Rebecca Gratz by Ashton Dianne;

Author:Ashton, Dianne; [Ashton, Dianne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Published: 1997-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Crossing Gender Roles through Piety

Gratz and the HSS managers created a curriculum that emphasized women’s importance in Judaism by drawing on many resources. Leeser preached that women must have a religious education to qualify them for the “holy . . . [and] noble task . . . [of] sooth[ing], calm[ing]) and . . . render[ing] happy the rugged career of a father, a brother, a husband, or a child.”61 His approval must have been crucial to winning the support of the many Ashkenazic (northern European) Jews, by far the majority, who were accustomed to a religious community that was, at least among its religious leadership, highly differentiated by gender, because among these Jews, female prayer leaders commonly led women in synagogue worship.62 In addition to his theological supervision of the textbooks, his concern for promoting fledgling Jewish religious institutions and cultural resources, and the influence on him of strong women leaders such as Aguilar, Gratz, and the Peixotto sisters, Leeser also perceived Jewish standards for piety in a way that was nearly identical with those of Victorian culture.

Despite the HSS founders’ personal objections to Reform, books by reformers of one stripe or another found their way into the school’s library, probably because so few English-language materials existed, and the library grew into an eclectic mix of approaches to Judaism. Several nineteenth-century Reform leaders claimed a commitment to “securing perfect equality between woman and man before God,” although women were not ordained until 1972.63 Samuel Pike’s 1801 Hebrew Lexicon was joined by Rev. Dr. Leo Merzbacher’s 1855 prayer book, the first American Reform liturgy compiled by a rabbi and used in New York’s Reform Temple Emanu El.64 An 1838 travelogue describing life in Syria was joined by an 1860 anonymous work, Thoughts Suggested by Bible Texts, and later by British Rev. Abraham P. Mendes’s 1870 catechism, The Law of Moses.65 As late as the 1870s, the more traditional HSS used the Hebrew Sabbath School Visitor, a children’s magazine published in Cincinnati by Reform rabbi Max Lilienthal, as a pedagogical aid. Although the Philadelphians’ contract with Lilienthal originally stipulated that they would be able to return free of charge any issues they found offensive, they renewed their subscription yearly.66

One regular column in the Visitor was “Little Nellie’s Catechism.” It described the efforts of Nellie, a Jewish Sunday school student, to train her younger brother and sister in Judaism by repeating to them the lessons she had learned in school. Nellie’s mother listened appreciatively to her children while wishing that she herself could have attended such a school. Nellie’s father was usually out of town on business. Stories in which daughters led their families in religious worship and education appeared more and more in popular literature, both Christian and Jewish, in the second half of the century. Just as in the antebellum era a mother’s religious leadership was made plausible through nursing and educating her own children, the Sunday school movement that swept across the country made it plausible that both male and female children might instruct their parents on religious matters.

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