and frequently asked many questions about the study.

Typically the students would begin class by filtering in from recess in small groups and playing around in the classroom until the teacher managed to get enough of their attention to begin working. Mrs. Weiss would come in and begin class by writing a schedule of what they would be doing in their allotted two hours. She usually broke the activities into half hour chunks.

During the observation they worked on some math, but most of their activities consisted of some combination of history, vocabulary, spelling, and current events.

Activity Nodes

There were nine different activity nodes observed in Mrs. Weiss’s class. The most frequently repeated activity node was the everyday ritual of ending class with fifteen minutes of video watching. The students were working their way through a lengthy PBS documentary on

World War II, and were given the last fifteen minutes of each class to watch it while the teacher straightened the room, gathered her materials, and prepared to go. There were three instances each of the constitution reading and lecture activity node and the vocabulary out-loud review activity node. As described earlier, in the first activity node, either she or the students would read from a text on the constitution, and she would intersperse some lecturing in between paragraphs.

253 In the second, she would go around the room asking each student to read a sentence that he had written for the vocabulary that they had been studying. In the same subject domain, there were also two observed instances of vocabulary desk work, and one of constitution desk work, which involved the students writing sentences for vocabulary words and answering questions about the constitution, individually at their desks.

The only math observed consisted of two instances of the activity node math desk work and one instance of the idiosyncratic looking up stocks activity node. Unlike many other classes the math in these activity nodes was not drawn from a set of problems in a book, but was chosen based on topics that Mrs. Weiss thought would be useful to them, such as calculating mortgages.

Outside of math too, Mrs. Weiss frequently chose content that she thought would be important for the students to know. Thus, she informed me (in casual conversation) that discussion of current events was a regular staple in her classroom. (Though it was only observed once as a coherent activity node, Mrs. Weiss frequently digressed from other material to talk briefly about current events). Similarly, she occasionally brought in short biographies for the class to read out-loud together—ones that she thought would be relevant and interesting to the students. This activity node (biography reading and lecture) was observed once as well. There was no study of science or literature, and no grammar or essay writing in Mrs. Weiss’s classes; these were noticeably absent.

Mrs. Weiss was moderately efficient at moving the class along from one topic to the other. The amount of non-instructional time stayed at around five or six minutes per observation

(usually 45 minute to an hour). Her choice of math work was consistent with the school’s general perspective that secular education should be practically oriented only. During my observations

254 they reviewed work that they had done on figuring out mortgages, they practiced tracking stocks in the newspaper and assessing their value, and they even worked on supermarket math, something that would ordinarily be considered lower level math. The constitution activity nodes were motivated by the fact that the students were studying for an Illinois test on the constitution.

From a purely historical angle this involved some review of the American Revolution as well as issues regarding the ideology that went into the structure of the constitution and the context within which the constitution was written. The study of the constitution also involved knowledge of the content of the constitution, which they were grilled on by the teacher to ensure that they would pass the test.

In the current events activity node Mrs. Weiss would bring in newspaper articles related to the history that they were learning. For example, in one class the students had to read an article about racist activities at soccer stadiums in Israel. This prompted a discussion intended to compare Israeli rights with American rights, and how hate speech laws might be seen in either context, considering the way the constitution is structured in the U.S. In addition, the teacher wanted the students to be able to read the newspaper critically, and form opinions based on the facts contained therein. This particular episode will be discussed in greater detail shortly.

Teaching Style

Mrs. Weiss taught in with a straightforward style; her lessons were neither creative nor sophisticated, but they were competent, and they reflected adequate knowledge of the material.

For the most part when engaging in historical discussions, she asked many questions to the students, both of the simple factual kind and those that were meant to provoke thought or express opinion. In teaching math she pushed the students to show their understanding of the material,

255 pressing them with statements like “I don’t want to know the number you have—tell me, what does that number represent”.

Her teaching was in many ways quite conventional, and she always demonstrated great engagement with the topics she was teaching. The activity nodes in her class tended to fall into a few basic forms. She gave the students a lot of desk work where she did nothing more than sit and answer student questions. They read history and current events out-loud together, (either she read, or chose students to read), and she would define words, or ask for definitions as they went along. Conducting activity nodes in this way did not require her to do much actual teaching, though the discussions prompted by the material often gave her an opportunity to discuss interesting topics with the students.

In Mrs. Weiss’s class there was very little direct instruction; she did not lecture or set aside time to transmit material other than what she read from a text. This was in part a product of the fact that they were nearing the end of the school year (it was April) and much of the material was review, but it was also due in part to a preference for teaching in response to questions and in the context of class discussion. Another contributing factor, perhaps, may have been the fact that they did not study science or work on grammar, two subjects that might lend themselves more to direct instruction.

Her knowledge of the material was adequate, and where she didn’t know the answers to questions she would say so, and tell the students she would look it up. Over the course of the observation I noticed four slight content errors, one on the constitution, and three in definitions of vocabulary; all four were minor. She did make one big mistake, however, in her explanation of how to calculate mortgage payments, which was quite significant considering the purpose of

256 learning mortgages was for its practical applications. In telling them how to calculate monthly payments of principal and interest she failed to take into account the fact that the total amount of the loan decreases as you pay off the principal, which makes the problem more complex, and she only calculated the interest over one year. The students had some difficulty with her explanation, and this difficulty appeared to arise from these issues, but she did not see the mistakes and persisted in explaining the material in the same way.

Connections

In keeping with the rules of the school, Mrs. Weiss carefully avoided making any connections between the material that they were learning and any religious issue. They discussed

Israel a number of times, but she steered away from discussing anything about its relationship to

Judaism. When opportunities arose to make connections she declined to discuss the issue. For example, the students wanted to discuss President Bush’s religiosity as a factor in his support for

Israel, but knowing that that conversation would veer into forbidden territory, she shifted gears to other factors. During one class, when a student read the sentence he constructed for the word

“permanence” that included reference to G-d’s permanence, she deliberately did not respond, and moved on to the next student.

Mrs. Weiss also deliberately avoided content that would be deemed problematic by the school. One example of this was that when she handed out newspapers during the stock tracking project, and again during the discussion of current events, she stapled the pages down so that the students would only be able to see the content chosen for them and would not read about other things that might be religiously inappropriate, or see images that are forbidden (for example, underwear ads). As noted above, the class also did not study any science or read any literature.

257 Though she did not make connections to the students’ religious lives, she did try to make connections to their Jewish lives. Thus, her choice of topic for current events was frequently Israel. She was careful to avoid any religious element to the discussion but there is no doubt that she felt that these topics were important to the students simply as Jews, if not religious

Jews. Similarly, she chose the Houdini biography as one of a series in a book of Jewish

American biographies, and highlighted with great pride his accomplishments as an American

Jew.

Finally, she also made connections to the students’ secular lives. The math that she chose to have them study, from mortgages to stocks to supermarket math, was all relevant to the students’ lives. In addition, in their constitution work she frequently gave examples of laws and law processes that were driven by elements that she believed they experienced in their daily lives.

Behavior and Discipline

As noted above, I used a rating scale to help assess behavior in the class. The average ratings in the three categories for the six classes observed is presented below, and following an explanation of the numbers I will describe the classes in great detail:

Chaos Functioning Chutzpah 1.4 1.2 1.7 1.2 1.2 1.2 2.3 1.4 1.4 1.8 1 1.4 2.4 1.6 1.5 1.9 1 1.4 Table 28: Mrs. Weiss Behavior Ratings

258 Note that while the level of chaos ranged from 1.2 to close to 2.4, the class functioning was much better, ranging from a perfect 1 to 1.6. This was representative of the fact that while there was great deal of movement around the classroom by students, a constant low level of chatter taking place, and lots of interruptions, for the most part this reflected the classroom culture and the students were doing what she asked of them. They were learning the material she taught, working on the assignments she gave, and participating in discussions.

However, there was also a considerable amount of Chutzpah in the classes observed, with every class having some instances of chutzpah and some having multiple. Though the range of 1.2 to

1.7 is not as high as the chaos, the existence of chutzpah is more significant, as even a few very rude comments or behaviors in a class can create an unpleasant atmosphere for a teacher.

In response to student misbehavior Mrs. Weiss employed the disciplinary technique of snapping or yelling at students to reprimand them for talking, arguing, being rude, playing with toys, or disrupting the class in some other way. She sometimes told students to apologize to one another as well as to her, and occasionally threatened them with missing recess, or not being able to watch the World War Two video. In one of the six observations she threw a student out of class.

The Chutzpah that was observed in Mrs. Weiss’s class took a very specific form, one that is worthy of greater attention. That form was the students’ use of their own insider status to wield power over her, a communal outsider. On element of this problematic behavior was that of asking inappropriate personal questions to the teacher, or talking about the teacher in her presence. On one occasion students broke into a discussion in front of her over how long she had been teaching in the school; they also repeatedly asked her questions about her personal life that

259 they knew she could not answer, particularly questions about her religious practices. For example, in one class that occurred shortly after Passover, the students grilled her about whether she had had a Seder, and if so what was it like? Students also frequently debated with her over what was allowed in the classroom, asserting that they could not engage in particular activities because they conflicted with their religious beliefs, or that she couldn’t schedule a test on a certain day because of some religious activity scheduled for that day that would prevent them from taking it. Because she did not know whether to believe them, she had to check with the principal before continuing with that aspect of her lesson, or scheduling the test. In one case a student managed to push off the decision over whether to have a test on a particular day by asserting that the students would not be having class with her that day, because they had special religious activities.

Sometimes students would discuss religious matters in their responses to her questions, knowing that she would likely not understand, and if she did would probably not be able to comment. They would occasionally answer her questions in Yiddish just to throw things off kilter a bit. This behavior did not disrupt to more than a minimal extent, but it appeared to make the teacher uncomfortable and functioned as an expression of the students’ power over her.

McFarland has described student resistance in the class in terms of the competing frames of social and academic affairs (McFarland, 2003). In a secular school though the students may try to impose a social frame on the activity, it is nonetheless a frame that is familiar to the teacher, and the teacher’s recognition of that frame can be helpful in maintaining order. In this case, however, the competing frames go beyond social versus academic, the behaviors described could be interpreted as demonstrations of the fact that the students all shared the same culture

260 and worldview, and Mrs. Weiss did not. The frame that they attempted to impose is one that she had no (or limited) access to, which makes it all the more difficult to combat. In this view it would seem as if the students used her outsider status as a tool with which they could disrupt the class and waste time. As students who appeared uninterested in learning the material being taught, they would try to find ways to make instruction more difficult for the teacher. If that is the case, their insider knowledge functioned as a very useful tool in this regard.

In addition to behavior aimed at exposing her outsider status the students also exhibited a great deal of ordinary disrespect, demonstrating that they did not take her seriously as an authority figure. In one example a student crumpled up the newspaper she had handed out to them in front of her face, knowing full well that she always collected the newspapers when she was finished. When asked to retrieve a paper that he had thrown out the boy sullenly went and got it, but then crumpled it back up and stuck it in his pocket. When she yelled at one student

“we have asked a zillion and a quarter times not to do that!” the student yelled back, “and I’ve asked a zillion point two times to stop exaggerating”.

Despite this disrespect the students were not malicious towards her; in fact, they all actually seemed to like her, (and she, them). In interviews with students it was clear that even those who did not like her class had good feelings towards her. One student dropped his voice and said in a drawn out voice “she’s e-vil” but then quickly followed up with, “no, no, she just um, she doesn’t take a lot of pressure, she’s a little older”. Another student attributed the class misbehavior to the fact that she was too nice: “she’s much, she’s too…nicer, she doesn’t push as hard as Rabbi Kutler to make us quiet and everything”. This explanation may have constituted

261 this boy’s attempt to rationalize the misbehavior in his class, but the truth was that these same boys displayed none of the same disrespect during their religious studies classes.

To understand this defiance in the absence of any true malicious intent, it is helpful to look at McFarland’s (2004) definition of a resistant act: “A type of nonconformist behavior that questions the legitimacy of the current social order. Resistant acts challenge the definition of the situation and, in more dramatic instances, attempt to supplant it through appeals to a different normative or cognitive framework of interaction” (p. 1251). In Mrs. Weiss’ class the students do not value the material that is being taught, do not understand the academic framing she is asserting, and belong to a world that she has little access to; this creates a context in which the students are likely to challenge the legitimacy of the teacher as an authority figure and attempt to impose their own framework of interaction through acts of defiance. This all takes place without any overt animosity, the misbehavior functions as an effective tool to subvert a framework for which the students have little regard.

Aside from chutzpah, the students had other standard forms of class disruption which, when employed, contributed to a lack of classroom functioning. These would fall under

McFarland’s (2001) category of passive resistance. Students engaged in an almost non-stop barrage of pragmatic and scheduling questions, ranging from “will we have to know this on the test? What about this?” to “When will we do math?” and “can we watch the video now?” They would ask simple questions that they knew the answers to, and would feign a lack of understanding of the topic, apparently in order to waste class time.

One interesting aspect of their behavior seemed to represent an adaptation of behaviors acquired during the religious studies part of the school day. They employed Talmudic-style

262 reasoning in a wide variety of circumstances, both to constructive and disruptive ends. In many cases they would pounce on any imprecision in the teacher’s language to weasel out a meaning she didn’t intend, and then follow the alternate meaning as a way of disrupting class.

When she challenged them they would simply explain quite “innocently” that they were just doing what she said. Similarly, when they got a question wrong in the book, they would argue with her by focusing on the precise language of the question; in one example they got into an extended discussion of the meaning of the words “is” and “of” in a math problem. In vocabulary, when they were given sentences in the book and asked to fill in the right word, they had no problem changing the sentence slightly so they could fit in the word of their choice; one frequent strategy was to change an “a” to an “an”. Mrs. Weiss did not disallow this, and gave them credit if the new sentence and word fit.

Two examples of Talmudic reasoning occurred close together in one of Mrs. Weiss’ classes, and serve to illustrate what is meant by this phenomenon. The students were going through and exercise on the constitution where they were given functions and descriptions of government by the teacher and they had to state whether that function belonged to the House, the

Senate, both, or neither. One question was “has 100 members”, to which the student responded,

“both”. When the teacher said that was wrong he used it as an opportunity to argue that he was right as both the House and Senate have 100 (even if the House has hundreds more as well), and the question didn’t say “has exactly 100 and no more”. Though it was clear to me that the student knew what the question was really asking, by deliberately misinterpreting it he was able to waste a few minutes of class arguing with the teacher. A few minutes later the teacher read “votes on the president’s nomination” and another student answered “the whole country”, choosing to

263 understand the question as referring to the nomination of the president for the role of president, not his choice of someone else for some government post. Once again, this sparked a debate with the teacher, and served to waste time in class.

They also used some very nuanced and sophisticated reasoning in their class discussions of current events. In one instance, mentioned above, Mrs. Weiss was discussing Israeli current events. This section will close with an extended account of this episode as it helps to illustrate the tone and tenor of much of the students’ interactions with her. Mrs. Weiss began by introducing the topic of Bush’s call at that time (2005) to have the Palestinians stop the acts of terrorism before Israel would be required to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. Though the ultra-Orthodox community has a complex and not entirely positive relationship with Israel (they are generally opposed to the state on the grounds that it is hostile to religion), in regard to Israel’s relationship with the Arabs the community is quite hawkish. Nevertheless, one student was quick to posit the Arab side of the issue, responding to the teacher’s approval of Bush’s declaration, saying “well, the Arabs say that the terror will stop when Israel withdraws”.

They then moved on to an article in a major U.S. paper that discussed the phenomenon of

Israeli soccer fans yelling racial slurs at Arabs at soccer matches, and what the Israeli government was doing to stop this. All of the students immediately adopted the pose that the article itself was biased, and leaving aside the merits of their claim, their argumentation with the teacher was spirited and interesting. One student said “it is racist against Israel that they are reporting this”, and the teacher responded that the paper is simply reporting the truth about a legitimate news event; that can’t be biased. Another student chimed in that that was not true, it’s not the truth or falsity of the article that makes it biased, but the fact that the soccer fans’ actions

264 take place in a context that isn’t addressed by the article. This student acknowledged that the article was factual in what it reported, but failed to report on anything that Arabs might similarly be doing, or even the larger context of the Arab-Israeli conflict within which the events in question took place. Another student in the class argued that soccer fans in England and around the world act this way all the time, and that is the nature of soccer games—to trumpet a headline with the word “racism” was misleading.

The teacher tried to distinguish between fans fighting with one another in general, and fans fighting and attributing their hatred to nationality or religion. One student persisted by describing at great length the hatred between Michigan State and Ohio State.43 The teacher responded, “Is that racist? Is that racist when you insult somebody from Michigan—should there be a difference between yelling at him because he’s Muslim?” The kid acknowledged yes, and she said “Okay, then your comment was not appropriate.” He then jumped in, “wait, wait, wait, let me finish—the difference is that the Arabs kill Israelis, Ohio State doesn’t…” the teacher jumped in that that has nothing to do with it, but the kid responded “It doesn’t? Didn’t we just have a conversation about Bush calling it Palestinian terror?” She responded, “Do you realize we are talking about a sports event? In a sports event is that appropriate?” he acknowledged that the answer was no, but another boy chimed in, “but for some people sports is religion”.

In this back and forth, which was a small part of a large and wide-ranging discussion, the important issue for these purposes is not the students’ political beliefs or knowledge of current events, but the students’ argumentation practices, their role in the classroom, and the significance of this interaction to the students’ worldview. To begin with, this encounter demonstrates the

43 Sports remains the one area of the secular world that is considered to be an appropriate outlet for ultra-Orthodox children, and many of them know a lot about sports.

265 way in which these students enjoyed arguing for arguing sake, tried to push the limits of an argument as far as possible to see where the breaking point is, and their attunement to nuances in text, such as the relationship between a headline and the actual content in an article, and the ability to note what is not mentioned in the text. In addition, though these boys seemed to express a certain degree of anti-Arab sentiment, they were perfectly comfortable turning around on the teacher and arguing the Palestinian side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These are all skills that are called upon during the course of Talmud study. (For example, drawing inferences based on what is not mentioned in a text was one of the techniques employed by the Gemara in the two and a half minute classroom segment that was recounted in the previous chapter).

Yet, unlike in Talmud class this discussion was only half serious. On some level they seemed to take the discussion seriously, and their arguments reflected some engagement with the topic, but on another level this appeared to represent a further opportunity for them to engage the teacher in a distracting argument. The students clearly enjoyed arguing with the teacher over this issue, and they were happy to throw in jokes and barbs. In repeat viewings of the video it seemed clear that for some students, at least one of the goals in this discussion was to try to string along the conversation for as much time as possible, thus taking away from the time that they would be learning new material. This was evident from the humorous knowing glances that they would give one another, from the constant laughter, and from the lack of attention paid by many of the students when there wasn’t something witty to say. In some respects, this discussion is an example of the students at their highest level of engagement; even in this case, however, that level is not very high, and is marked more by levity than anything else.

266 Despite the fact that the episode was marked by levity, this episode reflects one of the few instances where the students’ engagement in the secular studies material reflected an application of their actual worldview to secular content. What is meant by this, is that unlike many other secular activity nodes, in this case there was some content presented that afforded the students an opportunity to connect to the material with ideas and beliefs that are worldview relevant. In this episode students expressed moral opinions about world conflicts, opinions about how the media works, and beliefs about racism. All of these are worldview relevant, and all are unusual in an ultra-Orthodox secular studies classroom. Yet, precisely because the terms of the discussion were set by a non-community member, and the framework from which she was structuring the debate was so different than that of the students, the discussion was marked by levity, and was not conducted in a serious way. In order for the students to have engaged seriously in this material, the discussion would have had to have been framed in a way that is more consistent with their own worldview, and have been presented by someone who the students respected as a purveyor of legitimate norms and values.

Rabbi Aberman

Rabbi Aberman’s sixth grade class at Hassidic had sixteen students in it, which was fairly typical for this school. The students all came from ultra-Orthodox backgrounds, but some were

Hassidic and some were Yeshivish. The school had originally catered to only Hassidic students, but as it grew over time the student body became more diverse. Parents who sent their children to this school over Yeshiva, did so primarily because religious classes are taught in Yiddish here, and the school is smaller than Yeshiva. As in Lubavitch, many of the students were curious about the research and would ask many questions about it at the start of each class.

267 The students had time to talk as they came in from recess at the start of class, as

Rabbi Aberman was not always there on time. Students would come in from the park near the school, arguing about the games they were playing, getting drinks to refresh, and slowly getting into their seats. When Rabbi Aberman did show up, he also took a casual attitude towards getting ready; he often spent time talking to other teachers just outside the door before coming in. He did not have any set schedule to organize the material they would be working on; in most cases he jumped from one thing to the next with no warning or order. Sometimes he told the students they would come back to an activity that they were working on later, but not usually.

Activity Nodes

There were seven different activity nodes observed in Rabbi Aberman’s class. History oriented activity nodes made up the bulk of instruction, as there were three instances of history reading and lecture, two instances of history desk work, and one instance of history question and answer. These activity nodes had a fairly straightforward format, where Rabbi Aberman or the students would read a paragraph and he would intersperse some lecture. They might then be assigned some desk work from a textbook, and then go around the room reading their answers to each one. In addition to history there was one instance of vocabulary desk work. The other subject domain covered in his class was math, where he lectured once (math lecture) and assigned desk work once (math desk work). Finally, he administered achievement tests in parts of two different classes.

As mentioned, there was no typical structure to the day in Rabbi Aberman’s class, as he bounced around from one activity to another. Most classes had a large percentage of the time taken up with non-instructional activities such as transitioning or scheduling; the non-

268 instructional time ranged from 5 to 20 minutes per class. During much of the non- instructional time the students were not really working and he was not really teaching; the atmosphere was one of semi-permitted chaos

During math the students had a textbook from which Rabbi Aberman drew problem sets, but he did not use it for instruction or have the students read from it. Instead, he would put problem examples on the board and solve them. At the time the class was observed they were working on finding missing variables in equations with fractions. For example, one problem that he put on the board was 4/5g = 12/25. In the activity nodes that dealt with history the class was reading from a book that covered twentieth century America in a broad and quick survey form.

Over the course of the observation the class moved from the roaring twenties through the civil rights era and the Cold War. They would bounce around from topic to topic, sometimes moving back in history to focus in more detail on aspects that they had previously discussed briefly.

Rabbi Aberman’s choice of content reflected his personal interests. In interviews, he asserted that he had always enjoyed history and liked to tell the stories, using the historical material as a platform. He stated that he deliberately tried to go on digressions, often in order to discuss current events. Throughout their reading of the history text he would interrupt to talk in great detail about a particular issue, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, or to point out parallels between something in the text and something that was going on in the world in the present. On one occasion the students asked where the video footage of World War Two came from, which launched an extended discussion of the various videos of the twin towers falling on 9/11. He did not cover any science, literature, writing, or grammar, in his class, and the math that they did study was not done with the same engagement as the history.

269 Teaching Style

There were a number of interesting features of Rabbi Aberman’s teaching style. Purely in terms of style, and not in terms of pedagogical or content knowledge competency, he was a lecturer with an engaging storytelling manner. The class would read history and he would talk at length about the different issues raised by the reading. He did not ask many questions of the students or prompt them to offer their own opinions. In math as well, he did not ask students to explain their work to the class, or prompt them to see whether they understood. He simply explained it and waited for them to ask him questions about the material. In general he gave the students a large amount of desk-work to do that did not require him to teach anything, and when they were not doing desk work he lectured.

His classroom was also very loose in atmosphere. This is something that will be explored more when discussing student behavior, but it is worth mentioning here, that his management style allowed a good deal of laxity of behavior. When doing desk work, students were not stopped from wandering around the classroom, playing and talking; from his perspective if they got the work done that would be fine, and if not they wouldn’t get credit or would have to do it for homework. This loose atmosphere was driven by his own informal behavior as a teacher. For example, twice during the observation he took phone calls on his cell phone in the middle of class.

Generally, he knew the material that he taught. His sentence constructions reflected a man who was comfortable speaking in Yiddish—that is to say he often spoke what is colloquially called Yinglish. He made a few mistakes during the course of the observation. He defined several words incorrectly, and made a few historical errors, such as saying that D-day

270 took place in Germany and that Kennedy was the first president assassinated since Lincoln, but the content of his instruction appeared to be generally correct.

