Class is about to start and students are talking among themselves. A rabbi walks into the room to confer with the teacher and everyone stands up; conversation momentarily stops in acknowledgement of the respected figure who has just entered. Another teacher then enters, someone who has been teaching Judaic studies for twelve years and is considered a role model at the school. However, this time no one stands up and the buzz of conversation continues. All because the teacher is a female without the title “rabbi” affixed to her name.
This is a typical occurrence at the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy in Maryland that I have attended since nursery and where I am now a senior in high school. It is a co-ed school with Judaic classes in which boys and girls are separated from fifth grade on, and are mixed for secular classes. While I am grateful for the many opportunities afforded by my school, there are also areas of frustration.
Curriculum
The morning is divided into four periods – Bible, Hebrew Language, Prophets, and Talmud. Whereas at some schools girls are relegated to the weaker teachers, in our school, girls get very accomplished teachers. Most are scholars who listen and appreciate what girls have to say and challenge us to think critically. However, there is a clear differentiation between boys and girls when it comes to Talmud. Talmud is required for boys, but optional for girls. While boys begin learning Talmud in the sixth grade, those girls that choose to learn Talmud do not start until seventh grade. In high school, classes are only forty-five minutes each, and there is not enough time to delve deeply or to develop facility with the Talmud text, particularly as one Talmud period a week is devoted to a separate halakhah curriculum. Boys, on the other hand, do not study Prophets and instead have a second period of Talmud each day. They also have the option of learning Talmud during Hebrew Language. This gives boys the opportunity to learn Talmud in-depth with more sources. It often seems as if Talmud for girls is only a survey course encouraging us to learn in the future, as we are not given the tools to learn on our own. I am much more limited in my approach to a page of Talmud than a boy in my grade. If Talmud is not for all girls, then maybe it is not for all boys either.
I think it is important that both boys and girls are exposed to the voices and stories of women in our past. Schools should focus on issues such as women’s leadership roles in the Bible and the personalities of the foremothers. I can still remember our third grade teacher introducing us (boys and girls) to Rashi with a recreation of Rashi’s family. We dressed up as Rashi’s scholarly daughters and practiced writing with quills and speaking French.
Prayer
The school does recognize that gender is an important issue in the modern world and that everyone should be educated in halakhot regarding women. This year, the halakha curriculum for the entire high school is women and prayer. However, when it comes to practice, girls are not actively involved in prayer. We pray together with the boys but we cannot see over the mehitzah. There are no female gabbai’ot. No female teachers give divrei Torah after davening, whereas rabbis give them three times a week. I think it is very important that prayer in a school such as ours be in an environment of equal sight lines to increase girls’ participation and feelings of belonging. Many girls miss being hazzanit (prayer leader) as we were in earlier grades. The highlight of the year for many girls is the women’s megillah reading held annually on Purim morning at which the megillah is read by high school girls.
Modesty
The way modesty is addressed by the school is often frustrating for girls. Even though there is a dress code for boys as well as girls, tzniut is often viewed as a girls’ issue with discussions focusing on sleeve lengths. It seems sometimes as if teachers and boys forget that tzniut encompasses more than externals and should apply to every Jew, male and female – how we speak to each other, refraining from boasting about grades, not parading newly acquired clothes, and generally acting modestly.
Leadership Roles
Leadership roles in the school are equal for girls and boys. There are many female role models of leadership – a female president of the school, a female head of the board of education, three out of four female principals, many female department chairs and so on. In the high school, girls actually run more activities than boys – student council, drama society, newspaper and yearbook. Girls’ sports teams receive the same funding as boys’ and the school encourages attendance for all teams equally.
Student-Teacher Relationships
One of the things I am upset about is the lack of an equivalent for girls of the talmid-rebbe relationship. The boys go over to their rabbi’s house on Shabbat, talk over problems with him, and seem to have a special relationship. I have never had this opportunity. I have had teachers that I respected and learned from, but never someone I had a special bond with. More young female teachers need to be hired who can relate to female students and guide us in making religious decisions.
Beit Midrash
Another issue is that the beit midrash (study-room) is very unwelcoming to girls. It is very unusual to find females there and certainly not female teachers. Although the school has tried to remedy this by establishing a monthly womens’ evening learning program, the generally male-dominated beit midrash still intimidates many girls who might want to study there.
Many of these issues relate to the culture of the school and more generally to the culture of the Orthodox community, and will change over time. Solutions to these problems are not easy or clear-cut. But each girl in the school is only there for a limited number of years, and many of her life choices and attitudes will be shaped by her experiences in the school.