A year into my high school teaching career, I began teaching a class called Mishpacha: Jewish Family Life. My previous nine years of teaching experience had been with elementary and middle school students in yeshivot and congregational schools. This opportunity, at Yeshivah of Flatbush [in Brooklyn, New York], enabled me to craft a course that would provide high school seniors with a forum to discuss teen issues. I taught the class from 1982 to 2000.
The class focused on teenagers’ development. We discussed the challenges they faced, using Jewish ideas and attitudes as a guide. We explored—through general and Jewish-themed texts and discussion—healthy and unhealthy family relationships and the temptations of drugs, alcohol, and risky behavior. We examined dating attitudes, as well as the nature of true love and marriage.
Whenever I discussed the class with colleagues outside the school, they were shocked to find that a class like this did not require the separation of boys and girls. What I discovered, however, was that having both girls and boys in the same classroom created a real learning-lab atmosphere. During the first few weeks of the term, we established a de facto code of honor: what we discussed in the classroom could be discussed outside the classroom only if no student names were mentioned. The Mishpacha: Jewish Family Life class quickly garnered a reputation for being a class in which a student could share confidences.
Educators can often predict how students will react—I was getting to the point in my career at which I thought I would be able to read their innermost thoughts. This class dispelled that notion for me. Many times class discussions took us all into uncharted territory, especially when I moderated heated discussions between the boys and the girls.
Gender issues had an interesting way of playing themselves out in the class. Yeshivah of Flatbush is a school with a high percentage of Syrian Jewish students. Gender roles and expectations are clearly defined in the Syrian community. Syrian girls in the Mishpacha class at that time automatically perceived their future selves as wives and mothers, whereas Ashkenazi girls were planning for a year in Israel and college. Often there were Syrian girls who became engaged during senior year. Their fellow students offered Mazal Tov/Mabruk wishes, but were puzzled: Why would someone want to get married right after graduation? Meanwhile, the Ashkenazi boys were mildly critical—but somewhat envious—of the Syrian boys, who would “sow their wild oats” while rising in the ranks of the family business and delaying marriage.
Years of teaching, observing, and reflecting on this course have taught me many things about boys, girls, and their views of themselves. Here, then, is (almost) Everything I Needed to Know about My Students I Learned in Mishpacha Class (with apologies to Robert Fulghum):
Teenage boys don’t understand how girls think. Girls may miss some of the nuances, but seem more attuned to what boys think.
No matter what the discussion, the amazed looks and comments always crossed the gender gap; inevitably, there were “no way” and “I can’t believe you think that” retorts when boys and girls discussed topics related to family, teen behavior, dating, and marriage. The seventeen-year-old girls were more emotionally mature than the boys. On occasion, during discussions, the boys were unable or unwilling to consider the serious nature of a topic in relation to their own lives. The girls would be attuned to this right away, however, and would demand seriousness.
Self-esteem issues cross gender lines.
When the issue of self-esteem was the topic, many girls admitted that they placed emphasis on wearing the “right” clothing and having the “right” friends in order to “fit in.” The Syrian girls admitted to worrying about clothes more than the boys or the Ashkenazi girls did. The Ashkenazi girls said they were careful about dressing well for out-of-school events but had no problem dressing down for school.
Girls raised the issue of bravado exhibited by boys of all ages. Boys eventually and reluctantly owned up to masking feelings of inadequacy by annoying other kids. The situations in which boys said they felt the most pressure were usually in social situations involving girls. Reckless behavior and clowning helped them protect themselves.
Girls countered by admitting that they sometimes pretended to like certain boys’ behaviors or they helped the boys look smarter, as a way to make themselves more socially acceptable. Female students said they consciously “dumbed down” to gain social acceptance when boys were present in the classroom, and some confessed they were afraid to sound too smart in front of a boy they liked.
Teens believe their parents believe that boys will be boys, but girls have to behave. … Male chauvinism is alive and well and breeding in the high school classroom.
One class session was always spent on the following group activity: The class broke into groups of four or five. Class members could choose their own groups, but each group had to be single gender. I gave them large sheets of newsprint and asked them to make lists as follows:
As a boy I should… should not…
As a girl I should… should not…
Each group had a representative who presented the group’s findings, and the lists were hung around the room. Discussions ensued and spilled over, after class, into the halls. The examination of stereotypical expectations held by parents, the students themselves, and society at large sometimes clashed. There was much exasperation: “This is the twentieth century, for God’s sake!”
Years of teaching, observing, and reflecting on this course have taught me many things about boys, girls, and their views of themselves.
For example, in discussing the comment, “Boys should not show emotion,” they all agreed that anger was an acceptable emotion for boys (but not for girls), but that boys should never cry. Both boys and girls believed that boys should not show emotion. Girls thought that this societal norm was not healthy. Boys admitted that it was sometimes tough to hold back the tears, but they would control themselves. The consequences were dire: being labeled a sissy or a mama’s boy.