What was most significant about his teaching style was the absence of a large degree of pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986). He asserted in his interview that he had never received any training as a teacher, but this was true in his religious capacity as well, and in observing his class at Yeshiva, although it was informal and loose, his pedagogy appeared sound.

In regard to secular material, however, although he knew the material his pedagogy did not appear any more sophisticated than that of an average parent who can do the math their kid brings home but has a hard time explaining why it works the way it does.

In one instance the class was working on finding missing variables in equations with fractions. He began his introduction as follows:

Rabbi A: So we know a very simple math concept that we divide the fractions,

we multiply by turning over the second number, so this next part of the math that

we’re learning, takes, what they call “thinking math” you got to think of it

yourself, figure this out. For example, I have four fifths g equals twelve over

twenty five, now remember you have a number next to a letter that means

multiply, so what we really… so we have four fifths g equals this; so four times

something equals twelve and five times something equals twenty five. So g is

three fifths. I only know that because I—

Student :How do you know that rebbe?

271 Rabbi A: How did I figure that out I just showed you how I figured it out, but I’ll do

again another problem for you… Now how did I figure this out? I just used my

own mind (points to head) and figured out what’s missing.

At various later points in the discussion as the problems became more complex, students repeatedly asked for explanation. After one question about procedure he repeated “I can’t switch the “x” I don’t know what the “x” is, whatever it is I just figure it out by common sense.”

Moments later he continued with great emphasis, “The answer to all these questions are the same… you just figure it out by your sechel (intelligence)—there’s no formula in what I’m telling you today—strictly by sechel. It’s your mind, you are brilliant people and you gotta figure it out yourself.”

What is most interesting about this is that of course there is a formula, and much of teaching math involves getting students to understand formulas and why they work. Rabbi

Aberman, however, while perfectly capable of doing the math problems in question, did not know how to express the formula, or the understanding of what to do to come up with the answer. His explanation amounted to repeated calls to use your mind and the vague instruction to find the number that when multiplied by the given number gives you the other given number.

That type of guessing strategy is generally acceptable with easy numbers, but as soon as the problem gets complicated that strategy is all but useless. His explanation in this matter was indicative of a deficiency in pedagogical content knowledge, that is, knowledge of how to effectively teach math.

272 Connections

Unlike Mrs. Weiss, Rabbi Aberman was very comfortable making connections to students’ religious studies and to religion in general. The first aspect of this comfort was expressed in the way that he spoke and the range of references that he utilized, from using words like sechel, to telling a student to go out and recite Tehillim (Psalms) while waiting for him to come out and talk to him. A number of examples serve to show the extent to which he made connections to religion. In one case that was strikingly similar to a case in Mrs. Weiss’s class, a student read a vocabulary sentence that he had written using the Biblical concept of parah adumah, the Biblical law of the red heifer. Upon hearing the sentence in a one-on-one discussion with the student he exclaimed to the entire class, “did you hear that sentence, that’s an excellent sentence” and proceeded to have the student read his sentence out loud so that they could see how his understanding of the parah adumah allowed him to come up with such a good sentence.

In a lesson regarding the Soviet Union’s control of East Germany and the restrictions on travel that were imposed on citizens, he made elaborate comparisons to the nations that would not allow the Jews to go through their countries when they were wandering in the desert after Egypt.

When a student asked him what the word “inauguration” meant, the only way he could think to explain it was by using the Jewish concept of chanukkas ha-bayis, (the inauguration of the

Temple).

The following section will discuss these religious connections and their impact on behavior. It would suffice here just to note that using these connections may have given him a good deal of leverage in making the material more meaningful to the students.

273 In addition to making connections to the students’ religious knowledge, Rabbi

Aberman was careful to explicitly avoid material that he considered religiously inappropriate.

For example, he chose to skip various sections of the history book that he felt were problematic.

From the school’s perspective they wouldn’t have necessarily been banned, (one was about the rise of pop-music, for example, a borderline topic), but he exercised his own religious judgment in the class. In another case, however, he used his religious judgment to allow borderline material in the class. One of the reading comprehension sets in the achievement test he was administering utilized a story that involved a boy – girl relationship. In this case he chose to read the story and ignore the (very slightly) problematic nature of the content.

Like Mrs. Weiss, Rabbi Aberman also made connections to the students’ lives as Jews in general, not specifically as religious Jews. He spoke of the Rosenbergs, who were arrested as spies, and what a horrible embarrassment it was that they were Jewish, and he discussed the impact of civil rights on Jews. Finally, he also made connections to the students’ secular lives.

He had long discussions with them about the events of 9/11, he talked at great length about

United Airline’s cutting of pensions and how that would affect people’s job security, and he would engage the students in frequent discussions about baseball.

Behavior and Discipline

As part of my assessment of behavior in Rabbi Aberman’s class I used the same three five-point scales as in Mrs. Weiss’s class. These are the ratings for the six classes observed:

Chaos Functioning Chutzpah 2.7 1.9 1 2.5 1.7 1.1 2.7 2.1 1

274 3.6 1.6 1 2.9 1.6 1 2.7 1.6 1 Table 29: Rabbi Aberman Behavior Ratings

As with Mrs. Weiss’s class the class functioning was better than the chaos measurement.

Note that the chaos level was very high, ranging from 2.5 at the lowest (Mrs. Weiss’s highest average level was 2.4) to just under 3.6 at the highest. The high chaos levels reflected the fact that his teaching style allowed for a great deal of movement and noise; nevertheless, even with his loose teaching style there were many instances where the class was not functioning smoothly and there was little working or learning taking place. When the class would get into discussions around some topic, these rarely lasted very long before students threw the discussion off track, and many students did not participate at all in these discussions. Even during a class period where the students were taking a standardized test, Rabbi Aberman had a hard time keeping the students quiet and on task.

Rabbi Aberman’s general disciplinary approach did not involve nearly as much snapping at the students as Mrs. Weiss, and was much more oriented towards rewards than towards punishment. Rabbi Aberman would have raffles every week to give the students gifts for good behavior and he would give them extra recess. Often “punishment” was the threat of not getting the extra bonus that everyone else was getting. Yet even with this “threat”, he somehow managed to make sure that every student received extra recess and participated in the raffle. He had an alleged system of marking students down in his book for bad behavior, but based on the classroom observation, this system did not exist anywhere except in his head and in his speech to the students; he seemed to make up the number of “marks” that a student had as a way of getting

275 that student to behave. When he confiscated toys that the students were playing with he would return them after class, and he would make elaborate deals with the students, promising them less work, or a more fun classroom activity if they behaved. During the course of the observation he threw students out of class twice, and once took a kid to the principal’s office.

As with Mrs. Weiss, the students engaged in a nearly non-stop barrage of pragmatic questions that were not content oriented. Students would repeatedly ask whether they could eat and drink, (which he occasionally let them do), would pester him about the timing of the weekly raffle, and would ask to open the windows or turn on the air conditioner, and then minutes later ask for them to be closed or turned off. The asked questions about what they would have to actually know for the test, whether they could have the test graded in a particular way, and they would try to bargain with him over their grades. All of these behaviors constituted passive resistance to the academic framing of the class.

Noticeably absent from these students’ interaction with Rabbi Aberman, however, were questions about his personal life and attempts to confuse or disrupt by using insider religious knowledge. Clearly they could not deceive the rebbe over what was allowed or not allowed from a religious perspective, as he was one of the very arbiters of religious knowledge. It was more interesting that they appeared to hold the rebbe in high enough esteem that they felt that issues regarding his personal life were not things they could broach. Students certainly disobeyed Rabbi

Aberman, and even refused to do things that he asked, but when they did it was not in the form of flaunting their power over him but it was as resentful students being made to do something they didn’t like. In one instance he told one student to read, and the student flat-out refused. The student wasn’t smiling or showing off to the other students, as students routinely did in Mrs.

276 Weiss’s class; rather he was upset and hurt regarding some other issue, and appeared to be on the verge of tears. Rabbi Aberman ended up letting him not read, and spoke to him about the issue after class. Thus, the rating for chutzpah remained at a perfect 1 in all but one of the classes, and even in that class the 1.1 represented only one mildly rude remark.

Rabbi Aberman’s willingness to invoke religion in the class, and his standing as a rebbe served him well as a tool to avert student misbehavior. In one example, after a paragraph in their history text discussed Babe Ruth, some students started discussing the relative merits of various baseball players, and another student started yelling “shtus! sshtus! shtus!” (a Hebrew word meaning roughly, inappropriate frivolity). For a secular teacher this incident might have presented a number of difficulties. First, the teacher might not know what the word “shtus” meant. Even if she did, she might not know whether the student was religiously correct about the issue—is the issue in fact shtus? What would the implication be if it was? Would she be allowed to talk about it or not? The religious categories would be inaccessible to her. Finally, even if she understood the category of shtus, how could she respond? Technically the student was right, from a religious perspective while baseball is not outlawed, it certainly fits under the category of frivolous activity. Though the student’s behavior was out of line, his essential point might be correct, making it difficult for the teacher to respond in an effective manner.

For Rabbi Aberman, however, this case did not turn into a disruptive situation at all.

When the boy started yelling Rabbi Aberman said kindly but with a teasing tone, “of course,

Dovid here never exposes himself to devurim Betelim” (i.e. frivolous things). The point of this statement was to expose to that student and to the class that he knew that the student was not speaking out of religious conviction, but was just trying to disrupt the class. Rabbi Aberman did

277 not get into a discussion over whether baseball was or wasn’t shtus, but merely noted that this boy wasn’t always so careful to avoid exposure to non-religious things. The result of his response was laughter from both the student and his peers, as well as an appreciation of the fact that the rebbe shtuched him out, (meaning, that the rebbe “stuck him” with a good comeback).

General Conclusions

One observation that emerges from this case study is that knowledge of how to teach religious material does not necessarily translate into pedagogical knowledge in other domains.

This is not to say that no rabbeim have this pedagogical content knowledge; rather, that it should not be assumed that they do. Though the observation did not demonstrate that Mrs. Weiss had a better understanding of the material that she was teaching, her pedagogy appeared to be more competent than that of Rabbi Aberman. The use of trained non-Orthodox teachers would appear to possess a distinct advantage in this regard.

Yet it was equally clear that Rabbi Aberman’s students did not display any of the casual disrespect, the active personal defiance, which was present in Mrs, Weiss’s class. Administrators at Yeshiva (the one school that has made a halfway transition between having rabbeim and secular teachers) were unanimous in asserting that the classes with rabbeim as teachers demonstrated much better behavior, and that behavioral problems had decreased overall as a result of this policy. However, if we look at these two cases alone it would not seem to be the case that behavior, generally speaking, is better with Rabbi Aberman than with Mrs. Weiss. His class was significantly more chaotic and did not function as well as Mrs. Weiss’s class. But not all behavior is created equal; it would seem that the personal rudeness, the Chutzpah, is the important behavioral element that the schools were aiming to remove from the secular classes,

278 and on that metric, Rabbi Aberman’s class was much better, even though he allowed much more misbehavior as a matter of course.

This behavioral change, the removal of chutzpah, may be a consequence of a third observation—that Rabbi Aberman’s insider status allowed him to bridge the gap between the students’ religious lives and their secular study. Whereas in Mrs. Weiss’s class the students had to enter an arena that was cut off from the culture that they were used to, and may have reacted with some hostility, in Rabbi Aberman’s class they were able to learn secular material from within their own cultural and epistemological perspective.

The two teachers examined here chose to engage the class in very similar activity nodes; both chose social studies content as the predominant focus, and both utilized a format of having students read paragraphs one by one and giving the students lots of desk work. The only major difference was the fact that Mrs. Weiss chose to engage the students in discussion, asking them lots of questions, while Rabbi Aberman preferred to lecture. Yet because of Rabbi Aberman’s insider status, while the activity nodes presented by the two teachers were not substantially different in form, and the two teachers had similar preferences for the type of content they chose to cover, the character of their instruction was very different. Because Rabbi Aberman was a rebbe he was able to command the respect of the students, and perhaps more importantly, he was able to frame the content in terms that were familiar to the students. Both because he shares the same essential worldview as the students (that is to say, he belongs to the same community and engages in most of the same activity nodes as them) and because he is able to make connections to religion and religious aspects of their lives, he is better equipped to make the secular class a more meaningful experience for the students.

279 As I have tried to argue throughout this work, ultra-Orthodox schools are structured in a very particular way. They are set up to train students to be ultra-Orthodox adults, and to socialize them in ultra-Orthodox religious practices. The ultra-Orthodox world desires to remain apart from Western secular culture, and a big part of remaining separate is ensuring that children grow up solely within the framework of ultra-Orthodox Judaism to the exclusion of any other. In classrooms, the sharp divide between the character of the activity nodes in the religious and secular parts of the day (described in the last chapter) reflects this state of affairs. The secular education does not appear to serve the same function of socialization as the religious does, the content is not generally about the students’ lives (and is not nearly as complex) and there is very little worldview relevant material found in the secular part of the day. In many ways one could say that the material was sanitized so that it could have very little meaning for the students in their religious and daily lives.

The historical use of communal outsiders to teach this material may have paradoxically been the best way to teach, because it helped to ensure that the whole endeavor remained an

“outsider” endeavor. Secular instruction came from a secular source, and likely appeared to students as another one of these “goyishe” things that was unimportant in their lives. The students’ view of secular knowledge, their epistemology, was such that there was very little chance that they would build internal connections to the outside world.

The introduction of rabbeim into the secular classroom changes this dynamic—but the question is, how much? It was clear that in his role as secular teacher Rabbi Aberman pre- sanitized the material to reflect an ultra-Orthodox perspective; he made decisions about what was appropriate to teach and what was not. Yet at the same time his presence in the class as a

280 religious authority figure and his liberal use of connections to religion implicitly violated the isolation built up around the practice of secular instruction. The form and content of the secular activity nodes (and their relative lack of complexity) did not change, but the worldview significance did, as his status and use of connections gave more meaning to the material. In a small way, because the worldview significance is changed by the presence of a rebbe in the secular class, the function of the class may also change. Instead of solely conveying the sense that the purpose of secular knowledge is the isolated acquisition of skills, there is now some sense that the knowledge has relevance to the students in their religious lives, which may alter the character of instruction in a small but not insignificant way. The question of the worldview impact of this shift is part of a larger question of how the students’ worldview is affected by their overall engagement in the school day; in the next chapter I will try to pull the various threads of data together to elaborate on this point, and to provide a picture of the students’ worldview.

Addendum: Behavior and Connections in Other Classes

The case studies presented in this chapter looked closely at the behavior exhibited by the students in two secular classes, and the types of connections that the teachers made in those classes. In this addendum the behavior and connections in the other classes observed will be discussed. Note, however, that this section will not discuss the connections made by rabbeim in the religious part of the day, as the activity node descriptions in the previous chapter should have made clear that the entire structure of the religious part of the day in deeply integrated into the religious and cultural life of the students. Thus, nearly everything that a rebbe says in the religious part of the day is connected to the students’ lives.

281 Behavior

There were five secular studies teachers included in this study, two of whom have been profiled above. Of the remaining three, one was a Rabbi, Rabbi Freidman, one was not Jewish,

Mrs. Prince, and the last one was Jewish but only nominally affiliated with the Orthodox community, Mrs. Hart.

The first teacher examined is Rabbi Friedman. Though the chaos numbers are quite high, the class function numbers are not. The high levels of chaos are primarily due to two factors. The first is that there were many instances of group and desk work in Rabbi Friedman’s class; during these periods the students tended to run around and make a lot of noise, which was tolerated and not disallowed. The second factor in the chaos was that there were two instances where Rabbi

Friedman left the teacher’s aide, a non-rebbe, in charge of the class. In those cases the class became more unruly and chaotic, but also did not function as well, as the aide was not a skilled teacher. As indicated in the table, there was no chutzpah exhibited in his class.

Rabbi Friedman, 5th grade teacher at Yeshiva Chaos Functioning Chutzpah 1.4 1 1 2 1 1 3.3 1.4 1 1.9 1 1 2 1 1 3.3 1.7 1 Table 30: Rabbi Friedman Behavior

The next teacher is Mrs. Prince. In the first grade it appeared to be the case that students were more willing to regard the teacher as an authority figure simply by virtue of her being an adult. As they were only first graders there was a fair amount of movement around the class and

282 talking between students, and much of this was allowed. The class generally functioned well, never reaching a rating of two, and though Mrs. Prince was not Jewish, the students did not speak to her with chutzpah.

Mrs. Prince, 1st grade teacher at Yeshiva Chaos Functioning Chutzpah 1.4 1.1 1 1.9 1.1 1 2.2 1.3 1 2 1 1 2.4 1.3 1 1.9 1 1 2.5 1.9 1 Table 31: Mrs. Prince Behavior

Mrs. Hart’s class was unusual in that the class functioning was not significantly better than the chaos. This was a function of the fact that she was exceptionally poor at class management, and the chaos in the class was often a result of her inability to structure the class well. While in other teachers’ classes the chaos was allowed, as long as the class was doing what the teacher wanted, in Mrs. Hart’s class the chaos was a result of the breakdown in class functioning. In one hour-long period Mrs. Hart lost complete control of the classroom, and was only actually in the classroom itself for about fifteen minutes.

When she was able to get the class to function, it tended to be quiet and disciplined, as these students were not naturally wild. In fact, while she was out of the class many of the students dutifully worked at their desks, and asked the researcher for help when they got stuck.

The high level of chutzpah in the class can be attributed in part to her status as a partial outsider

(she lives in the same neighborhood as the students and is religious, but only very nominally

Orthodox and certainly not ultra-Orthodox), but was also driven in part by her inadvertent

283 encouragement of this behavior, by failing to recognize it when it appeared and her susceptibility to being driven off topic.

Mrs. Hart, 3rd teacher grade at Lubavitch Chaos Functioning Chutzpah 1.5 1.4 1.3 4.6 4.1 2 1 1 1.8 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.6 1.2 1.1 Table 32: Mrs. Hart Behavior

That these students were not naturally wild can be seen by looking at their behavior in the religious part of the day, when they were taught by Rabbi Markowitz.

Rabbi Markowitz, 3rd grade at Lubavitch Chaos Functioning Chutzpah 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Table 33: Rabbi Markowitz Behavior When these same students were in Rabbi Markowitz’s class they exhibited perfect behavior; they were extremely quiet, and they followed every order the rebbe gave.

Just as the behavior of the students in the religious part of the 3rd grade at Lubavitch gives us some insight into their behavior in the secular part of the day, there are two classrooms that can give us insight into the behavior exhibited in Rabbi Aberman’s class in the case study above.

Recall, that while there was almost no Chutzpah in that class, both the chaos and functioning were relatively bad.

284 Rabbi Aberman, 6th grade secular class at Chassidic Chaos Functioning Chutzpah 2.7 1.9 1 2.5 1.7 1.1 2.7 2.1 1 3.6 1.6 1 2.9 1.6 1 2.7 1.6 1 Table 34: Rabbi Aberman Behavior--Chassidic Now look at the behavior ratings for the same students with their religious studies rebbe,

Rabbi Carmen, as well as the behavior rating for Rabbi Aberman’s 5th grade religious studies class at Yeshiva:

Rabbi Carmen, 6th grade Chassidic Rabbi Aberman, 5th grade Yeshiva Chaos Functioning Chutzpah Chaos Functioning Chutzpah 1.5 1 1 1.3 1.2 1 1.5 1 1 1.9 1 1.1 1.4 1 1 1.9 1 1 1.8 1 1 1.9 1.1 1 1.1 1 1 1.8 1.2 1 1.1 1 1 1.8 1 1 Table 35: Rabbi Carmen - Rabbi Aberman Behavior Part of chaos in Rabbi Aberman’s secular class was due to the students, who were used to a certain amount of chaos in their classroom, even in their religious study class. Though Rabbi

Carmen did not allow it to interfere with the class functioning, the students in his class would still walk around and talk to one another. In Rabbi Aberman’s religious study class at Yeshiva, though, one can see that he also ran a loose class independent of the students. He allowed the students to move around and talk to one another, and he allowed the class to get off track and not function very well. Nevertheless, there was still almost no Chutzpah exhibited in either his secular or religious classes, as there was no Chutzpah in Rabbi Carmen’s class.

285 The culture of many of the religious classes, like Rabbi Carmen’s seemed to tolerate a certain amount of noise and movement as long as the class could stay on track. Rabbi

Klemworth, the other 5th grade rebbe at Yeshiva (the religious class is split in two) was one such example:

Rabbi Klemworth, 5th grade rebbe at Yeshiva Chaos Functioning Chutzpah 1.4 1 1 1 1 1 1.9 1 1 1.6 1 1 1.9 1 1 2 1 1 Table 36: Rabbi Klemworth Behavior

Though there was no chutzpah, and the class functioned perfectly, he nevertheless allowed a small amount of movement, talking, and general wildness.

Rabbi Kutler was a similar example, though his class did not function perfectly:

Chaos Functioning Chutzpah 1 1 1 1.1 1 1 2.2 1.8 1 2.2 1.3 1.1 2.3 1 1 2.7 1 1 1.3 1 1 1.5 1.1 1 Table 37: Rabbi Kutler Behavior

He generally allowed a great deal of chaos in his classes, and allowed the class to get pushed off track from time to time, but again, there was almost no Chutzpah exhibited in his classes.

286 The final rebbe was Rabbi Newman, the 1st grade rebbe at Yeshiva:

Chaos Functioning Chutzpah 1 1 1 1.3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Table 38: Rabbi Newman Behavior

Like Rabbi Markowitz, his class was quiet and well-behaved, and had almost no movement or talking.

Overall, though four of the six religious studies classes were somewhat chaotic, similar to the secular studies classes, they nevertheless functioned smoothly, unlike the secular studies classes. In addition, the only place that chutzpah was found was in classes taught by non- rabbeim, where two of the three classes had significant levels of chutzpah.44 Perfectly orderly classes were only found in two religious studies classes, both with younger students (1st and 3rd grade).

Connections

As noted, there were three secular teachers observed in this study in addition to the two who were profiled in the case studies. Rabbi Friedman was a 3rd grade rebbe at Yeshiva who also functioned as the 5th grade secular studies teacher. In his secular studies class he used religious

44 There is a confounding issue in the distinction between classes with chutzpah and classes without, which is that the non-rabbeim in this study were all women. It could be argued that the chutzpah had its source in the gender of the teacher rather than the teachers’ religious status. I find this explanation unlikely, though it cannot be ruled out, and should be the subject of further research. Anecdotally, I tried to gain access to a 3rd grade class in Yeshiva that had a male teacher, but I was told that the class was too out of control to allow an observer. When I stood outside that classroom during my initial visit to the school, the screaming and the insults were far worse than anything I observed during the rest of my study.

287 words and phrases and made connections to religious knowledge found in the religious studies part of the day. He frequently used religious Hebrew words like Boruch Hashem (means: thank G-d) and referred to the Hebrew language as Loshon Hakodesh (the holy language).

During multiple grammar lessons he used the students’ knowledge of Hebrew grammar to explain English grammatical concepts, and his examples of palindromes in a vocabulary assignment were all Hebrew words.

Mrs. Hart, the 3rd grade teacher in Lubavitch, was a partial member of the students’ community. She lived in the same neighborhood as the students and knew some of the families personally, but she did not participate in the exact same cultural and religious practices, as she was neither Lubavitch nor strictly Orthodox. In violation of a strict interpretation of the school rules she would frequently include references to the students’ religious lives in her class.

Spelling tests would include sentences that had words like Shabbos (Sabbath) and Shul

(Synagogue), she would appeal to their midos (good character traits), and make reference to the

Jewish holidays. Unlike Mrs. Weiss, she did not back away from students who brought up religious content, but would engage in discussion of that content with the students. Some examples of this include conversations about Christianity and historical forced conversions, what the role of a minister is, and the history of the Chanukah story.

Finally, Mrs. Prince was the 1st grade teacher at Yeshiva. She was not Jewish and did not know much about the students’ religion or religious lives prior to teaching at Yeshiva.

Nevertheless, she frequently engaged the students in detailed conversations about their lives, and this inevitably included religious content. She often positioned herself in these conversations in the role of a learner, and they would be happy to “teach” her about their religious practices.

