Download THE GENDER QUESTION AND THE STUDY OF JEWISH

THE GENDER QUESTION AND THE STUDY
OF JEWISH CHILDREN
Stuart Z. Charmé
Rutgers University (Camden)
Camden, New Jersey, USA
Abstract
Although some researchers argue that a generation of feminist innovations and changes in American Jewish life has produced an egalitarian generation in which gender differences among Jewish children
and adolescents are insignificant, this article argues that the salience
of gender differences is a factor of the kinds of questions that children
are asked by researchers. When the question of gender was explicitly
posed to 67 Jewish children, subtle differences did emerge. Jewish
girls were found to be more sensitive to issues of equal rights and
sexism, more ambivalent about their proper roles, and more aware
of the contributions of Jewish women than boys.
Since the 1980s, Jewish feminists have repeatedly testified to the contradictions Jewish women have experienced—sometimes as early as
childhood—between their consciousness of themselves as females
and their consciousness of themselves as Jews, that is, a conflict between two different identities (Plaskow 1976, 1990; Pogrebin 1991;
Schneider 1984; Dufour 2000). Many Jewish women have reported
the beginning of their disillusionment with Judaism as a painful sideeffect of the dawning of their feminist consciousness (Kendall 1983;
Umansky 1985). With the rise of the feminist movement, Jewish
women began to complain about their exclusion from the public religious realm of Judaism [not being counted in a quorum for prayer, or
minyan; being hidden behind a curtain (mechitzah) separating men
from women in some synagogues, not being allowed to wear the Jewish ritual objects of tefillin, tallit, or kipot; not being allowed to read
from the Torah, being barred from the rabbinate], their inferior status
in Jewish religious law, and their subordinate role and lack of voice in
the religious narrative of Judaism.
Although some of these women experienced a conflict of loyalties between their commitment to the Jewish community, which has
seemed hostile to women at times, and their commitment to women
Religious Education
Vol. 101 No. 1 Winter 2006
C The Religious Education Association
Copyright ISSN: 0034–4087 print
DOI: 10.1080/00344080500460594
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GENDER AND JEWISH CHILDREN
and the women’s movement, which at times seems hostile to Judaism
and Jewish survival (Fishman 1993), other Jewish women have argued
that these two identities are mutually supporting and that Judaism
actually enhances and enriches their experience as women (Frankiel
1990; Greenberg 1981).
In the case of religious behavior, children are socialized into
gender-appropriate behavior and roles in a number of ways, such as
reinforcement of traditional roles for the child by family role models, participation in congregational rituals and customs, and religious
education. Children’s identity formation requires constant negotiation
between multiple overlapping identities whose boundaries are often
quite fuzzy. A child must learn what a girl or boy is and is not, what
a Jew is and is not, the different ways of being a Jew, of being an
American, and so on.
In the last 25 years, many of the problems faced by previous generations of Jewish women have been addressed (for the most part) by
liberal Judaism, and the most overt forms of Jewish women’s disenfranchisement have been eliminated. Jewish-American children growing
up today in Reform or Conservative communities can reasonably expect to find full female participation in Jewish religious practices and
rituals, the possibility of women as rabbis and cantors, and pedagogical
approaches to Biblical stories and Jewish history that emphasize the
contributions and perspectives of women.
As the impact of feminist criticism has made itself felt within Jewish congregational practice and religious education as well as Jewish
home life, the question of how the emerging Jewish identities and
gender identities interact within a new generation of Jewish children
represents an intriguing, if not pressing, issue to explore. Clearly, Jewish girls growing up today do not face the same challenges as their
mothers and grandmothers. As Sylvia Fishman (1993) noted toward
the end of her study of feminism in the American Jewish community,
“For the first time in recorded Jewish history, women as a group can
aspire to positions of power and prominence in the Jewish religious,
scholarly, and communal worlds.” (229). Not only do Jewish girls have
a different set of opportunities and role models to follow, Jewish boys
are now growing up in a world with radically different assumptions
about women’s place in Judaism and women’s roles in general than
their grandfathers’generation and even their fathers’generation. This
is not to suggest that Jewish children today have arrived in a feminist
“promised land,” but merely to acknowledge that the interface of gender and Jewishness has undergone a seismic shift. Liberal Judaism, for
STUART Z. CHARMÉ
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example, has made a growing effort to incorporate a sensitivity to gender equality in stories about Jewish history, in liturgy, and in religious
practice (Hyman 1999).
