ayala fader

Literacy, Bilingualism,and Gender in a

Hasidic Community

Ayala Fader

New York University, New York, NY, USA

This paper focuses on language socialization activities in a community of Hasidic

Jews, showing the ways that local ideologies of texts and knowledge interact with local

ideologies of language and gender. Drawing on texts, literacy practices, metalinguistic

commentary, and censoring practices at different points along the female life cycle, the

paper examines girls’ shift from Yiddish-English bilingualism to English dominance

upon entering the first grade, despite complaints by teachers and parents. Literacy

practices, in particular shifting ideologies of English, are shown to unintentionally

render girls’ rejection of Yiddish as their vernacular less threatening to communal

boundaries because they blur the boundaries of language itself. Ethnographic

investigation of how language(s) and literacy are socialized across the life cycle is

critical to providing a lens through which to view broader cultural processes, which

shape the reproduction of persons, languages, and communities.

INTRODUCTION

One Sabbath afternoon in Brooklyn, a Hasidic rabbi spoke to a crowded

synagogue about the need to protect children from inappropriate books. To

emphasize the potential danger inherent to texts, he reminded his listeners that a

Torah scribed by a gentile or heretic must be burned. He explained that even if it

is letter-perfect, the hashkofe (outlook) of the scribe enters the actual letters as he

forms them. If an observant Jew were to read that Torah, he continued, the words

could enter his mind and corrupt him. This anecdote sheds light on local

ideologies of literacy and language: even a sacred text written in a holy language

Direct all correspondence to: Dr. Ayala Fader, 152 West 94th Street, #4, New York, NY 10025, USA.

E-mail: [email protected]

Linguistics and Education 12(3): 261–283. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

Copyright D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. ISSN: 0898–5898

has the possibility of corrupting a reader if the intention or outlook of the writer

is corrupt.

Jewish religious literacy practices have been a major force in the main-

tenance of Jewish identity and difference in diaspora. Hasidic Jews today, one

denomination along a continuum of Jewish religiosity, are notable for, among

other things, a strict and literal interpretation of sacred texts. A focus on texts

is one aspect of an increasing religious conservatism more generally among

orthodox Jews in North America, including Hasidic Jews (Soleveitchik, 1994).

The importance of religious texts, enacted in Hasidic men’s study of the

Torah, shapes a particular ideology of literacy: The acts of reading and writing

are understood as a powerful force for either contaminating or uplifting an

individual’s soul.

Nonreligious texts and literacy practices are similarly thought to have the

potential to corrupt or elevate a person. In a Hasidic community in Brooklyn,

especially in children’s socialization contexts, secular texts are monitored and

controlled by parents, rabbis, and teachers in order to protect against the

unwanted influence of those outside of this fundamentalist religious community.

Communal attempts to control secular texts and literacy practices are one way

that Hasidic Jews maintain and reproduce differences both within (e.g., gender

and age) and across (e.g., gentile and Jewish) community boundaries in the

multicultural context of New York.

Hasidic literacy practices, however, are complicated by multiple languages

(Yiddish, English, and liturgical Hebrew) read and/or spoken in Brooklyn and

their associations with gender. Multilingual texts and the ideologies associated

with these languages play an important part in the production of gendered

identities. It is particularly in socialization contexts—classrooms and homes—

that males’ and females’ differential access to and experiences with texts shape

linguistic competencies. Gender differences are marked and reproduced through

language choice and exposure to certain realms of knowledge in texts. Further,

the social organization of gendered identities is a key site for Hasidic legitima-

tions of their sacred covenant with God.

In this article, I show how Hasidic literacy practices contribute to the

production of gendered linguistic competencies in which men and women are

believed to have innately different and complementary positions in the moral

universe. In particular, I investigate girls’ shift from Yiddish–English bilingual-

ism to English dominance upon entering the first grade, despite explicit valor-

ization of Yiddish by teachers and parents. I do this in an examination of texts

and literacy practices at three different points along the female life cycle: early

childhood, young adulthood, and adulthood. First, I analyze textbooks and

fiction, metalinguistic commentary, and literacy activities in classrooms and

homes in order to show how local ideologies about texts and knowledge interact

with local ideologies of language and gender.

262 FADER

Then, through a consideration of censoring practices, I examine how parents

and teachers, drawing on a local ideology of literacy, are more vigilant over the

content of books than the choice of code. In part, this may be explained by a

recent innovation in a genre of children’s English-language fiction, which creates

new associations and possibilities for English to express the morality generally

associated with Yiddish texts.

I conclude that English-language literacy practices unintentionally render

girls’ rejection of Yiddish as their vernacular less problematic because they blur

the boundaries and ideologies of language itself. An investigation into the

socialization of multilingual literacy practices can form a hub for tracing how

linguistic practices get located within the broader workings of the maintenance

and production of ethnic and gendered identities.

LITERACY, LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES, AND LANGUAGE

SOCIALIZATION

My analysis of literacy activities and texts in Hasidic homes and schools

integrates two related bodies of work using the theoretical frame of language

socialization: ethnographic approaches to literacy, especially to children’s

literacy, and recent research on language ideologies. By integrating these bodies

of work, I aim to embed the study of linguistic practices within the framework

of broader cultural processes. In particular, my goal is to investigate the

practices of identification and differentiation, which produce subjectivities

and communities.