288 When the daily sentences activity node was conducted on a Friday, one of the sentences would make note of Shabbos, and she would start a sentence “On Shabbos I like to…” and have them finish it. She would remind them to say their blessings over food during snack time, something that is explicitly religious. In one case she explained to a student that the Greek gods were not real but myths, and the names were made up by men, but “we” believe that there is really only one G-d. It was unclear if by “we” she meant to include herself, or whether she was just adopting the students’ perspective, but in either case, it represented explicit religious instruction.

The cases of Mrs. Hart and Mrs. Prince demonstrate that not all teachers strictly adhere to the rules dictated by the school against including any religious content in the secular part of the day. Nevertheless, the content that they do discuss is not presented from the same overall worldview than that of the students, as they generally do not share the same activity nodes as the students do, and do not participate in the students’ community life. Thus, the impact is greatly lessened. Indeed, as I demonstrated in Chapter 3, when administrators talked about the reasons for the rules about keeping religion out of the secular class one reason cited was that the teachers would not be able to talk about these things in a way that the students could understand. Thus, if the teachers did try to talk about religion the students would just use that as an opportunity to waste time and be aggressive with the teacher, trying to trip her up, and make her say something that would actually get her in trouble.

289 Chapter 6: Conclusions: Worldview Formation in School

This dissertation has drawn on demographic data, interviews, and detailed classroom observation to describe the ways in which secular instruction is accommodated by ultra-

Orthodox elementary schools whose primary purpose is to socialize students as members of the ultra-Orthodox community. This chapter will review this data and draw on it to describe the basic elements of worldview imparted by these schools, and to posit some implications for life in the ultra-Orthodox community as a whole. I will end by examining the shift to the use of rabbeim as secular instructors noted in the previous two chapters, and I will speculate regarding its potential to shift the impact of elementary education on the students, and the community’s, worldview.

The first chapter of this dissertation described the genesis of this study and provided a framework for thinking about worldview. In that chapter I discussed my own interest in this work as a member of the community, and my hope that an analysis of the schools could provide solutions to the perceived problem of weak secular education in the schools. As noted in that chapter, I quickly came to realize that the problems, such as there were, were a product of a complex school environment which was instrumental in developing the communal worldview, and that any analysis of the community would have to begin with an understanding of the elements of worldview formation in the schools. With that in mind, I utilized a framework for thinking about worldview that gives primacy to both beliefs and activities that individuals engage in, and set out to examine three schools using that framework.

Using interview and observation data, along with my own knowledge of the community, the second chapter began the process of mapping out some of the basic information about the

290 three schools in the study, and noting some of the differences that exist between the three schools. In that chapter I examined test scores from the three schools and found that, contrary to my initial assumptions, the students were performing at average levels on standardized test scores, performing better on reading and math, and worse on science and social science. Of the three schools, Yeshiva had the best test scores and Lubavitch the worst. Chapter 2 also reported on results of a demographic survey that demonstrated some interesting differences between parents of students in the three schools. There were clear differences in the background of parents, with Chassidic parents almost entirely coming from ultra-Orthodox backgrounds themselves, and Lubavitch having the highest percentage of parents with non-Orthodox backgrounds. And there were differences in the occupations chosen by the male parents, with

Yeshiva parents primarily in Klei Kodesh or professional work and Chasidic parents primarily in business or Klei Kodesh. Finally, the survey revealed a community that is relatively successful, with very high levels of home ownership.

The background data presented in Chapter 2 set the stage for the later chapters that looked at the school day directly, with an eye towards uncovering worldview formation in school. Understanding the communal context, in particular the jobs and background of parents, is important in order to understand how the in-school data affects worldview, as it informs the out- of-school experiences that the students have. The third chapter narrowed the lens to look at the attitudes and beliefs regarding the purpose of school and the role of secular education expressed by the different participants in the school. It was clear from those interviews that the administration and rabbeim understood the role of school in terms of socialization into the correct model of Jewish life, which includes a great deal of Talmudic learning. As I noted in

291 Chapter 3 when asked what the purpose of school was, the principal of Yeshiva stated “We teach to the objective that they will go to rabbinic yeshiva of higher learning, will be married and learn in kollel, and then at that point they will consider what skills they need to raise a family and support (a) family.” Moments later he said, “that is the model”. He responded by articulating a particular life-path as the goal of schooling. Rabbeim understood the goals of religious study in terms of the molding of the character of the boys to that of an ideal ultra-Orthodox Jew, mentioning characteristics such as “Yirei shamaim (those who maintain a fear of G-d), Baleh midois toivois (masters of ethical behavior), which includes achrayus for klal Israel (taking responsibility for one’s fellow Jew) and limud hatoira (the study of Torah)”.

While they described the overall goals of school as being instrumental in molding students’ characters and preparing them to follow the right path in life, when asked to explain the presence of secular education in the school day they tended to limit its function to one particular aspect of that life—to the acquisition of the skills necessary to allow basic interaction with the secular world and future job acquisition. Significance beyond that goal was not only not pursued but was forbidden, as the schools all made a point of forbidding discussion of religion by secular teachers in the secular part of the day. The students understood the limited role of secular education in the school day and would constantly question the necessity of different subjects for their future lives.

Chapter 3 described the beliefs that were expressed in interviews, and demonstrated that participants explicitly believe that the function of schooling is socialization into particular communal practices, and secular knowledge only plays a limited, and not tremendously significant, role in the overall goals of the school. In keeping with the approach adopted in this

292 work, that we must examine activities as well as beliefs in order to understand worldview,

Chapter 4 was concerned with documenting (using the construct of the activity node) the activities that the students engaged in, in both their religious and secular classrooms. I developed a complete catalogue of all of the activity nodes observed during the course of the study, and

Chapter 4 examined those activity nodes, and compared the religious and the secular. As a reminder, a complete list of the nodes can be found in Table 39 below.

Religious Secular Chumash Science Learning Chumash Science group deskwork Chumash Desk Work Math Chumash Chavrusa Math deskwork Chumash Chazara Math lecture Chumash Quiz Math group review Chumash Bechina Stock Analysis Chumash Q and A Reading Comprehension Chumash party practice Book Report Chumash Baseball Reading comprehension and discussion Chumash Individual Work Library Rashi Perfection Language Use and Grammar Gemara Language Arts Lecture Learning Gemara Language Desk Work Gemara Desk Work Reading—writing/lecture—desk work Gemara Chavrusa Correcting a Paragraph Gemara Chazara Reading/writing/grammar correction Gemara Chart filling Daily Sentences Gemara tape Vocabulary and Spelling Writing down Gemara answers Vocabulary deskwork Jewish Law Vocabulary out-loud review Inyonie D-yomei Halacha Spelling deskwork Halacha Lecture Spelling Test Prayer Spelling Bee Davening out loud History and Government Bentching History desk work Learning about Davening History reading and lecture Lubavitch Pre-Davening Ritual History question and answer Parsha WWII Video Parsha desk-work Constitution desk work

293 Parsha lecture Constitution reading and lecture Parsha study Biography reading and lecture Mishnayos Current Events Mishnayos learning Discussion of current events Pirkei Avos desk-work For Young Students Pirkei Avos lecture Centers Morals, Ethics, and Spirituality Coloring Vertlach Other Chassidus Acheivement Test Dvar Torah Free Desk Work Navi Navi Learning Other Raffle Secular Knowledge Coloring Mock Seder Mishnayos Game Show Daily Sheet Table 39: Activity Nodes

In Chapter 4 I described each of the activity nodes in terms of its form, content, and worldview significance, and following that, compared the religious and secular activity nodes in terms of their worldview significance. One of the major arguments made in that chapter was that the religious activity nodes constitute authentic activities and the secular do not. The religious nodes are intimately tied to the students’ current and future life practices, while the secular nodes are divorced from the actual practices that the students engage in. In addition, the religious nodes contain a great deal of worldview significance while the secular nodes have the worldview significance deliberately removed. Finally, I argued that the religious nodes were significantly more complex and difficult than the secular activity nodes.

294 Following the chapter on the activity nodes, the fifth chapter explored the impact of the worldview isolation of the secular material on the students in the classroom, and how the isolation and its impact varied depending on whether a rebbe was teaching the secular material or a secular teacher was teaching the material. In particular, I used two case studies to explore the issue of behavior in the secular classroom, noting the increase in personal disrespect found in the secular teacher’s classroom. I posited that this disrespect was a function of the isolation the students felt in the secular classroom, as both the teacher and the material were not considered to be very important. In part because of their personal stature, but also because the rabbeim were able to connect the material to the students’ religious lives, they were generally able to conduct the secular classroom without any of the personal attacks that were found in the secular teachers’ classrooms.

Worldview

Given the data explored so far in this study I would like to draw some conclusions as to the nature of the worldview that a typical student develops through engagement in the activities present in the ultra-Orthodox school day. If one believes, as I do, that the overall worldview must be seen as emergent from the entirety of the activities and beliefs that individuals maintain, then even this detailed examination cannot give us a complete picture of worldview; nevertheless, school is a comprehensive enough environment to allow some discussion of the worldview that may emerge from student participation, incomplete as it may be. I will try to describe this worldview here.

The chapter on activity nodes made clear (I hope) that there are some stark differences between the secular and religious parts of the school day. The most critical difference described

295 in that chapter was the way in which the religious activity nodes appeared to be designed for socialization into authentic ultra-Orthodox practices, while the secular activity nodes tended to be stripped of intrinsic significance and did not model authentic practices. This observation received confirmation in the interviews that I conducted with participants, described in Chapter

3, as rabbeim described their job in terms of molding the character of the students and creating a certain type of person, and perceived the role of secular education purely in terms of limited skill acquisition.

But what is the exact nature of this molding, and what is its significance? I believe that there is an underlying unity to the disparate elements of worldview embedded in the structure and content of the activities and beliefs present in the ultra-Orthodox school day. This unity can be best described by asking the old philosophical question: what is the Good, and what does it mean to live a good life? The schools, more than anything else, are presenting a model of the ultra-Orthodox understanding of how to be a good person. This is why socialization is so explicitly prevalent, but it also explains the character of the socialization; students are not simply taught norms, they are taught how to construct their lives with deliberateness, with a recognition that every action that they take has significance to some larger purpose.

This can be seen in the prescriptive nature of the religious curriculum, as the practices are not simply presented as a model, but the model, and it can be seen in the way that so much of the religious curriculum deals with mundane activities that take place at home, and which are imbued with religious significance, such as bentching after every meal, davening in the morning and afternoon, and learning the extensive laws that govern both daily life and the yearly cycle of holidays in the halacha and inyonie d’yomei activity nodes. The purposefulness can be seen as

296 well in the ubiquity of the critical vertlach, worldview nuggets with explicitly moral and ethical content distilled into easily absorbed short-story form. In all of these one sees the school guiding and instructing along lines that will lead the students down the right and just path. It is no coincidence that one who ceases to follow the religion is said to have gone “off the path”. The school is laying out that path and teaching the students how to walk it. Indeed, the secular curriculum contributes as well, as the skills to earn a living and provide for a family are an acknowledged component of the model of a good life.

I believe the essential character of the worldview that emerges from the school day is one that interprets every aspect of everyday behavior to be part of the model of living the good life, and I think that one can see the root of (at least) three components of this model in the school day. The first is mostly structural in nature, and has its most significant impact within the domain of religious study. This component is the epistemology of religious study, the element of worldview that gives significance to religious activity of Torah study (which includes primarily

Bible, Talmud, and Jewish Law). Throughout the course of the curriculum, from the youngest grade to the oldest grade the students receive a grounding in the methods and beliefs of religious study. This begins with the essential socializing set of expectations, driven mutually by the school and the practices observed at home. These are the expectations that ultra-Orthodox community members will organize their lives around Torah study; that most of them will follow the standard model of life (as Rabbi Merzel put it, “the model”) that is driven by religious study; that even those who do not follow that model will still spend time studying religious texts daily.

The epistemology of religious study then extends to the methods of study. As we have seen in the activity node descriptions, students are taught to read in a sing song voice; as they get

297 older they are taught that the only way to truly understand the text is by studying in dyads called Chavrusah’s; they are taught that Chazarah (review) is an essential, absolutely necessary, component of study. The socialization of study also extends to the methods internal to each textual religious domain. They absorb the belief that the meaning of the text must be understood in light of the oral tradition, and that there can be multiple meanings to the text. As such, in

Chumash and Talmud they learn to first turn to the Medieval commentator, Rashi, for illumination; they learn to reconcile disparate pieces of Talmud through analytic legal distinctions; they learn how to find the commentaries that will raise questions and provide answers in the interpretation of text, and in the deciding of religious law.

Finally, the last element of the epistemology of religious study to which they are being socialized is to treat the religious texts with great reverence, and to recognize their relevance.

Their relevance is clear from the way in which the laws that they learn are directly applied to their lives; they engage in the activities that they are studying in the texts. The reverence can be seen in the treatment of the texts as holy (they must be kissed if they fall on the floor, they cannot be put down upside-down), the reverence that the text is given by the rabbeim who are teaching it, and the fact that they are expected to engage in this textual study for the rest of their lives.

All of this constitutes one, very much essential, element of what it means for an ultra-

Orthodox boy to begin to engage in the good life. The second element can be found in the content of religious study itself, rather than its epistemological character, and can be identified as the recognition of G-d. The recognition of G-d begins with descriptions of G-d’s power and activity in the world and extends to the behaviors that one engages in, in order to engage with G-

298 d. As noted extensively in the activity node catalogue, the content of the Chumash and

Gemara is filled with statements about G-d’s behavior in the world, from His anger at human sin and His happiness with human righteousness, to statements of morality—what actually constitutes a sin.

In the selection of vertlach noted in Chapter 4, the students were given many examples of what G-d considers to be good and bad: that it is bad to take revenge, to steal, and to get angry; that it is good to greet people in a friendly manner, to study Torah, to show honor to sages, and to have pity. One vertle demonstrated the point that G-d directly engages in people’s lives to save people in danger. Another vertle made the point that one doesn’t wear clothes simply for comfort or to protect oneself from the elements, but to show that one is following G-d’s Torah— thus the distinctive dress of Orthodox Jews, that includes a Yarmulka on one’s head, which reminds the wearer of his fear of G-d.

In this last vertle, one sees how the recognition of G-d as an essential component of worldview is indicative of an approach wherein every action is deliberate. Because G-d controls all aspects of the world, and the purpose of schooling is to learn how to behave in the way that

G-d desires, all aspects of life must be laden with G-dly significance. This, again, is why the content of school is concerned with the activities that the students engage in, in daily life; each of these actions is conducted in a particular way because that is what G-d desires.

This can be seen in the structure of the day, as well as the content. The day begins with prayer to G-d, and the religious part of the day ends with prayer. The content of these prayers acknowledge G-d’s mastery of the world and ask for G-d’s help in creating a just and perfect world. The day is bounded by the acceptance of G-d. The mundane details of life are given

299 significance as well; when the students sit down to eat lunch, they eat together, washing their hands and saying a blessing on the food first, and singing the Grace after meals when they are done. When they go to the bathroom, they are taught to say a blessing when they have finished, thanking G-d that their body functions properly.

All of this ‘G-d talk’, while perhaps startling to the outsider, blends into the day to such a great degree that students do not even realize that they are being instructed in belief; very few students would even mention G-d as a topic of study, perhaps because it is no topic, it is simply contained in all of the activities.45 But as a result of this essential element of belief, ingrained at home as well as at school, the typical student learns that the Good life, the right way to behave in the world, is something that extends to every moment of the day. Thus, every moment of the day must be treated with deliberateness—is my action following G-d’s will, or is it not?46 The path of the Good is broadly defined by the larger model of lifelong textual religious study, and is defined in its particulars by the application of the recognition of G-d to one’s mundane everyday life.

There is a third major element of the model of the good life that cannot be overlooked, and contributes just as strongly to the notion of what constitutes a good life as the first two. That is the role of the individual within the larger, non-Jewish and certainly non-Orthodox world. The popular perception of ultra-Orthodox rejection of secular culture is not wrong; the very

45 Indeed, a frequent critique of the ultra-Orthodox maintains that there is an absence of spirituality and conscious recognition of G-d in people’s behavior, as the “G-d-oriented” behaviors are so well ingrained as to be conducted without thinking about their meaning. As such, the claim goes, the students do not actually think about their responsibility to G-d, and the G-dliness of their behavior at all. This critique may have some amount of truth to it, but is misleading. The fact that a fish does not perceive the water around it, does not lessen the fact that the water shapes its very life; every activity is bounded by the fact that it swims in water. Similarly, these students have had their worldview shaped in a fundamental way, and even if G-d is not given much explicit thought, it is around the students and is present in everything they do. To an outsider, the G-d talk would appear to be ever-present and depending on one’s temperament, stifling. To the students it is a basic part of life—and thus, to my mind, a fundamental characteristic of their worldview. 46 This is not to say that every student does this, however; rather that this is how they are being molded to behave— this behavior is the goal.

300 deliberateness of activity throughout everyday life to determine whether it conforms to G-d’s will, the emphasis on lifelong religious textual study that must be pursued day and night if possible—these things implicitly constitute a rejection of the culture that surrounds the ultra-

Orthodox community. If one is engaged in Talmud study, one is not at the same time able to watch TV; if one is concerned with G-d’s admonition against gazing at immodest dress, one cannot go to the movies. But the rejection of the secular world is not only implicit; it is explicit as well. The students are raised with the understanding that the path they are on constitutes the

Good, and that any other path is, by definition, not the Good. They are taught to be respectful, but as we have seen in Chapter 5, when something is seen to be without value it is hard to maintain that respect in practice—especially as a child.

Into this powerful and self contained ultra-Orthodox worldview, meticulously crafted and developed during the school day, is then inserted a entity that is foreign—not only foreign but rejected—and the question is, how does the school deal with it, and what is its impact on the overall worldview of the students? This is the same question that was posited at the outset of this study, but it is now posited with an understanding of how the worldview is driven by what takes place in school.

I hope that I have so far demonstrated the general approach that I take to answer this question. I have shown the myriad of ways in which the secular material is made devoid of meaningful content. In Chapter 4 I compared the secular activity nodes to the religious, demonstrating the absence of worldview content, and the avoidance of activity nodes that might lend themselves to having worldview orienting content. In contrast to the religious activity nodes, the secular nodes did not contain elements of authentic communal activity. I further

301 described, in Chapters 3 and 5, how the school puts restrictions on what can be taught, removing objectionable content and forbidding any religious discussion in the secular part of the day. All this leaves the secular education isolated from the overall worldview being developed, and ensures that the worldview is isolated in turn from the secular.

Yet, there is some positive contribution of the secular studies; the students know that they must have skills to get jobs, and in this way they place the secular content into its appropriate slot in the overall path that they are learning to follow. The secular studies that they engage in has its place in the overall worldview, but it is limited; as the students all noted in their interviews, they will need to have some skills to function in the world, and the secular education provides the basis for those skills. What it does not do, however, is contribute to the shaping of the students’ characters, generally dictate how to behave in the world, or direct them on a life- path—either for good or bad. The admonition to stay away from religion in the secular part of the day ensures this last point, as secular education is thus kept from being seen as having an impact on the overall conception of what the good path looks like. As we have seen, students react to this all-encompassing implicit admonition by consciously justifying secular studies in terms of pragmatics, and battling the administration over content for which they cannot see a purpose.

This adds another element to the story of behavior in the secular studies class, which was discussed in Chapter 5. It is not just that the material is devoid of meaning and purpose and that the students are alienated from it, but that they have the internal sense that the religious material they study is part of a larger moral purpose, and that the secular is, in contrast, if not immoral, then amoral. The disconnect from religion—and not just from religion, but from the sense that

302 the students are given that every action they take is part of a path of righteous behavior and is potentially laden with the fulfillment of G-d’s will—ensures that the students will look down on both the secular material and the teachers who are so earnestly trying to articulate the meaningfulness of the material. As noted above, a number of administrators felt that a teacher trying to communicate the religious significance of the material is inherently opening himself up to being taken advantage of by the students. This makes sense given what we have said here; the students already know deep down that in their system they are studying the secular knowledge for the sole purpose of jobs, and to them the teachers’ protestations must appear silly. For to the student, the path of the Good is already articulated through the constant activity and belief in the religious part of the school day and in the students’ experiences at home.

Worldview Components Examples from the Activity Nodes and Interviews Leading the good life: Deliberateness of every • Students are being trained to follow “standard activity, even mundane, the school is guiding model” and instructing along lines that will lead the • Bentching and davening, activities that impose students down the right and just path structure on daily behavior • Inyonei dʼyomah, halacha—dictate behavior for every time of the year and every activity • Vertlach—explicitly moral and ethical content, ubiquitous in the day • Secular Instruction—supporting family is element of the “good life”

Religious • Social expectations and norms • Vast majority of activity nodes involve religious textual • Methods and beliefs textual study study • Reverence • Religious textual study is part of the “standard model” • The form of the activities mirror the adult forms: Chavrusa, Chazara, sing-song repetition and translation • Analysis of text follows religious traditions: Medieval commentators, reconciling disparate Talmudic arguments • Reverence is seen in treatment of texts as holy, and by attitudes expressed by rabbeim (sometimes in vertlach) Content of o Content of Chumash and • Descriptions of G-dʼs power and activity in the religion: Gemara filled with statements world—anger at sin, happiness with human recognition about G-d righteousness of G-d o Vertlach indicate what G-d • Morality in vertlach tied to G-d: G-d directly considers good or bad engages in peopleʼs lives to save people in

303 o Must learn how to behave as G-d danger. The Torah (the word of G-d) says itʼs desires—extends to all behavior, bad to take revenge, to steal, and to get angry; it and enforces deliberateness is good to greet people in a friendly manner, to study Torah, to show honor to sages, and to have pity. • Structure of school day supports G-d recognition: begin and end with prayer that acknowledge G-dʼs mastery of the world and ask for G-dʼs help in creating a just and perfect world; eating begins and ends with prayer to G- d—even going to the bathroom has prayer to G- d The role of o Implicit rejection of secular • Implicit rejection: If one is engaged in Talmud the culture through the pursuit of study, one is not at the same time able to watch individual religious activity TV; if one is concerned with G-dʼs admonition within the o Explicit rejection of secular against gazing at immodest dress, one cannot culture—the students are on the go to the movies larger good path, every other path is • Secular nodes have little worldview significance, secular not “the good” almost no authentic activity world o The role of secular knowledge— • Secular nodes restricted in content and jobs, not the shaping of character conceptual scope, cannot touch on religion at or morality all, cannot contribute to understanding of the “good path” • Secular nodes do not shape character • Secular nodes contribute to the ability to get jobs to support the standard model Table 40: Components of Worldview Expressed in the School Day

Ultra-Orthodox Identity

For a moment, I would like to shift the lens away from the within-school development of worldview to consider the question of ultra-Orthodox identity as it is then expressed in the larger world. In the first chapter, I pointed to an image that many people may be familiar with from the movies, or from pictures of New York: The image of the Chassidic man, in full garb, talking on his cell phone while walking up to his office in Manhattan. In the ideal envisioning of the picture he is walking through the external, American, world, but he is not a part of that world; instead, he is in a bubble. In his bubble, he carries with him the ways of looking at and experiencing the world that are driven by the myriad activities that he engages in to reinforce his worldview.

Before he came to the office in the morning he was at the synagogue saying prayers, after that he

304 went to a Talmud class for forty-five minutes, before hopping on the train. On the train, his elaborate garb further reinforces his bubble, setting him culturally apart from those around him.

On his lunch break he goes out to synagogue to participate in the afternoon prayers, and when he comes home this evening, he will head back out for the evening prayers.

Figure 8: Worldview Bubble in the Outside World

Through his worldview his life is organized around his conception of the Good life, and the entirety of the world around him is filtered through this worldview, so that its place, for him, can be placed neatly into the slot of jobs and sustenance. Were it not for this bubble, there is no doubt that the culture and activities of the outside world would have much more resonance for him, but as it is now, he looks down on it, as devoid of meaning, and counter to G-d’s will.

In the school day, we see however, a completely opposite picture than that of the Chassid in Manhattan. As Heilman (1992a) has noted, the Yeshiva provides “isolation and protection from the evils outside” (p. 35). In the elementary school, it is the religious worldview that is the

305 larger framing context, and it is within that context that the secular education must function—placed in a bubble of its own.

