I found myself in an interesting situation today with Peach’s school. At about 8:00 this morning, I got a call from the principal of the school telling me that Peach had turned up at school in pants. I knew she had put on pants because I had helped her get them out personally, since the girls have sports today. The fact that she had made it out of the house without putting a skirt on over the pants was a bit of a surprise. (She got past her father, me, and her two sisters without any of us noticing. It’s been a long, relaxed summer with the girls wearing shorts with no skirt on over them, so not too surprising when one pauses to reflect.)
However, instead of seeing this as an oversight and saying, “Peach seems to have forgotten to wear a skirt today. Are you available to bring her one?” the principal chose to assume I was an ignoramus and informed me that this is a National Religious school (a fact of which I was already aware, having chosen the school myself, thank you very much), and that as a result of this infraction, Peach would be made to sit in the secretaries’ office until such time as I and the skirt materialized. I got off the phone with him, fetched a skirt from Peach’s closet, and fired up the Crunchmobile to take it to her.
The whole trip there, I made an effort to temper my irritation since it was anyone’s guess what emotional state I would find Peach in when I arrived. After a bit of hide-and-seek, I managed to find Peach’s classroom first, and introduced myself to the teacher. She said Peach was still in the secretaries’ office, and sent one of Peach’s classmates to show me where it was. When I arrived, Peach was seated in a chair, with her trademark mild expression on her face. She smiled when she saw me, and when I asked her if she’d forgotten her skirt this morning, she giggled. I gave it to her to put on, and then she took my hand and took me back to her classroom. I gave the teacher a stern look and asked, “Is everything all right now?” She came up, put an arm around Peach, and apologized profusely, assuring me that it was not her choice to isolate Peach in that way. She gave me to understand that it is a policy the school adheres to, but that she agrees that it’s a bit much for a little girl to receive for simple forgetfulness. I in turn assured her that Peach simply forgot, that it’s the first time she’s ever forgotten, that we were focused on the fact that Peach needed something UNDER her skirt to keep her panties from public view during sports, and that I have four children and sometimes miss things. She was very understanding and, I think, communicates more compassionate to the children than the head.
I was warned by more than one person not to send Peach to this school. There is a school closer to where we live that she could attend, but Peach was adamant after her wonderful experience in an all-girls kindergarten last year that she wanted to be in a girls’ school for first grade. The Cap’n and I are firm believers in single-sex education for girls (for boys is another matter entirely), and were happy to comply. But clearly there are areas in which we will clash philosophically with the school and its head.
I know what the head is trying to achieve. He wants to establish clearly at the beginning what the school’s dress code is, and to make clear to the girls that girls who deviate from it significantly (Peach was in the equivalent of off-white hot pants today) will need to remedy the situation before they can participate in their class’s activities. On the other hand, as I’ve stated, he is also sending the message that what you wear is more important than what you learn.
But had Peach been of a different personality (Beans’s, for example), I might have found her sitting in a puddle of tears awaiting me and her skirt this morning, and then I would not have held back my wrath from the head.
I’ll let it all slide today, because I doubt Peach will repeat this oversight, and she’s none the worse for wear.
But I have my eye on that man.
Update: Upon further questioning about the incident, Peach told me this evening that the head had actually offered her the choice of wearing a school-issue skirt (“someone else’s skirt,” Peach called it) and returning to her class, or sitting in the office until I got there with her skirt. Peach herself chose the latter. She also said that she had felt like crying when it happened, because she’d never been in this situation before, but wanted to show she was a big first grader, and managed to keep herself from breaking down. Brave thing. It makes me more favorably disposed toward the head, that is certain.
Shimshonit 
What a story. Is the other school mixed? State-religious also? Our school is mixed for first and second grade. My third-grader is thrilled to be with only boys this year. I’m having my own conflict with my daughter’s first-grade teacher, but about a different issue.
It’s interesting the correlation assumed between “National-Religious” and pants. I personally never would have assumed the two are inextricably related.
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Now, the above remark of mine reminds of something entirely else. But before I go onto a ramble, let me stay focused on Peach.
I’m sorry this happened, but at least you can tell that her teacher is quite understanding. Peach’ll have to deal with the teacher more often than with the principal, so count your blessings, I suppose. (Of course, who will be her teacher next year?)