Recent ethnographic approaches to literacy have started from a position

which locates literacy within institutional circumstances and cultural practices

(Collins, 1995). In particular, I draw on Brian Street’s elaboration of the

‘‘ideological’’ model of literacy. This model approaches literacy as a set of

practices, which is implicated in operations of social power, and thus, integral to

the formation of identities and subjectivities (Street, 1984, 1993). Scholars who

approach literacy in this way are committed to understanding literacy practices in

socio-historical perspective and contexts (e.g., Collins, 1998; Kulick & Stroud,

1990; Reder & Wikelund, 1993; Rockhill, 1993; Schieffelin, 2000). Similarly,

my analysis draws heavily on interactions within a girls’ Hasidic school and

examines how changes in codes and reading practices are important factors in

shaping gendered subjectivities.

The work of scholars investigating literacy practices involving children has

been particularly insightful. This body of research focuses on the relationships

among literacy practices, local ideologies around literacy, and the reproduction of

social inequities (e.g., Heath, 1982; Schieffelin & Gilmore, 1986). These

approaches to the socialization of literacy practices support my own position

that everyday linguistic interactions shape broader cultural processes.

LITERACY, BILINGUALISM, AND GENDER 263

Language ideologies have proven a particular fertile place to link up linguistic

practice to a wider set of cultural practices. For example, Kathryn Woolard (1998,

p. 3) suggests:

. . . Ideologies of language are not about language alone. Rather, they envision and

enact ties of language to identity, to aesthetics, to morality, and to epistemology.

Through such linkages, they underpin not only linguistic form and use but also the

very notion of the person and the social group, as well as such fundamental social

institutions as religious ritual, child socialization, gender relations, the nation state,

schooling and law.

Language ideologies, in particular, often make explicit the processes of

differentiation and identification that create and maintain community boundaries.

The work of Irvine and Gal (2000), for example, has shown that linguistic

ideologies can be a site where difference is articulated and reproduced in specific

semiotic ways.

Ideologies of language articulated in literacy practices are similarly about

difference, identity formation, and community. As Street (1993, p. 137) notes,

‘‘Literacy, like language, register, and dialect may become a focus for drawing

boundaries against outsiders . . ..’’ My work shows how ideologies of language,

embedded in literacy practices, are an important site where Hasidic difference

from other Jews and gentiles is legitimized and reproduced.

The language socialization research paradigm (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984;

Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) provides an approach that integrates ideologies of

language, literacy practices, and broader social processes of differentiation and

identification. The paradigm makes activities between children and caregivers the

primary site for delving into broader cultural themes and relationships (Schieffe-

lin & Ochs, 1986). Language socialization focuses on ‘‘how children are

socialized through the use of language as well as how children are socialized

to use language’’ (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986, p. 184). Talk between adults and

children displays language ideologies, notions of personhood, and socio-cultural

knowledge, as adults in talking to children often make cultural values and

practices explicit. Furthermore, language socialization does not stop in early

childhood, but continues across the life cycle of individuals. Language social-

ization provides a theoretical and methodological perspective to investigate the

cultural logic by which populations make connections among ideas about

language, literacy practices, and evaluations of persons and communities.

BACKGROUND TO THE COMMUNITY AND THE RESEARCH

The research site, a Brooklyn neighborhood, is dominated by Bobover Hasidim

(over 1,000 families) who live alongside smaller Hasidic groups. Hasidic Jews

264 FADER

(Hebrew ‘‘pious ones’’) trace their beliefs back to the late eighteenth century in

Eastern Europe. While there is scholarly debate as to how to characterize the

Hasidic movement historically and explain its continuing success, most scholars

seem to agree that what marked the movement as unique was a redefinition of the

person and his relationship to God.

In a radically democratizing move common to many fundamentalist move-

ments, the Hasidic movement offered an alternative social organization which

rejected the rabbinical elite. Instead of stressing ascetic study of Torah, Hasidism

offered a social organization based on the relationship between the individual

and his spiritual leader, the rebbe (teacher), in which the divine aspect of each

person was recognized regardless of social standing. The Hasidic movement,

informed by mystical texts, redefined ideals of worship, suggesting that all

observant Jews were capable of reaching the divine through joyful singing,

dancing, and prayer. Each Hasidic group organized into a dynastic court named

after the rebbe’s place of origin (Belcove, 1989; El-Or, 1994; Ettinger, 1991;

Hundert, 1991; Poll, 1962).1

After the decimation of World War II, survivors immigrated to major urban

centers—e.g., Jerusalem, Montreal, Antwerp, London, and Brooklyn—rebuilding

the courts and forming a transnational diasporic network constantly invigorated by

marriage, kin, and business ties (Belcove-Shalin, 1995; Epstein, 1979; Mayer,

1979; Mintz, 1968, 1992). Hasidim in New York have been successful in this most

recent phase of their diasporic experience, growing in strength, number, and

political clout. They share with other fundamentalist movements a reimagining of

community and a longing for a sacred past, while they await a new world order

brought about through the final redemption (Heilman & Friedman, 1991; Marty &

Appleby, 1991).

My fieldwork (1995–1997) follows a tradition of Jewish ethnographers work-

ing in Jewish communities where the religious and ethnic identity of the researcher

shapes, constrains, and enables the project (e.g., Boyarin, 1993; Kugelmass, 1988;

Myerhoff, 1979). For example, in this relatively closed community, my own

identity as a female researcher meant that my interaction with males was limited; I

primarily had access to women, girls, and very young boys.2

The research project was guided by the language socialization research

paradigm. Data for this article draws on ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork

carried out in homes, schools, and other community contexts. Classroom

discourse was audiotaped in a girls’ Hasidic kindergarten classroom that I call

Bnos Yisroel.3 Over 2 years, I followed a class of girls, first in kindergarten and

then into first grade. I was also able to attend a boys’ Hasidic nursery school and

kindergarten classroom for a period of 3 months.4

A unique aspect of education in fundamentalist communities is a continuity

across home and school contexts (Rose, 1988). Hasidic parents and teachers

generally share the same educational objectives, although variation in familial


religious practice is respected by school administrators. Gendered identities,

however, are an arena in which parents and teachers have similar goals. Entry into

first grade, when boys formally begin to study with all male teachers and focus on

religious literacy, is a watershed for the production of gender differences. In the

next section, I discuss the organization of knowledge and languages in separate

boys’ and girls’ elementary classrooms in the context of the social organization of

gender. Focusing in more detail on girls’ curricula, I show how particular

associations are formed among codes, speakers, and content.

