But What About the Boys?

Make way for girls!

 

It’s an exciting time to be a girl in the modern Orthodox world. Because the old ways, they are a-changing. Things that were unheard of even a decade ago are becoming the norm. Like women’s learning. Many high schools offer Gemara (Talmd) classes for girls, either as part of the curriculum or as an elective. Women’s learning at the post-high school level has reached unprecedented heights. And women are starting to shatter the glass mechitzah, contributing to and participating in Jewish communal life like never before. Partnership minyanim and women’s minyanim have opened the door for women to participate in synagogue services. While women-only megillah readings have been common for years, some synagogues are moving past that and incorporating women into services on a regular weekly basis. And now that a modern Orthodox high school in New York has allowed two of its female students to wrap tefillin during the morning prayers—well, it certainly seems that the world is wide open for girls to participate in Judaism to the greatest extent possible.

 

These are hard-won battles, and girls growing up today who are lucky enough to take women’s learning and leadership for granted owe a great deal to their foremothers who refused to settle for anything else. And no, the “women’s role in Judaism” debate is far from over. But it is an exhilarating, empowering time.

 

But what, I ask, about the boys? On the one hand, they’ve had it easy. No one has ever questioned their right to learn Gemara, lead a minyan, wear tallit and tefillin, read from the Torah, be a rabbi. They haven’t had to fight for any of their God-given rights. And yet, the same way we are charging forward, breaking down gender roles and gender stereotypes in favor of girls, we seem to be unwilling to do the same for boys. What about a boy who doesn’t find fulfillment or religious meaning in learning Gemara? A boy who prefers to daven alone instead of pray with a minyan? Do we have an outlet for them, as well, to find their path to spirituality?

 

My husband grew up in a typical modern Orthodox society, went to the Jewish religious high school, etc., and was always disenchanted with learning as a teenager. He never enjoyed his many, lengthy Gemara classes, not in high school and not during his post-high school studies. It wasn’t until he discovered academic Bible study that he found his place in Jewish learning. He discovered that it wasn’t that he didn’t like learning, he just didn’t enjoy learning Gemara. He eventually went on to give a weekly Tehillim (Psalms) class at our shul and completed a Master’s degree in Biblical Studies.

 

However, I still remember mentioning this newfound love of learning to someone, and the reply was a dismissive, “Well, everyone knows that ‘real’ learning is Gemara learning.” Because for boys, there is no flexibility. This is your path son, you better learn to like it. Or at least pretend. (Today, every time someone brings up girls learning Gemara, my husband jokes, “Great, now can we stop making the boys learn it?”) (Another parenthetical aside: One of my 5^th grade daughter’s favorite classes in school? Gemara. #irony)

 

The same is true of the bar/bat mitzvah. We will be making a bat mitzvah, God willing, in a year and a half. I keep joking to my friends about how much harder it is to make a bat mitzvah than a bar mitzvah. I mean, for a bar mitzvah, it’s pretty much set: Layn (read from the Torah). The end. Girls, in the Orthodox world, have the world open to them. Which is nice but overwhelming. We’ve gone to bat mitzvahs that featured: a musical presentation, a family history exhibit, a chessed (charity) project, an erudite speech based on a religious text the girl had learned in-depth, and yes, reading from the Torah.

 

In fact, my daughter is contemplating learning Megillat Ruth (her birthday is around Shavuot) but I said to my husband that I didn’t really feel like layning would be a good fit for her. That we should try to find something else that would match her many abilities.

 

Then I thought: If she were a boy, with the same skill set, would I say the same? Would I say, “Oh, he’s not really the layning type. Let’s figure out a different project that is a better outlet for his talents and interests.” To tell the truth, probably not. Because boys layn, the end. Many times, the frustration-to-enjoyment ratio that comes with learning to layn is way, way off. And most of these boys, statistically, will probably never become regular readers of the Torah. They will get up to layn their bar mitzvah parshah every few years, but that’s it. And yet, at least in my modern Orthodox circles, every bar mitzvah boy layns at least some part of his Torah portion.

 

A friend of mine, someone who has fought for and championed the right of women to learn and participate fully in Orthodox Judaism, recently sighed, “I’m just so tired of men telling me what I can and can’t do!” But maybe boys, too, are tired of being told, always, what they can—or rather, must—do. When it comes to choosing a religious path, we need to start thinking out of the box for our boys the same way we are so determined to do for our girls.