Jewfem Blog

On modesty, sexuality, and watching girls' bodies: part 2

book cover -- educating in the divine image

"One educator admitted that he believed in discussing sexual activity (or rather the need for abstinence) even from fourth grade: “ I think that it is self evident that one should teach our students about all halachot that we expect them to observe. As the laws often called "negiah," as well as laws forbidding (among other things) pre-martial sexual relations, are certainly laws we want them to observe, we need to teach them (I bring up the subject of "negiah" in 4th-5th grade, within the context of our Mishna study. I feel it's important that they've heard of this prior to their developing "interest" in the opposite sex.)”, he wrote. “We need to give our students the information they need to fight against the "Yetzer haRa." Read another excerpt of our book, Educating in the Divine Image at The Eden Center blog    

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Day Schools Must Keep Up With Society In Gender Equality

Excerpt from Elana's op-ed in The Jewish Week "When my daughter was in kindergarten, her teacher decided that it would be nice to get mothers more involved in the class. So she invited us to what she thought would be a fun evening with a stylist who specializes in teaching people how to set their tables more elegantly. I made a futile attempt to explain to this lovely young woman why a women’s-only evening to teach proper table-care was throwing women back a generation or more, and that, by the way, fathers are parents, too. The teacher could not comprehend how something as innocuous as a get-together for table-setting mothers could be taken as offensive, and I eventually dropped the discussion rather than reduce her to tears. Clearly, this was her first encounter with some basic ideology of the movement for women’s equality." Read the rest here            

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