GENDERED CURRICULA, GENDERED PERSONS

The organization of curricula, and literacy practices in particular, prepare boys

and girls to participate in a gender-segregated social organization in which

Hasidic males and females have separate domains of responsibility for reproduc-

ing their way of life. Hasidic men study the sacred Torah according to the dictates

of religious law. Women’s domain of responsibility includes raising their children

to be erlikhe Yidn (pious Jews) and creating a home environment to support their

husbands’ and sons’ Torah study. This includes the negotiation of public

extensions of the domestic sphere in, for example, their dealings with utility

companies, medical caregivers, and social service organizations.

Challenging those who would suggest that women’s participation in funda-

mentalist movements would seem to reduce their opportunities, Hasidic women

claim that their roles are critical and complementary to the prestige men garner

from Torah study; Hasidic women are proud of their cultural competence in their

gendered domain of influence, which includes negotiation of the ‘‘secular’’

world, especially marked through fluency in English. They claim that their

everyday activities, like mens’, bring the messiah closer everyday.

Gendered language choice and literacy practices are one implication of the

social organization of gender. Religious study is generally limited to males, who

read liturgical Hebrew texts and discuss them in Yiddish. Males, at least until

their wives have a few children at which point they go out to work, are dominant

Yiddish speakers, although all speak some English. Females, in contrast, have

limited access to sacred texts, although they learn to read and write in liturgical

Hebrew and Yiddish and are expected to use Yiddish in certain interactions with

other Hasidic Jews. In addition, however, Hasidic females must also be fluent

English speakers, so that they can participate in and make use of services

available in Brooklyn. Ideally, then, Hasidic females should be fluently bilingual

in Yiddish and English, while boys and men, at least until they go out to work,

are expected to remain dominant speakers of Yiddish, reflecting their immersion

in the study of Torah.

Gender differences, however, are not very significant before the age of 3. Until

then children are considered ungendered ‘‘babies.’’ Babies are addressed primar-

266 FADER

ily in a simplified baby register of Yiddish, although they are exposed to both

Yiddish and English. Members of the community suggested that speaking

Yiddish to young children (boys and girls) was an active step parents took to

maintain their Hasidic way of life, just as their grandparents had done in Europe.

For example, in an interview, I questioned a Hasidic mother and teacher as to

why ‘‘a Yiddish kind darf redn Yiddish’’ (a Jewish child needs to speak Yiddish),

something that another community member had suggested. She responded,

translating the Yiddish as she spoke:

I think maybe the point is if a Yiddish kind gayt es nisht redn, if a Jewish child isn’t

going to speak it, then nobody will know it. It’s with everything you know? It’s up

to the Yiddishe kinder, the Jewish children, to maintain everything. If de Yiddish

kind vet nisht redn Yiddish, if the Jewish child won’t speak Yiddish, there won’t be

anybody out there talking Yiddish.

It is the parents’ duty to talk to children in Yiddish, to make sure that children

master Yiddish like the rest of religious practice, which they will in turn pass on to

their own children. According to community members, learning a babytalk register

of Yiddish is one way that children learn to think, act, sound, and be Hasidic Jews.

Between the ages of 3–5 years old, boys and girls enter gender-separated

schools. From that point onward, their educational and linguistic experiences are

all differentiated by gender. Through access to particular texts, boys’ and girls’

linguistic competencies begin to follow separate paths. Gendered educational

experiences create particular associations with particular languages and forms of

literacy. Yiddish, English, and liturgical Hebrew are differentially valued for boys

and girls as is evidenced by an examination of the school curricula.

Boys entering the first grade spend the entire day acquiring literacy in

liturgical Hebrew and Yiddish and studying religious texts, all in Yiddish. They

do not receive instruction in English literacy and secular subjects (math and

social studies) until the second or sometimes even third grade. When non-Jewish

subjects begin, they come at the end of a long day of study and boys are often

exhausted and restless. English literacy and secular learning are minimized and

often trivialized. As one 11-year-old boy said of English teachers, ‘‘S’iz nisht kan

teacher. S’iz a babysitter’’ (It’s not a teacher. It’s a babysitter).

Beginning in second or third grade, according to the reports of their mothers,

boys learn that maintaining Yiddish at home is one of their responsibilities.

Young boys even ask their mothers to speak less English and more Yiddish. For

example, a mother reported that her son came home from school and said,

‘‘Mommy, ikh beyt dikh, red nor Yiddish in de haym’’ (Mommy, I beg you, only

speak Yiddish at home). She agreed she should try.

In contrast, the organization of girls’ curricula attempts to create fluency in

both Yiddish and English, religious and secular subjects. Girls are taught in


Yiddish in the morning when they study religious learning or ‘‘Jewish’’

studies. English is the vernacular in the afternoon for studying ‘‘English’’

or ‘‘secular’’ subjects. Girls have two different teachers for the morning and

the afternoon, a Hasidic teacher to teach religious subjects and an orthodox

but not necessarily Hasidic teacher for the secular subjects. Jewish and secular

subjects for girls are differentiated according to classroom language, teacher,

and time of day.

