Education

Another major issue in Orthodox society today is women’s education. Women tend to have a more “machshava” based education that is interested in inculcating them with religious values and practical halacha, especially in regards to kashrut, tzniut and shabbat, while men’s education tends to be more intellectual and Gemarah-based.

This can be seen especially from the seminary/yeshivah scene in Israel. Most yeshivahs do not try to actively control the boys’ lives while in yeshivah, yet often offer high-level education, especially when it comes to gemarah. (There are some schools that do try to actively control the boys lives, and some that do not offer a good education, but they are the minority, not the majority.) Most girls schools do try to actively control the girls lives while they are in seminary, and often do not offer the same quality and type of education to be found at the yeshivahs. Even the girls’ schools that offer the highest and most intensive education, especially in terms of gemarah, do not equal the highest-level men’s schools, and two of the three of them do try to control the girl’s lives more than the two highest-level boys’ schools.

This leads to a situation where women are often observing the one halachic opinion that was taught to them in school, as opposed to choosing which shitah to follow based on in-depth learning of the halachic process and a variety of shitot. Women are often unable to engage in rigorous intellectual religious debates with men, because the levels and types of their education differ too much for common dialogue. There have been major inroads in women’s education; many women today to learn Gemarah and the halachic process and can debate with men. But not enough women.

I believe this is due to the prevalence of separate education for men and women. As long as there is separate education, there can never be true equality in education. This is because the concept of men being more obligated in Torah learning than women has infiltrated Orthodox society so deeply that even when there is no conscious discrimination, there will always be a subconscious bias that will result, at the very least, in the task of women’s education not being pursued by the male authorities as aggressively as men’s education. As more and more women educators become qualified, this may become less of a problem. Nevertheless, as long as women are educated to teach only to women and rabbis are taught to teach to both men and women, there will be a discrepancy in the education between the two, due to the subconscious bias. Currently, women have no opportunity within the Orthodox world to learn all that a man learns when he pursues semicha. This article will not deal with the issue of women rabbis, but there should be an opportunity for women to pursue an equivalent education where they are taught everything a man learns in semichah, even if they do not receive semichah after learning the material. There should be a semichah-equivalency degree, called something else. Ideally, women should be able to enroll in a semichah program and learn alongside men, with the understanding they will not receive semichah in the end, but will receive some sort of document to testify that they successfully completed the program. Even a separate education program that taught all the semichah material to women without granting semichah would be an advance over what we have now. The yoetzet halacha and toanit rabbanit programs at Nishmat and Beruriah (Midreshet Lindenbaum) respectively, are advances, but neither offers a semicha-equivalent curriculum. The Stern Talmud MA program is another advancement and may indeed offer semicha-equivalent Gemarah study, but does not offer semicha-equivalent Tanach, Halacha, etc.

Thus, a woman who pursues the highest level of Jewish education available to her and a man who pursues the highest level of Jewish education available to him will have unequal levels of education.