Religious-Zionist Women's Views on Sex Education in Israel

International Journal of Jewish Education Research, IJJER 2013 (4), 29-67. “From ‘Asur, Asur, Asur’ to ‘the Big Mutar1’”: Religious-Zionist Women’s Views on Sex Education in Israel Galit Kahane Uli | [email protected] Bar Ilan University, Israel Deborah Court | [email protected]; [email protected] Bar Ilan University, Israel Abstract This study presents the experiences, feelings, and opinions regarding sex education, of 12 young religious-Zionist women who studied in the Israeli religious-Zionist school system and participated in bride-counseling lessons in the months and days prior to marriage. Each has been married two to ten years and each was participating in a bride- counseling course during the present study. The aim of the in-depth interviews was to understand how each of these women experienced the transition from complete celibacy before marriage to full sexuality in the first days and months after marriage, and to hear about their experiences of formal sex education as high school students and as brides undergoing bride counseling lessons, as well as their new impressions on sexuality education as students in a bride-counseling course. In addition, they were asked to articulate their thoughts on sex education for religious high school girls and for brides they may wish to counsel in the future. Caught between their perceived commitment to teaching the 1 This means “From ‘forbidden, forbidden, forbidden’ to ‘the big permitted.’” The authors decided to use the Hebrew transliteration in this quotation. 29 Religious-Zionist Women’s Views on Sex Education in Israel halachic lifestyle and values, and their sense of obligation to promote the well-being of their students and brides when dealing with sexuality both before and after marriage, these women often voiced ambivalent and even contradictory opinions regarding what to talk about with students and brides, as well as when and how. But they also gave a clear message on the importance of promoting healthy femininity and sexuality within a halachic framework and the need for a formal sexuality program for religious girls in the high school classroom. Key words: sex education, religious-Zionist, bride counseling, Israel Introduction The Jewish religious-Zionist world in Israel contains many laws, values and beliefs that can be considered ambivalent and even contradictory: traditionalism vs. modernity, rigid halachic laws vs. flexibility and democracy, sexual modesty vs. exposure to media and mixed (male-female) social youth groups, and more. The main challenge to the young religious-Zionist Israeli woman is to find the pathway where all of the seemingly conflicting values can converge, so that she can attempt to maintain her own thoughts, beliefs, and desires while striving to adhere to Torah laws and traditions and to remain a part of the Orthodox Jewish community. A review of the general literature on sex education, as well as traditional Jewish views and teachings, points to a serious lack of unified guidelines and effective sex-education programs for religious-Zionist Israeli girls that can lead to confusion and hardship in adolescence and through the first years of marriage. Female desire and satisfaction in sexual relationships is either ignored or often treated as a symptom of a low level of spirituality, which can lead to feelings of guilt and low self- esteem when building sexual relationships, even within marriage. The transition from celibacy to sexuality that many young Orthodox women experience needs to be studied, in order to create a new way of thinking about the sexuality of Orthodox women and to develop future sex education programs that can promote adolescent Orthodox girls’ positive definitions and beliefs about modesty, relationships and sexuality. 30 Galit Kahane Uli & Deborah Court Girls’ Sex Education in Religious Zionism Orthodox Judaism, as a traditional religion, asserts authority over all areas of life, yet within the bounds of commitment to religious doctrine, many areas of struggle for individuality and change may be revealed, especially within the religious-Zionist community. Commitment to religion as well as to an inner voice may coexist at a very deep level of identity, along with a belief that such conflicts can be resolved within the religious system. In this way, non-religious aspects of one’s personal and social experience can become a significant aspect of religious life (Hartman, 2002; Sosis & Ruffle, 2003). Teachers in Israeli religious-Zionist high schools, where secular and religious subjects are taught, recognize a pressing need for education in sexuality, a need which is triggered by the realization that, contrary to Orthodox religious law, some students are sexually active, and most students are learning more about their emerging sexuality from the internet and other media sources (Hartman and Samet, 2007). While the general media and popular culture display a blatant caricature of sexual desire, this topic remains simultaneously ignored in the classroom, leaving adolescents confused about what is real and accurate and what may be relevant to them now or in the future (Fine and McClelland, 2006). Despite the fact that religious students are exposed to sexuality through the media, until recently, the general policy of most religious authorities in the Israeli religious school system was to discourage discussion of sexuality in the classroom, an approach that implies that “to ‘awaken’ one to the existence of sexuality through conversation is in itself to ‘arouse.’ Better to leave sexuality dormant, than to kindle it with speech” (Hartman and Samet, 2007, p. 79). Fine (1992) describes a similar attitude to sex education in the United States public school system, where resisters of sex education feel that any discussion of this topic in the classroom “raises questions of promoting promiscuity and immorality and of undermining family values” (p. 32). Opponents of sex education assume that by not teaching about sexuality, adolescent sexual behavior will not occur, despite the fact that empirical evidence disproves this theory (Fine, 1992). Another possible outcome of avoiding sex education in the classroom is the future inadequate sexual development of the school graduate, when sexual activity eventually becomes relevant. Opposing the attitude that discussion of sexuality should be 31 Religious-Zionist Women’s Views on Sex Education in Israel avoided in the classroom, Fine and McClelland (2006) contend that “sexuality education is the only academic content area that is taught as if the knowledge gained in the classroom is meant to exclusively serve the young person’s present situation” (p. 328). They compare sex education to other school topics such as math education, wherein topics are learned within the school curriculum despite the fact that there is no need for these topics in the students’ daily lives. Gilligan (1990) supports the importance of open discussion with adolescent women about their budding sexuality when she defines the turning point in girls’ lives at the time of adolescence, where the tendency “for a resistance which is essentially political — an insistence on knowing what one knows and a willingness to be outspoken — [turns] into a psychological resistance: a reluctance to know what one knows and a fear that such knowledge, if spoken, will endanger relationships and threaten survival” (p. 256). Gilligan describes this period as “the time when girls’ desire for relationships and for knowledge comes up against the wall of Western culture and a resistance breaks out which is… potentially of great human value” (p. 257). In aiming to put this resistance in the Israeli religious-Zionist context, we would suggest that the time of girls’ desire for relationships and for knowledge is a period that extends from adolescence – when these young women are commanded by Jewish law and expected by their parents, teachers, and peers to remain celibate – until marriage, and even through the first years of marriage. During this extended turning point, the “wall” that Gilligan mentions becomes a double-barrier for these women. They must deal with the wall of Western culture as well as the restrictions on behavior, thoughts and feelings impressed upon them as members of the Jewish Orthodox world. Gilligan (1990) further describes girls’ knowledge of reality as itself politically dangerous, but at the same time determines that “it is both psychologically and politically dangerous for girls not to know what is going on — or to render themselves innocent by disconnecting themselves from their bodies, that repository of experience and desire, and thus, in essence, disassociating themselves from themselves, from relationships and from what they know about the world.... [G]irls’ knowledge and girls’ passion are bound to make trouble in the world girls are entering” (p. 284, 285). In comparison with the above mentioned avoidance of sexuality education in the American classroom, a notable problem surrounding sex-education discussion in the religious-Zionist education system in 32 Galit Kahane Uli & Deborah Court Israel is the expectation and definition of good, positive behavior in the Jewish Orthodox student. This problem is specifically relevant to the numerous restrictions of tzniut [modesty] with which the girls must comply pertaining to the clothes they wear, what they speak about, and their general behavior and activities, in and out of school. Moreover, the ideas of tzniut shape women’s personal body image and the way women feel about themselves, strongly impacting future marital relations and sexual satisfaction and enjoyment (Marmon Grumet, 2008). For some young female students the laws of modesty may be conceived of as a complete negation of women as sexual beings, a perception that can create great difficulty in their future marital and sexual lives, especially during the transition into marriage, when cultural expectations shift from encouraging a girl to be chaste and uninterested in sexuality to becoming an active marital partner who is alluring and available for her husband. Marmon Grumet (2008) suggests that the messages of tzniut and the methods by which this subject is transmitted must be seriously re-examined.

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