In the morning, girls learn liturgical Hebrew and Yiddish literacy, as well as

receive religious instruction in the Jewish holiday calendar, mides (character

building) and the parshe (weekly biblical portion). This pattern leads to the

association of particular languages, speakers, and contexts. Yiddish literacy is

generally taught in the context of simultaneously transmitting a moral lesson. In a

first-grade Yiddish reader put out by the school (Greenzweig, 1990), the preface

explicitly makes its agenda clear:

. . . Mit de hartsige balernde maselekh, vos zenen ongefilt mit yiras shamayim in

mides toyvos, tsiyon mir de interes fin de kinder. Az de kinder veln derfiln dem zisn

tam, veln zay alayn shoyn hobn groyse khayshek tsi laynen in Yiddish. Zay veln zan

darshtig nokh mer tsi derkvikn zayere hertselekh in veln mit der tsat gayn vater in

hekher. Zay veln, b’esras hashem, okh zikh nemen tsi laynen mases veygn avoseyni

ve’imoseyni hakdoshem in dernentern zikh tsum gartn fin sifrey mussar af Yiddish.

(. . .With these heartfelt instructive little stories which are filled with good values

and awe of God we draw the interest of the children. As children sense the sweet

taste of Yiddish reading, they themselves will have a great desire to read in

Yiddish. They will thirst to refresh their little hearts even more and will, with time,

go higher and further. They will, with God’s help, take to reading about our holy

forefathers and foremothers and bring themselves closer to the garden of ethical

writings in Yiddish.)

In the text, each chapter focuses on teaching a specific vowel through

rhyming stories, while simultaneously imparting a moral lesson. These readings

are often used as a springboard for discussion by teachers. For example, one

chapter focuses on the Yiddish vowel /ay/, rhyming haym, fayn, klayd (home,

nice, and dress). The story links Yiddish to a simpler, less materialistic time in

pre-war Eastern Europe through the narrative of a little girl’s grandmother. The

grandmother tells a story about the haym (i.e., Eastern Europe) when she was a

little girl. In honor of the Sabbath, she had ‘‘one and only one’’ dress and was

very happy with it. Even when the dress got worn out and had to be turned

inside out and resewn, first once and then again, she was satisfied with her lot.

In class, a first-grade teacher read the story aloud and then asked the girls if

they would be satisfied with just one Sabbath dress. The girls clamored that they

would. Their teacher responded skeptically as, in fact, a great deal of money and

268 FADER

attention is spent on girls’ Sabbath clothing. She suggested that people in the past

were less materialistic and vain:

I wish! Ikh hof az inz volt geveyn tsifriden. Ober in de alte tsaten, de mentshn zenen

geveyn zayer tsifriden.

(I wish! I hope that you would be satisfied. But in the olden days, the people were

very satisfied.)

Girls are taught to make associations among Yiddish, the old days in Eastern

Europe, their grandmothers, and lack of materialism or vanity. Speaking Yiddish

is one way that teachers and mothers try to maintain and reproduce the ways

of their ancestors. As one mother responded to my question about why Yiddish

is important:

Why I think Yiddish is important? Well, that’s how we, the Jewish people, keep

themselves separate from the rest of the world but keep together as a nation.

We’re doing what our parents did. We’re not changing what our parents and

grandparents did.

In metalinguistic commentary, many mothers and teachers told me that

Yiddish is a more aydl (refined) language. A teacher told me that in Yiddish

certain terms or ideas from ‘‘today’s world’’ cannot even be articulated. Despite

the fact that these women use English as their vernacular, their metalinguistic

commentary portrays Yiddish as a more moral, edifying, and more authentically

Jewish language.

In contrast, literacy activities in the ‘‘English’’ afternoons were not explicitly

didactic, although central Hasidic concerns of fitting-in, self-control, and limited

individualized expression were stressed. Unlike the communally produced

Yiddish texts, English reading texts were public school readers, which provided

innocuous stories. For example, girls read a chapter in their English reader about

a puppy who ran up and down a hill and the children who chased after him.

In comparison to their own explicitly articulated ideologies of Yiddish,

teachers and mothers suggested that girls think English is ‘‘fancy, sophisticated,

ladylike, and shtoty (high class).’’ While first-grade girls made very little

metalinguistic commentary regarding their attitudes toward English, they did

repeatedly ask me which language I liked more, claiming to ‘‘only like to talk in

English.’’ First-grade girls also frequently commented on the fashionable

clothing of the afternoon English teachers who were, as I noted, often not

Hasidic. Although orthodox Jews, these women in general had more flexibility

in the requirements for modest dress and were able to dress in greater accord

with current mainstream fashion. This included, for example, longer hairstyles

of wigs, sheerer, unseamed stockings, shorter skirts, and no hats on their wigs.


Girls’ association between English and their fashionable English teachers was

one more factor influencing their frequent requests that their mothers only speak

to them in English.

One mother and teacher theorized that when girls hear their mothers and

teachers speaking English among themselves and hear their brothers and fathers

speaking Yiddish, they begin to associate femaleness with speaking English.

Girls’ mothers’ use of English can be traced to the fact that Hasidic schools for

girls have only existed for approximately 20 years. Before that, Hasidic girls went

to public schools or non-Hasidic Jewish day schools, which taught in Hebrew and

English, not in Yiddish. However, with the establishment of Hasidic schools for

girls, there has been a heightened effort to encourage Yiddish use among girls,

although for the previous generation, using Yiddish as a vernacular is an effort in

terms of fluency.