Figure 9: Secular Bubble in the School Day If we put these two pictures together, we get a picture of the complete state of affairs:

306

Income

Figure 10: Worldview Mechanics

The ultra-Orthodox worldview is developed, at least in part, in the religious part of the school day. The secular education has a place within that system, but its place is one of mediation with the outside world. The model of secular education that the students receive in the ultra-Orthodox school day is the one that they are going to use in their interaction with the secular world as adults. As such, it is, itself, an essential part of worldview. The conceptual isolation in the removal of worldview significance, and the sense that secular knowledge plays only a limited role within a much larger religious purpose, is the model for how ultra-Orthodox adults will treat the entirety of the secular world, when they are finally exposed to it after many years in the bubble of Yeshiva.

307 The ability to act pragmatically with secular knowledge, and to function in a context larger than just that of the ultra-Orthodox, has its origin in the school day, in the ability to function in a classroom that is driven by foreign concerns—one that is not driven by concerns of

G-dliness. The ability to acquire skills in this context is not just in order to prepare the students to use these skills later on in life, but also to prepare them to function in a foreign context, while maintaining their religious worldview. A student in an ultra-Orthodox elementary school studies math not only to be able to pay the bills, but to know how to pay the bills in a context that is not ultra-Orthodox, but is secular and foreign.

Figure 11: Ultra-Orthodox Emergent Worldview

308 Rabbeim and the Changing Pattern of Worldview Formation

I believe that the model as described and depicted above is the model that has existed for some time. However, in previous chapters I pointed to a development that would appear to change this dynamic: the introduction of rabbeim as secular instructors. In the classroom, Rabbi

Aberman was perfectly comfortable making connections to religion where he felt such connections could be found. In this respect he was following the direction of the principal at

Chassidic who urged such connections to be made—provided it was a rebbe making the connection. Furthermore, as a rebbe, the source of religious authority to the students, he commanded more personal respect, and his instruction carried more weight. His very presence in the classroom implicitly violated the isolation of secular material as meaningless; instead the positive aspect of the worldview formation—that secular knowledge has some positive role in the system—came to the fore.

To close out this section, I would like to speculate on the impact of this shift on the ultra-

Orthodox worldview. I noted in the last chapter that in their interviews, many of the secular teachers indicated that they felt the need to communicate the importance of the material to the students—to break down the separation between the secular and the religious, and that the schools discouraged this attitude because the students would take advantage of it. When a rebbe enters the secular classroom and begins to explain material by virtue of connections to religion, and holds the students respect and attention by virtue of his esteemed position as a purveyor of

Torah knowledge, the students cannot take advantage of him, because he is the source of their understanding of the Good. Moreover—and this is critical—as a rebbe, he will have pre-

309 sanitized the material himself (as Rabbi Aberman did, repeatedly) making sure that nothing they studied conflicted with the ultra-Orthodox understanding of correct belief and behavior.

The impact on the worldview may be to internalize aspects of the secular world into that of the ultra-Orthodox. No longer would the worldview significance of secular education be one of skill acquisition in the context of negotiating a foreign worldview, but it would be much more integrated into the fabric of the rest of the ultra-Orthodox worldview—it would be a more integral part of the Good path that students are being taught to follow. Because it is pre-sanitized, and connections are made only where they support the ultra-Orthodox perspective, however, the secular knowledge becomes subservient to the religious; the only elements incorporated are those that do not impact the overall worldview, and secular knowledge ceases to exist as an independent entity.

I believe that we can see that this is so by looking at some of the larger communal dynamics in the ultra-Orthodox community. The shift to using rabbeim as secular instructors may actually be a consequence of a shift that is already taking place within the ultra-Orthodox community itself. In particular, the recent growth of the ultra-Orthodox community, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the Orthodox population, may have already changed the dynamic at play in the ultra-Orthodox world.

Over the last few decades, as the community has grown and become more secure, a number of related developments have occurred on a practical level. The first is that the ultra-

Orthodox community has found it impossible to maintain the same level of isolation as had been previously maintained. Not everyone in a community can study Talmud all day in a Kollel; more people now go out and earn livings outside of the realm of Klei Kodesh, as was seen in the

310 section on demographics. (Though of course they still follow the standard model of many years of religious study prior to gaining employment). In addition, as noted in the section on community demographics, the community has absorbed many individuals who were previously modern Orthodox or not Orthodox at all, who are much more likely to work in professional occupations.

As ultra-Orthodoxy became more widespread, the need to publicly and visibly demonstrate its cultural and ideological distance from modern-Orthodoxy—and its view that secular knowledge is on equal footing with religious knowledge—may have lessened. The community is objectively in a position of greater security and cultural stability, and from an ultra-Orthodox perspective the battle may be considered won, and the pendulum may now have a chance to swing back in the other direction, towards more integration. This can be seen in the casual way in which Rabbi Liebberg, without fear of being accused of being modern Orthodox, asserted that it would be praiseworthy for teachers to make connections wherever possible.

Given that the community has established itself for several generations, the product of the later generations, having been raised entirely within an ultra-Orthodox worldview, may not see the struggle between the secular and the religious as starkly as their predecessors have. Indeed, it may be that at this point, for many community members, all of their secular knowledge has been filtered through the worldview of the community—pre-sanitized—and they may no longer recognize as powerful a need to fight off the secular world. (This is not to say that they have abandoned a contra-acculturative approach in its entirety! Rather, complete isolation of secular knowledge is no longer a hallmark of the contra-acculturative communal worldview.)

311 There is some evidence that such a shift is indeed occurring. Recent years have seen the establishment of ultra-Orthodox technical colleges, which are accepted by communal leaders

(often on the condition that they don’t use the word college in the name of the institution).47

Prominent Rabbis have declared from the pulpit that students should no longer feel that there is a stigma attached to working in a respectable job instead of learning—that the overwhelming emphasis on everyone studying Talmud was a product of the post-war struggle to establish an identity, but that is not the struggle of our time.

These factors may have created a new epistemological dynamic within the ultra-

Orthodox community, which is reflected by developments within the community schools.

Instead of secular education remaining entirely cordoned off from the rest of the school day, it may now be somewhat connected, and as a result, whether intentional or not, the secular education may be allowed to draw from the religious to a certain extent, both in terms of content and legitimacy. Note, that in my study this is happening only in the most right-wing and ultra-

Orthodox of the three schools, in Chassidic, whose parent body consists almost entirely of parents who grew up ultra-Orthodox themselves. In this corner of the community, a new model may be arising, which, in contrast to Figure 10 may look more like the following:

47 For example, Touro college in New York opened up a technical college, The Institute for Professional Studies (IPS) – Machon L’Parnasa, (Job/Income Institute) which in their words, “was established in early 1999 to provide higher education with practical applications for the ultra-Orthodox community”.

312

Figure 12: Emerging Model of Worldview Mechanics

If this is indeed what is taking place, then the community is becoming both more open to the secular world and at the same time more insular. In a recent article, and in more depth in a recent book, Samuel Heilman worried that Orthodoxy was being swept up in the fundamentalism of ultra-Orthodoxy, and was losing its richness and complexity as a result (Heilman, 2005,

2006). Leaving aside whether it is true, as he asserts, that the fundamentalist stance only stands against the world and does not promote anything positive (a position I hope this study convincingly rejects), this potential development within the community indicates that the trend towards ultra-Orthodoxy is not resulting in a complete disassociation from the Western world;

313 rather elements of the secular world are being incorporated and assimilated into the ultra-

Orthodox world. The community is taking the secular world and making it their own.

As the ultra-Orthodox world grows more complex, ideas and practices that previously existed only within the secular world are now available even within the ultra-Orthodox community. But at the same time the community is growing more insular, because the only source for secular ideas and knowledge is within the community itself. When secular teachers were teaching the material, they were teaching it from a secular perspective; of course, secular knowledge had little meaning for the students then, but they were exposed to it, and they were learning to negotiate that outside world as a small part of their training. Now this material is increasingly taught by a new generation of rabbeim whose own exposure to secular education comes only from Yeshivas, that is, from within the ultra-Orthodox world itself. Sanitization of this material has taken place on a community-wide level, and the material is taught to students accordingly. Direct in-school exposure to the outside world has been removed.

The approach that has been taken with respect to the assimilation of secular knowledge into the ultra-Orthodox context differs from that espoused by modern-Orthodoxy in that it still does not accord the respect and privilege to secular knowledge. On a modest scale, however, it may now join modern-Orthodoxy in its recognition of the connections between religious life and secular knowledge. As the use of rabbeim becomes more standard one would expect that these secular studies classrooms will begin to employ more deliberate connections to religion, altering the dynamic that has been in place until now. Indeed, Rabbi Malick at Yeshiva informed me in

May 2006 that they have begun to have rabbeim assign writing assignments about religious topics which are graded for content in the religious part of the day, and for writing in the secular

314 part of the day. If I am right that this practice is part of a trend, we should expect to see this type of bridging becoming more common in time.

Final Thoughts

In this study I have explored the boys’ elementary educational system in one ultra-

Orthodox community, with an eye towards uncovering the way in which the ultra-Orthodox worldview is represented in the school day. I believe that worldview is of critical importance in the development of identity, and that too often the unique perspectives of communities and cultures are swallowed through absorption into a single homogeneous worldview. The ultra-

Orthodox community has managed to maintain a unique worldview, and thus the independence of their identity, but only by erecting barriers of practice and belief, along with a rigorous and all-encompassing education. As a result, the community is isolated; they live within our society but are not of the society. This makes the community an exceptional test case of worldview, as this level of extreme separation is not often found in other communities, and where it is found it is generally accompanied by physical removal from society and rejection of modernity, such as the case of the Amish.

Because of this, the ultra-Orthodox community warrants greater attention—both to understand the dynamics within the community and to act as a foil for the analysis of other communities and worldviews. Because the model of schooling described in this study is different in so many ways than that of an American public school, analysis of this system can stand in contrast—as an opportunity to explore the assumptions that underlie the educational system by contrast to a different model of education.

315 One way in which such a contrast can be obtained is by looking at the educational goals of the school system. I have argued that in ultra-Orthodox schools a primary goal is to produce students who will follow a particular model of the good life. Though stakeholders in public schools may have a vision of the type of life a graduate of elementary or high school ought to lead, this vision likely varies from community to community and from school to school.

Even where there is agreement on the overall life goals expected for students, those goals are quite vague in comparison with the well-specified life path articulated by ultra-Orthodox community members. This reality reflects the very different role that school plays in American secular society, and the belief that there are many different possible paths for students to follow, none of which is intrinsically better or worse than any other.

Because the goals of education are so narrowly constructed in ultra-Orthodox schools, it is not difficult to understand how the activities that structure the day contribute to that goal. Any activity can be relatively easily measured against a clearly defined outcome. This task becomes more complex when the number of acceptable possible outcomes and life-paths is much larger.

Standardized test scores and national standards describe the subject matter that educators intend students to receive, but they don’t by themselves clearly explain how those subjects relate to larger life-goals for students.

As the goals in public schools are often ill-defined, instead of adopting a top-down approach towards understanding public school education, a bottom-up approach that begins with the activities and beliefs in the school day could be very productive in this context. A central commitment in my work is that the activities that people engage in and the beliefs that they maintain (often presented to them in school, a formative environment) determine the nature of

316 their worldview—as the worldview emerges from them. Though the activities in schools and the beliefs presented in schools may not be organized with one clear life-model in mind, they nevertheless contribute to students’ interpretation and sense-making. The worldview that emerges will not be the sense that there is a particular model of life against which activity must be measured, but something else entirely—something that we have yet to truly understand.

Indeed, the activities in public school may not contribute to a unitary worldview at all, but to fragmented pieces that can be easily incorporated into worldviews that emerge from students’ out-of-school activities and beliefs.

I believe that just as in the ultra-Orthodox context, this approach would allow us to examine how school activities help produce student worldviews. Adopting this approach may then have a number of benefits. The first, and most straightforward benefit would be an understanding of the way in which public schools contribute to the American worldview. How much of a role do they play, and how much variation is there? What are the basic components of such a worldview? Beyond such an understanding, however, we might also be able to avoid much of the confusion and disagreement that comes from the debate over student success, in situations where the actual goals of education may not be agreed upon. By examining the way in which school activities impact worldview (leaving aside the question of life-goals) we can have a discussion about the relative merits of one or another activity using a common metric upon which decisions can be based. Once such an understanding is established it may be easier to uncover some of the hidden assumptions about the purposes of public school education, and to have more productive conversations in that regard.

317 In the context of public schools it might also be important to understand the relative contributions of home and school practices to the formation of worldview, and the variation that exists across different school contexts. There are a number of plausible ways in which schools might contribute to the development of worldview. At one extreme we might believe that they don’t contribute all that much, as numerous features of public schools, such as pluralistic ideals and the separation of church and state, ensure that content remains devoid of worldview significance—in a manner that is perhaps reminiscent of ultra-Orthodox secular studies classes.

In this model, school activities would generally be neutral from a worldview perspective, and would have a modular design, maintaining compatibility with the wide range of worldviews that are present in the United States, and fitting comfortably within them.

A less extreme version of this argument might be that public school activities are not entirely stripped of worldview significance, but the significance that remains is generalized and vague. There may be some element of patriotism and pluralism that emerges from the school activities and beliefs, but these elements of worldview are still compatible with a wide range of other, more differentiated, worldviews, which are developed through the practices of communities and homes. Yet others might argue the opposite case, that there is a powerful

American worldview that emerges from public school activities and beliefs. In this argument, one might point to the structure of the day, the way in which even supposedly neutral material

(such as math) is taught, the content of social studies, and the unique American culture that appears to emerge in our society, as evidence of activities that have worldview significance.

Each of these is plausible, and could be studied through an in-depth exploration of activities, using the model presented in this work.

318 Understanding the worldview significance of activities in the school day is of more than just academic importance. Because our country is so diverse there are often instances where students come from communities with strong cultures that produce their own strong worldviews.

What happens when students from these cultures are placed in public school classrooms? If we assume that the classroom activities have little worldview significance, the strong worldviews students bring with them should be no problem, but if the activities reflect and produce a worldview in conflict with those of the students the students could have difficulty in school and suffer from a lack of success. In order to resolve issues of this kind, a detailed analysis would need to be conducted of the in-school activities and the at-home activities of the students, in order to come to an understanding of how the two emergent worldviews might relate. This type of worldview clash has already been the subject of a great deal of research in the context of science classrooms (e.g. Aikenhead & Jegede, 1999), a domain that is recognized to have worldview significance. This work has adopted a broader approach than one that looks only at science, and worldview clashes might be explored throughout the school day, using the approach adopted in this work.

In a similar vein, researchers have studied alternative epistemologies in science classrooms, looking at non-Western and Native American epistemologies of science. These researchers have sought to understand how these epistemologies relate to a Western scientific epistemology (e.g. Cobern & Loving, 2001; Snively & Corsiglia, 2001). This approach could be expanded greatly using the analysis conducted in this work. For example, we might look at the activities that Native American students engage in at home, and build a picture of the worldview that they maintain. That picture could then be used to understand what happens when these

319 students engage in in-school activities. This type of analysis could be conducted at the class level, even within Native schools, as the curriculum has its own activity structure, and may not fit easily with the worldview that students maintain. Other non-dominant communities, such as the Amish, could also benefit from this type of analysis.

But there is more work to be done within the ultra-Orthodox educational system as well.

For example, though the dissertation has looked at aspects of school life that affect the students as a group, I have not examined the subtle differences that exist between individual students.

This does not mean that I believe that individual differences do not exist—rather, the individual differences are quite nuanced and are more fine-grained than the dynamics that I describe in this study, and further study is needed in this area to describe and explain such differences. For example, in the interviews I noticed that many of the students had a hard time articulating the purpose of religious study, as that was taken for granted, while they had a clearly articulated justification for secular studies, as that demanded explanation. However, not all students fit this model; some students (many of whom had parents who were not raised Orthodox) were able to provide elaborate justifications and explanations for why they studied religious material. Clearly, then, there are some ways in which their experience of religious education is different than the other students—as the framing that they give to the activity is different.

In the case of the students who had explanations for religious study, the primary source of the difference appeared to reside in the home, as the few students who were articulate in their justification of religious study had parents who did not grow up Orthodox. In the interview protocol I tried to examine some of the at-home variation by asking the students questions about their home life, such as what they did after school every day, and what their Shabbos was like.

320 These questions did not reveal any important differences, however (either because the questions were not well suited for uncovering such differences or because there were no differences to be found). Many students mentioned playing sports and riding their bikes after school, and they all gave the same basic descriptions of Shabbos, which included going to Shul, having Shabbos meals, and singing Shabbos songs. There was some variation in whether students were allowed to use computers at home, and some students mentioned learning

(religious textual study) with their fathers at home, but many of the larger cultural influences on the students seemed similar.

Because much of this work approaches worldview from the perspective of those who run the school (the administrators, rabbeim, and teachers) and from an examination of the structure and content of the school day, it might be easy to overlook the fact that even if all of the cultural influences on students are exactly the same, they may nevertheless adopt the overall worldview to differing degrees and in different ways. The cognitive mechanism for adoption of worldview is not clearly specified in this model. Indeed, there are some students who never fully adopt the worldview of the community and do not ultimately remain within the community.

The fact that some students may adopt the community worldview to differing degrees is not of great concern in this analysis. For the most part, the students interviewed and observed shared many of the same views and behaviors and the interviews did not turn up significant differences in the students’ adoption of the ultra-Orthodox perspective. In my observation of the classrooms it was apparent that as a group the students responded differently in secular and religious classrooms, and differently in secular classrooms taught by secular teachers and rabbeim. The differences in behavior observed indicate different levels of engagement that are a

321 result of a particular general worldview maintained by the students. Individual differences that exist between students likely take place at a much more nuanced level than that presented in this study, and there is no doubt that a finer grained analysis would pick up interesting differences at the student level as well; that was, however, beyond the scope of this dissertation.

Another important area of inquiry that lies beyond the scope of this work is girls’ education; this study only looked at boys’ education, and the girls’ education was left entirely unexplored. Yet girls’ education in the community is very different than the boys’—they study different material, they have a different structure to the day—and they too contribute to the overall worldview of the community. In that sense, this study has only provided half of the picture. Moreover, this study has only examined one medium-sized community. The dynamics at play in this community may not be the same as those at play in a larger community such as the

New York area, or in a more completely ultra-Orthodox community such Lakewood, NJ, or

Chassidic enclaves such as New Square, NY, or Williamsburg in Brooklyn.

Future research could also examine some of the prospects for change in secular education in ultra-Orthodox schools. I have presented an analysis of how secular education currently fits into the overall worldview of the community, and how the issues in the secular day can be seen as a product of the role of secular education within the ultra-Orthodox worldview. This does not mean, however, that schools cannot improve the secular education without violating the community’s worldview. There are many potential improvements that could be implemented in ways that are entirely consistent with the worldview of the community. A number of studies could explore these different possibilities, trying out a variety of design changes in the secular curriculum to see which ones are most effective. One possibility might be to make the material

322 more challenging, so that the students are excited about the content, and less denigrating of it.

Another possibility might be to try to integrate different secular subject areas so that the school can pack in more content in the limited amount of time available to them. One organic change, the introduction of rabbeim as secular instructors, is already taking place, and could be studied for its educational impact, as well as for the impact on worldview discussed in this work.

There are also many puzzles that were left unanswered in this study. For example, how is it that the students are managing to score at average levels on standardized test scores, given the lack of time devoted to secular studies and the lack of seriousness those studies are given? Is it simply the case that less time is needed to obtain these skills than is commonly assumed, or are there other forces at play? One intriguing possibility is that the rigorous religious study throughout the rest of the day provides the students with a cognitive advantage when they enter the secular part of the day. Many of the skills that they are acquiring through religious textual study may be helping them in their secular studies. This community could serve as an interesting test case for questions of cognitive transfer.

There are other interesting questions that can be explored in this community—because this community is an outlier in so many ways, it has the potential to serve as a fruitful test case for a wide range of inquiry. For example, there are interesting questions about delinquency that could be explored in this community. When children do abandon the worldview of the community (by no longer engaging in the religious practices of the community) they often also abandon the norms of secular society, engaging in delinquent behaviors such as drug and alcohol use, and criminality. What does this tell us about the nature of delinquency? How do the children’s worldviews change, if at all, when they abandon the practices of the community, and

323 are they able to successfully adopt the worldview of the secular world? These are but a few of the questions that should be explored in future work.

Questions of identity, worldview, culture, and activity are all intermingled in our daily lives. We generally do not focus on the way our outlook is shaped by our activities, our education, and the basic assumptive beliefs of our culture. We take these things for granted, for they are in fact so basic. It is only when we are confronted with alternative models that we can begin to see the influence of these factors on our lives. Indeed, the existence of this dissertation can be traced to my own process of examining the ultra-Orthodox school system from an outside perspective—that of the secular academic world. Prior to that, I had assumed that the dissertation would involve a fairly straightforward process, one that would require an exploration of the schools’ problems, a rationale for some reforms, and the results of the implementation of those reforms. Instead, as I began my exploration of the schools, I began to come up against my own assumptions about the nature of the school dynamics, and began to see how the worldview of the community, formerly transparent (and thus invisible) to me, was influencing what took place in the schools. Perhaps, if some internalization of the secular does take place in the community, as I have posited it might, some of those changes will be reflected in the secular part of the school day, and efforts to create a more meaningful secular program will develop organically, rather than through reform.

By describing the elements of a worldview that is almost entirely foreign to the vast majority of Americans, as they exist in everyday school practices, I hope to have shown the significance of daily activities and core beliefs in shaping the way that we understand the world.

Just as the air we breathe is critical in every moment of our lives, though we do not give thought

324 to it, our worldview, as it emerges from everything we do and think, is all around us, and is a critical determinant of how we understand, and act in, the world around us.

325

326 Appendix A. Interview Coding

In what follows I have provided an example of how I derived the gist of one interview, in this case, that of Mrs. Weiss, the 8th grade teacher at Lubavitch. She is the same teacher whose class is profiled in Chapter 5. In each line, I have given a brief explanation of why the themes marked were chosen. I have presented the summary paragraph of Mrs. Weiss’ views after the coding.

Secular Religio Secular School Jo History/ Norm Conne Knowled us K/C Ed. Purpos bs Descript sExpe ctions ge e ion ctatio Culture ns Mrs. My name is Mrs. Weiss, this is W, Lubavitch and I teach 8th grade boys. X Tea How did you come to teach here? cher 17:00 It's been 13 years now and I started for a teacher who was pregnant and leaving for the last two months of school and I took her place and ended up the year and they asked me to come back and I did. Did you work beforehand? 17:34 I'd been a teacher for probably longer than you've been alive and I have always taught. I taught for many In these lines Mrs. W. is simply giving me years. And when my family moved background information about who she is. here I was looking for a part time teacher position and I ended up at Lubavitch. Did you get a degree in teaching? Yes I have a BS in teaching and almost a masters.

Mrs. When you were younger did you want X W to be a teacher or did you want to be Tea something else? 18:05 cher That's an interesting question. In the days when I was younger, women had two choices. If they didn't want to be a secretary they could be a nurse or teacher. My choice was nurse but because my birthday was in October the nursing school said I had to be 18 by September in order to start. And I wouldn't be able to start. I would have to wait a whole year and my family could not afford a whole year to do nothing and I became a teacher. I

327 never regretted it. Again in these lines Mrs. W. is providing background Have you done anything else for a living? information about who she is. I do other work. When my husband passed away, teaching here was not enough to pay the bills so I was an editor at a publishing house - which I still do part-time. It's called Pearson education.

Mrs. 19:12 Can you tell me what you've X X W, been working on this week? Tea Well because I teach the secular cher subjects and it's a self-contained class I teach all of the subjects. I do math, social studies, reading, language arts. In the 2.5 hours I have to teach them. And I do them everyday and the boys also have computers, library and recess so it's a full schedule. 19:42 And what topics are you studying now? The boys are doing the constitution now. It's Illinois law that 8th grade These lines are mostly descriptive, but because they takes the federal constitution test. tell me a little bit about what types of subjects are We're now reviewing math because they're going to have a math final. privileged in the school day, I also wanted to flag this We're reviewing algebra, fractions as being potentially relevant to the theme of the role and whatever else they did in math this year. We did a last spelling unit. of secular education in the school day.