Studies of religious participation and belief among Christians in
the United States and elsewhere have commonly found greater involvement in religion among women (Roof 1993; Batson, Schoenrade,
and Ventis 1993, 33–38; Hyde 1990, 198–1999; Argyle and BeitHallahmi 1975, 75). In studies of children and adolescents, girls
demonstrate higher religious service attendance, youth group participation, and belief in God and the Bible’s truth than boys (Smith et al.
2002, 605; Loukes 1965; Cox 1967). In the case of younger children,
some research assumes that public participation in religion is determined by parental wishes, resulting in similar levels of involvement
for boys and girls, while private prayer may be more consonant with a
female expressive gender role (Nelson and Potvin 1981).
Transferring such conclusions about gender differences in religious involvement derived from mainstream Christians to Jews is difficult, however, because of special circumstances in the case of Judaism.
Traditional Judaism has a long history of gender role differentiation in
which men’s lives are focused on the public world of the synagogue and
women’s lives are focused on the private realm of family and children.
Indeed, these different roles are codified in the specific traditional obligations prescribed for Jewish men and women. Recent studies confirm
the different realms of Jewish involvement for men and women. Jewish men still play a bigger role in the public dimensions of Jewish life,
such as synagogue activities and Jewish organizations, whereas Jewish
women have greater involvement in the transmission of Jewish culture
in the family and managing Jewish home life and rituals (Cohen and
Eisen 2000, 54–56, 206; Habertal and Cohen 2001). The actual impact
of liberal Judaism’s ideology of egalitarianism on the traditional Jewish
customs of gender role differentiation is not so simple to determine.
Gender has been a neglected category in many studies of Jewish identity, especially of Jewish children. Previous research on Jewish identity in general and children’s Jewish identity in particular,
has tended not to focus on the possibility of gender differences in
the emergence, development, and maintenance of Jewishness. In his
classic study of Jewish identity in Israeli high school students, Simon
Herman (1970) reports the absence of “any sharp differences between
the sexes on questions of ethnic identity.” A later study of the beliefs,
ritual practices, and identity of Israeli Jews, found negligible gender
differences among their subjects (Levy, Levinsohn, and Katz 1993;
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GENDER AND JEWISH CHILDREN
Liebman and Katz 1997). Many studies talk about “Jewish children” as
a non-gendered category (Lax and Richards 1981; London and Frank
1987). Others find that gender differences are insignificant. The default set of Jewish identity measures that have been developed by
quantitative social scientists (e.g., attending a Passover seder, lighting
Chanukah candles, keeping kosher, lighting Shabbat candles, fasting
on Yom Kippur, attachment to Israel, importance of being Jewish, attending High Holidays services, having mostly Jewish friends, dating
mostly Jews) have generally not produced evidence of dramatic gender
differences (Cohen 1995).
One of the most telling examples of the way gender has been studied in relation to the Jewish identity of adolescents and young adults
has been the large longitudinal study of Conservative Jews who became bar or bat mitzvah in 1995. In three different phases of their
study, in 1995, 1999, and 2003, researchers Ariela Keysar and Barry A.
Kosmin (2004) found only minor gender differences on most behavioral and attitudinal items in this cohort.” Girls at different stages of
the study were found to place more importance on being Jewish and
keeping kosher, but no significant differences were found in synagogue
attendance, attitudes about Israel, or the number of Jewish friends.
Women were more likely to date only Jews and say that marrying someone Jewish is important (38), but overall, the report concludes, “The
egalitarianism of Conservative institutions has produced a cohort for
whom gender does not lead to differences in behavior or beliefs, and
is not an issue” (45). This “triumph of egalitarianism” amounts to a
declaration of victory in the battle of Jewish women for equal rights.
Considering the fact that Reform and Reconstructionist forms of Judaism have been involved in implementing gender equality in Jewish
observance and religious life longer and more intensely than Conservative Judaism might lead one to conclude that gender is no longer an
issue in any form of Judaism outside of Orthodoxy.
Yet the success of the campaign for women’s religious rights in Judaism may still allow for differences in the ideas of boys and girls to elements of Jewish life. The absence of gender differences in many studies may reflect something other than the total acceptance of women.
