Interested in learning about current curricular trends for boys and girls, JOFA conducted interviews with three high school administrators. Below is an edited transcript of the interviews.
Participants:
Mrs. Esther Krauss is principal of the Ma’ayanot High School for girls in Teaneck, New Jersey. Currently in its sixth year, Ma’ayanot has 160 students.
Rabbi Zev Litenatsky is dean of admissions and financial aid for Shalhevet, a coed high school in Los Angeles. Shalhevet is seven years old, and has 285 students.
Rabbi Leonard Matanky is principal of Ida Crown, a coed high school in Chicago that separates boys and girls for Judaic studies. Founded sixty years ago, Ida Crown currently has 330 students.
Interviewer:
Dr. Janet Dolgin is the Maurice A. Deane Professor of Constitutional Law at Hofstra University School of Law and is a member of the JOFA board of directors.
Q: How did your school make the decision to opt for a coeducational or separate environment? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such an environment?
Mrs. Krauss: There is a coed school and a boys’ school in the area. The founders felt that the community was entitled to a girls’ school. Some opt to educate girls separately for religious reasons, and others for educational reasons, because the studies have shown that girls thrive in an all-girls environment. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It continues to be partially a man’s world, and single sex education encourages the natural inclination of women to be less competitive and more cooperative in the way in which they function in a man’s world. Coed schools tend to be more competitive environments. I’m not one of those who says that men and women are the same. I don’t think they are, and I think that it’s important to nurture and value those distinctions that make us who we are.
Rabbi Litenatsky: When the school was founded no one was addressing the need of modern Orthodox families who wanted to educate their children in a coed environment. The school does not separate by gender for any subjects, as it was felt that boys and girls could study equally in all subject areas. In fact, we have found that in actual classroom teaching and management, that this is exactly what happens, be it in Talmud, mathematics, or biology.
Rabbi Matanky: The founders of the school created a coed school because that is all anyone would imagine sixty years ago. Were an Orthodox school being started today, it would be much more difficult to start it coed, but there would be concern about providing for both boys and girls. For the girls the coed environment is a mixed bag. Research suggests that girls do better when they are separated for math and science, which we don’t do. On the other hand, there is an advantage for both genders to be in a coed environment, considering that students come from coed elementary schools and many are headed to coed universities. The decision to educate boys and girls separately for Judaic studies is also part of the history of the school. When the school was founded there was an option for the boys to study Judaic studies in conjunction with the Hebrew Theological College, a yeshiva program. The option did not exist for girls, so they learned in separate classes. I think there’s a difference in the way the two genders learn in general. You’re still in the adolescent years – there’s a difference in maturity. You see that often in the way the girls take notes in high school that are much more like transcripts. Boys will doodle often. There are differences in the type of work product, and in the work ethic.
Q: Are girls taught Talmud in your school?
Mrs. Krauss: At the inception of the school we made the decision that Talmud will be a core part of the curriculum without any apologetics, without any hesitation. The decision would be made based purely on educational grounds –what we choose to learn and how we choose to learn it is based, as in every other subject, upon what is best for the students educationally. We have never had any hesitation, and we certainly do not communicate to the students any kind of hesitation about learning Talmud.
Rabbi Litenatsky: We teach Talmud equally to both boys and girls in coed classes. When the kids start out in ninth grade, the girls have not had any experience with Talmud, whereas most of the boys have. But I find that within six months, the girls are right up there with the boys. I have often said that some of our girls have better Gemara heads than our boys.
Rabbi Matanky: Girls and boys are separated for Judaic studies. All boys study Talmud, whereas the girls have the option of a Talmud program or a Jewish philosophy program. A number of years ago, when we introduced the option of Talmud for the girls, we also introduced the option of Jewish philosophy for the boys. The reality was, that while the girls were pretty evenly split between the two programs, within a few years there were very few boys who remained in the Jewish philosophy program. I believe the reason for the imbalance relates to the expectation of parents that if boys do not study Talmud, the program is not considered serious. Parents are more open to different options for girls.
Q: Do you employ female Talmud teachers?
Mrs. Krauss: It happens to be that the head of the Talmud Department in the school is a woman. At first, the girls felt it was weird, and then the next year they told me it was weird to have a man – they had had such a wonderful experience. They have really established a rebbe-talmid (student-teacher) relationship with their Talmud teacher. The thing that is most missing for girls in a coed environment is female role models in Judaic studies, especially in Talmud. And because of that, the atmosphere, especially in Talmud, and the perspective and the approach of learning Talmud is a male approach because men have been learning Talmud for centuries and women have not. When a woman is in the classroom teaching Talmud, she’s got to approach it as a woman. That’s going to translate itself to the students. We haven’t created a particularly female way of learning Talmud, but the very fact that it’s being taught in a school which takes women seriously, in which they have role models of leadership in all areas, but particularly in Judaic studies– all of that changes their perspective.
Rabbi Litenatsky: At the moment, we do not have any women teaching Talmud but we entertained the thought of having a seminar for girls by women.
Rabbi Matanky: We do not currently have any women teaching Talmud, but we tried to get one a few years back. There aren’t that many women who are capable and trained in this, and Chicago has an even smaller percentage of capable women than New York, for example. We would not be averse to having a woman Talmud teacher, and there was once a woman teacher of Talmud here. I don’t believe that we would have a woman teaching boys. We would prefer to have woman teachers teaching girls, and male teachers teaching boys. We have a mixed gender of teachers teaching both genders as it is now. I think the question of role modeling is very important for us. But we have to deal with the reality of what we have.
Q: What is the extent of girls’ participation in tefillah?
Mrs. Krauss: We take tefillah very seriously. The girls daven together every day for both shaharit and minha, and all girls are required to participate. A student leads the tefillah and on Friday gives a dvar Torah, but we do not read from the Torah. Taking responsibility for leading tefillah has been a new experience for our students. Although they were hesitant at first, they have become invested in the daily tefillah and our Rosh Hodesh davening is really nice. We also have a tefillah committee of students to discuss protocol and policy.
Rabbi Litenatsky: We have a number of tefillah options. We have a regular minyan of boys. Then we have what is called a “happy minyan,” which is a mehitzah minyan, including both boys and girls, that spends more time on singing and discussion. And then there are six or seven individual girls’ minyanim by grade level, that are led by the rebbetzins who teach. And they conduct a full minyan in the true sense of the word – but it’s with girls. The girls do not read from the Torah in their minyan, but they join the boys each month on Rosh Hodesh. Of course, the reading of Torah on Rosh Hodesh is done by the boys. We do have a separate girls’ reading of the megillah on Purim.
Rabbi Matanky: The girls daven at a minyan with the boys, so they don’t participate except as individuals. We want to train students for participation in the community. If girls aren’t familiar with davening with a traditional minyan, they are not going to be familiar with davening in a shul. And we want to create that familiarity. When I started running the school six years ago, I made a switch from the girls davening on their own to davening as part of a minyan. It is my feeling that we need to encourage the concept of participation in traditional Jewish structure.
Q: How do you envision the ideal graduate of your school?
Mrs. Krauss: My dream is that she will take herself seriously as a Jewish woman, as a woman and a Jewish woman particularly, that she will see herself as able to make a significant contribution to the Jewish community, that she will have integrated Torah into her very being – and that that will inform anything that she chooses to do. A very tall order!
Rabbi Litenatsky: One who is involved in his community, the land of Israel, and who gives back to the school and its community that which he received. Or she received.
Rabbi Matanky: Our ideal graduate is a person who is involved in the Jewish community, is committed to Jewish life, and is contributing to Jewish and secular society.