educating in the divine image hbi series on jewish women Shulamit Reinharz, General Editor | Sylvia Barack Fishman, Associate Editor The HBI Series on Jewish Women, created by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, publishes a wide range of books by and about Jewish women in diverse contexts and time periods. Of interest to scholars and the educated public, the HBI Series on Jewish Women fills major gaps in Jewish Studies and in Women and Gender Studies as well as their intersection. The HBI Series on Jewish Women is supported by a generous gift from Dr. Laura S. Schor. For the complete list of books that are available in this series, please see www.upne.com Chaya Rosenfeld Gorsetman and Elana Harriet Hartman and Moshe Hartman, Maryles Sztokman, Educating in the Divine Gender and American Jews: Patterns Image: Gender Issues in Orthodox Jewish in Work, Education, and Family in Day Schools Contemporary Life Ilana Szobel, A Poetics of Trauma: Dvora E. Weisberg, Levirate Marriage The Work of Dahlia Ravikovitch and the Family in Ancient Judaism Susan M. Weiss and Netty C. Ellen M. Umansky and Dianne Ashton, Gross-Horowitz, Marriage and Divorce editors, Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s in the Jewish State: Israel’s Civil War Spirituality: A Sourcebook Ronit Irshai, Fertility and Jewish Law: Carole S. Kessner, Marie Syrkin: Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Values Beyond the Self Literature Ruth Kark, Margalit Shilo, and Galit Elana Maryles Sztokman, The Men’s Hasan-Rokem, editors, Jewish Women Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an in Pre-State Israel: Life History, Politics, Egalitarian World and Culture Sharon Faye Koren, Forsaken: The Tova Hartman, Feminism Encounters Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Mysticism Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Accommodation Saidel, editors, Sexual Violence against Anne Lapidus Lerner, Eternally Eve: Jewish Women during the Holocaust Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Julia R. Lieberman, editor, Sephardi and Modern Jewish Poetry Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora Margalit Shilo, Princess or Prisoner? Derek Rubin, editor, Promised Lands: Jewish Women in Jerusalem, 1840–1914 New Jewish American Fiction on Longing Marcia Falk, translator, The Song of Songs: and Belonging Love Lyrics from the Bible Carol K. Ingall, editor, The Women Who Sylvia Barack Fishman, Double or Nothing? Reconstructed American Jewish Education: Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage 1910–1965 Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Gaby Brimmer and Elena Poniatowska, Jewish Women in Medieval Europe Gaby Brimmer: An Autobiography in Iris Parush, Reading Jewish Women: Three Voices Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society Educating in the Divine Image Gender Issues in Orthodox Jewish Day Schools chaya rosenfeld gorsetman and elana maryles sztokman Brandeis University Press | Waltham, Massachusetts Brandeis University Press An imprint of University Press of New England www.upne.com © 2013 Brandeis University All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by April Leidig Typeset in Arno Pro by Copperline Book Services, Inc. University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gorsetman, Chaya Rosenfeld. Educating in the divine image : gender issues in Orthodox Jewish day schools / Chaya Rosenfeld Gorsetman and Elana Maryles Sztokman. pages cm. — (HBI series on Jewish women) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–61168–457–5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978–1–61168–458–2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978–1–61168–459–9 (ebook) 1. Jewish day schools — Cross-cultural studies. 2. Jewish girls — Education — Cross-cultural studies. 3. Sex differences in education — Cross-cultural studies. 4. Sex discrimination in education — Cross-cultural studies. I. Sztokman, Elana Maryles. II. Title. LC715.G67 2013 371.076 — dc23 2013005522 5 4 3 2 1 Dedicated to our next generation, the subject and purpose of our work: To Atara and Brian, Talya and Adam, Leora and Omri, Yedidya, and their children. And to Avigayil, Efrayim, Yonina, and Meital. And God created Man [ha’adam] in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.— Genesis 1:27 Both sexes are included in the one essence that is called “Man.” . “Ha’adam” means “male and female,” man and woman. With this description of the creation of the world, then, is a fundamental concept of equality between man and woman. The woman, like the man, was conceived in the Divine thought and created by Him as the crown jewel of creation. The woman, like the man, was created “in the image of God,” and is a partner with the man in that special status of being human. Both were created as the result of one decision, by one Creator, in one moment and according to one plan.