It is to some degree a function of the types of measures of Jewish
involvement that are used. Cohen and Habertal note that even similar Jewish identity outcomes may conceal different underlying processes.“Men and women may arrive in equal numbers at certain Jewish
identity destinations, but they get there by different routes.” (Cohen
and Habertal 39–40). Riv-Ellen Prell (1997) questions whether
STUART Z. CHARMÉ
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Jewishness can truly be measured by conventional lists of beliefs and
activities. She argues that “if jewishness is a gendered and relational
concept, then Jewish men and women have not experienced their
lives in identical ways” (80). Accordingly, when Debra Kaufman interviewed Jewish young adults, she did not find many gender differences in terms of the basic themes and elements of Jewish identity.
But she did find that women tended to describe their identities in
more gendered and relational terms than men, who saw themselves
in more individualistic terms (1999: 11–12; 1998: 54–55). Jewishness
for women is more deeply embedded in social relationships, particularly those with parents, children, friends, community. Different types
of qualitative research may be able to uncover a variety of styles of
experiencing and expressing Jewishness (Habertal and Cohen 2001,
40–41).
This study is intended to show how the salience of gender effects
within children’s Jewish identity is determined in great measure by the
kinds of questions children are asked. The real impact of egalitarianism
on the Jewish experience of children can only be evaluated when they
are questioned about that issue directly, and the meanings that they
attribute to Jewish ideas and practices are examined. When this is
done, some of the progress of egalitarianism may turn out to be more
cosmetic than real, and declarations of “triumph” premature. Studies
that report the absence of gender differences are often ones in which
no questions are asked that dealt directly with gender-related issues in
Jewish ritual or history. In other words, it is one thing to ask “Do you
participate in a Passover Seder?” (where there probably is not a big
gender difference) and to ask “How important to you is the character
of Miriam in the Passover story?” (where one might be more likely to
find gender differences.)
In this study 67 Jewish American children (39 girls/28 boys) were
interviewed for approximately 30 minutes each. The children ranged in
age from 7 to 12, with about 90% between 9 and 11 years old. They were
drawn predominantly from Reform and Conservative synagogues, although there were a small number of children from Orthodox, Jewish
renewal, and Reconstructionist backgrounds.1 The children were participating in programs at various synagogues and a Jewish Community
Center in the northeastern United States.
1
52% Conservative, 33% Reform, 4% Conservadox, 4% Orthodox, 3% Jewish
Renewal, 3% Reconstructionist. The sample was approximately balanced by gender,
except for the Conservative children, who were more heavily female (65%) than male
(35%).
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Unlike Orthodox Jewish children, Jewish children from liberal
Jewish denominations are unlikely to have had significant contact or
even casual familiarity with problematic gender practices of traditional
Judaism such as mikveh, mechitzah, or minyan. Participants in the
study were questioned (among other topics) about gender practices
in a number of areas that were likely to be familiar to most kids. This
discussion will focus on the following elements:
Gender roles in traditional Jewish rituals. Children were shown
two pictures reflecting common elements of traditional gender role
differentiation in Jewish ritual and institutional practice. The first
depicts a woman lighting Sabbath candles while her husband, young
son, and daughter look on. The home rituals of welcoming the
Sabbath (Kabbalat Shabbat) are among the more widely observed, or
at least recognizable, Jewish rituals. They are also rituals with a history
of gender role differentiation. Sabbath candle-lighting is traditionally
a woman’s duty, whereas kiddish, the wine blessing, is traditionally a
man’s duty. Children were asked to discuss the gender roles implied
by the mother lighting the candles and the fact that only the father
and son are wearing kipot. The second picture is a scene of people
praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a place with which almost
all Jewish children are familiar. Prayer at the Western Wall is regulated
by Orthodox traditions and a fence separates male and female prayer
areas of unequal size. Children were asked to explain why the men
and women were separated, why the men’s side was larger, and how
they would arrange people at the wall if they could decide.
Famous Jewish figures. One of the most obvious changes in response to feminist criticism of Jewish liturgy and history has been the
attempt to highlight the identities, stories, and perspectives of women.
This has ranged from inclusion of matriarchs’names alongside those of
the patriarchs in prayers, greater attention to female characters in the
Bible, feminist midrash, and so on. If Jewish identity is to be consonant
and well integrated for both Jewish boys and girls, Jewish children will
require suitable gender role models to demonstrate what it means to
be a Jewish man or Jewish woman. Children were asked to name and
identify who they regarded as the most important Jews in history.