Further, teasing routines that focus on gender and language competency show

that language choice practices are, indeed, a site for reaffirming separate gendered

realms of authority. Hasidic men and boys comment on girls’ use of language,

complaining and teasing that it sounds as one father said, ‘‘too American.’’ Being

‘‘American’’ implies a break with more European ways of doing things and a

break with the more authentically ‘‘Hasidic.’’ In contrast, Hasidic women often

negatively assess men’s English and lack of secular knowledge. Wives, for

example, frequently claim that their husbands can ‘‘barely’’ speak English. When

Mrs. Katz invited my husband and me for a Sabbath, she confessed she and her

husband were worried because her husband did not have ‘‘a good English.’’ I

went alone for Sabbath and discovered that her husband was a fluent English

speaker, though his English was influenced by Yiddish phonology and like all

Hasidim, greatly influenced by Yiddish and Hebrew lexicon.

Thus, through literacy practices, the structure of schooling, and the home

context, girls come to associate Yiddish with a range of specific contexts: babies,

moral didactism, religious learning, and males. Girls’ own observations and

associations with English and fashionable clothing provide further incentive for

the gradual shift to the use of English with their peers and adult women.

Girls’ shift to English occurs despite demands by teachers and administrators

that among themselves, girls should be speaking in Yiddish. A teacher told me,

for example, that girls should speak English in their English afternoon classes but

by themselves, during recess, they should really be speaking Yiddish. Very few

do, however, and teachers are constantly reminding girls to speak Yiddish.

Language choice is one of the few sites where continuity across home and school

contexts is not as strictly enforced as other realms. School administrators, while

explicitly supporting the use of Yiddish among the girls, draw the line at

demanding that parents speak to their children exclusively in Yiddish. This is

due, in part at least, to the fact that administrators are aware that many women are

not that fluent in Yiddish other than a babytalk or respect register. When, for

270 FADER

example, a teacher wanted to send home a chart where mothers had to keep an

account of how often girls spoke in Yiddish, the principal vetoed the idea. Some

homes are English-speaking, she explained, and we cannot force parents to speak

in Yiddish, although we encourage it.

In contrast, the school administration does enforce and require that parents

abide by the standards the school sets for access to certain books, especially

by forbidding attendance at the public library. In the next section, I discus

how and why the school administration monitors students’ reading activities.

Girls’ increasing use of English as their vernacular can be more fully

understood once it is contextualized in local ideologies of reading and access

to knowledge.

CONTROLLING TEXTS, CONTROLLING KNOWLEDGE

Texts available to elementary school-aged children and the literacy practices

involving them reinforce ideologies associated with Yiddish and English, while

drawing on a culturally specific notion of texts as potentially corrupting or

morally uplifting. Ideologies of Yiddish and English are made explicit in two

local categories of narratives for children which support a particular elaboration

of how Hasidim see their world. Parents, teachers, and children frequently

categorize stories as ekhte mases (genuine stories), which are explicitly Jewish,

or goyishe mases (gentile stories). Ekhte mases are generally in Yiddish and

recount the lives of sages or other aspects of shared sacred history.5 Goyishe

mases are in English and are purely for entertainment. They include fairy tales

and mainstream North American children’s fiction.

The Bnos Yisroel school library is physically separated into goyishe and ekhte

mases by language. There is a Yiddish section of the library and an English

section. The Yiddish books in the library are almost exclusively didactic and

explicitly moralistic. These are usually read aloud to children, often summarized

and translated, because they are written in an inaccessible Yiddish; they are

published in Israel where a variety of Yiddish influenced by Hebrew lexicon is

used. Mothers told me that their children found these books ‘‘boring or

unexciting.’’ Although I did see some children eagerly asking to be read these

ekhte, (genuine) stories, I rarely saw a child read a Yiddish book alone. These

books were usually part of a group activity. Yiddish is the vehicle for texts which

are morally didactic, non-individualistic, and ‘‘genuine.’’

A recent innovation in Yiddish texts for children, however, are the Mides Velt

and Chayder Velt series (The World of Character Traits, The World of School

series) (Schmeltzer, 1995a, 1995b). These colorful texts depict contemporary life

in a suburban Hasidic community (New Square, New York) and include a

companion tape (in the Hasidic variety of spoken Yiddish) with musical

selections to teach children the importance of proper, ethical behavior. In Mides


Velt, Part A, for example, children learn through the exploits of two brothers how

to behave at home from when they wake up in the morning to when they go to

bed. The texts emphasize obedience to parents, kindness to other children and

siblings, and respect for Jewish laws. These books, in contrast to the English-

language Jewish books for orthodox Jews, I discuss below, are specifically

Hasidic. Males have long sidecurls and are dressed in Hasidic garb. Females are

always drawn from behind, so as not to have to show their faces; it is considered

immodest for Hasidic females’ faces to be presented publicly.

Further, unlike the Yiddish texts published in Israel about sages, these local

texts are in American Hasidic Yiddish. This means that while the texts are written

using Yiddish orthography, there are many borrowings and loan words from

English, rendered with Yiddish phonology. For example, the first story begins

with vart shoyn de Mame in kikt aros fin fenster tsu zeyn dem bos. (Mama is

already waiting and looking out of the window to see the bus). These types of

texts are an attempt to make Yiddish texts more appealing to young children,

while still creating the association between Yiddish and moral didactism. The

books and tapes were indeed popular with younger children (up until ages 7 or 8

years old).

In contrast to the content of acceptable Yiddish-language books, teachers’ and

parents’ concern over negative influences from the non-Jewish world results in a

greater wariness of non-Jewish, English texts. Caregivers, for example, fear that

goyishe mases (gentile stories) will introduce representations of inappropriate

females, which might include romantic relationships and/or express certain kinds

of knowledge.