One class session was devoted to reading and reflecting on the story of teens involved in a life-threatening accident, one that resulted from drinking and driving. Boys were seen as the major culprits in drinking, and girls claimed to be more responsible drinkers. Boys thought smoking was cool, and girls thought smoking was unfeminine. The majority in both groups agreed with these assessments: Boys could smoke and drink (despite the illegality of underage smoking and drinking), but girls should not.
Students believe apologetics are used when discussing halakhic issues vis-à-vis women.
There was discussion about the place of religious practice in community and in family. The girls often asked “Why do rabbis always make us feel second-class?” and expressed the feeling that being placed behind a mehitza made them “hidden.” The boys would often counter with “shelo asani isha” and retort, “You girls have it easy!” (They cited the liturgy of the morning blessing, where a man thanks God for not making him a woman, ostensibly because he is blessed with many more timebound mitzvot.)
Scholastic achievement, tied to financial potential, results in high pressure put on boys. Girls are expected to marry and raise the children, even if they have careers. Sometimes girls will not have a choice—family will have to come first.
These topics came up later in the year, when we discussed dating and marriage. Debate raged over matchmaking and dating exclusively for marriage, as opposed to dating for fun. Dating for fun, they believed, would help one make an educated decision about choosing a spouse. Some students were fascinated by the shiddukh (matchmaking) approach used in right-wing communities. Others said that it was unnatural to separate the genders so much, but that dating should be done only when one was ready to marry.
As a group, we discussed qualities to consider when choosing a mate. Not surprisingly, financial issues came up again and again. The debate about the right age to marry was fanned by the presence of Syrian girls in the classes who, at seventeen, were already dating for marriage. Others, mostly the Ashkenazi boys, saw this discussion as abstract and not personally relevant. They would be attending college and perhaps postgraduate education before being able to establish themselves. Fellow Syrian male students had family businesses with which they were already involved.
*****
I taught the Mishpacha class at the Yeshivah of Flatbush for almost twenty years. Looking back at the class, many of the points separating the genders were specific to the makeup of the Flatbush population. Some things have changed over the years, but others have not. Syrian girls are still more traditional in many ways than the Ashkenazi girls. Now, however, more of the Syrian girls go to Israel for a gap year. I recently met a former Yeshivah of Flatbush graduate in Israel who is helping to run a school in Israel for young women of Sephardic communities. According to her, although there is still a reluctance to send girls to Israel, more families are willing to do so if the school is one that is from “the community.” It was clear while I was teaching at Flatbush that the Syrian girls were dating for marriage, and they often still do get married straight out of high school. In some cases, families may begin to do preliminary planning while the girls are still at school, but the engagements are not celebrated or announced until after graduation. More of the girls are now attending college, and most of them finish—even those who marry while in college.
There is still a wariness among the Syrian girls about the increase in women’s participation in religious leadership and ritual. In the early years of my teaching, it was clear that although the girls could learn Talmud at Flatbush, they were very conscious of expectations to be an “eishet hayil.” This stemmed from attitudes at home, their place behind the mehitza, and the position of the synagogue rabbis. Many of these attitudes have changed in the past decade. The girls now know that there are young women who learn full-time, become yo’atzot halakha, or take on other religious leadership roles. The girls often meet these accomplished young women and in some cases have had these scholarly women as teachers. The more visible women become in public life in the Jewish community, the more the girls feel that they too can achieve great things. There is less “dumbing down” in class, although there are still girls who defer to the boys when it comes to leadership roles.
Syrian boys were not expected to marry as early as the girls. The Syrian families still expect the boys to get settled in business or a career first, and not marry as early as the girls. Although in the 1980s few attended college, there is now a big push to get boys to college, as the economic reality in today’s world is that a family business cannot absorb everybody in the family. Indeed, I found that by 2000 the Sephardic community was already being serviced by its own doctors and dentists.
Despite certain changes, the majority of my impressions from the class at Flatbush are still true today. Wearing the “right” thing is more important today than ever— for both genders. There is also valid concern about wider experimentation with drugs and alcohol, which now crosses gender lines.
The Mishpacha class provided a forum for young people to exchange ideas and learn about each other in a coed class. For me, my years spent teaching the class truly embodied the adage from Pirkei Avot: “Mikol melam’dai hiskalti, u-mitalmidai yoter mi’kulam”—“I have learned from all my teachers, and from my students [I have learned] more than from all of them.” With each new set of classes I was provided with the teens’ candid view of what life was like for them in a world I lived in, but experienced and saw through adult eyes. It was imperative for me to see the world through their eyes so that I could teach them in ways in which they were able to learn—whether in halakha or English literature, and that applied to both my male and female students.
An earlier version of this article appeared in Jewish Educational Leadership 6:3, published by The Lookstein Center for Jewish Education (Spring 2008).