RESULTS
Sabbath Candle Lighting
Over two-thirds of the children (and nearly three-quarters of the
girls) saw no reason why a boy could not light Shabbat (sabbath) candles
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just as well as a girl. For most of them, it was not a problematic issue at
all, but rather one of common sense and respect for individual rights. If
someone wants to light Shabbat candles, they have a right to. Several
girls specifically described this as a matter of equal rights for boys
and girls, a position never expressly mentioned by the boys.“God did
make both of us. Why should we be any different?” noted one girl (F,
Conservative, age 10, #61). Another girl explained,“Guys are equal to
girls, so anyone can do whatever they want. If they believe in their mind
that guys can light candles for Shabbat, they can” (F, Conservative, age
12, #14).
Although most children rejected the idea of candle-lighting as
a specifically “woman’s job,” 30% did think the traditional position
of only women lighting Shabbat candles was correct. An additional
12% agreed that it was a “woman’s job,” even though boys could be
permitted to do it as well. Boys were more likely to defend the idea of
distinct roles in Jewish practice for girls and boys. Among those who
supported the idea of gender roles in general and the idea of certain
things being “a woman’s job,” less than a third (32%) were girls, while
over half (56%) were boys.
Children who thought lighting candles was a girl’s job often referred to “tradition” as the reason, just as it is “tradition” for boys
to say prayers over wine and bread. “Tradition” provides a category by which children can accept what they might not otherwise
know how to justify. Socialization of children always includes many
behaviors that one accepts just because “that’s how it is done and
always has been done.” Although some children begin to question
the reasons behind various taken-for-granted behaviors or rituals, for
other children they are not an issue at all. For children in the latter group, assigned gender roles do not appear to be problematic or
unfair, just accepted as given. In the following explanation for why
women rather than men light Shabbat candles, traditional religious
gender roles are conflated with traditional domestic gender roles for
women.
I’d say that there are other things that women don’t do that men do. And there
are things that women do that men don’t do. And this is one of them. (What
are some of the other things that just women do?) Usually, they prepare for
the dinner, they do the housework, they clean up the house before Shabbat.
And the father and the son usually do more of things like the blessing for
the hallah and the wine. (Is there a reason for dividing things like that?) I
don’t think it would make any difference who did what, but that’s the way it
is. (F, Conservative, age 11, #8)
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Even when their own families did not observe Shabbat candle-lighting
regularly, boys were more likely to defend the traditional role. This is
how two ten year-old boys would respond to a boy who asked to light
the candles:
I would try to explain the background story and why the woman should
light and the history of why the women do light it. I would talk it out with
them and tell them straight why the woman should do it. (Do you know
what the reason is why the women do this?) No, but I would try to find out.
(Conservative, age 10, #59)
They [the parents] tell the son that. . . . in the Jewish community the woman
always lights the candles, and that maybe he can help. The mom and the
father would say, “you’re not going to do it when you grow up because your
wife will be doing it.” (Why is that job just for women?) The man could
do it just as well as the woman, there’s no difference. So I don’t know why
the woman does it. (What do you do in your family?) We don’t do Shabbat.
(Reform, age 10, #11)
Kipot
Kipot are the only gender-specific ceremonial object with which
most Jewish children have personal contact at a fairly early age. They
are too young to wear tallitot or tefillin (and few boys who are not
Orthodox will ever use tefillin). Although tzitzit are worn by young
boys, they, too, are generally not part of Jewish ritual practice outside
of the Orthodox world. In this study, children were asked to explain why
only the males were wearing kipot in a picture of a family celebrating
Shabbat.
Although the children were not asked whether girls could wear
kipot, too, the majority of children sensed that it was an implicit issue
in the question, and they responded to it by affirming girls’rights as
well. Yet their egalitarianism is once again tempered by deference to
tradition. Thus, many children affirmed the distinction that for boys
wearing kipot remained an obligation or mitzvah with the authority
of tradition behind it, whereas for girls it remained a neutral option
that was neither strongly encouraged nor discouraged, that is,“Girls
can wear them but the don’t have to” (F, Conservative, age 8, #46).
Indeed, this is the policy of many synagogues that support religious
egalitarianism.
Whether or not girls were allowed or encouraged to wear kipot,
most girls and boys denied that wearing kipot made boys or men feel
STUART Z. CHARMÉ
29
more important or special at synagogue. On the contrary, some children described kipot as more of an additional burden or nuisance
for boys than a discriminatory privilege that disadvantaged girls. Girls
sometimes offered explanations they had been taught for men wearing
kipot that diminished any sense of specialness attached to the practice.
One girl explained the custom as a result of male weakness, not male
superiority.