Mrs. What did you do today? 20:25 We X X W did three pages in the constitution. Tea They have 35 worksheets to do to cher learn. We're up to the executive powers. We reviewed algebra, two step equations and we finished a little bit of spelling unit 15. Did you give them any homework today? Again, though the lines are descriptive, we are also I know that it is a policy for the boys to get homework but I don't usually learning something about the nature and role of give homework to the boys, so no I secular education in the school—the fact that they did not. receive no homework could be relevant here.

328 Mrs. How do you divide your time in the X X X W class? Tea Usually in half hour increments 21:16 cher taking in account when they have to leave the room for computer time and library time, so I have to work around that and usually I put a schedule on the board in half an hour intervals. Which subject areas get the most priority or to they get equal treatment? It depends what we're doing. When we're doing the mortgaging of homes 21:39 and the loans for cars the boys are really into it and we do the stock Because I knew from an interview with the secular market the boys are really into it and really engrossed sometimes we will studies principal that studying mortgages and stock do that subject for almost the whole markets are part of the school’s effort to teach the day. We do the stock market and we play real estate brokers so we did that students skills that will be of practical use to them in for almost an hour and then I throw in negotiating the wider, secular world, I flagged this as social studies and spelling. being relevant to views of secular knowledge and culture, along with the other two themes.

Mrs. Do you think it's important for these X X W kids to know math? Tea They always ask "when will I have to cher know algebra again?" It's a favorite question. 22:27 algebra again, they ask when will I ever have to use them. my logic is that anything you use your intelligence to solve helps to create thinking processes and that's the important thing that I teach. No, they will not use algebra per se but they use the information and percentages of interest and the stock In this instance the teacher is noting the students’ market and how to get a mortgage of a home. They will also use the frequent questioning of the benefit of the material— thinking processes in general. They giving us an idea of the overall attitude toward secular will not call it algebra but they will think through a problem and a knowledge and toward the role of secular instruction solution. in the school day. In addition it provides us with her view on these same matters. Though nearly every statement provides some description, this utterance did not add very much description, and was not labeled as such. Mrs. Do you read books with them at all? X X X X W 23:11 Tea Yes as a matter of fact one of the boys cher was trying to sneak in to finish it, we read the autobiography of a survivor for our unit on WWII. We read "will to live" which is an autobiography of a survivor and we discuss it. Do you think it's important for them to read literature, for example, in many high schools they read Shakespeare? I respect the wishes of the school so I

329 do not go into anything they cannot Because she adds information about the religious read. I have read hundreds of anthologies and compiled hundreds of point of view of the school (or her perception of it) short stories that the boys can read. religious knowledge is added here. The description and they do read a number of short stories. some of the sherlock holmes category is back, as we are learning some more stories are appropriate. I think their specifics about what the students are studying. vocabulary is very important to encourage....

Mrs. Do you find you have enough time to X X X W cover the material you want to cover? Tea 24:33 cher No I have to jam down their throats what a public school does in eighth grade. A public school in eighth grade takes all day to do it, I do it in two hours and we don't finish. I would love to do more science, I would love to do more geography but sometimes there just is no time. Do you have goals each year of what you want them to accomplish? Well the eighth grade has goals and I have goals. I would like for their characters to develop into young men that will responsible and we can be proud of. I want their minds to Here, she discusses her expectations for the develop as much as possible. I have students—what she hopes that they will get out of been told that this is the last time they will do English studies 25:26 and so I class. This is both under the expectation/norms sometimes feel a heavy weight of category and the role of secular education responsibility to get as much into them as I can before they go into Hebrew. 25:35

Mrs. Do you consider yourself to have a X W particular teaching style? Tea They probably think that I do and the cher boys probably think I have a style but I'm not project oriented and I'm probably more of a disciplinarian than I should be, less understanding of eighth grade boys than I should be but no I don't think I have a style. 26:15

330 Mrs. Do you have discipline problems in X W the class? Tea Always. They are growing boys and a cher parcel of what they have to do is give the teacher troubles. Can you tell me about a particular incident? Well today they went to the library 26:37. we now have a policy that the teacher does not have to stay in the library. Half of the boys come back from the library and half of them stay in the library. so what do you do with This is an instance where a purely descriptive half of the boys who do come back? 26:52 I was walking back and forth.. statement is revealing of an underlying attitude of the boys who came back early got disinterest in the secular material, but because she recess and the other boys stayed in the classroom. doesn’t interpret the behavior she is describing in this way, I didn’t mark it as such.

Mrs. Do you think the students are as X X X W motivated to learn this material as Tea secular kids in public school? 27:09 cher I think that's probably individual. There are some boys who really want to learn about World War II and the Holocaust and then there are some boys who do like a certain amount of current events and they read in the newspaper anything that has to do with Israel. So there are some boys who are really into that and some boys who couldn't care less. 27:31 depends on what goes on in their family life at home and I respect that. Do you think the long school day effects them in any way? 27:45 well they like to eat in class because they She is telling me which secular subjects are of interest get hungry all the time because they to the boys, as well as what she covers in class. growing boys too… Probably but they are used to it so much of what they do and I don't see any getting tired at the end of the day because they have classes after me. I don't see them getting tired in my class.

Mrs. How do you try to communicate the X X X W importance of the material to the Tea students? cher In the subjects I teach it's sort of self evident. Mortgage, I teach how that has happens. Boys today talk about interest and bonds that the gov't does. Boys today know for their bar mitzvahs they get bonds so we were talking what that is and how it works.

331 28:39 There is a certain amount of She touches on a number of things here. There is carry over to what they do. subjects like war and the holocaust they are some of the same information about which topics the interested in so I don't have to boys are interested in and she has to create interest in. somehow create an interest. The constitution I have to create an The mention of the constitution is relevant to norms interest but there are boys who are for two reasons: 1. Because the reason it is in the going to want to drive pretty soon so we talk about the laws and where they curriculum is that they claim it is a requirement for come about. the students before they can take their GED’s, and that is all they will take because these kids have no high school English. 2. She is articulating the fact that they might be interested in laws because they want to learn the laws pertainng to driving which is something they will do. Mrs. How does teaching in this school X W compare to teaching in other schools Tea that aren't orthodox jewish schools? cher I can only compare to public schools although I did teach in ______but that was a long time ago. But to compare it to public school, I certainly don't have a language problems. In public schools across the united states, there's a second language problem and I don't have that here because they know English well. it's a plus here. but we have the same amount of diversity in the classroom here that you would have in a public school. so you are teaching to widely diverse group. 11 boys and you have those who will catch on immediately and those who won't. so it's pretty much the same 30:00 on a smaller scale than it is in a public school

Mrs. can you talk about any experiences X X X X W with the restrictions the school puts Tea on any material in their english cher classes? Well the videos are a big problem 30:23 . for instance, 12 angry men. we do a court case and we have recently decided we can read the book 12 angry men and it's fascinating . it's very well done. there is of course an oscar winning video out on it and I'm not allowed to show it. how come? When she starts describing the restrictions that the the only videos they are allowed to see are documentaries and this is a school puts on her this adds the connections category hollywood movie. 30:48 it's a very in addition to the others, whose rationale has been good hollywood production but it is acted. described in previous text. Strictly speaking this is not the exact issue of allowing connections to religion, but rather the exclusion of things that conflict with religion. It is closely related enough that it went into

332 this category.

Mrs. Is there content in there that is X X X X W problematic or is it simply because it's Tea not a documentary? cher No we read it so it's not anything in there that is problematic. We were allowed to read it but not see it. 31:15. There are a number of other videos. The problems is that some of the boys are allowed to see these things at home. some of the boys not though. so for instance, we were studying world war II. Tora! Tora! Tora! is an Hollywood production about the Japanese attack on pearl harbor. half of the class has seen it. they talk about it in class but I cannot show it. 31:41

Mrs. Does the material that they learn X X W relate in any way to their religious Tea life? cher That they learn from me? Yes. 31:49 well the holocaust relates to their religious life of course. and the traits I try to stress in the classroom relate to their religious life. math certainly doesn't but a lot of the times they tell me they are learning the same things in hebrew in the math end. do you try to communicate this relevance to them? actually they try to communicate it to me. they will tell me "oh we learned this today in Hebrew class." 32:23 what about the holocaust? it's interesting. the classes here think of WWII as equal to the She is giving us her view of the importance of aspects holocaust. they don't realize that to of secular knowledge and culture, and the role of the the secular world, the holocaust was only a small part of WWII so we talk material that they learn in class in that regard. about that. we talk about the history books and how while WWII might take two chapters, the holocaust might only take one paragraph. 32:56 we talk about that in general

333 Mrs. I know you don't have that much X X X X W science in 8th grade but do kids try to Tea bring up topics that are problematic? cher issues like evolution? not to my experience no. by the time the kids get to eighth grade they know what they can bring up and what they can't. 33:25 Do you ever encounter subjects that are problematic? in the stories and books we read I have to censor material for them. do you feel you have a good handle on what the problematic things are? The rationale here is similar to that of two lines because they have allowed me to use above, but because she adds that she makes judgments my discretion because they know that I am almost stricter than they are about what the religious rules are, and acts more according to their rules. strictly than the school itself, this is also in the religious knowledge and culture box.

Mrs. Can you give me an example of X X X X X W editing? Tea We read a number of stories. One cher story which is excellent --(but) because at one point a boy and girl talk to each other, we can't read that one. some of them i just can't incorporate. and then there are a number of stories which are excellent but there are some words in there I have to edit. I actually Xerox the pages and change some of the wording. there are very few stories that would be acceptable as a whole so I censor them. Do you feel you have, this sense of what you have, gives you an advantage over other teachers who Because she is giving us information about the may not know the rules like you do? Well the population of teachers here religious perspective and telling us how she herself changes constantly 35: 20. so most of treats that perspective—that she has respect for it and the other teachers are not so they come to me and ask is this okay. and I wouldn’t do anything to question it, the religious don't know it gives an advantage, I knowledge and culture category is checked. We also have a great deal of respect for the beliefs of the school so I would never learnsomething about how secular knowledge is do anything that would question that limited in the school day and what is considered respect. I have made it my business to learn what is appropriate. unessential secular knowledge.

334 Mrs. Do you think if there was a Rabbi X X X X W who taught the secular subjects that Tea they would command more attention cher from the students than the teachers who aren't rabbinical authorities? the students have built in a certain amount of respect for the rabbinical authorities--one that I don’t get for two reasons. One because I'm secular and one because I'm a woman. I don't know that they could teach secular subjects. They have a great amount of disrespect for the secular subjects and they throw away an English book if they find a boy is reading them. Throwing away a book is not acceptable so we have had our disagreements about that. They automatically act more quiet in a classroom because of who they are. Does it ever occur that you have a conflict in between the way you see the world and the way the school sees the world that it becomes a conflict? 36:54 I have a world until 4:15 and a world afterwards. And I realize that a conflict doesn't occur -- because they do conflict.

When the summary was finally distilled from this coding into a coherent paragraph with the gist of the content of her interview, this was the result:

Mrs. Weiss: Discusses her background as a career teacher, and discusses what they covered in class and how she divides her time—there is also some mention of which subjects they are interested in and which she has to create interest for. There was some discussion of their behavior, which she ascribes to them being growing boys. There is also some discussion of her expectations of them—she would like to mold their character, and feels the weight of responsibility to give them an education, given that this will be their final in school exposure to secular knowledge. She talks about religious restrictions, and feels she has a very good handle on

335 what is allowed in the class and what is not. She notes that she feels a conflict between her worldview and the school’s every day, though she is careful to be respectful of the school’s religious views.

336 Appendix B. Catalogue of activity nodes

Religious Class activity nodes

During religious study there are two major subject areas that dominate study, depending on the age of the students. For younger students Chumash (Bible study) is the major activity, and for older students Gemara (Talmud study) is the major study activity. Each of these has one central activity node associated with it, but also has several other, more minor activity nodes that can accompany the central activity node. In this section I refer to the group of activity nodes as a cluster of activity nodes around a particular topic. (The secular activity nodes observed did not tend to have very many activity nodes grouped together on the same subject matter; there were usually no more than 2 or 3 at the most.)

The first cluster of activity nodes discussed will be the Chumash cluster. This cluster contains eleven activity nodes; seven of them are standard activity nodes and the other four are idiosyncratic. A brief description of the nodes in the Chumash cluster is provided here, followed by a more complete description of each node.

o The central Chumash activity node is the learning Chumash activity node. This node has

two basic variations depending on the age of the student. For younger students, they take

out the chumashim and combine aspects of lecture, sing-song reading and translating of

the text, and learning new Hebrew vocabulary words and grammar concepts. These

components will be intermingled and the rebbe will often cycle through them numerous

times. For older students, the grammatical study tends to recede and there is more

individual reading. Aside from the reading and translating skills the students are learning

337 a tremendous amount of Biblical content. This content is described in the complete node description below.

The six standard activity nodes attached to this activity node are:

o Chumash Desk-work: The rebbe gives the students a worksheet or the students

open a workbook to a certain page and they fill in the answers.

o Chumash Chavrusa: Students get together in pairs and read and translate the

Chumash to each other. Each one reads and the other follows and interjects, until

they are both certain they understand the material.

o Chumash quiz: The rebbe reads questions and the students write them down on

their papers.

o Chumash Bechina: The rebbe will grill the students orally using a combination of

straightforward questions and Socratic back and forth to assess student

understanding.

o Chumash question and answer: The rebbe asks the students questions about

Chumash and they answer together as a class or individually, as the case may be

o Chumash Chazara: Students review the material that they have learned, either in

pairs (Chavrusa) or by themselves. They read and translate text and try to

memorize vocabulary.

The four idiosyncratic activity nodes observed were:

o Chumash party practice: Students stand in a line and each student recites a little

speech or poem about the Parsha that they have studied, as part of a performance

that they will put on for the parents.

338 o Chumash Baseball: the rebbe asks questions to the students on Chumash that

they have already studied (often vocabulary, but also sometimes content), and the

students get hits or strikes depending on their response, leading to runs.

o Chumash Individual work: students read and translate Chumash to themselves

(material that they have not studied before). For any word that they can’t figure

out the meaning of, they raise their hand and ask for help; when the rebbe tells

them what the words mean they write it down on a sheet of paper. This sheet can

be used on any Chumash quiz.

o Rashi Perfection: The students have flashcards that are numbered and

progressive. The flashcards contain both Chumash vocabulary and individual

Rashi selections with the translations on the back of the card. The students work

on their own or with other students to master the content on the cards.

Each of these nodes is described in more detail below.

Cluster of Chumash activity nodes

Standard Chumash activity nodes

Learning Chumash

Form and execution: The learning Chumash activity node is the central activity node of a cluster of activity nodes that are based on the text of the Chumash. There are two basic variations of this activity node, one for younger students and one for older, but they are similar enough to be grouped as one. In the younger grades the rebbe tells the students to take out their Chumashim and they then engage in any one of a series of components. The rebbe might begin with some

339 amount of lecture, introducing new Hebrew words that they will encounter in the text, or prefacing some of the content that they will be learning, and might also review what they had previously done. Another component that he might begin with is one in which they engage in out loud call and response reading and translating of the text, word for word. When the verse is new to the students, the rebbe will do it a few times with them before having them do it on their own.

The rebbe might also call on individual boys to read and translate the verse. In preparing them for the upcoming verses, the rebbe has to teach them a good deal of biblical Hebrew grammar, so as they go along in the text the rebbe teaches them about roots of words, what certain prefixes and suffixes indicate, and what tense and gender words are. The rebbe also has to explain the content of the Chumash to them—biblical texts are not simple; the rebbe has to do a lot of scaffolding to give the students the proper interpretations. All of these components are typically used in this activity node to varying degrees.

In a typical class the rebbe will operate in a cycle, giving some content explanation and grammatical help, having them read together in call and response, and going back and doing it again. In the older grades the grammatical lecturing tends to fall to the background as vocabulary becomes a more central issue, and the students are asked to do more individual out-loud reading of the verses than group reading. Also, in the older grades the content becomes more important than at the younger grades.

Different rabbeim add their own flourishes to this activity node. For example, the 1st grade rebbe at Yeshiva had a system of large flashcards that he held up for the students to see.

On the cards were the Hebrew words with the roots, prefixes, and suffixes all in different color ink, so that the students could see it visually. One 5th grade rebbe added a writing element: in

340 between verses the students would write down translations of the Chumash text from the whiteboard.

The different elements that are used in this activity node are not separated by clear temporal boundaries; rather, the rebbe will flow between different elements, switching between them in a matter of seconds. In addition, they are perceived by the rebbe and the students to be parts of one activity, and are not individually named. Each component is not, therefore, a separate activity node, but taken together make up a complex but unified whole.

This activity node is often accompanied by any number of other activity nodes, among them are Chumash Chavrusa (learning in pairs), Chumash vocabulary work, and content and vocabulary quizzes. All of these will be described in their own sections. The time frame for the activity node can be as little as 5 minutes or as long as an hour.

Content: Aside from Biblical grammar and Biblical vocabulary, which are skills that are developed in the course of learning Chumash, the students are also learning content. In the 1st grade at yeshiva they were learning the section of the Bible that deals with G-d’s increasing anger at the wickedness of man, leading up to the flood and Noah’s Ark. In one of the 5th grade classes at Yeshiva the students were learning a section of the Bible that dealt with the different parts of the Tabernacle (a sort of traveling Temple). In the other 5th grade class the students were learning about a plague that descended on the Jews in the desert that was cured by looking at a statue of a snake wrapped around a staff. In another class the Chumash section dealt with Jewish holidays throughout the year, and in yet another the Chumash dealt with the laws of leprosy.

Direct worldview significance: There is an incredible amount of worldview significant material in this activity node, some of this material is contained in the specific content being

341 studied, some is implicit in the practice regardless of content, and some is contained in the way the content is studied.

There are a lot of ways that one can study the Bible. Most academics treat the Bible critically, and there is a long tradition of Biblical criticism that has its own assumptions and contains specific ways to study the Bible. Christians would study the Bible from a Christian perspective, and non-Christians might study the Bible in order to draw life lessons from it, or for other reasons. In the Orthodox Jewish community, and in its schools, the Bible is studied in a particular way and this way represents certain assumptions about the text. One assumption that is prominent in the way that Chumash is studied is that the meaning of the text is determined by a chain of tradition that is organized in the Talmud, goes through the medieval commentaries, and continues until today. Individuals cannot find meaning in the text on their own, they must appeal to previous sources such as the famous medieval commentator, Rashi, to discern the proper meaning of the text. In classrooms, this is how the correct interpretation is arrived at. Another assumption is that there are multiple layers of meaning within the text; that there is the straightforward interpretation, the mystical interpretation, the legal interpretation, and the moral interpretation, among others. These differing interpretations are treated differently and are accorded different status within the class.

Also inherent in the classroom study of Chumash is the purpose of the study. Study of

Chumash is not typically skill-based in ultra-Orthodox schools. You could imagine a structure for study that would not begin in-depth study of the Chumash text until the students have mastered biblical grammar and have some foundation of a vocabulary. This is in fact the way that some modern Orthodox and Conservative schools teach Chumash. Alternatively, you could

342 just focus on the stories contained in the Chumash and not bother with the Hebrew at all— there are schools that do this as well. Because, however, this very activity node is meant to be a basic building block of students lives—done in essentially the same way for the rest of their lives—it is reasonable that they begin to work on the activity node itself immediately. The skills will not be needed for some other content, or for some wider knowledge of grammar systems; the students are expected to be studying this exact text, in a roughly similar way for their entire lives. This expectation is built-in to the structure of their study, and the goal of the class is that the students develop familiarity with the text and ultimately be able to read it independently.

Another aspect of their Chumash study that is implicitly worldview relevant is that the approach taken in teaching the material assumes that all of the events described really truly happened the way they are described and are not allegorical (except in rare instances where the chain of tradition dictates that the correct interpretation is allegorical). Some of the observed examples of this include: the flood really truly happened, the sacrifices in the temple were taken by G-d, before the flood there were giants on earth, miracles really happen (for example, looking at a snake cured the plague), and angels appear to people.

In addition the content of the Chumash contains many basic principles, norms, and beliefs that structure how students understand the way that the world works. Some examples of this from the classes that were observed for this research are that G-d gets angry or happy at people based on their good and bad actions, repentance can change G-d’s mind so that he would not punish someone, people can die because of their sins, if you act bad, bad things will happen to you, G-d doesn’t really have a heart—that is just an expression, the worst thing in the world to happen to a woman is not to be able to have children, and that taking revenge is a sin.

343 Finally, the practice of studying Chumash (and all religious texts) is given great importance and is treated quite seriously, thus the students maintain a reverence for the material that is not typically found in other contexts.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed five times in the 1st grade at

Yeshiva, two times in one 5th grade class at Yeshiva and twice in the other, three times in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch, and twice in the 6th grade at Chassidic.

Chumash Desk-work

Form and execution: The rebbe gives the students a worksheet or the students open a workbook to a certain page and they fill in the answers. This is very often done in pairs

(Chavrusa learning, which is explained below) and is also often part of a review (Chazara, explained below). Time frame is 10 to 20 minutes.

Content: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description. Chumash desk- work is often vocabulary oriented, but can also be content and grammar based.

Direct worldview significance: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 1st grade at

Yeshiva, and two times in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch.

Chumash Question and Answer

Form and execution: rebbe asks the students questions about Chumash and they answer together as a class or individually, as the case may be.

Content: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

344 Direct worldview significance: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 5th grade at

Yeshiva, and once in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch.

Chumash Chavrusa

Form and execution: Students get together in pairs and read and translate the Chumash to each other. Each one reads and the other follows and interjects, until they are both certain they understand the material. This activity node can range from a few minutes in length to a half an hour.

Content: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Direct worldview significance: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description of the worldview significance of Chumash as a topic of study. In addition, the

Chavrusa is the basic structure for lifelong religious learning in the Orthodox community; most learning that these students will engage in as adults will be done in this format. By participating in Chavrusa learning in class the students are being socialized into a particular methodology for acquiring religious knowledge. They will come to see this as a normative practice, almost inseparable from the material itself.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 1st grade at

Yeshiva, once in the 5th grade at Yeshiva, and once in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch.

345 Chumash Chazara

Form and execution: Students review the material that they have learned, either in pairs

(Chavrusa) or by themselves. They read and translate text and try to memorize vocabulary. The time frame is 5 to 25 minutes.

Content: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Direct worldview significance: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description of the worldview significance of Chumash as a topic of study. In addition, like the

Chavrusa activity node, the Chazara activity node is a central element of all religious learning throughout life. By participating in structured Chazara in class the students are being socialized into a particular methodology for acquiring religious knowledge. They will come to see this as a normative practice, almost inseparable from the material itself. Review of material actually has religious significance for the students.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 6th grade at

Chassidic, and once in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch.

Chumash Quiz

Form and execution: The rebbe reads questions and the students write them down on their papers. This activity node is part of a suite of assessments used in the religious part of the day that range from short written quizzes such as this, to frequent short oral Bechinas (explained below), to even more frequent Socratic dialogue with the class. Large written tests are not as common. In the example observed the content was Chumash vocabulary and the rebbe gave the

346 students an English word or phrase and the students had to write down the Biblical word in the text they had studied that corresponded to the English word. The time frame is 5 to 10 minutes.

Content: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Direct worldview significance: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 5th grade at

Yeshiva.

Chumash Bechina

Form and execution: The rebbe will grill the students orally using a combination of straightforward questions and Socratic back and forth to assess student understanding. Often these Bechinas do not involve number or letter grades—students can tell how they’ve done because the right answer is always told to them, and the rebbe can see how much the students know. Sometimes the rebbe will give prizes or raffle tickets for right answers. The time frame is

5 to 25 minutes.

Content: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Direct worldview significance: In addition to all of the significance mentioned in the learning Chumash description, the students also develop the sense that this is material that has intrinsic value, because much of the time they are not trying to get the answers right for grades, but just to know the material. This is reflective of a cultural attitude that is then reinforced by this activity node.

347 Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 6th grade at

Chassidic, and twice in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch.