Question: if you support single-sex education for girls, how can “for boys [be] another matter entirely”? If all the girls are learning only with girls, then there are no girls left to learn with boys, and the boys must be in a single-sex environment as well! On the other hand, if any boys learn with girls, then those girls lack the single-sex environment you desire for them. I’m confused, and I suspect I misunderstood something you said.
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Now, the unrelated ramble I promised. I’d never had correlated National-Religious with a prohibition on pants, and in that vein…
I just read an essay trying to prove that Rabbi Dr. J. H. Hertz was a Conservative, as the term is understood today. Now, the essay was quite learned; the author copiously cited Rabbi Hertz’s Pentateuch, showing his view of Biblical Criticism (viewing Wellhaussen as an anti-Semite who wanted to make the Torah be post-Exilic in order to say that original authentic Judaism, like Christianity, was antinomian), support of the concept of evolution in halakhah and progressive-revelation in the Oral Law, and Maimonidean rationalism in his moralization of Judaism (eschewing all Kabbalism, appealing to late 19-century and early 20th century Germanic rationalism). The essay also showed how Rabbi Hertz’s views followed from those of his teachers, Alexander Kohut and Sabato Morais at JTS, and how Rabbi Hertz, to his dying day, heaped praise upon JTS and its faculty (especially Solomon Schechter).
But while the essay was brilliant from a technical historical standpoint, its ultimate thesis I think was a failure. If Rabbi Hertz was a Conservative for believing in the evolution of halakhah and the Oral Law, then so were:
— Rabbi Tzadok ha-Kohen of Lublin (a renowned Hasidic master);
— Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner (a traditional old-school dayan in Klausenberg, Hungary);
— Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits;
— Rabbis Benzion Uziel and Haim David Halevi, both traditional Turkish Judeo-Spanish rabbis who never attended yeshiva.
— Arguably, Rambam, whose philosophy of the Oral law Glasner relies on.
The essay also wanted to say Rabbi Hertz was Conservative because of his positive attitude towards Solomon Schechter. But as Professor Marc Shapiro notes in another essay (“Sociology and Halakhah” in Tradition – the title says it all, on how sociology as much as ideology shapes denominationalism), Rav Kook referred to Schechter as “rabbi”. Similarly, the essay about Hertz remarked how Rabbi Hertz considered Zacharias Frankel, the founder of Positive-Historical Judaism (the precursor to Conservative) to be a rabbi in good standing, whereas Rabbis S. R. Hirsch and Esriel Hildsheimer, the foremost figures in German Neo-Orthodoxy, considered Frankel a heretic. But, as Professor Shapiro shows (op. cit.), Rabbis D. Z. Hoffmann and Yehiel Weinberg, Hildsheimer’s direct successors, considered Frankel to be a kosher rabbi! So if Rabbi Hertz was Conservative for supporting Frankel, so were Hoffmann and Weinberg! (We might note that Weinberg is even cited reverentially in Eastern-European Lithuanian Haredi circles. So apparently, the Haredim are all Conservative as well!)
The essay again tried to show that Rabbi Hertz was Conservative because he was president of Jews’ College in Britain and favorably compared it to JTS. But we might note that the principal of Jews’ College rabbinic school, Rabbi Dr. Isidore Epstein, received his smiha from…Rav Kook!
Then, the essay noted that Sabato Morais, Rabbi Hertz’s revered and oft-cited teacher (Rabbi Hertz called him his “patriarch”) doubted whether the Third Temple would have animal sacrifices, thereby attempting to impugn the Orthodoxy of both Morais and Hertz. But as we all know, Rav Kook (as well as many Orthodox authorities cited in Professor Marc Shapiro’s The Limits of Orthodox Theology, chapter on eternity of the Torah) also thought that the Third Temple would have only vegetal offerings!
So for every single piece of evidence adduced to show Rabbi Hertz was Conservative, a multitude of unquestionably Orthodox rabbis are impugned as well. Heck, Rav Kook is already Conservative three times over!