Children’s access to English books, then, must be controlled. Hasidic adults

control access by defining, labeling, separating out, and censoring books

according to content and language. For example, the English-language books

in the library and classrooms were often decades old, what Hasidim describe as a

more ‘‘decent’’ time, even for gentiles. Inappropriate passages or pictures were

blacked out with a marker or excised completely in many of the same ways that

Peshkin (1986) describes censorship practices in a Baptist Fundamentalist school.

Girls frequently take these home for a few days. They read them alone, to

siblings, or were read to by their mothers before bed.

Both boys and girls (aged 3–11 years approximately) are allowed to read

gentile children’s literature as long as it is deemed ‘‘clean’’ or ‘‘kosher,’’ i.e.,

without any potentially contaminating representations of anything other than a

nuclear family or any romantic relationships. Labeling certain texts as ‘‘clean’’ or

‘‘kosher’’ creates a parallel between reading and the Jewish dietary laws

(kashrus). Both the Jewish dietary laws and the censoring of books are attempts

to control what is put into the body and mind. For example, elementary-aged girls

in an assembly were reminded that the act of ingesting unkosher food can make a

person become coarse, vulgar, and polluted. Similarly, what one ingests intellec-

272 FADER

tually through reading has the potential to corrupt and contaminate. Sustenance

for body and mind must be monitored due to its potential for pollution.

Children’s books that were acceptable included, for example, Amelia–Bedelia

and Curious George, stories about a maid who takes instructions literally and a

monkey who gets into scrapes because of his curiosity, respectively. These books

were familiar to and popular with a wide range of children. However, English-

language fairy tales, laden with notions of true love, evil witches, and fantasy are

not only discouraged, they are considered irrelevant and dangerous.

When, for example, a first-grader (from an orthodox but non-Hasidic family)

brought in a copy of Cinderella (an edition based on the animated Disney film)

for her English teacher to read to the class, the teacher first went out to show the

principal and check if it was acceptable. She came back and told the girls we

did not have time to read it that day, though there were still 20 minutes of class

time remaining. I asked her later if the book was not allowed because Cinderella

was dressed immodestly in a low-cut ballgown; to dress modestly, Hasidic girls

cover their collarbones. She explained that girls are going to see immodest

clothing all over the city; they have to get used to it. However, Cinderella

dances with the prince and kisses him in front of everybody. These girls, she

said, will never experience that. It will not be their lives. Why should they be

exposed to it? Goyishe mases, which present challenges to Hasidic ways of life,

in particular relationships between males and females, are not allowed to

penetrate community boundaries.

Like teachers, parents similarly monitored their children’s readings activities.

When children, despite the school administration, were allowed to visit the public

library, an older sibling always had to accompany younger ones in order to check

that chosen books were appropriate. When a family did not patronize the library,

parents would often receive catalogues of books in the mail, which they could

check for content before placing an order. One mother accidentally ordered a

book which she later discovered featured a child whose parents were divorced. To

the disappointment of her 8-year-old daughter, she returned the book unread.

Although it had looked so ‘‘exciting’’ to her daughter, she said that there was no

reason for her to be exposed to divorce at such a young age. Children are being

protected from the gentile world while learning of the potentially contaminating

and dangerous effects such books might have.

Living in an urban context where books and magazines were within easy

reach, Hasidic girls did sometimes attempt to read unacceptable books. However,

parents and teachers quickly discovered breaches and publicly shamed trans-

gressors. For example, it was the policy of the Bnos Yisroel administration to

forbid attendance at the public library because of the possibility of unsupervised

reading. Some mothers allowed their daughters to go, however, because they

themselves had grown up in more permissive times. When the administration

heard that some high-school girls had been going to the library, they ordered


spot checks of book-bags and when they found a library card, it was publicly

ripped up.

In another incident, a teacher told me that some years ago, girls were secretly

circulating books from the Sweet Valley Twins series created by Francine Pascal

(Pascal, 1989). These books follow the lives of non-Jewish high-school girls,

which include dating. Somehow the administration discovered that girls were

passing these books back and forth. They checked every girl’s bag, confiscated

books, and warning notes were sent home to parents. Through surveillance

practices, attempts to experiment or explore alternative ways of life through

literacy activities are publicly shut down.

The teens I spoke with seemed irritated more by the complete ban on the

library than the censoring of materials, more upset by the lack of trust in them to

choose their own reading materials than questioning that some books must indeed

be censored. Girls accept restrictions on certain books or content as one more set

of practices that mark them as different from those outside of their community.

In the next section, I show how gendered reading practices unintentionally

support girls’ use of English as a vernacular. Innovation in English texts for

children and young adults is resignifying the ideology of English as a gentile

language, creating the possibility for English to be a Jewish language too. This

shift in language ideology makes girls’ use of English as a vernacular less an

issue of resistance to teachers and school administrators. Teachers, administra-

tors, and parents are more concerned with the content of children’s books, than

which code they are in. This is because girls’ use of English as a vernacular,

especially in reading practices, reinforces and legitimates elaborations of essen-

tialized gender difference.

CHANGING IDEOLOGIES AND CHANGING LITERACIES

For first-grade girls, English was often metalinguistically described by teachers

as a goyishe shprakh (a gentile language). Lecturing her class (in Yiddish) on

the importance of speaking a Jewish language, a teacher asked the girls why

they would want to ‘‘copy’’ gentiles by speaking their language. ‘‘Do they

love us so much, do we love them,’’ she asked, ‘‘that we should want to copy

their language?’’ However, outside of first-grade classrooms, the ideology of

English as a gentile language is more ambiguous. As one teacher noted to me,

there are many non-Hasidic observant Jews, khushever (important) community

members, who speak only English at home. Language choice is neither a

sufficiently potent nor accurate marker of Jewish orthodoxy and/or difference

from gentiles.