Idiosyncratic Chumash activity nodes

Chumash individual work

Form and execution: students read and translate Chumash to themselves (material that they have not studied before). For any word that they can’t figure out the meaning of, they raise their hand and ask for help; when the rebbe tells them what the words mean they write it down on a sheet of paper. This sheet can be used on any Chumash quiz. In some variations the rebbe limits the number of words he will translate. The time frame is 5 to 20 minutes.

Content: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Direct worldview significance: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed twice in the 5th grade at

Yeshiva.

Chumash Baseball

Form and execution: There are a number of variations on this classic activity node, but the basic structure is that the rebbe asks questions to the students on Chumash that they have already studied (often vocabulary, but also sometimes content), and the students get hits or strikes depending on their response, leading to runs. In the version observed the content was

Chumash vocabulary and the students received RBI’s for right answers; the greater the number

348 of students who did not get a particular word correct, the greater the number of RBI’s received when the correct answer was finally given.

Content: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Direct worldview significance: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 5th grade at

Yeshiva.

Rashi Perfection

Form and execution: The students have flashcards that are numbered and progressive.

The flashcards contain both Chumash vocabulary and individual Rashi selections with the translations on the back of the card. The students work on their own or with other students to master the content on the cards. When they reach a certain level of proficiency they get tested and can move on to the next card. There is also a higher level of proficiency for each card that allows the student to become a “tester” himself.

Content: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Direct worldview significance: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed twice in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch.

Chumash Party Practice

Form and execution: Students stand in a line and each student recites a little speech or poem about the Parsha that they have studied, as part of a performance that they will put on for

349 the parents. This activity node is typically done in the younger grades when students are just starting to learn Chumash.

Content: Chumash content, see the learning Chumash activity node.

Direct worldview significance: See the learning Chumash activity node for a full description. Also, the fact that they have a party when they finish a Parsha conveys the sense of importance and religious reverence that the students are being socialized to have for the material.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 1st grade at

Yeshiva.

Cluster of Gemara activity nodes

The second major cluster of activity nodes is the Gemara cluster. This cluster contains seven activity nodes; five of them are standard activity nodes and the other two are idiosyncratic.

As with the Chumash cluster, a brief sketch of the nodes in the cluster is provided here, followed by a more complete description.

o The central Gemara activity node is the Gemara learning activity node. The Gemara is

the extensive commentary and elaboration of the Mishna (which consist of relatively

short summations of Jewish law). Together, the Mishna and Gemara make up the

Talmud, which is the central document that Orthodox Jewish men study throughout their

lives.

At the outset of a class a rebbe will typically begin in one of two ways. If the class

is beginning a new section of Talmud the rebbe will begin with a lecture that sets up the

basic background laws that are necessary for an understanding of the text. If the class is

in the middle of a text, however, the rebbe will usually begin by engaging in a Socratic

350 back and forth dialogue with the students on what they have already learned to ensure that they understand the material before moving on. This back and forth can sometimes take the entire class, particularly when the material is difficult. As the students get older, the amount of Socratic back and forth decreases and the amount of learning directly from the text increases.

Once the rebbe is confident that the students understand the logical flow of the text they will turn to the text itself. At this point the process is designed to teach the students to match the short and cryptic text (that has no punctuation or capitalization) to the logical flow that has just been elaborated. This is done by having the students all read out loud and translate together, with the rebbe guiding them, or having the rebbe read and translate out loud, explaining the text in terms of the previous discussion.

Four standard activity nodes were observed attached to this node:

o Gemara Chavrusa: Students get together in pairs and read and translate the text of

the Gemara to each other.

o Gemara Chazara: Students review the material that they have learned, either in

pairs (Chavrusa) or by themselves. They read and translate text and try to

memorize vocabulary.

o Gemara desk work: Desk-work is not a major part of Gemara study; in some cases

however, the rebbe will assign the students worksheets of some kind.

o Gemara chart-filling: The rebbe will put up a table or chart on the board, or will

give the students a sheet with the table on it, and the class will fill in the chart

351 together. These charts generally deal with the flow of the logic in the Gemara,

or a breakdown of the different opinions in the Gemara.

The two idiosyncratic activity nodes observed were:

o Gemara tape: The rebbe tapes his Gemara class for the students and they bring in

blank audiotapes for him to make copies for them to take home.

o Writing down Gemara answers: The students have questions about the Gemara

written down on a sheet in front of them and the rebbe asks different students to

answer the questions. Regardless of what the student answers the rebbe then gives

the answer in his own words and dictates to the students the exact language that

they should use on their sheets when filling in the answers.

These are all described in more detail below.

Standard Gemara activity nodes

Gemara Learning

Form and execution: To understand the activity node of classroom Gemara study one must first have some understanding of what Gemara itself is, and what its study looks like outside of the classroom. The Gemara is the extensive commentary and elaboration of the

Mishna (which consist of relatively short summations of Jewish law). Together, the Mishna and

Gemara make up the Talmud, which is the central document that Orthodox Jewish men study throughout their lives. In the Orthodox community the entire Talmud is simply called the

Gemara, because only a small portion of the text is Mishna.

352 The Talmud is an exceptionally long and complicated Aramaic text, and it is cryptic as well. It is not unusual for those who study Talmud regularly to spend numerous days trying to understand just a few lines of text. This is because the Talmud is actually a written down account of numerous conversations and arguments over Jewish law that took place over 500 years as part of an oral tradition. When upheavals in the Jewish community began to cause the law to be forgotten it was written down as the Talmud. The Talmud thus compresses 500 years time into one text, with differing opinions presented on the same page by people who lived hundreds of years apart. The central task for those studying Talmud is to reconstruct the back and forth argumentation in the text, to come to an understanding of the underlying legal principles that drive the debate, and to determine what the law would be in any given situation.

In the Orthodox world, the Talmudic text is never studied on its own, but rather, it is studied through the prism of the countless commentators who have written down their interpretations of the Talmud over the millennia. Most prominently among them is Rashi, whose commentary appears on the side of the Gemara, and is central to any Talmud study. Rashi’s commentary has become so standard that it is perceived as nearly part of the Talmudic text.

In school, students usually begin to study Talmud in the 5th grade. Once they begin

Talmud study it increasingly becomes the main focus of the school day, as it requires the most intensive study, and will ultimately be the text that these students will be engaging with throughout life. By ninth or tenth grade the goal is for the students to be able to “make a

Leining”, which means to be able to read a piece of Gemara and figure out what it is saying without assistance. This is the ultimate goal that the schools are working towards even in 5th grade, and it structures the way that the activity node is conducted in the classroom.

353 At the outset of a class a rebbe will typically begin in one of two ways. If the class is beginning a new section of Talmud the rebbe will begin with a lecture that sets up the basic background laws that are necessary for an understanding of the text. The structure of the Talmud is such that any one text may have references to laws from a wide variety of topics—all of the law is deeply interconnected—and as such the students are unlikely to have enough knowledge to understand the text without a basic primer. If the class is in the middle of a text, however, the rebbe will usually begin by engaging in a Socratic back and forth dialogue with the students on what they have already learned to ensure that they understand the material before moving on.

This back and forth can sometimes take the entire class, particularly when the material is difficult. As the students get older, the amount of Socratic back and forth decreases and the amount of learning directly from the text increases.

The Socratic dialogue is usually structured around an understanding of the “Shakel

V’Tarya”, which literally means “the question and answer”. Because the Gemara is made up of a series of complex back and forth arguments, one of the most difficult things for a rebbe is to communicate what the different positions of the argument are, and how the progression in the

Gemara reflects those positions. What are the proofs being brought, what are the counter-proofs?

What is the nature of the proof: is it textual, Rabbinic, or logical? What did this opinion originally state and how did it change? These are some of the questions that a rebbe must make sure the students know the answers to. In order to aide in student understanding the rebbe will often map out the structure of the argument on the whiteboard, using charts and tables to keep track of different opinions.

354 Once the rebbe is confident that the students understand the logical flow of the text they will turn to the text itself. At this point the process is designed to teach the students to match the short and cryptic text (that has no punctuation or capitalization) to the logical flow that has just been elaborated. This is done by having the students all read out loud and translate together, with the rebbe guiding them, or having the rebbe read and translate out loud, explaining the text in terms of the previous discussion. Students are then asked to read individually to ensure that they can read the text well.

After reading the text inside with the students, the rebbe might return to the Socratic dialogue with the students, as repetition is necessary to avoid confusion, and then might have them read the commentary of Rashi, together as a class, to see his opinion of the text (which is usually the opinion that the rebbe has already presented to them). In older grades this might be followed by an analysis of select other Talmudic commentators, such as the Tosafos, who might raise objections to, or questions about, the interpretation of the text.

This activity node is often accompanied by any number of other activity nodes, among them are Gemara Chavrusa (learning in pairs), and Gemara Chazara (review). These will be described in their own sections. The time frame for the activity node can be from 25 minutes to an hour. (As adults, any one Gemara activity node can extend up to 3 hours, and Gemara related activity nodes can be studied back to back all day).

Content: The content of Gemara in general is wide ranging. Even a piece of Gemara that is focused on a single subject will nevertheless bring in many other subjects as part of the textual dialogue. There are certain tractates of the Talmud that are traditionally taught to Talmud beginners. These generally come from the tractates dealing with responsibility for damages and

355 one’s responsibility to return lost objects under different circumstances. These are considered more accessible to students because they deal with issues that students have some familiarity with. Topics such as ritual impurities and technical rules for the kosher slaughter of animals are not generally taught to students at the elementary level; nevertheless because the Talmud is so interconnected, these topics show up even in discussions of damage responsibility.

In the four classes where Talmud study was observed, two were studying the same tractate which dealt with how one identifies lost objects and when one has a responsibility to try and track down the owner. Another class was studying a tractate that dealt with who is responsible for the damages when there is a collision between oxen in the street. The fourth was studying a section that dealt with what quality of produce one can use to pay a debt, and whether it mattered if the produce was dedicated to a Priest or to the Temple.

Finally, because the Talmud is written in Aramaic, the students are learning some

Aramaic, albeit a version that contains a great deal of Hebrew in it. They are also learning to translate and decipher a text, and they are learning how to make and understand complex logical arguments.

Direct worldview significance: As with the Chumash activity nodes there is an incredible amount of worldview significant material in the Gemara activity node, from the way that the material is studied to the content that it contains.

As with Chumash, students in these classes do not study the Talmud from the same conceptual paradigm as an academic might; their assumptions about the text are very different.

In this context, the class is not concerned with the historical implications of the text, or the personalities of the different sages giving their opinions. That contextual background is flattened

356 out, and all that is important is the arguments and the law. An academic would not be particularly troubled if there was a contradiction in the text and would not treat all of the text as equally valid; in these classrooms, however, the text is uniform and a coherent interpretation of all its parts must be arrived at. In addition, the way to arrive at the correct interpretation is understood to be through the commentaries that have been written, and the oral tradition that has been handed down—not through isolated analysis of the text.

Like Chumash, the students do not begin their study of Talmud with a primer on

Aramaic, and do not focus on Talmudic reading skills. They also do not focus purely on content either; it is not expected that the content that they learn in the fifth grade will be remembered years later. Rather, the students are being taught how to engage in the activity node of Talmud study; that is, how Orthodox men are expected to engage with this particular text. Because they are being socialized into a particular practice, it is necessary for them to engage in that practice

“for real”. The structure of classes is set up to teach the students the activity node of Talmud study, not the actual content of Talmud itself. This activity node therefore contains a great deal of focus on learning to argue, learning to appreciate the logical structure of the text, and learning to make connections between different areas of law and to understand the implications of one area on another.

Though the function of class may not be geared toward lifelong remembrance of the content, the activity node cannot take place in a vacuum, and as such there is a great deal of

Talmudic content being absorbed by the students. This content also has worldview shaping significance. To begin with, Talmudic material concerns itself with Jewish law, and how people must behave. Contained in the study of this law is the understanding that these laws are truly

357 relevant today, and are not just of interest as historical relics. Thus when they learn about responsibility for crashes in the street, they understand that this is the law today as well. In addition, like Chumash, the content of Talmud contains a great deal of basic beliefs and religious principles, which are absorbed by the students in their study of the material.

Finally, the practice of studying Talmud (just like Chumash) is given great importance and is treated quite seriously, thus the students maintain a reverence for the material that is not typically found in other contexts.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed three times in one 5th grade class at Yeshiva and twice in the other, four times in the 8th grade at Lubavitch, and five times in the 6th grade at Chassidic.

Gemara Chavrusa

Form and execution: Students get together in pairs and read and translate the text of the

Gemara to each other. Each one reads and the other follows and interjects, until they are both certain they understand the material. Students in elementary school mostly use the Chavrusah time to do Chazara. Sometimes Chavrusa is not text based, but worksheet based. This activity node can range from a few minutes in length to a half an hour.

Content: See the Learning Gemara activity node for a full description of the content.

Direct worldview significance: See the Learning Gemara activity node for a full description of the worldview significance of Gemara as a topic of study. In addition, the

Chavrusa is the basic structure for lifelong religious learning in the Orthodox community; most learning that these students will engage in as adults will be done in this format. By participating in Chavrusa learning in class the students are being socialized into a particular methodology for

358 acquiring religious knowledge. They will come to see this as a normative practice, almost inseparable from the material itself.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed twice in the 8th grade at

Lubavitch.

Gemara Chazara

Form and execution: Students review the material that they have learned, either in pairs

(Chavrusa) or by themselves. They read and translate text and try to memorize vocabulary. The time frame is 5 to 25 minutes.

Content: See Gemara Learning for description of content.

Direct worldview significance: The worldview significance is the same as that described in Gemara learning. In addition, the Chazara activity node is a central element of all religious learning throughout life. . By participating in structured Chazara in class the students are being socialized into a particular methodology for acquiring religious knowledge. They will come to see this as a normative practice, almost inseparable from the material itself. Review of material actually takes on religious significance for the students.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed twice in one 5th grade class at

Yeshiva, and once in the 8th grade at Lubavitch. In addition, Chazara was the sole homework assignment given to the 6th graders at Chassidic every evening.

Gemara Desk-work

Form and execution: Unlike Chumash and other religious subjects, desk-work is not a major part of Gemara study. Most Gemara work is text based and oral; students work with

359 original text and are assessed by the rebbe in Socratic back and forth conversations with the rebbe. In some cases however, the rebbe will assign the students worksheets of some kind. The students will work on this at their desk, like all other desk-work.

Content: See Gemara Learning for description of content.

Direct worldview significance: See Gemara Learning for description of worldview significance.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in one of the 5th grade classes at Yeshiva.

Gemara chart filling

Form and execution: The rebbe will put up a table or chart on the board, or will give the students a sheet with the table on it, and the class will fill in the chart together. These charts generally deal with the flow of the logic in the Gemara, or a breakdown of the different opinions in the Gemara. The time frame for this activity node is 10 to 15 minutes.

Content: See Gemara Learning for description of content.

Direct worldview significance: See Gemara Learning for description of worldview significance.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in one of the 5th grade classes at Yeshiva and once in the 6th grade class at Chasidic.

360 Idiosyncratic Gemara activity nodes

Gemara Tape

Form and execution: The rebbe tapes his Gemara class for the students and they bring in blank audiotapes for him to make copies for them to take home. The students get credit in various raffles for listening to the tape at home.

Content: See Gemara Learning for description of content.

Direct worldview significance: In addition to the general significance contained in

Gemara Learning this activity node also conveys the sense that Gemara learning is something that is important in one’s home life and that it is important to spend time at home reviewing what one has learned in Gemara at school.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed three times in one of the 5th grade classes at Yeshiva.

Writing Down Dictated Gemara Answers

Form and execution: The students have questions about the Gemara written down on a sheet in front of them and the rebbe asks different students to answer the questions. Regardless of what the student answers the rebbe then gives the answer in his own words and dictates to the students the exact language that they should use on their sheets when filling in the answers. The time frame for this activity node is 5 to 30 minutes.

Content: See Gemara Learning for description of content.

Direct worldview significance: The worldview significance is the same as that described in Gemara learning.

361 Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed twice in one 5th grade class at Yeshiva.

Standard activity nodes (non-Chumash, non-Gemara)

Other than the Chumash and Gemara activity nodes, which are the central activity nodes in the school day, there is a wide range of activity nodes around other subject areas. There were seventeen standard activity nodes observed in the religious classes of the three schools.

Davening Out Loud (everyday ritual)

Form and execution: The students begin at the beginning of Davening and start reading together from the prayer books in a sing song out-loud. Depending on the rebbe’s preference and the age of the students he might have them read some of the Davening to themselves quietly and some out-loud in sing-song. There are certain parts that are always said quietly and others that are always said out-loud. In addition there are different rituals for different parts of Davening; students stand up at certain points, hold their Tzisis at certain points, and kiss their Tzisis as well.

Many student Shukle (shake) back and forth like adults often do when they Daven. When they are a little older these students will come to school an hour early and Daven together with the adults.

At the end of Davening there are some end of Davening rituals. During the time of the year when they count the Omer, there is a small ritual at the end of Davening where a different student each day will put the next number up on a chart and they will all count together.

Sometimes rabbeim incorporate Tehillim (Psalms) into the end of Davening. The time frame for this activity node is 15 to 20 minutes.

362 Content: The content is the morning prayers that are said by all Jewish males every day. The students don’t know the meaning of all of the text but they are taught to repeat it, reading it from the prayer books.

Direct worldview significance: The fact that in general Orthodox Jews pray together three times a day structures their view of the world. These students are learning how to pray—they are not doing the activity node exactly in the way that adults would, but they are getting used to doing large chunks of what the adults do. Inherent in the practice is the assumption that there is a

G-d who controls the world and who must be prayed to. In addition, the repetition of the ritual every day provides structure to the day, in the same way that any morning ritual might (like brushing teeth and getting dressed); if you are praying to start your day you are not doing something else at that time.

As students get older and become more aware of the content of the prayers, the specific content also has an impact. Contained in the prayers are supplications, descriptions of G-d and of the Jewish people’s obligations towards him, beliefs about the messiah and Jerusalem, and other biblical and Talmudic content. When someone repeats these things word for word on a daily basis, they must in some way have an impact on the way that they see the world.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed five times in the 1st grade at

Yeshiva and three times in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch. This is a activity node that is done every day without fail. When the students enter 5th grade they shift to the real Davening activity node, together with the adults earlier in the morning and do not take up class time with Davening.

363 Learning about Davening

Form and execution: Either the rebbe or students reads and translates the text of the

Davening, pausing frequently to explain what the Davening means in greater detail. Depending on their age, students will follow along or take notes.

Content: The daily prayers, which the students recite every day, but don’t necessarily understand.

Direct worldview significance: Just as in prayer itself the students are accepting some major beliefs about the world and are acting on them, in learning about the prayers the students are delving into those beliefs. As they read the text of the prayer they are reading about G-d’s greatness in the world and about our role in the world and what we ask of G-d when we pray, and how it is supposed to affect our character.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 5th grade at

Yeshiva and once each in the 8th and 3rd grades at Lubavitch.

Bentching out loud

Form and execution: Following lunch, the students open their Siddurim (prayer books) to the right page and they all sing the Bentching (grace after meals) out-loud together in a sing- song. The time frame is about seven minutes.

Content: Grace after meals (in Hebrew).

Direct worldview significance: Inherent in saying these blessings is the notion that all the food ultimately comes from G-d and He must be thanked for it. It also makes eating a more formal activity; you cannot just eat on the fly because there are rituals that dictate how you must

364 eat. This must change the way that people see the world in some small way, as the practice of eating on the run is never engaged in—because one will have to Bentch at the end.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 1st grade at

Yeshiva.

Lubavitch Pre-Davening Ritual

Form and execution: The rebbe leads a call and response with class of a select group of verses from the Torah, then reads and explains one small section of Jewish law from the

Rambam’s (Maimonadies’) code of Jewish law, and finishes by lecturing one small mystical tidbit about the coming of the Messiah. The time frame is about 5 minutes.

Content: The content of the Jewish law is always changing, as is the tidbit on the

Messiah.

Direct worldview significance: The ritualized nature of this activity prior to the morning prayers, highlights these items as being of great importance. The Rambam lecture signifies that following Jewish law is of great importance, and the study of the Messiah highlights the fact that the Lubavitcher movement has always promoted the study of the Messiah as a major area of interest. Engaging in this ritual is also a way of signifying that these students are Lubavitch and are concerned with issues that are important to Lubavitch, if not to other ultra-Orthodox groups.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed twice in the 3rd grade at

Lubavitch.

365 Vertlach

Form and execution: Vertlach are special activity nodes that have a great deal of worldview significance. They are short religiously or morally oriented lectures given by a rebbe that are liberally sprinkled throughout the school day. The structure of a Vertle can vary. One common structure for a Vertle is that the rebbe presents a problem with or question about a verse in the Torah and then answers the question by elucidating a religious or moral point. Another common type is the Gadol story (a Gadol is a great sage), which is a story about a Gadol that demonstrates some act of piety or lesson in how we should act. Sometimes the Gadol story doesn’t really have a moral point, but is just interesting because it is about a great religious figure and how he behaves (the secular analogy to this might be a story about a baseball player, where the content of the story is not baseball related).

The Vertlach are different from other activity nodes in that they are often (but not always) practiced as part of an aside within another activity node. While learning Chumash the rebbe might notice a connection in the text to some moral point and use the opportunity to expand on that point. When it is within the context of another activity node the line between that activity node and the Vertle activity node can sometimes be blurry, as some activity nodes naturally contain many Vertle sized nuggets of information. In this respect, Vertlach constitute a slight violation of the heuristic of clear temporal boundaries; nevertheless, as they have strong worldview significance and do have their own form and script they are worthy of analysis in and of themselves. It should be noted that there are also times when the Vertle is indeed a practice unto itself. When that is the case the content and structure of the activity node is usually quite

366 clear. The time frame for a Vertle is 2 to 3 minutes for Vertlach that are presented as asides and 5 to 7 minutes for those that stand on their own.

Content and Direct worldview significance: The content of a Vertle often consists of undiluted worldview assertions, thus the two categories, content and worldview, are combined for this activity node. Here is a sampling of the range of Vertlach noted in the classes observed for this research:

o Story Vertlach

- It is bad to take revenge

- Understanding is built on shared experience

o “True Story”

- Hashem (G-d) saved a woman who had a rattlesnake in her closet and she didn’t open

it

- Man swindled others by selling a car phone, but the phone was shaped like a car, not

for use in a car

- A long story about getting Matzo on Pesach from the late Lubavitcher rebbe o Vertlach based on a connection to the material they were learning

- Do not steal

- We don’t wear clothes for comfort, but to show that we follow the Torah, not just to

protect us from the elements; thus, the word yarmulka means yorei malca (fear of G-

d) o Vertle contained in a Talmudic text (and connected to what they were learning)

- Learning Torah in order to do Mitzva is the highest level of learning

367 - One must always greet friends with panim yafos (a friendly face)

- A Vertle that teaches students to appreciate certain brachos

- Discusses a Gemara about a Tana (Talmudic sage) who lost 10 children and was able

to understand the suffering of others to strengthen them in their faith. (Also a Gadol

story). o Gadol story

- Hillel, a great sage, did not ever get angry, and a story about someone who tried to get

him angry

- A story about a Gadol, demonstrating the honor one must show to a gadol

- A story about the Vilna Gaon (name of Gadol) explaining how anyone could become

as great as him

- The Chofetz Chaim (name of Gadol) was meticulous in his grocery store, so as not to

cheat anyone o Vertle based on question one might have on Jewish law

- Why does sheep thief pay less than cow thief? Because Torah has pity even on him

because he had to shlep it on shoulders

- Why we can’t have any leaven at all on Passover? Because leaven represents

haughtiness and one’s character cannot have even a trace amount of haughtiness o Straight moral point

- One must be extremely careful not to take in any way from the poor

- One must treat the Torah with great seriousness

368 - Gemara says that a man can be beaten until his will is such that he wants to grant

his wife a divorce, similarly a class can be punished until they truly desire to behave

All of these examples demonstrate that this activity node is quite powerful in its ability to frame the students understanding of a wide range of content, primarily within the domains of religion and morality. The way in which they are constantly peppered throughout the day also has significance in that these Vertlach become part of the fabric of the students’ lives. They are used to hearing Vertlach at all times and connected to all subjects (in the religious part of the day). Their sheer ubiquity in the school day makes going to school an explicitly worldview filled experience.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed five times in the 1st grade at

Yeshiva, two times in one 5th grade class at Yeshiva and eleven times in the other, six times in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch, and seven in the 8th grade at Lubavitch, and once in the 6th grade at

Chassidic.