Sofo shel davar: be very careful when dealing with denominational labels. If Rabbi Hertz was Conservative, so were:
— Several Eastern European scions of traditional yeshivot (Glasner and Tzadok ha-Kohen of Lublin);
— The entire Turkish/Greek school of Judaism;
— Half of the German Neo-Orthodox school (Hoffmann and Weinberg, in contrast to Hirsch and Hildsheimer);
— Rav Kook.
That’s a pretty wide brush to be painting with!
Mother in Israel: The other school is mixed until fourth grade, I believe. We offered Peach that school, or the school where Beans, her elder sister goes, which splits boys/girls in third grade. She was adamant that she wanted to stay in an all-girls environment.
Michael: I’ll blog about the single-sex education issue separately. And thanks as always for the free Torah.
I am sorry you had to go through this. To me it seems a bit excessive for girls that young. But that’s just me.
I am looking forward to your post about single-sex education.
To clarify about the National Religious (Mamlachti Dati) and pants: They are allowed under a skirt, but not instead of a skirt.
She’s only in first grade… it is stupid to make her sit outside the classroom. That implies that she is being *punished*, as if she did what she did on purpose. I can see this sort of rule for a middle schooler or higher, where girls MAY actually do it to spite their teacher or parents… but for a little girl? And a first grader, of all things? Just dumb. I also would have been extremely upset, but I’m so glad little Peach was a tough cookie and didn’t seem to mind so much.
Rachel: In the update at the end of the post above I write my discovery that the head actually offered Peach a “loaner” skirt which she refused. Wearing the loaner would have allowed her to rejoin her classroom, though no doubt making a fashion statement not her own. Peach found this option repugnant (slave to fashion that she is) and opted to sit in the office pending the arrival of a skirt that says “her.”
I didn’t like the implication that we had sent her to school without a skirt on purpose either, which was my beef with the head. But since he was fairer to Peach than he was to me, I can get over it this time.
My daughter is in a mamad gan chova, where anything goes for girls except tank tops–but next year they have to be wearing only skirts and the school shirt…to the mamad elementary school that is literally next door.
I don’t understand why 5 year olds can wear whatever they want but the following year they have to adhere to the dress code 100 meters away. I can’t believe I am saying this, because the alternative (slippery slope! skirts all the way down to trom trom!) sounds ridiculous.
Of course if we had stayed in the US it would have been the same (3s, 4s, and Kindergarten = no dress code, co-ed grades 1-8 only skirts).
I am searching for a good way to teach my daughter about certain aspects of tzinut–right now she’s totally oblivious and we deal with that by wearing a lot of skorts/bike shorts under dresses and skirts
Kate: I think shorts (and, in the winter, pants and sweats) under skirts is a very practical solution. Oblivious or not, the fact is that when girls play, their skirts flip in all directions, revealing legs (so cute) and underwear (not always so cute). People concerned with modesty ought to be encouraging that extra sort of coverage. Otherwise, it’s clearly not modesty they’re concerned with, but femininity, and that’s not the same thing. And girls MUST be allowed to play. How refreshing it must be to have a daughter who is clueless about these things. Best of luck to you.
I think that skirts restrict movement,whether or not you wear shorts underneath.
Kate, my girls easily adjusted to skirts only when they entered first grade. I stopped buying them pants, and they haven’t asked. Okay, one has been in school for only two weeks.
LOL, Shimshonit, my daughter’s favorite playground apparatus = monkey bars. Before we left America I went to The Children’s Place and bought bike shorts in the next two sizes. But I think even if I weren’t religious I would want to deal with “there’s no reason everyone in the park needs to know what color underpants you have on.”
Oblivious, unfortunately, applies to other aspects of her life as well. I keep waiting for empathy to kick in…
My first-grader just got home and I had to share: After her “sport” class she couldn’t locate her skirt, which her friend had folded up for her and put I don’t know where. She says no one said anything about her wearing pants, but her regular teacher was gone by that point. I’m surprised. Anyway, I hope we get that skirt back!
Mother: Thanks for sharing. The sartorial adventures continue…
She just found it in her backpack while getting her books ready for tomorrow. Whew! Don’t know why she missed it before.
[…] concerned about a religious girl wearing pants than why she was wearing them. I’ve had a few conversations about modesty on my blog, and the push and pull between what is the general practice where I live, […]