Men wear kipot because when they built the golden calf—it was only the
men—and they wear kipot to remind them that God is above. They were
assigned to do that. (F, Conservative, age 10, #53)
Others suggested that women are not required to wear kipot because
their spiritual superiority makes this “crutch” unnecessary. As one girl
explained,
Someone told me that if God said that everyone had to, the boys wouldn’t
and the girls would, so He said that the boys have to and the girls wouldn’t
have to. (F, Reform, age 9, #29)
Permitting girls and women to wear kipot in synagogue services
was motivated by a desire to create parity in public worship between
men and women. It is clear, however, that requiring a ritual observance for boys at the same time that girls can individually decide
whether to participate perpetuates some degree of the differential
gender treatment. There is a presumptive maleness about kipot that
is not eliminated by official egalitarian policies of this kind. A female
student at a Jewish day school—which follows the “boys must, girls
can” approach—made clear that there is a difference of perception
about kipot for boys and girls and that girls receive confusing mixed
messages about it.
At my school they say that girls are lucky because they don’t have to wear
kipot. (Do you feel lucky that you don’t have to?) No, I will wear one. I
stopped wearing one to school because everyone kept asking me why I was
wearing a kipah, cause I’m a girl, like you’re not supposed to wear a kipah.
(Why did you?) My teacher did, and she’s a woman. (Reconstructionist, age
9, #47)
Despite a female teacher whose behavior offered an egalitarian role
model for students, this girl still absorbed the message that kipot are
for boys. The effect of the seemingly egalitarian policies is to shift responsibility to the girls. Not to wear a kipah thereby becomes one’s own
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personal choice rather than a form of collective exclusion by others. A
Jewish day school student explained
I don’t wear a kipah. A girl could. I’m wearing a kipah at my bat mitzvah. I
just don’t like it. I’m kind of glad I’m not a boy because in school the boys
have to wear them. Anybody can wear it, it doesn’t matter what gender you
are. (Are there any things just for girls or just for boys?) No, not really. I
mean I could probably think of one if I think about it. Well, the thing you
put on here [gestures to her arm] (tefillin?) Yeah, and the thing the guys
wear underneath (tzitzit?) Yeah. The rabbi and his sons wear them in my
school. I don’t know if I would call it “just for boys.” I could wear them. I
don’t think girls would. I don’t know. (F, Conservative, age 11, #49)
This girl has generalized in her own mind the egalitarian policy on kipot
to include tefillin and tzitzit as well. On the one hand, it would be hard
to have a consistent policy of egalitarianism and female inclusion and
still maintain the use of tefillin and tzitzit as a male-only practices. On
the other hand, she doubts that most girls would exercise their right
to use tefillin and tzitzit. This is the tension for Jewish girls, balancing
de jure statements of gender equality with de facto realities of Jewish
ritual practice where expectations for boys are different from those for
girls.2
The following response from a 10-year-old girl with a Conservative
background begins by recognizing the patriarchal origins of reserving
traditions like kipot for males only, and she asserts women’s right to
equal participation today. But she quickly explains why she prefers
not to exercise this right, and she implies that it is more important for
boys to wear kipot than girls. Having said this, she again tries to undercut the greater weight placed on boys’ participation by mentioning
their complaints about this ceremonial obligation and their envy of
girls’ freedom. Finally, she ends her comments with a reaffirmation of
gender equality.
. . . when kipot got started men were in charge. I think women can do it
whenever they want, if they want to. They’re allowed to. A lot of times I
don’t like to bother because I’ll lean back my head and my kipah falls off
and I’ll spend my entire shabbes evening putting my kipah back on. (Would
it be OK if a boy decided not to wear his kipah because it bothered him by
2
Alison Bender Kellner found that none of the 57 girls at an urban Schechter
school wore tallit or tefillin while davening at the Wednesday morning minyan, although they participated equally with the boys. “What Do girls at Metro Schechter
High School Think about Females Wearing Tallit and Tefillin?, Network for Research
in Jewish Education Conference, June 2004.
STUART Z. CHARMÉ
31
falling off a lot?) I think he should wear it, but if he really doesn’t want to,
then he really doesn’t have to, but only if he really doesn’t want to. (So why
should he?) I don’t know. (Does he feel more special for wearing it?) No. A
lot of the boys I know complain that they have to do it and they consider us
lucky for not having to wear them. (Are there any other special things just
for Jewish boys?) Not that I can think of. We’ re really equal.
Although most boys do not seem threatened or disturbed by the
prospect of girls wearing kipot, girls’ attitudes often reflect ambivalence about their ritual participation in traditional male practice and
the ambiguous messages they receive about doing so.