— Sarah Yefet, “In God’s Image or from the Rib of Man?” in Women Reading Genesis, ed. Ruth Ravitzky, translation ours Contents Foreword: Gendered Lessons in Jewish Schools by Sylvia Barack Fishman ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Gender, Judaism, and Educating in the Divine Image 1 chapter one In the Classroom: Gender, Pedagogy, and Teaching 28 chapter two People of the Book: Gender in Jewish Books and Curricula 61 chapter three Separate or Together? Single-Sex versus Coed Schooling 88 chapter four Tzniut and Dress Codes: Female Body Cover in Jewish Socialization 125 chapter five Building Intimate Relationships: Sex Education and Judaism 168 chapter six The Shul in the School: Socializing into Gender via Jewish Rituals in School 203 chapter seven The Broader Context: Gender Hierarchies in Jewish Educational Leadership 242 Reflections and Conclusions 269 viii contents Appendix A. Practical Educational Resources 279 Appendix B. Methods 290 Notes 295 Glossary 323 Bibliography 325 Index 339 Foreword Gendered Lessons in Jewish Schools Jewish day schools transmit lessons about Jewish values, as well as a pleth- ora of information. Few would be surprised that expectations regarding the male and female roles of students — and the men and women they will become — are among the societal values conveyed by Orthodox day schools. However, as Chaya Rosenfeld Gorsetman and Elana Maryles Sztokman analyze explicit and implicit gendered messages, some star- tling lessons are derived not from halakha — Jewish law — but rather from often unexamined and sometimes unwitting “cultural and sociological” premises. Boys and girls enrolled in all- day Jewish schools learn lessons not only about the foundational texts of historical Judaism and about Jew- ish religious rituals and culture, but also about their teacher’s and school’s understandings of maleness and femaleness. Drawing on data generated in a Jewish educators’ survey, qualitative interviews with educators and with day- school graduates, classroom observation, textual analysis, and basic data from the day schools them- selves, Gorsetman’s and Sztokman’s discussion places day- school class- rooms into the social contexts of family, religious community, and the general cultures of the United States and Israel, and into the intellectual contexts of educational and gender theory. The book begins with the way things are taught — with pedagogical techniques and styles, noncurricu- lar aspects of education: classroom and teaching, sex- segregated class- rooms, dress and behavior codes, and prayer services in school settings. As the authors note, teachers can, and often do, transmit messages “about who is more visible, who is first in line, who is smarter and more capable, whose learning is more important, and who is dominant”— often without realizing they have done so. Such inequities are not limited to day schools, of course, and the authors suggest that often “the process of gender dif- ferentiation in schools — in which girls are socialized into one set of ex- pected behaviors and boys are socialized into another — is as detrimental to boys as it is for girls.” x foreword Prescriptions about wardrobe reveal similar noncurricular messages in Orthodox day school settings. Because boys, as a group, are not described in rabbinic literature as attracting “a sexual gaze, they are not restricted from physical play and movement due to how they dress.” Orthodox fe- males, in contrast, are made aware of their bodies and their wardrobes when they are just schoolgirls — an awareness that continues into lifelong internal self- consciousness. Informants explained that they struggled with what they wanted, what their husbands wanted, and what they thought their societies wanted: “demands on her body, especially demands that negate and nullify her own sense of personal desire and comfort.” At the same time, the outside world is sending very different — and equally gendered — messages to women telling them to be “gorgeous, fashionable, and thin.” Thus, religious girls are subjected “to the double set of societal gazes.” Perhaps no educational policy so clearly divides day- school commu- nities as gender segregation in the classroom. This book lays out the evidence from broader educational theories and settings, applying the arguments both pro and con to Jewish religious schools. One poignant comment comes from an observer who remembers