Literacy practices further render associations between English and gentiles

more tenuous. In the English section of the school library and popular in

bookstores and homes were what community members call Yiddishe (Jewish)

274 FADER

books for elementary-aged school children. Written in English, these books have

orthodox Jewish children as protagonists and teach children the importance of,

for example, helping their parents in preparing for the Sabbath.6

One feature of these books, which mark them as explicitly Jewish and

observant, is that they are written in a variety of English community members

call haymish (familiar). In print this is indexed by unmarked use of Yiddish and

Hebrew code mixing, which is a representation of community speech patterns.

For example, religious lexical expressions like Shabbes (Sabbath) and kiddish

(the blessing over wine) are unmarked, untranslated, and orthographically

representative of Ashkenazic pronunciation of Hebrew lexicon. Jewish English

books, then, are not only transforming literacy possibilities for children, they are

actually supporting and creating a developing variety of English which is specific

to orthodox Jews in North America. This has been termed Jewish English by

some scholars who describe it as English with a large number of borrowings and

calques, as well as prosodic and phonological elements from Yiddish and Hebrew

(e.g., Benor, 1998; Steinmetz, 1981).

These books use brightly colored illustrations and glossy pages to redefine

possibilities for English-language books for children. Jewish books in English

sanctify the language, breaking apart simple dichotomies of holy and profane

languages. Jewish English books create the possibility for redefining ideologies

of English according to content, rather than code. When the content is ‘‘Jewish’’

and the language marked through lexicon and orthography as Jewish, the code

itself may become less significant or less easily identifiable.

Community members who are concerned with maintaining a clear separation

between Yiddish and English find these books problematic. For example, a

mother who was especially committed to having a Yiddish-speaking home

worried about the impact of these Jewish English books on the perpetuation of

Yiddish. I asked her if these books did not complicate the association of English

with the language of gentiles. She responded, ‘‘It’s a big problem. It blurs the

lines.’’ Jewish English texts for children do ‘‘blur the lines’’ between the actual

codes of English and Yiddish, as well as their possibilities for expression.

This phenomenon of the increasing ambiguity of ideologies of English, I

suggest, makes girls’ gradual shift to English as their vernacular less problem-

atic. When English can accommodate Jewish ideas, practices, and beliefs, its

use is less threatening to the impenetrability of community borders. As children

mature into young adulthood, texts and activities further support internal

gender and age differences, which are important to the social organization of

this community.

In keeping with the use of Yiddish as a register for very young children, as I

noted, there are new genres of Yiddish children’s literature. These books

represent an effort to maintain associations among Yiddish, morality, and

edification, even as they try to appeal to children through representations of


their own world. In contrast, I have not found young adult fiction genres in

Yiddish. Reading practices have become increasingly gendered by this age (12

years and older), and boys are not expected to spend time reading for ‘‘fun.’’ One

editor of a Jewish series for young adult girls suggested to me that boys ‘‘just

don’t have time to waste on that kind of reading (fiction). They are busy studying

Torah.’’ The limited offerings for boys in a popular neighborhood bookstore

supported this.7

There are, in contrast, many fictional texts in English for girls. These texts

draw on mainstream North American young adult fiction genres to promote

explicitly observant Jewish ideals, including moral didactism and gender

difference. A bookseller from one of the most popular stores in the neighbor-

hood reported that the market for Jewish fiction aimed at girls has expanded

rapidly within the last 5 years. Previously, he noted, reading material for

children and young adults was translated from Hebrew and was mainly non-

fiction. Orthodox young adult fiction aimed at girls is a relatively recent trend.

Jewish fiction for girls is written either by individual women or a group of

women, often based in Israel, and supervised by rabbis who ensure that the

books are ‘‘kosher.’’

Some of the recent fiction for Orthodox Jewish girls is explicitly modeled on

secular books for girls. For example, when in a phone interview I asked about the

motivation for the Jewish series, The Bais Yaacov Times by Leah Klein (1993),

an editor at Targum Press told me ‘‘We had to give them something to read

besides Babysitter’s Club’’ (a series aimed at mainstream American girls created

by Ann Martin) (Martin, 1988). Other books are explicitly Jewish and moralistic.

For example, The Brookville Chesed Club (Good Deeds Club) by Tamar Elian

(1992) is a series about a group of Jewish girls who organize a club to do good

deeds. These English texts, like the Jewish English books for younger children,

are appropriate vessels for moral didactism even when they are in a gentile genre

and language.

In the next section, I discuss how many adult Hasidic women participate in the

belief that reading should be a source of moral edification. This is despite the fact

that most adult women’s reading activities are in English.

READING AS ADULT WOMEN: THE MORALITY OF READING

By the time girls grow up, they are almost exclusively reading in English. Even

those women who were fluent readers and speakers of Yiddish as children report

a loss of fluency as they matured. As adults, they claim to find reading in Yiddish

‘‘too difficult.’’ Women’s reading activities continue to be monitored by the

authority figures in their lives, usually their husbands. One mother who is an

especially voracious reader (only of non-fiction) told me that her husband was

unusual in that he let her read whatever she wanted. He trusted her, she explained

276 FADER

to me, because he knew that her faith was unshakeable. Her husband did request

that she not bring gentile reading material, e.g., magazines or newspapers, into

the house, in case their children found them.

Despite women’s dominantly English reading activities, there is a general

ideology that the purpose of reading is for moral improvement and reading for

entertainment is a waste of time, although some women do read for this purpose.