The Western Wall
Jewish children who attend Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist synagogues in the United States have little experience of
Orthodox gender separation. However, through their religious school
education, many of them are familiar with important sites in Israel, including the Western Wall of the Temple mount in Jerusalem. Because
this is a sacred Jewish symbol that is presented to most AmericanJewish children, yet which preserves Orthodox gender separation, it
offers a good barometer of how Jewish-American children respond to
religious gender segregation, and how they manage the tension between respect for sacred Jewish symbols and their American values of
individual rights and freedom.
Children were shown an illustration of the Western Wall, which
also showed groups of men and women praying, separated by a fence,
or mechitzah. They were then asked: (a) Why do you think the men
and women are separated at the Wall? (b) Why is the men’s side bigger
than the women’s side?, and (c) How would you arrange people at the
Wall if you were in charge?
Reasons for separating men and women. Even if they didn’t agree
with the idea of separating men and women, most children did think
there was a logical reason for the arrangement. Although about a quarter simply attributed the separation to Orthodox forms of prayer, other
children thought the separation might reduce distraction or provide
some kind of increased privacy for prayers. In searching for explanations, some children assumed that separate prayer spaces was a
response to the unique characteristics of men and women, who might
pray differently or have different goals. One girl suggested that men
and women ask God for different things, so that mothers might be
praying for their children’s futures, whereas men might be praying for
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wealth. At the same time, she acknowledged that if various men or
women in the same place were making different kinds of prayers, it
wouldn’t cause a problem, so the critical issue is clearly gender difference, not difference in general. A boy noted that men rock back and
forth when they pray whereas women don’t, so it would feel strange
for them to pray next to each other (M, Reform, age 12, #16).
Why is the men’s side bigger? Aside from the simple fact of separation, the mechitzah at the Wall divides the plaza facing the Wall
into two unequal parts, with the men’s section being nearly twice as
big as the women’s section. When children were asked to explain this
disparity in the size of the sections, over half, both boys and girls, offered a variety of reasons to explain why the space might be divided
this way. In other words, they assumed the legitimacy of a division
that at first glance might violate their sense of equity and they tried
to rationally justify it. On some level, most children expect or assume
religious customs to be fair and logical. The overall attitude was that
this is the way it is and has to be, and there must be a good reason for
it.
The most common reason that children offered for unequal space
at the Wall was an assumption of some mathematical calculation of
the different needs of men and women. Some figured that more space
must have been assigned to the men’s side because more men come
to pray at the wall. Others suggested that women were/are a smaller
percentage of the population of Israel than men. And other children
wondered whether men need more space because they are physically
bigger than women. Or maybe it’s because men move and rock more
than women when they pray, and they therefore need more space for
that. Maybe men pray more often, are more religious, or have more
prayers to say than women.
Children reveal a great deal of ingenuity in making sense of this
seemingly inequitable situation. It is possible that children justify the
mechitzah at the Wall on the basis of their prior opinions about religious
gender roles. But the responses also suggest that the mere fact of
an unequal separation reinforces certain gender assumptions about
Jewish prayer and leads children to attribute greater (in numbers,
intensity, etc.) prayer behavior on the part of men.
Not all explanations assumed greater male participation in prayer
at the Wall, however. One girl thought the different relational skills
of men and women might require different spatial configurations for
prayer. In a public space where strangers come together men may be
less likely to interact than women. As this girl explained,
STUART Z. CHARMÉ
33
maybe because the men don’t like talking to each other, and the women
don’t mind talking to each other even if they don’t know each other. Or they
don’t mind being in a closer space. (#51)
Although a relatively small number of children described the mere
fact of dividing men and women at the wall as unfair or sexist, the
unequal division of the space seemed a more conspicuous inequity
to many of them, particularly girls, that could not be explained away.
Forty-two percent of the girls and a quarter of the boys described the
space division as unfairly privileging the men. They see the greater
space for men as a symbol of the idea that in Israel Jewish men are
considered better, more important, and more respected than women.
