female relatives, who taught them how to maintain
a Jewish home. This included not only manual
work but also prayers and related Jewish laws (for
example, kosher food, times of work and rest, espe-
cially as regards the Shabat, and purity laws). Thus,
boys and girls received different education, leading
toward different goals based on the perceived place
in the world destined for each gender.
It would be wrong to conclude that girls were less
educated than boys, but it is true that they received
what the Jewish community perceived as the less
prestigious education. Since the main goal of boys’
education was to enable them to participate in the
service in the synagogue, they learned to read the
Hebrew holy scriptures, mainly the Pentateuch.
Nonetheless, they usually could only recite the text
without properly understanding it, because the spo-
ken language of Jews in most communities of the
Jewish diaspora was a Jewish dialect of the local
language (for example, Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-
Arabic, Judeo-Persian). Only relatively few men
became religious scholars who understood the holy
scriptures and other religious writings, and even
fewer could write in Hebrew or in the vernacular.
Adult education for men in the synagogue was usu-
ally limited to recitation of religious texts in He-
brew and Aramaic, which most of the audience did
not understand. Girls’ education was experience-
based and was much more creative and individ-
ualistic than that of boys. Moreover, women
developed oral poetry in the vernacular, which was
understood by all and was constantly changed by
individuals based on current events and personal
feelings. Women were also involved in other
branches of art such as embroidery, singing, and
dancing (the latter two only in front of women or
close family members). Every woman could con-
tribute to these constantly evolving art forms based
on her inclinations and talents, regardless of her
level of formal education or socioeconomic status.318 jewish women
Women were often the ones passing on tradition to
children. This was an important issue among the
crypto-Jews of Mashhad who after the forced
Islamization of 1839 tried to keep their Jewish faith
alive in secret. Since women were secluded, it was
easier for them to clandestinely pass on tradition to
their children.
Modern schools, especially those for girls, were
established in Muslim countries later than in the
West. At first, schools were established by Western
institutions, most of which were Christian religious
ones. Later on, Jewish European organizations
opened schools so that local Jews could receive a
combination of modern and Jewish education. The
next step was the establishment of modernized
Jewish communal education for boys and state
schools for both genders. As a result of these devel-
opments, Jewish girls could receive formal educa-
tion, and contrary to Jewish boys, all female formal
education was modern. However, Jewish girls often
received an education that was not in tune with
their cultural and social environment.Bibliography
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