Dvar Torah

Form and execution: The Dvar Torah is closely related to the Vertle, but is slightly larger and more developed. The lesson being recited is usually a bit more complex than in a Vertle; it might contain more than one question and answer, and may bring multiple sources to make its point. In classrooms, this activity node is often conducted on a Friday, so that the students can go home and repeat the Dvar Torah at the communal meal on Shabbos. Thus, part of the activity node contains some instruction and practice in reciting the Dvar Torah. The basic format, then, is that the rebbe tells the students the Dvar Torah and then has a few students repeat the Dvar Torah to the class; this ensures that they understand the material, as well as providing them with a

369 platform to practice their recitation of the Dvar Torah. The time frame for the Dvar Torah activity node in the classroom is 5 to 15 minutes; the time frame for its presentation at home is 5 to 10 minutes.

Content: The content can span the same range as Vertlach, and is often connected to the weekly Torah portion.

Direct worldview significance: See Vertlach for the complete significance. In addition, the Dvar Torah activity node is deeply embedded in the students religious observance at home— there are expectations that there will be a forum at home for them to recite the Dvar Torah, and that the students will all be participating in the same activities at home. In practicing their recitation, the students are also developing skills for future presentations of religious knowledge when they are adults, as the Dvar Torah is commonly presented in a variety of communal gatherings.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 5th grade at

Yeshiva, and once in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch.

Chassidus

Form and execution: The Chassidus activity node is closely related to the Vertle and the

Dvar Torah, but is larger than both. The rebbe typically lectures the material, reading and translating from a text (usually a Chassidic essay called a Mamar or Sicha), and pauses to explain the material to the students. The time frame for this activity node is 20 minutes to an hour.

Content: The content of Chassidus ranges from explanations of commandments and religious practices, to insights into the Jewish holidays, to moral and ethical instruction. A key

370 feature of Chassidus is that it uses many mystical Kabbalistic concepts in its explanations of religion. In the classes that I observed most of the Chassidus was concerned with explanations of aspects of the holiday of Passover.

Direct worldview significance: Inherent in the practice of studying Chassidus is the idea that mystical Kabbalistic explanations are the right sort of explanation for religious law. The

Yeshivish ultra-Orthodox would not give these sorts of explanations, preferring legal explanations instead. In addition, the material contains all of the worldview significance elaborated upon in the Vertle activity node.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed three times in the 8th grade at

Lubavitch. (Only two of the three schools in this research were Chassidic schools; Yeshiva would not have any Chassidus in its classes).

Pirkei Avos Lecture

Form and execution: The rebbe lectures about the content of Pirkei Avos, a section of the

Mishna that contains moral and religious guidance. Time frame is 5 to 10 minutes.

Content: Pirkei Avos Mishnayos contain information such as the edict that one must open one’s house to guests.

Direct worldview significance: Pirkei Avos are similar to Vertlach in their worldview impact, but have more religious significance and weight than many Vertlach, as they are part of the Talmud itself.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed twice in the 1st grade of

Yeshiva.

371 Pirkei Avos Desk-work

Form and execution: The rebbe hands out a worksheet and the students fill it out while the rebbe walks around helping them.

Content: Pirkei Avos (see Pirkei Avos lecture). This also involves being able to read and translate Mishnaic Hebrew.

Direct worldview significance: See Pirkei Avos lecture.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 1st grade of

Yeshiva.

Raffles

Form and execution: The students get raffle tickets throughout the week for doing a variety of things ranging from ordinary good behavior to doing extra credit work. At the time of the raffle, often held once a week, the students get out their tickets and the rebbe picks tickets from bowl. Students who win the raffle receive a variety of small prizes, from doughnuts and other sweets, to little toys from the dollar store, to extra recess or computer time. Some rabbeim customize the raffle into elaborate games where students can trade a number of tickets for tickets into a bigger raffle or turn down a prize for a chance at a different prize. This activity node is found in many classes and usually takes about 15 minutes.

Content: No learning content.

Direct worldview significance: The inclusion of raffles into every part of the religious school day, reflects an attempt to convey the sense that this material should be fun and to increase the students desire to participate.

372 Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in one 5th grade class at Yeshiva and twice in the other.

Parsha Study MP

Form and execution: The students review the content of the week’s Torah portion

(Parsha) and fill out worksheets related to that content together as a class. Depending on the age the content of this study can range from simple knowledge of what happened in the Parsha to more in depth knowledge that deals with what the different laws in the Parsha are, and how we practice them today. The activity node is typically conducted on a Friday, as the Torah portion is read in the synagogue on Saturday. The time frame is 15 to 30 minutes.

Content: The content varies based on the week. The Torah portions that are read early in the school year are much more story based than those later in the year. (They contain, for example, the story of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, Joseph and his brothers, etc.). The later Parshas contain many more laws and descriptions of Temple worship.

Direct worldview significance: The study of the Parsha directly relates to the students life outside of school as they are going to be hearing the Parsha read on Saturday in the synagogue.

This gives the material more weight and importance to the students. In addition, much of the significance of the study of Chumash applies here as well, as it is the same text. The difference here is that they are not learning to read and understand the text as a text—they are not being taught to engage in the activity node of Chumash study—rather they are being taught the content of the text in broad survey format, with the aim of keeping pace with the weekly readings. Thus, all of the worldview significance dealing with Chumash content, such as the belief that all of

373 these events really happened, and that G-d controls the world in the way described in the

Torah, also apply to this activity node.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed twice in one of the 5th grade classes at Yeshiva.

Parsha lecture

Form and execution: This activity node is similar to the Parsha study activity node but consists only of lecture, not of worksheets.

Content: The content is the same as the Parsha study activity node.

Direct worldview significance: The worldview significance is the same as in the Parsha study activity node.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in one of the 5th grade classes at Yeshiva, and once in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch.

Parsha desk-work

Form and execution: The rebbe gives the students a worksheet with questions on the

Parsha and the students work at their individually at their desks or in Chavrusa pairs to answer the questions.

Content: The content is the same as the Parsha study activity node.

Direct worldview significance: The worldview significance is the same as in the Parsha study activity node.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in one of the 5th grade classes at Yeshiva.

374 Inyonie D’Yomah, Halacha

Form and execution: The study of Chumash and Gemara in school is primarily geared towards socializing the students into the practice of this study so that they will engage in the practice throughout life. Jewish law (Halacha), however, is studied in order to know the rules for how one must act in any situation. As such, as the Jewish year runs its course the topics covered in Halacha shift to keep up with the year. Thus, before Jewish holidays such as Passover the students will learn the rules of Passover. Typically, the rebbe will read and translate from a

Jewish legal text and will explain the material to the students, engaging them in discussion around the topic. Occasionally there will be worksheets accompanying this lecture. The time frame is 10 to 40 minutes.

Content: The content could be any element of Jewish law. Due to the time of year that this research was conducted the classes that were observed studying Jewish law were studying the rules of Passover, and then after Passover, the rules of Sefira (a period of semi-mourning and ritualized counting up to the holiday of Shavuos).

Direct worldview significance: This material directly relates to the students’ lives and explicitly structures the way that they conduct their religious lives. When the students go home they will all share the same knowledge about how the holidays should be conducted and what the various customs of the holidays might be; this activity node therefore has an impact well beyond the classroom.

In addition, the practice of studying Halacha implicitly conveys the sense that Jewish law is fixed and unchanging, that there are specific rules that remain the same over time.

375 Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in one of the 5th grade classes at Yeshiva, twice in the 3rd grade at Lubavitch, and twice in the 8th grade at

Lubavitch.

Halacha Lecture

Form and execution: A non-Inyonei D’Yomah Halacha lecture is essentially the same as one that does deal with the Halacha that is relevant at that time of the Jewish calendar. The structure is the same: the rebbe reads and translates the text and explains the laws to the students.

The only difference is that the topic is not tied to the time of year, but is based on a progression through some Jewish legal text such as the Mishna Berurah or the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch. The time frame is 10 to 30 minutes.

Content: The content could be any aspect of Jewish law. In the class where this activity node was observed the students were learning about the different customs that people have during prayer, and what some of the rules of prayer are. This is different than the learning about

Davening activity node which is a study of the prayer text itself and its meaning; here the content is about the customs and practices of Davening itself as part of the larger body of Jewish law.

This includes content about when one must say certain prayers, when to stand during Davening and when to sit, and what to do if you forgot to say a particular prayer.

Direct worldview significance: As in the Inyonei D’Yomah activity node, the practice of studying Halacha implicitly conveys the sense that Jewish law is fixed and unchanging, that there are specific rules that remain the same over time. In addition, learning about practices that all of the students participate in every day, such as prayer, makes the content more meaningful.

The students will actually be practicing, on a daily basis, what they are taught in this class.

376 Catalogue of activity node: this activity node was observed once in the 8th grade of

Lubavitch.

Navi Learning

Form and execution: The Navi (Prophets) makes up the second of the three sections of the Tanach (The Jewish Bible). In the ultra-Orthodox community, this is typically studied more in depth by girls than by boys. When boys do study Navi they move quickly through the text, studying it in order to gain broad familiarity with the content. The rebbe will typically read, translate, and lecture about the content in the Navi. The students will follow along in their texts and listen. The time frame is 10 to 40 minutes.

Content: The content that was under study by the one class observed learning Navi was the story of Sampson.

Direct worldview significance: The epistemological import of this activity differs from other textual study such as Chumash and Gemara in that it is familiarity with content that is important, not the socialization into the activity node of Navi study. Thus, for the students this material does not retain the same significance as the other subjects. They know they are not going to be spending time in life studying this material, and are not as engaged as a result. This represents a marked difference from the way that Navi is approached in modern-Orthodox or

Israeli contexts, where Navi is a much more central element of the religious curriculum.

As for the content itself, much like Chumash, there are a great number of significant religious beliefs that are promoted by the text, such as the existence of miracles. In addition, however, there is also the sense (explicitly promoted by the rebbe) that the events described in the text are extraordinary, and do not have immediate practical relevance to Judaism today. Thus,

377 when Sampson marries a non-Jewish woman, that event is explained in terms of the particular context of that time and place, and as coming directly from G-d’s will, but not in terms of any relevance to today’s day and age.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed twice in the 6th grade classes at Chassidic.

Mishnayos Learning

Form and execution: The Mishnayos are part of the Talmud, and generally prior to beginning the Gemara, students spend a year just learning Mishnayos, and then continue learning

Mishnayos as its own subject for a few years. The students will read and translate the text together in class, or the rebbe will do it for them, and then they will have a Socratic back and forth about the content of the text. The time frame is 10 to 30 minutes.

Content: The content is essentially the same as that described in the Gemara learning activity node, but is generally simpler, with a less difficult logical flow.

Direct worldview significance: The worldview significance is essentially the same as the

Gemara learning activity node.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in one of the 5th grade classes at Yeshiva.

Idiosyncratic activity nodes (non-Chumash, non-Gemara)

There were five non-Chumash and non-Gemara idiosyncratic activity nodes observed in the religious classes in the three schools.

378 Mishnayos Game Show

Form and execution: The rebbe gets out an electronic game show device that has multiple buzzers that the students can push, as in a game show. He asks them questions on the Mishnayos that they have learned and whoever hits the buzzer first answers the question. One student keeps score on the board while they play.

Content: The content is the same as the Mishnayos Learning activity node (which is the same as Gemara Learning).

Direct worldview significance: The worldview significance is the same as the Mishnayos

Learning activity node. The fact that they use the form of a game show, which is an activity drawn from secular culture (in particular, from TV, which most of the students don’t watch) implicitly sends the message that some elements of secular culture can be adopted for religious purposes, and are at least neutral from a religious perspective.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 3rd grade class at

Lubavitch.

Coloring project

Form and execution: Students (in younger grades) color pictures that have religious content that relates to their work, as well as writing in Hebrew and English.

Content: The content varies by the topic that the picture is accompanying, but typically involves some writing of both Hebrew and English.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 1st grade of

Yeshiva.

379 Daily Sheet

Form and execution: The rebbe hands out a sheet to the students that contains information about what they are studying, what their obligations are, and how well they have been doing in class. The students bring it home and have to have the parents sign it and then they bring it in the next day.

Content: organizational content

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was only observed once in one of the 5th grade classes at Yeshiva, but was conducted every day in that class.

Mock Seder

Form and execution: The students and rebbe set the table the way that it would be set at the Passover Seder, and the rebbe conducts the Seder, telling the students when to do the various rituals, and asking the students to occasionally recite the Vertlach that they have learned.

Content: The content includes the many Vertlach that are associated with Passover (some mentioned above in the Vertlach activity node description). In addition there is the Seder itself— the students are learning how to act at a Seder.

Direct worldview significance: This is another practice whose purpose is not necessarily the content contained in it, but rather, the inculcation of a particular activity node. The students are learning how to conduct a Seder, not about the Seder.

In addition, the content of the Seder explicitly celebrates G-d’s working of miracles in the world and the Jewish exodus from slavery in Egypt.

380 Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 3rd grade class at Lubavitch.

Secular activity node

Form and execution: Very occasionally, the rebbe will teach the students something secular in their religious study class. This could take any form in theory; in the case observed the rebbe lectured on writing. This node is really a slot that many different types of secular nodes could fill.

Content: In the case observed the rebbe taught the students how to outline an essay.

Direct worldview significance: By having the rebbe, who is the source of religious authority for these students, teach secular material in the religious class, the students are likely to see this material as more significant and relevant than it would be if they had learned this material in secular class.

Catalogue of activity node: This was observed once in the 8th grade at Lubavitch

381

Secular-class activity nodes

Standard activity nodes

There were twenty-one different standard activity nodes observed in the secular classes at

Yeshiva, Chassidic, and Lubavitch.

Science group desk-work

Form and execution: The students are told to arrange themselves in groups of two or three and to open their books to a certain page. They are to read the text of the science textbook together and then answer the questions that are at the end of the chapter. Those questions contain both science content and science vocabulary.

Content: In the one class where this activity node was observed the text that the students were reading contained information about rainforests and ecosystems. (It was not possible for the researcher to determine the content in more detail).

Direct worldview significance: Knowledge of ecosystems must structure, at some level, an understanding of how the world works. It is difficult to ascertain the exact impact of the material on a worldview both because it was desk-work and the content was not clear to the researcher, and because it is hard to assess the overall impact of this knowledge on a worldview system. One possible impact of this activity might be in the specification of rainforests as an ecosystem, in a context where the students do not study a great deal of science, which might misleadingly convey to the students that ecosystems are only in exotic places like rainforests, and not everywhere. The fact that the students do not study a great deal of science, and the

382 teacher did not bother to lecture or assign them a project, might also indicate to the students that science is not an important subject.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 5th grade at

Yeshiva.

Math desk-work

Form and execution: The activity node begins one of two ways. Either the teacher begins to write on the board, putting up a list of questions that the students must answer, or the teacher tells the students that they must get out their books and turn to page x, where they will do, for example, all of the odd problems from number one through number twenty-seven. At that point the students will proceed to follow directions (they typically take their time getting settled, especially if they have to get their books out). While the students work the teacher will either walk around and help students or will do some other type of work such as grading spelling tests.

Often (but not always), this activity node follows a math lecture where the teacher might write on the board and lead a discussion, and it often precedes an activity node where they review their answers together as a class. The time frame for this activity node is generally 15 to 40 minutes.

Content: In some cases where there was no lecture and the material was not on the board it was not possible to know the content of the math work. In most cases however the math content was clear. In one of the grades the students were studying fractions, in another grade they were studying factors, and in another the teacher put a range of questions on the board, some dealing with fractions, others dealing with mortgage calculation, and others with division.

Direct worldview significance: Both implicitly, through the choice of math as a subject of study, and as explicitly mentioned by many teachers, the activity node conveys the belief that

383 knowledge of math is an important skill that is necessary for functioning in daily life. In addition, as math in the classes observed was presented as a series of procedures to be followed, there may be a sense conveyed to the students that the rules of math are immutable rules of the universe—this is how math works and it cannot be changed. Also, the choice of form conveys the sense that a way to become skilled in math is by doing many math problems.

One teacher, the 6th grade teacher at Chassidic, incorrectly gave the students the impression that some math had no formula—you just had to figure it out by common sense. His assertions must be taken as contributing to the epistemological character of the activity node. In addition, this same teacher conducted the activity node in such a way as to allow students to run around and not do the work, simply saying that if they do the work they get credit and if not, not.

This too, must contribute to the underlying epistemology, conveying the sense that this material is not intrinsically important, but that doing the work is just one of the hurdles students must jump over to get through the school day. The eighth grade teacher at Lubavitch, however, conducted this activity node in such a way as to push for deeper understanding, telling the students that she did not want to know what answer they had, but what that answer represented, thus giving a very different epistemological character to the activity node.

Catalogue of activity node: There were eight instances of this activity node: Lubavitch 3rd grade three times, Lubavitch 8th grade twice, Chassidic 6th once, Yeshiva 5th twice. The longest enactment was 38 minutes, and the shortest was 8 minutes.

Math Lecture

Form and execution: The teacher lectures to the students, explaining how to solve the math problems and taking them through some examples on the board.

384 Content: In one example the content was fractions and in another it was factors.

Direct worldview significance: As with the math desk-work activity node, the choice of math as a primary subject of study, and the explicit assertions of the teachers, conveys the belief that knowledge of math is an important skill that is necessary for functioning in daily life. In addition there is the sense that the rules of math are immutable rules of the universe—this is how math works and it cannot be changed.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed in the 6th grade of Chassidic and the 5th grade of Yeshiva.

Math Group Review

Form and execution: The teacher asks one student after another to read the answer that they have for different math problems that they have worked on, either for homework or as part of in-school work. The teacher corrects and explains wrong answers, and occasionally elaborates on correct answers. This activity node often comes upon the completion of math deskwork. The time frame for the activity node is 5 to 10 minutes.

Content: The content was math problems from a book. In one class the content had something to do with division (it was not feasible to be more specific) and in the other class where this activity node appeared the content was identifying factors and lowest common denominators.

Direct worldview significance: As with the math desk-work, the choice of math as a subject of study, and the explicit assertions of the teachers, implicitly conveys the belief that knowledge of math is an important skill that is necessary for functioning in daily life. In addition there is the sense that the rules of math are immutable rules of the universe—this is how math

385 works and it cannot be changed. The choice of form also conveys the sense that a way to become skilled in math is by doing many math problems.

Catalogue of activity node: The activity node appeared twice in the 3rd grade of Lubavitch and once in the 5th grade of Yeshiva.

Book Report

Form and execution: The teacher gives a short lecture to the students on how they should present their reports and then each student comes to the front of the class and reads their book report and answers the teacher’s questions.

Content: Content consisted of books that the students chose to read for the report. The rules for choosing books were not followed by the students in the one instance that this activity node appeared. They were supposed to choose chapter books, not collections of stories, and text- only books rather than those with comics or pictures. A few students did not follow these rules.

The content of the books ranged from Jewish religious stories and fables to standard secular books like the “The Boxcar Kids”. The teacher’s questions asked the students to summarize the books and to explain why they did or didn’t like the books.

Direct worldview significance: This activity node implicitly (and in this case also explicitly) conveys the opinion that the ability to digest written information and communicate one’s understanding of it to others is an important skill. The content of the worldview significance varies depending on the book that a student chooses. One student gave his report on a book of religious fables, which had direct religious significance, as their content was explicitly concerned with appropriate religious behavior and moral behavior. Another student chose a

386 popular secular young adult book, and that choice must also be seen as having some worldview significance, as all literature must in some way impart a perspective—a way of seeing the world.

Catalogue of activity node: The activity node appeared once in 3rd grade in Lubavitch.

The activity node lasted 27 minutes.

Constitution/ History desk-work

Form and execution: The teacher tells the students to take out their constitution sheets.

These sheets are copies of a standard text that teaches students about the content and context of the US constitution. The students sit at their desk and fill in the answers to questions about the constitution by referring to the text on the sheets. This activity node has a time frame similar to other examples of desk-work, from 10 to 40 minutes, though this research only observed the tail end of one enactment of this activity node.

Content: The text contains information about the specific content of the constitution, that is, the laws, as well as the historical context within which the writing of the constitution took place.

Direct worldview significance: The students in this school will not study more secular knowledge after graduation as they will go to a full time religious study school. They do take their GEd’s, however, and according to the school are required to pass an exam on the constitution given by the State of Illinois in order to advance to that stage. Thus, in an important respect their study of this material might not convey the usual impression that this is something that one must know; it might rather convey the impression that this is a hoop they must all jump through in order to advance along the trajectory that they (and their parents) have chosen.

387 At the same time, however, the content does contain a great deal of information about how systems of government can be erected and what types of communal organization are good or bad. At some level this information must have some impact on the students worldview. This impact might be positively oriented, or negatively (they may come away from this class believing that the American system of government is no good), but it is unlikely to have no impact.

Catalogue of activity node: Constitution desk-work was found in one class, the 8th grade, at Lubavitch.

Constitution reading and lecture

Form and execution: The students have a textbook (or pages copied from a textbook) that they read from out loud. Either the teacher calls on different students to read each paragraph or the teacher reads it herself to the students. She frequently pauses to talk to them about the content contained in the text, asking them questions and prompting discussion. The time frame for this activity node is 15 to 40 minutes.

Content: The text contains information about the specific content of the constitution, that is, the laws, as well as the historical context within which the writing of the constitution took place.

Direct worldview significance: This has essentially the same impact as constitution desk- work.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed three times in the 8th grade at

Lubavitch.

388 History reading and lecture

Form and execution: The teacher would have the students each read a paragraph from a history text and would intersperse lectures and stories related (sometimes only loosely) to the text. Often this activity node is accompanied by a desk-work activity node or a activity node that involves out loud question and answer. Occasionally the teacher would have the lecture element dominate, speaking for 20 minutes at a time, before returning to student reading. The time frame for this activity node is 10 to 45 minutes.

Content: The content in the classes observed was 20th century American history, presented in a broad survey format, not in depth.

Direct worldview significance: History has a great deal of worldview significance in these schools. In particular, in the classes that were observed in this research the rebbe told them explicitly that they could understand the present in greater depth by looking at the past. In addition, the study of history depends heavily on the choices made as to what in the past is important to know, and this reflects the values of those who are writing the history texts and teaching the class. In this case the teacher was a rebbe, which meant that he was communicating his values to the students, for example, by skipping material that he did not think was important

(the rise of pop-music), or going off on tangents that he thought were important for them to know as Jews (civil rights and its relevance to Jews). Because he was a rebbe he also made the material more meaningful to them by connecting it to religious content. All of this must have the cumulative effect of making history seem like a topic that has more significance to the students than other topics. (For example, this is the same teacher who did not convey a strong sense of the importance of math).

389 The actual content itself also has significance. For example a description of the Cuban

Missile Crisis looks very different told from an American perspective than from a Soviet perspective. Assumptions about the nature of cause and effect, and what factors lead to what outcomes, are also contained in most descriptions of history. Thus, the factors that led to the

Great depression contain some worldview significance for thinking about economic issues.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was found three times in the 6th grade of

Chassidic.

History Desk-work

Form and execution: The teacher tells the students to answer questions at the end of a chapter in the history book, or to take relevant words from the text and find the sentence in the text that defines those words. The students do the work while the teacher walks around helping other students. The time frame for this activity node is 10 to 40 minutes.

Content: The content is determined by the content in the history books, in this case it was

20th century American history. There is also an element of vocabulary as they are defining certain historical terminology.

Direct worldview significance: During desk-work the rebbe has much less control over the worldview framing of the material as the questions are dictated by the text and therefore the choice of what is important is structured independent of the teacher. Otherwise the impact of the content remains the same.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed twice in the 6th grade at

Chassidic.

390 History question and answer

Form and execution: The teacher goes around the classroom asking each student another question pertaining to the history they studied and intersperses lecture on the subject in between some of the questions. The time frame for this activity node is 5 to 15 minutes.