Girls tended to be more upset than boys at the inequity of the division
at the wall. One complained:
It’s so unfair. The woman’s side is half as big. You can only read Torah on
one side. The people who decided there should be two sides and where to
put the mechitzah were sort of sexist. (F, Havurah, age 10, #4)
Another girl acknowledged that more men probably come to the Wall,
but that may be because the women are arbitrarily required to take
care of the home:
I think this is awful, but a lot of time the women used to stay home and cook
while the men went and prayed which I think is absolutely horrible. My dad
cooks a lot better, just as good as my mom. (F, Conservative, age 10, #61)
What would you do? When the Jewish-American children were
asked how they would arrange the people for prayers at the wall, a
variety of answers emerged ranging from leaving things exactly as they
are to mixing men and women together without any mechitzah.
Boys were somewhat more likely to be content with the arrangement of the mechitzah. Over a third of the boys, compared to less
than a quarter of the girls, favored keeping the division of sexes at the
wall, without any accommodation for those who prefer mixing men
and women. Some children were willing to keep the mechitzah, but
with conditions. Either it had to be moved to the middle so that the
space was equal for men and women, or a separate gender-integrated
space had also be available. Boys (14%) preferred the first condition
more than girls (7%), but girls (14%) were more likely to insist on the
second condition than boys (5%).
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Children tried to balance the existing tradition with their own sense
of fairness and preservation of individual choice and pluralism. Those
who wanted to maintain some form of gender segregation mentioned
that this was a matter of respect for the Orthodox, who wouldn’t want
mixed prayer. The most comprehensive solution to accommodate both
fairness and respect for tradition would be to divide the wall into three
sections.
I think there should be a section where guys and girls can go together and
then a section for just guys and just girls. Like with two fences and three
sections. (F, Conservative, age 12, #14)
I would put the mechitzah in the middle. . . . because some people are Orthodox and they don’t want to pray with other genders (What about the people
who do want to pray with other genders?) I’ll divide it into thirds—men,
women, everybody. (F, Havurah, age 10, #4)
They should have it optional. There should be one part for people who
want to pray separate and another part of people who want to pray together.
(F, Conservative, age 11, #6)
The idea that both mixed gender and gender-segregated spaces
might coexist at the wall without either one in any way invalidating
the other reflects the idea of many children that gender separation
is a matter of individual choice, not a group decision or religious
policy. Gender separation is tolerable only if it is not compulsory
for everyone. As long as segregated space is available for those Jews
who desire or require it, other Jews should be free to decide for
themselves.
Aside from such creative solutions to simultaneously accommodate both Orthodox and liberal Jews, the majority of children favored
simply removing the mechitzah so that men and women could pray
together. This conclusion was described as both a question of individual freedom and of the goal of keeping families together. Two-thirds
of the girls and 6 out of 10 boys favored complete removal of the mechitzah. If the children who favored keeping a mechitzah but adding
an egalitarian area as well are included, then 80% of girls and almost 2/3 of the boys favored a provision for mixed prayers. Although
most children saw a need to change the arrangement at the wall, in
general the girls interviewed were more determined to find new solutions or remove the mechitzah than the boys, who favored mixing
but did not express the same degree of personal investment in the
issue. Although a commitment to egalitarianism is pervasive among
STUART Z. CHARMÉ
35
Jewish-American children, girls tend to be stronger advocates for it
than boys.
Famous Jewish Women and Men
Jewish education in grade school tends to focus on Biblical stories
as a primary focus, along with highlights of modern Jewish history,
such as the Holocaust and the birth of the state of Israel. Although
Jewish educators have worked to include women in children’s introduction to Jewish history, and revised liturgies now frequently mention
the names of Biblical matriarchs alongside those of the patriarchs, it is
not clear how well Jewish children have integrated Jewish women into
their own sense of Jewishness or internalized them as potential role
models. The children in this study were not asked to identify specific
Biblical or other Jewish figures from a list. This kind of recognition
is certainly easier than recalling historical figures without prompting.
To the extent that cultural knowledge functions very much like a language in which there are varying degrees of fluency, simple recognition
of historical figures resembles passive language comprehension, understanding the meanings of words once they are spoken, whereas
independent unprompted recall resembles a deeper integration of a
language at the level of active productive fluency.
First, children were asked to name several of the most important
Jewish people (no gender specified) throughout history. When all the
names they mentioned were taken as an aggregate, we found that
the girls as a whole produced just slightly more male names than
female names. For boys, however, the names of male personalities
outnumbered the names of female ones by 9 to 1. Among the Biblical
characters alone, girls mentioned male characters twice as often as
female ones, whereas boys mentioned men 6 times more often than
women.
There are a number of possible explanations for these disparities.
