THE GENDER QUESTION AND THE STUDY OF JEWISH CHILDREN. Stuart Z. Charmé Rutgers University (Camden) Camden, New Jersey, USA.

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1 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 Copyright C The Religious Education Association Vol. 101 No. 1 Winter 2006 ISSN: print DOI: /

2 22 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

3 STUART Z. CHARMÉ 23 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, ; Argyle and Beit- Hallahmi 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;

4 24 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 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

5 STUART Z. CHARMÉ 25 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%).

6 26 GENDER AND JEWISH CHILDREN 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

7 STUART Z. CHARMÉ 27 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)

8 28 GENDER AND JEWISH CHILDREN 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?)wedon 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

9 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

10 30 GENDER AND JEWISH CHILDREN personal choice rather than a form of collective exclusion by others. A Jewish day school student explained I don t wear a kipah. Agirl 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.

11 STUART Z. CHARMÉ 31 falling off a lot?) Ithink 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?) Idon 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 American- Jewish 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

12 32 GENDER AND JEWISH CHILDREN 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,

13 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%).

14 34 GENDER AND JEWISH CHILDREN 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

15 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

16 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.

17 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

18 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). REFERENCES Argyle, M., and Beit-Hallahmi, B The social psychology of religion. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Batson, C. D., Schoenrade, P., and Ventis, W. L Religion and the individual: A social psychological perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Cox, E Sixth form religion. London: SCM Press. Cohen, S. M The impact of varieties of Jewish education upon jewish Identity: An intergenerational perspective. Contemporary Jewry 16: Cohen, S. M., and Eisen, A. M The Jew within: Self, family, and community in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dufour, L. R Sifting through tradition: The creation of Jewish feminist identities. Journal for the scientific study of religion 39(1): Fishman, S. B A breath of life: Feminism in the American Jewish community. New York: Free Press. Fishman, S. B Jewish Life and American Culture, SUNY Press. Frankiel, T The voice of sarah: Feminine spirituality and traditional Judaism. New York: Harper and Row. Greenberg, B On women and Judaism: A view from tradition. Philadelphia: JPS. Habertal, T. H., and Cohen, S. M Gender variations in Jewish identity: Practices and attitudes in conservative congregations. Contemporary Jewry 22: Herman, Simon Israelis and Jews: The continuity of an identity. Philadelphia: JPS. Hyde, K. E Religion in childhood and adolescence. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press. Hyman, P Where do we go from here? Feminism and changing gender expectations and roles in Jewish communal life. In pp , Creating the Jewish future, ed. M. Brown and B. Lightman. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Kaufman, D Gender and Jewish identity among twenty-somethings in the United States. In pp Religion in a Changing World, ed. M. Cousineau. Westport, CT: Praeger. Kaufman, D Embedded categories: Identity among Jewish young adults in the United States. Race, Gender, and Class 6(3):1 13. Kendall, T Memories of an Orthodox youth. In pp , On being a Jewish feminist. ed. S. Heschel, New York: Schocken. Keysar, A., and Kosmin, B. A Eight up The college years: The Jewish engagement of young adults raised in conservative synagogues Jewish Theological Seminary. Lax, R. F., and Richards, A. K Observations on the formation of Jewish identity in adolescents: Research report. Israeli Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences 18(4): Levy, S., Levinsohn, H., and Katz, E Beliefs, observances, and social interaction among Israeli Jews. Jerusalem: Guttman Institute. Liebman, C., and Katz, E. (Eds.) The Jewishness of Israelis: Responses to the Guttman Report. Albany: SUNY Press. London, P., and Frank, N Jewish identity and Jewish schooling. Journal of Jewish Communal Service 64(1):4 13. Loukes, H New ground in christian education. London: SCM Press. Nelson, H. M., and Potvin, R. H Gender and regional differences in the religiosity of protestant adolescents. Review of Religious Research 22(3): Plaskow, J The Jewish feminist: Conflict in identities. In pp. 3 10, The Jewish woman: New perspectives, ed. E. Koltun. New York: Schocken Books. Plaskow, J Standing again at sinai: Judaism from a feminist perspective. New York: Harper and Row.

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