Content: The content is determined by the content in the history books, in this case it was

20th century American history.

Direct worldview significance: The same as in History desk-work and History reading.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 6th grade at

Chassidic.

Discussion of current events

(This is an activity node that might be considered idiosyncratic in another class, but was standard for this class).

Form and execution: The teacher hands out newspapers to the students with an article in it that the students will read, either together out-loud or by themselves, and the teacher leads a discussion of the content. The newspapers are stapled together so that the students can only see the selected article and not other pages. The time frame is 15 to 45 minutes.

Content: The content could range over any topic that interests the teacher. In the examples observed the newspaper articles ranged over topics that involved Israel and racism.

This was the teacher’s choice of topic.

Direct worldview significance: The teacher explicitly stressed to the students that it is important to know what is going on in the world. Her choice of subject matter reflected the

391 perspective that knowing about Israel was important for these students. The discussions themselves also involved argument over morals and norms, right and wrong, the role of the media and its biases—all things that are important in reflecting and shaping a worldview.

Catalogue of activity node: Observed once in the 8th grade of Lubavitch but was informed that this was a regular feature of class. The 6th grade at Chassidic also brought up current events frequently but in the context of other activities.

Spelling test

Form and execution: The students sit in their desks with sheets of paper and pencils. The teacher reads a word, recites a sentence using the word, and repeats the word. The students quietly write the word on their sheets of paper. In some variations the students get extra credit for also writing the word in cursive, and whether or not the teacher invents a sentence or reads a prepared sentence also varies. The time frame for this activity node is ten to twenty minutes.

Content: the content varies based on age and context. In some cases the words are chosen from a spelling book with the purpose of building particular spelling skills, in other cases the words are chosen from a history or social studies text, and the relationship between the words on the test are topical rather than being based on spelling similarities.

Direct worldview significance: At an elementary level the choice to focus on spelling in a classroom conveys the belief that it is important to spell words correctly. In addition, working on spelling conveys the sense that there are set rules for written communication which ought to be followed, and that there is some value attached to following these rules. In observation of specific iterations of this activity node, there were more explicit elements of worldview formation apparent. In a third grade class, three of the sentences recited by the teacher during the

392 test contained religious content that was relevant to the students’ religious lives. The inclusion of this content may reinforce the primacy of the students’ religious worldview and it might implicitly break down some of the barriers between secular and religious study.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node appeared twice, both times in 3rd grade at

Lubavitch. (Many other classes had spelling, but the researcher was not there during spelling tests).

Spelling Desk-work

Form and execution: The teacher tells the students to turn to a certain page in a book, or hands out a worksheet, and the students complete the work there. In younger grades (1st, in this case) the teacher scaffolds the instruction and the answering of questions on the sheet with greater detail than in older classes. Sometimes the worksheet is in the form of a crossword puzzle. The time frame for this activity node is 5 to 25 minutes.

Content: English words from a variety of sources.

Direct worldview significance: At an elementary level the choice to focus on spelling in a classroom conveys the belief that it is important to spell words correctly. In addition, working on spelling conveys the sense that there are set rules for written communication which ought to be followed, and that there is some value attached to following these rules. In the 1st grade enactment of this activity node the teacher told the students that one has to read a lot to know how to spell in English. She also informed them that at this stage in their development of English skills it was more important for them to sound out the words than to get the actual spelling correct. This is a very different epistemological message than that conveyed in older grades.

393 Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 5th grade at

Yeshiva and three times in the 1st grade at Yeshiva.

Reading – Writing / Lecture – Desk-work

Form and execution: The teacher conducts a variety of reading and writing exercises with the group, sometimes requiring them to write on their own papers and sometimes requiring them to respond to her questions. This activity node is very similar to the language arts lecture activity node. The time frame was about 15 minutes.

Content: The content ranged from alphabetizing words and spelling to constructing sentences together as a class.

Direct worldview significance: The activity conveys the sense that the rules that govern reading and writing must be followed in order to communicate properly with others.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 1st grade at

Yeshiva.

Language Arts Lecture

Form and execution: The teacher introduces a topic having to do with grammar, writing, or language usage. Often the teacher will remind the students what they had previously covered.

The teacher puts words on the board and asks the students questions about those words, following those questions up with explanations. This activity node is often accompanied by desk- work. The time frame for this activity node is 10 to 30 minutes.

394 Content: There was a range of content observed within this activity node. In the classes observed they learned when to use words like “more” and “most” and “better” and

“best”; they learned about haikus and palindromes; and they learned about using apostrophes in contractions.

Direct worldview significance: The activity conveys the sense that there are rules of grammar and language use that must be followed in order to communicate properly with others.

This is implicit in the activity, but it is also mentioned by the teacher at times. Because the teacher in the classes where this activity node was observed was also a rebbe, he was able to make use of the students’ knowledge of Hebrew and religious material to explain grammatical concepts. For example, he used Hebrew words to demonstrate what a palindrome was, and to illustrate the difference between “the” and “a”. These connections give weight and legitimacy to the subject matter in the students’ minds, and more firmly cement the necessity of grammatical rules, for if they are there in their religious material they must be important.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed five times in the 5th grade at

Yeshiva.

Language Arts Desk-Work

Form and execution: This activity node often follows a lecture on the same topic. The students are then instructed by the teacher to open their books to a certain page and to do certain problems, or the teacher will hand out a work sheet for them to fill out. Sometimes this activity node is conducted individually and sometimes they are allowed to work in groups. While the students work the teacher walks around helping students and explaining material. The time frame for this activity node is 10 to 25 minutes.

395 Content: As with the lecture activity node there was a range of content observed within this activity node. In the classes observed they learned when to use words like “more” and

“most” and “better” and “best”; they learned about haikus and palindromes; and they learned about using apostrophes in contractions. The desk-work they were assigned dealt with these topics.

Direct worldview significance: As with the lecture the activity conveys the sense that there are rules of grammar and language use that must be followed in order to communicate properly with others. The formalization of these rules in the desk-work might also convey more of a sense of the immutability of these rules (even if they are not actually immutable).

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed three times in the 5th grade at

Yeshiva.

Reading Comprehension discussion

Form and execution: Students read a story out-loud one by one, or the teacher reads it to them, and throughout the story the teacher will ask the students questions about the content and will lead discussion with the students.

Content: During this research the students read four different stories. An example of a fiction story they read was about a girl who gets in trouble with her cat in a museum. A non- fiction book they read was about butterflies. Aside from the actual content of the stories the students are also learning how to understand stories in general (thus the label, reading comprehension). For example, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction was something that the teacher discussed with them before beginning each story.

396 Direct worldview significance: The story about the girl in the museum raises many issues having to with what appropriate behavior looks like and why one might get in trouble, as well as issues of human nature and how people sometimes do the wrong thing and what the consequences are in those case, as well as generally informing the students about how the world works (e.g. that there are such things as museums). The story about the butterfly has more information-based worldview shaping, as it relates to the butterflies that they are studying in nature; it may promote the feeling that things in nature are interesting and worth telling stories about. In general, stories are very powerful tools for conveying worldview, as they reflect the author’s perspective on how the world functions.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node appeared four times in the 1st grade of

Yeshiva.

Vocabulary out-loud group review

Form and execution: The teacher asks the students, one by one, to provide a sentence for each vocabulary word in a list. Sometimes the list is drawn from a history or social studies textbook and sometimes it is drawn from a purely vocabulary textbook. This activity node is often accompanied by vocabulary desk-work. The time frame for this activity node is 5 to 10 minutes.

Content: In some classes the content came from a history text (or constitution text), and in others from vocabulary books.

Direct worldview significance: This activity node conveys the sense that having a large vocabulary and being able to use it is an important skill. In addition, the fact that the words often come from history textbooks demonstrates implicitly that vocabulary is useful in a variety of

397 domains (not just within the category of “vocabulary”) and that history words are useful to know. The fact that the form of the activity node is to provide a sentence for the word conveys the epistemological knowledge that to know a word is to be able to use it in a sentence.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node appeared three times in the 8th grade of

Lubavitch.

Vocabulary desk-work

Form and execution: The teacher either gives the students a worksheet, refers them to a list in a book, or identifies the words in another text, such as a history or social studies textbook, and asks the students to write the words, usually with sentences attached to them. Some variations: sometimes the worksheet is in a novel form, such as a crossword puzzle, sometimes the practice is connected to spelling (they are graded on the spelling as well), and sometimes it is connected to topical subjects such as history. The teacher typically walks around helping students or sits at the desk doing other work. Occasionally, this activity node will involve some degree of lecture while the students are working; for example, when the students are having a hard time with the material, the teacher might begin to explain, using the board, and the students who want to would listen. This activity node has a time frame of 10 to 30 minutes.

Content: The content varies depending on the context. When connected to spelling the content is driven by similarly spelled words, when connected to social studies the content is driven by the text.

Direct worldview significance: As with the vocabulary out-loud review, this activity node conveys the sense that having a large vocabulary and being able to use it is an important skill. In addition, the fact that the words often come from history textbooks demonstrates implicitly that

398 vocabulary is useful in a variety of domains (not just within the category of “vocabulary”) and that history words are useful to know. The fact that the form of the activity node is to provide a sentence for the word conveys the epistemological knowledge that to know a word is to be able to use it in a sentence.

In addition in one class that was observed, the teacher, who was a rebbe, used the opportunity to make connections to religious elements of the students lives. For example, he defined the word “inauguration” using the Jewish concept of the dedication of the Temple. In other classes, secular teachers avoided making those very same connections when they presented themselves. This type of connection implicitly designates the material being studied as more relevant to the students than other secular material because it has relevance in their religious lives. Also, connections of this sort may also help them understand the material better than they would otherwise.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node appeared in Lubavitch 8th grade twice,

Chassidic 6th grade once, Yeshiva 5th grade once, and Yeshiva 1st grade twice.

Coloring (Art)

Form and execution: Students color pictures that are determined by topics covered in class. The time frame for this activity was 15 to 20 minutes.

Content: The content of the coloring the one time this activity node was observed was butterflies, which was the theme of the science and nature topic that they had been studying.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 1st grade at

Yeshiva.

399 Centers (or Stations) (everyday ritual)

Form and execution: Students go to different stations in the classroom in small groups where they can engage in a variety of activities, depending on the station. These activities include art, reading, music, and puzzles.

Content: Art, reading, music, puzzles, and other similar activities.

Direct worldview significance: The different stories and games all have content that shapes worldview; however, the nature of the activity made it difficult to determine the worldview content with any great specificity.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed four times in the 1st grade at

Yeshiva.

Idiosyncratic activity nodes

There were ten different idiosyncratic activity nodes observed in the secular classes at

Yeshiva, Chassidic, and Lubavitch. Recall, that idiosyncratic activity nodes are those that are either not an essential part of the curriculum or are unique to the particular teacher.

Spelling Bee

Form and execution: The students arrange themselves in a big circle and the teacher reads a word that the students must spell. They begin with one student and move around the circle. If the student cannot spell the word correctly he leaves the circle and watches the remaining students. The form of their response is to state the word, spell it, and then state it again. They also sometimes ask for the word to be used in a sentence.

Content: Spelling English words.

400 Direct worldview significance: As with other spelling work the choice to focus on spelling in a classroom conveys the belief that it is important to spell words correctly. In addition, working on spelling conveys the sense that there are set rules for written communication which ought to be followed, and that there is some value attached to following these rules.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 5th grade at

Yeshiva.

Correcting error filled paragraph as a group

Form and execution: The teacher puts a paragraph up on the board that is filled with writing mistakes, such as not having commas in the right place or not capitalizing letters that should be capitalized. The students are told that there are mistakes and she goes around the room asking each student to identify a new mistake, which she then corrects on the board. The students are supposed to write the new mistake-free paragraph on their papers as they go along.

Content: The content pertains to where punctuation belongs and some small amount of grammar and spelling.

Direct worldview significance: The choice to focus on writing and punctuation conveys the belief that it is important to punctuate and spell correctly when writing. In addition, working on the rules of writing conveys the sense that there are set rules for written communication which ought to be followed, and that there is some value attached to following these rules.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node occurred once, in 3rd grade in Lubavitch.

The activity took 20 minutes.

401 Reading, writing, and grammar correction

Form and execution: Students who have written short essays that respond to some aspect of a story that they read in class go to the front of the class and read their essays to the class. As a group, the class then discusses the content of the essay as it relates to the story, and also corrects any grammar and language mistakes that the student has made. The time frame for this activity node is about 10 minutes.

Content: The story that the essay was about, in the instance that this activity node was observed, involved a man who hired a young boy to work for him. The writing corrections involved basic grammar and word choices.

Direct worldview significance: There is some element of worldview contained in the content of the story; as a story about realistic events it structures students’ understanding of good and bad behavior and helps develop an understanding of how people behave in different circumstances and what their motivations might be. The focus on writing and word choice coveys the sense that there are rules of grammar and language use that must be followed in order to communicate properly with others.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node occurred once, in 5th grade in Yeshiva.

Library

Form and execution: The students all line up and go to the library where there are books they can read and projects that they can work on.

Content: In the one example observed the students were working on projects in the library (posters) on the 50 states in the USA.

402 Catalogue of activity node: This activity node occurred once, in 5th grade in Yeshiva.

Looking up Stocks project

Form and execution: The teacher hands out business sections from three different newspapers dated a week apart, to each student. The students spread out at their desks or on the floor and are supposed to track the stocks that they have chosen to follow, marking down the prices and determining how well they are doing by comparing to previous prices. This activity had about a 30 minute time frame.

Content: The content is primarily math, but also finance. In addition the students must know a little bit about how newspapers work and how to look something up in a paper.

Direct worldview significance: These students are studying math for the purpose of being able to function in the world as adults, and this fact is conveyed by the choice to work on stocks as part of math. (They similarly study mortgage calculations in math as well). The activity allows that there is value in being able to make money and invest successfully, and that this is something students should know how to do.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 8th grade at

Lubavitch.

Achievement Test

Form and execution: The students sit with their achievement test booklets at their desks, and the teacher reads the instructions (and questions, when called for). The students fill in the bubbles with number 2 pencils, ostensibly in a totally quiet classroom, but in practice in a slightly noisy class. The time frame for the activity node is 10 to 45 minutes.

403 Content: The content varies along the major content areas.

Direct worldview significance: There is some sense conveyed that this is a necessary hurdle to pass school, but not intrinsically valuable. In the classes observed the teacher was sloppy about treating the activity with the seriousness that it typically gets in other schools.

Catalogue of activity node: This was observed twice in the 6th grade of Chassidic.

WWII video (everyday ritual)

Form and execution: Students bring a large TV and VCR into the classroom during the last 10 to 15 minutes of the day, and the teacher puts in a PBS documentary series about World

War II. The students sit and watch, while the teacher gets herself organized to finish the day.

Content: The content is the history of World War II, mostly told from a military perspective.

Direct worldview significance: The students recognize that the war has a relevance to

Jews, and this content helps structure their understanding of that war. As they don’t watch TV at home, this is also fun for them and conveys the sense that there are some legitimate, fun, uses of television.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node took place at the end of every 8th grade

Lubavitch class, but was only observed once during this research. (The researcher did not stay for the video on the other days).

404 Biography reading and lecture

Form and execution: Like other social studies reading and lecture activity nodes, this involves the teacher reading the text (or asking the students to do so) and pausing frequently to discuss the content with the students.

Content: The content of the one observation of this activity node was a biography of

Harry Houdini taken from a book on famous Jewish Americans. The teacher also asked the students to define words in the text as they read, adding vocabulary to the content as well.

Direct worldview significance: For the teacher, who was Jewish but not Orthodox, being an American Jew is a source of pride, and it is worth acknowledging those who became famous in class. The students do not necessarily share this outlook, as they are more divorced from

Americanism, but this activity conveys the sense that it is worth being proud of such Jews. The text itself also made parallels between Houdini and the Jews more broadly, talking about finding ways to escape when there appeared to be no way out. This structures a particular way of thinking about Jews throughout history.

Catalogue of activity node: Observed once in the 8th grade of Lubavitch.

Daily Sentences (everyday ritual)

Form and execution: The students have a set ritual to start the secular part of their day.

They come into the class, sit down, and take out a blank sheet of paper. The teacher starts writing sentences on the board that the students copy on their papers. The first few sentences are standards that repeat each day (such as the day of the week and month), and the students suggest the next few sentences. The student-suggested sentences pertain to things that are going on their

405 lives. The teacher then adds a few more sentences that vary depending on the day, but which might include some prefacing of what they will be doing in class that day. The time frame for this activity node is 15 to 20 minutes.

Content: The content of this activity node is wide ranging. Most predominantly, they work on writing and spelling, but the content is also about their lives. For example, a student suggested a sentence about his baby sister’s first birthday, and on Friday the teacher put up a sentence about that evening being Shabbos. In addition, she would integrate other subject areas into this activity node, such as science and nature. During some of the observations she took out the caterpillar chrysalis that they were raising and had some students measure it so that they could write the sentence “Our chrysalis is four centimeters long”.

Direct worldview significance: This is one example of a secular activity node that contains a good deal of real meaningful content as it draws from the students’ lives in significant ways. The activity node incorporates aspects of classroom life and the students’ home life into an activity that teaches the students to write. Its ritualistic nature also provides a certain amount of stability to the opening of the day and transitions the students from recess to school-work. The worldview significance of these aspects of the activity node are difficult to pin down, but because so much of the material is concerned with topics that are of immediate interest to the students, the activity itself must necessarily structure their understanding of those things. The choices that the teacher makes about what student sentences they will write and the way that she presents them must have some impact on the students’ worldviews.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node took place at the start of every 1st grade

Yeshiva class, and was observed five times during this research.

406 Free desk-work

Form and execution: students all work on different projects at their desks and the teacher walks around and helps them with their work.

Content: In the one class observed some students were writing stories, and others were reading or finishing a worksheet. For some of the time some about half the students were listening to a story while the other half continued to work.

Catalogue of activity node: This activity node was observed once in the 1st grade at

Yeshiva.

407 Appendix C. Frequency and Distribution of Activity nodes

Activity Nodes Y1 Y5 L3 L8 V6 Total Secular Activity nodes Science Group Work 1 1 Math DW 2 3 2 1 8 Math Lecture 1 1 2 Math Group Review 1 2 3 Book Report 1 1 Constitution –DW 1 1 History DW 2 2 Constitution –Reading and lecture 3 3 History Reading and lecture 3 3 History Q and A 1 1 Current events discussion 1 1 Spelling test 2 2 Spelling DW 3 1 4 Reading – writing Lecture-DW 1 1 Language Lecture 5 5 Language DW 3 3 Reading comprehension discussion 4 4 Vocabulary out loud review 3 3 Vocabulary DW 2 1 2 1 6 Coloring 1 1 Centers 4* 4 Idiosyncratic Spelling bee 1 1 Correcting Paragraph 1 1 Reading, writing, grammar correction 1 1 Library 1 1 Stocks 1 1 SAT 2 2 WWII video 1* 1* Biography reading and lecture 1 1 Daily sentences 5* 5 Free desk-work 1 1 Total AN instances 21 18 9 15 11 Total # of different AN’s per class 8 11 5 9 7 * indicates a daily ritual

408

Activity Nodes Y1 Y5K Y5A L3 L8 V6 Total Religious activity nodes Davening out loud* 5 3 8 Learning Chumash 5 2 2 3 2 14 Chumash Desk-work 1 3 4 Chumash Chavrusa 1 1 1 3 Chumash party practice idiosyncratic 1 1 Chumash Baseball idiosyncratic 1 1 Chumash Quiz 1 1 Chumash Bechina 2 1 3 Chumash Individual work idiosyncratic 2 2 Chumash Question and Answer 1 1 2 Rashi Perfection idiosyncratic 2 2 Chumash Chazara 1 1 2 Vertlach 5 2 11 6 7 1 32 Dvar Torah 1 1 2 Chassidus 3 3 Pirkei Avos Lecture 2 2 Pirkei Avos Desk-work 1 1 Bentching 1 1 Learning about Davening 1 1 1 3 Gemara Learning 2 3 4 5 14 Gemara Chazara 2 1 3 Gemara Chavrusa 2 2 Writing down dictated Gemara answers 1 1 idiosyncratic Gemara Tape Idiosyncratic 1 1 Gemara Desk-work 1 1 Gemara Chart filling 1 1 2 Parsha Study 2 2 Parsha Lecture 1 1 2 Parsha desk-work 1 1 Inyonie D-yomei Halacha 1 2 2 5 Raffle 1 2 3 Daily Sheet idiosyncratic 1 1 Mishnayos Learning 1 1 Mishnayos Game Show idiosyncratic 1 1 Mock Seder idiosyncratic 1 1 Lubavitch pre Davening ritual 1 1 Coloring project idiosyncratic 1 1 Navi Learning 2 2

409 Halacha Lecture 1 1 Secular idiosyncratic 1 1 Total AN instances 24 20 26 29 22 13 Total # of different AN’s per class 11 15 11 15 9 7

410 Appendix D. Worldview Dimensions

Natural Cultural Moral/Ethical Epistemological World Science Group Work Yes No No Yes Math DW No No No Yes Math Lecture No No No Yes Math Group Review No No No Yes Book Report No Yes Yes Yes Constitution –DW No Yes Yes Yes History DW No Yes Yes Yes Constitution –Reading and No Yes Yes Yes lecture History Reading and lecture No Yes Yes Yes History Q and A No Yes Yes Yes Current events discussion No Yes Yes Yes Spelling test No No No Yes Spelling DW No No No Yes Reading – writing Lecture-DW No No No Yes Language Lecture No No No Yes Language DW No No No Yes Reading comprehension Yes Yes Yes Yes discussion Vocabulary out loud review No No No Yes Vocabulary DW No No No Yes Coloring Yes No No Yes Centers Yes Yes Yes Yes Idiosyncratic Spelling bee No No No Yes Correcting Paragraph No No No Yes Reading, writing, grammar No Yes Yes Yes correction Library No Yes No Yes Stocks No Yes No Yes SAT No No No Yes WWII video No Yes Yes Yes Biography reading and lecture No Yes Yes Yes Daily sentences Yes Yes Yes Yes Free desk-work No No No Yes Religious Davening out loud* Yes Yes Yes Yes Learning Chumash Yes Yes Yes Yes

411 Chumash Desk-work Yes Yes Yes Yes Chumash Chavrusa Yes Yes Yes Yes Chumash party practice Yes Yes Yes Yes idiosyncratic Chumash Baseball idiosyncratic Yes Yes Yes Yes Chumash Quiz Yes Yes Yes Yes Chumash Bechina Yes Yes Yes Yes Chumash Individual work Yes Yes Yes Yes idiosyncratic Chumash Question and Answer Yes Yes Yes Yes Rashi Perfection idiosyncratic Yes Yes Yes Yes Chumash Chazara Yes Yes Yes Yes Vertlach Yes Yes Yes Yes Dvar Torah Yes Yes Yes Yes Chassidus Yes Yes Yes Yes Pirkei Avos Lecture Yes Yes Yes Yes Pirkei Avos Desk-work Yes Yes Yes Yes Bentching Yes Yes No Yes Learning about Davening Yes Yes Yes Yes Gemara Learning Yes Yes Yes Yes Gemara Chazara Yes Yes Yes Yes Gemara Chavrusa Yes Yes Yes Yes Writing down dictated Gemara Yes Yes Yes Yes answers idiosyncratic Gemara Tape Idiosyncratic Yes Yes Yes Yes Gemara Desk-work Yes Yes Yes Yes Gemara Chart filling Yes Yes Yes Yes Parsha Study Yes Yes Yes Yes Parsha Lecture Yes Yes Yes Yes Parsha desk-work Yes Yes Yes Yes Inyonie D-yomei Halacha Yes Yes Yes Yes Raffle No No No Yes Daily Sheet idiosyncratic No Yes No Yes Mishnayos Learning Yes Yes Yes Yes Mishnayos Game Show Yes Yes Yes Yes idiosyncratic Mock Seder idiosyncratic Yes Yes Yes Yes Lubavitch pre Davening ritual Yes Yes Yes Yes Coloring project idiosyncratic No No No Yes Navi Learning Yes Yes Yes Yes Halacha Lecture No Yes Yes Yes Secular idiosyncratic No No No Yes

412

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