Although all children are presumably exposed to the same selection
of historical Jewish characters, girls may find themselves more interested or attracted to female characters than boys. They may pay more
attention to the stories of these characters and therefore have greater
probability of recalling them. Girls may also be more motivated to
think of at least some female characters when asked about famous
Jews, almost as an informal kind of “affirmative action” for Jewish
history. Boys may find the stories of famous Jewish women not only
less interesting than girls do, they may also consider the women to
36
GENDER AND JEWISH CHILDREN
be less important characters in Jewish history. Thus when thinking of
the most important characters, they may reflexively think of the most
well-known Jewish men.
Regardless of whether children were recalling male or female characters, in most cases, there was not a great deal of depth, either in
numbers or content, to their recall of famous Jews. Children most often identified Moses and Abraham as the most important figures in
Jewish history and had fairly accurate ideas about why these men were
important. Beyond these few figures, however, the amount of content
associated with the names of Jewish figures rapidly decayed. In general, girls gave more details about the lives of female characters than
boys. Many children have learned the names of matriarchs, which are
often mentioned in revised liturgies in liberal synagogues. Indeed, the
inclusion of the names of the matriarchs has come to be somewhat of
a barometer of egalitarian sensitivity. Nevertheless, most children—
regardless of sex—still think of the matriarchs primarily as the wives
of famous men. A boy from a Reform synagogue with a woman rabbi
said,
we didn’t learn too much about women. I know some Jewish women like
Rachel and Rebecca, but I don’t know anything special that they did. They
were just wives. (M, Reform, age 10, #45)
A girl from a progressive conservative synagogue tried to think of
important Jewish women and seemed frustrated that she came up
with so little.
What’s her name, you know, the judge? (Deborah?) Yes, Deborah, she judged
people. She solved people’s problems when they can’t solve them themselves. (Anyone else?) They don’t mention them that much except as a wife
of an important person. (F, Conservative, age 10, #34)
When boys were specifically asked about famous Jewish women, many
of them struggled to come up with any name at all, or they admitted
that they really knew little about the woman they had named. In light
of this, it need not come as a surprise that the woman most commonly
mentioned by boys as the most important Jewish woman in history was
Eve. The story of Adam and Eve is one of the earliest studied in religious school and one of the most familiar to children. For many Jewish
children there is a presumption that all the well-known characters in
the Bible are Jewish.
STUART Z. CHARMÉ
37
CONCLUSION
Despite an ambivalence about the term feminism, American culture has absorbed the basic feminist platform of equal opportunities
for both women and men based on the assumption that, in most respects, women and men have comparable abilities. Among the children
interviewed in this study, there appears to have been a remarkable diffusion of the idea that girls and boys are both capable of doing the
same things and should be given the chance to do so. Children struggle, in different degrees, to harmonize a certain degree of socialization
into gender role differentiation with their values of individual freedom
and fairness of treatment. Although this attitude is expressed by the
majority of boys, it is more pronounced in girls.
By the age of 8–10 years old, children have developed an ability to
understand and evaluate the reasons offered for various religious activities. Despite their expectation that religious rules and rituals should
both make sense and be fair, they are forced to deal with the dissonance created when religious stories or practices present conspicuous
violations of other values that they hold. For example, children who
are not Orthodox find it easier to justify the separation of men and
women at the Western Wall in Jerusalem than to explain the unequal
division of the space at the wall (twice as much space for men as for
women), which is more obviously unfair in the eyes of many of them.
Although there is no question that enormous progress toward gender equality has occurred within the American-Jewish community in
the last generation, this research also reveals different nuances in the
attitudes and behavior of young Jewish girls and boys that make it premature to declare “the triumph of egalitarianism.” When the question
of gender was explicitly posed to Jewish children, girls were found to
be more sensitive to issues of equal rights and sexism, more ambivalent about their proper roles and more aware of the contributions of
Jewish women, whereas boys were more likely to defend more traditional gender roles in Judaism and to be less familiar with important
Jewish women. Neither educators nor researchers should assume that
gender issues are a thing of the past for Jewish children. Only when
questions that carefully probe these issues are devised and used both
in classrooms and in research will this dimension of children’s Jewish
experience become articulated and better understood.
Stuart Z. Charmé is professor of religion at Rutgers University (Camden)
as well as an associate of the Rutgers Center for Children and Childhood
38
GENDER AND JEWISH CHILDREN
Studies. His research interests include the development of Jewish identity
in childhood and adolescence. He is the writer and director of the documentary film “KOTEL: Jewish Teens on Gender and Tradition” (2003). E-mail:
[email protected]
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