Several years ago, I joined a JOFA educational team charged with the goal of developing a gendersensitive humash curriculum for the day school classroom. Our job: to supplement “regular” humash learning with lessons that would increase an awareness of gender through the study of humash. Following on the success of the Bereishit team, we set out to design a series of units for fifth grade teachers of Shemot that would highlight women in the biblical text and help deepen girls’ personal connections to the Bible and its study. Taking into consideration that most day schools in the New York area study the first half of Shemot in the fifth grade, we decided to shape nine lessons centered on the early chapters in Shemot.
In the early stages of development, our gender-inclusive approach to humash study challenged us to think more broadly about inclusivity in the classroom. In addition to focusing on biblical women and trying to reach the girls in the classroom, we attempted to design lessons that would facilitate a more inclusive learning environment. In our units, questions of all kinds are respected and encouraged, and learners with a variety of learning styles are valued and nurtured. Students have choices of activities that play into their diverse strengths and afford them multiple avenues for expression and engagement. Furthermore, we organized each unit around a “big picture” question so all the learning segments would contribute to the students’ understanding of the larger issues at stake.
Our gender-inclusive approach to humash study challenged us to think more broadly about inclusivity in the classroom.
Our inclusive lens prodded us to treat the biblical text with a similar openness; in other words, we wanted students to recognize that the biblical text itself has many stories to tell and layers of meaning encoded within it. To help students access these layers and to expand the students’ tools in the study of Tanakh, we turned to the midrashic tradition. As a bonus, the midrashic collection from which we culled most of our material—Shemot Rabbah—opens up a rich undercurrent to the biblical text, which showcases women’s spirited participation in the Exodus narrative.
Nearly all of our nine units incorporate small bits of midrashic material in ways that encourage creative questioning and bolster the students’ understanding of the p’shat (plain sense of the text). For example, in one unit, after they have spent time discovering Miriam’s leadership qualities in the p’shat of the verses, students learn the story about young Miriam challenging her father, Amram, to reunite with her mother, Yokheved. Studied this way, the midrashic story confirms the students’ understanding of Miriam’s character and deepens their appreciation for the power of well-spoken words and initiative, even in a young child.
Not all our units center on topics that would seem obvious for a gender-sensitive curriculum. Although the early chapters in Exodus are heavily populated with female characters, women quickly disappear from the narrative later on. One way in which we dealt with this problem was to expand our lens beyond women per se, to think in gender terms about family structure and access to power.
The unit titled “Moshe at the Well” demonstrates this strategy. The unit offers the students a prism through which to consider Moshe’s growth as an individual, from the time he leaves Egypt until God calls to him from the burning bush. Moshe is decidedly the focus of the unit, but our lessons cast a wider look at Moshe’s influences—his mothers and sister—and conflicting family ties.
As a preparatory homework assignment for this unit, the students draw a family tree for Moshe at four pivotal moments: as a newborn baby, after he is weaned and given back to Bat Par’oh, when he goes out to his brothers, and when he leaves Egypt. The goal is for students to confront the shifting lines of identity that characterize Moshe’s early life. How does he see himself? Which is his “true” family?
Later in the unit, after the students study the verses that describe Moshe’s encounter at the well, they think about “Moshe in transition.” Comparing Moshe’s experience to those of Abraham’s servant with Rivka and of Jacob with Rachel in parallel scenes that also take place at wells, they consider how the well scene functions as a critical coming-of-age moment for Moshe, when he asserts his connection to the tradition of the Avot (his forebears) and gains comfort and strength in his new family. As a final homework activity for the unit, the students write letters home to each of Moshe’s “mothers” describing what happened at the well, as well as his feelings about having a new family.
Not all our units center on topics that would seem obvious to a gender-sensitive curriculum.
Exploring Moshe’s emergence from an Egyptian child into a capable leader through the prism of Moshe’s shifting family ties affords the students the opportunity to think about the role of family constellations in the development of identity and leadership.
Another challenge we encountered in developing the Shemot curriculum stemmed from our immersion in the Midrash. To better shape the students’ appreciation of the text and to deepen their understanding of women’s role in the Exodus narrative, we chose selective midrashim from Shemot Rabbah and the Tanhuma to incorporate into the lessons. For example, in our units on Miriam, the midwives, and the women in the incident of the Golden Calf, we latched onto the suppressed narratives in the Midrash—highlighting women’s remarkable faith in the face of slavery and their consistent ability to imagine a redemptive future.
Rescuing this suppressed narrative of women’s heroism is wonderful for (a) calling attention to women’s otherwise unnoticed, or less noticed, active role; (b) helping students to read the text carefully and attentively; and (c) developing positive female role models.
Paradoxically, though, the portrayal of the women as stalwarts of faith can lead to an excessively stark division between the roles of women and men: women instinctively believe in God, whereas men fall prey to fear and uncertainty. In other words, the wooden quality of the heroism replaces one stereotype with another and inadvertently reinforces gender-based assumptions about men’s and women’s behavior. We wanted to avoid this stereotyping, and also to avoid painting a portrait in which the men as an entire group are seen as stubborn and close-minded. We were also concerned as to how the boys in the room would feel.
In our unit on the Song at the Sea, we worked hard to negotiate this problem. In this unit, the students studied Miriam’s song in depth. Rather than reading quickly through the women’s song as a corollary to, or a shorter version of, Moshe’s lengthy song, the unit lets students explore the multiple ways in which the women’s song represents an alternate mode of religious expression to Moshe’s song. Presented side by side in the Torah, the celebrations at the sea offer insights into multiple ways of connecting to Hashem.
Through a series of activities (text learning, listening activities, and movement activities), the students discover three key differences between the songs:
- The women’s song is short, like a mantra, and is accompanied by dancing. By contrast, the men’s song is a long song, unaccompanied by dancing.
- The women’s celebration is planned, whereas the men’s song is spontaneous. Guided by the Midrash, the students interpret the women’s possession of instruments at the sea as an indication of their preparedness for God’s miracles as they were packing for the Exodus. On the other hand, Moshe leads the men in a spontaneous song—Az Yashir Moshe (Ex. 16:1); after he saw the miracle, he praised God.
- Finally, the students learn that the women’s song at the Sea parallels several other biblical tales in which women celebrate a victorious return of warriors with tambourines and dancing (see Shoftim 11 and I Shmuel 10). In contrast, Moshe and the men sing a narrative song, retelling the events of the victory, and it helps students break down the distinction along gender lines to see the similarity of Moshe’s song with the song of Devorah in Shoftim 5.
Our goal in showing the two songs as alternate modes of religious expression is to shy away from fixating on differences between women’s and men’s spiritual behavior, and rather, to offer the students the opportunity to consider the following questions: Which mode of expression do you identify with? How do you celebrate joyous events, and connect to God? Why?
Even as the unit calls attention to and examines the extraordinary contribution of the women, the students are encouraged to think beyond a binary gender difference and relate personally to both modes as equally viable and valuable alternatives.
The most rewarding feedback we received was from a teacher who piloted the units and reported that the gender issues in the text arose naturally in class discussions. Even more, she felt as if her students were engaged with Miriam’s leadership, the midwives’ ethical dilemmas, and the women’s drive to bring forth children because they were exciting and important issues in the humash.