During a recess period, for example, teachers in Bnos Yisroel were talking about

the latest historical novel which some of them had read over the Passover break.

Some of the teachers had been so enthralled by the novel, which traces a Jewish

man’s adventures and trials from pre-War Europe to present-day Israel, that they

had been riveted to their sofas for long stretches of time (the novel was very

long). The teacher I regularly observed did not seem to approve. ‘‘I don’t read

novels,’’ she said, ‘‘They’re a waste of time.’’ She explained that novels were

only for ‘‘entertainment.’’ She was not improving herself or learning anything by

reading fiction. She claimed that she would rather read a ‘‘Yiddish,’’ i.e., Jewish

(in English) non-fiction book, which would teach her something or inspire her.

Other women I met expressed similar views.

A more acceptable alternative to individualized reading is the taped inspira-

tional lectures (available in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English), which circulate

from a lending library or are available for purchase.8 Women (and men) would

often listen to these taped lectures given by well-known rabbis and respected

women while they were doing chores, in-transit, or to relax. The lectures most

often drew on a discourse of self-help in tandem with Jewish ideals and values.

For example, The Center for Chinnuch and Chizuk Habais (The Center for

Education and Building Up the Home) claimed that the lectures which they

offered focused on:

Self-hope, personality development, Chinnuch (moral education) and encourage-

ment of Torah values in a warm Yiddish (i.e. Jewish) environment. Most lectures

will touch you and give you the knowledge to find true happiness with your role in

life (1996).

The lectures included topics such as ‘‘Bringing Out the Best of Ourselves,’’

‘‘Finding the Path to a Joyful Life,’’ ‘‘Be Optimistic About What You Can

Accomplish,’’ and ‘‘The Best Way of Giving.’’ This alternative to reading

controlled not only the content, but also the medium of communication.

Adult women’s literacy activities, then, support the notion that the content of

texts is more important than which language texts are in. Hasidic women’s

literacy activities are based on a particular ideology of knowledge and commu-

nication. While Yiddish is considered an inherently more ‘‘refined’’ and moral

language, with new possibilities for expressing Jewish ideas in English, control-

ling knowledge and building boundaries against what is considered potentially


contaminating require the most immediate communal attention. This has the

unintended consequence of making girls’ switch to English as their vernacular

unthreatening either to internal gender differences or to community borders.

CONCLUSIONS

A focus on the socializing activities of multilingual literacy practices shows

where these practices interface with and influence broader processes of cultural

reproduction and change. The Hasidic case study shows how a diasporic

fundamentalist community engages literacy practices to manage and control

difference both within community boundaries and across them. Hasidic teachers

and parents emphasize the morality of reading activities by monitoring content,

language choice, and mode of transmission. Literacy practices reinforce gender

differences at the same time that they strengthen communal borders, which

separate Hasidim from other Jews and gentiles.

An investigation of multilingual literacy practices also provides insight into

processes of language shift. Drawing on Silverstein’s (1985) work, Kulick’s

(1998) research in Gapun, Papua New Guinea shows how language shift can

occur when a linguistic form or a whole language gets associated with and

becomes indexical of a particular group of people. The Hasidic case study is an

example of one segment of a community shifting languages. However, as Kulick

(1992) has shown elsewhere, language shift does not necessarily imply cultural

change. Among Hasidim, changing ideologies of English allows girls’ shift to

English to be perceived as a force of social reproduction rather than resistance to

authority figures and change.

This change in ideology is evidenced in the new Jewish English books

available, which use English to convey Jewish narratives with a moral message.

The appropriation of a non-Jewish form to convey a specifically Jewish message

has a tradition among Hasidim, as Ellen Koskoff’s (1995) work shows. Koskoff

discusses the ways that Lubavitcher Hasidim in Brooklyn often use secular tunes

from musical comedies or TV commercials in their performances of sacred

nigunim (religious melodies). The practice of taking a secular form and infusing it

with religious meaning can be traced to the Zohar (a mystical text), which says

that at the time of creation, holy vessels were broken, scattering the sparks of

Godliness. These sparks lodged often in the most mundane locations and only a

person of good intention and holiness can redeem them. Koskoff (1995, p. 100)

notes that through appropriation, Hasidim negotiate the gentile world around

them. She writes, ‘‘The borrowing and transformation of the (gentile) tune

effectively neutralized both the power of the mundane earthly music and of its

user . . .(i.e., the gentile).’’ Jewish fiction for girls similarly takes a ‘‘mundane’’

form and infuses it with Jewish ‘‘truth,’’ effectively neutralizing any taint from

the hashkofe (outlook) of gentile North America.

278 FADER

Local ideologies of literacy further support this shift in language ideology and

language itself for Hasidic girls and women. Hasidic ideologies of literacy

emphasize the importance of the outlook of authors and content rather than the

language of the text. Thus, despite the claims of teachers, school administrators,

and mothers, that speaking Yiddish is important to the reproduction of Hasidic

ways of life, girls’ rejection of Yiddish in some contexts becomes a force of

conservatism, shoring up community borders through elaborations of difference.

Investigations of local notions of literacy, communication, and language

ideologies are critical to placing practices around texts in their socio-cultural

context. This approach to literacy provides a lens through which to view

broader cultural processes, which shape the reproduction of persons, languages,

and communities.

Acknowledgment: The research on which this article was based was funded by

the Spencer Foundation, the Lucius Littauer Foundation, the National Foundation

for Jewish Culture, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Founda-

tion for Anthropological Research, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish

Culture. I am very grateful for their support. For their comments, suggestions,

and guidance, I would like to thank Stanton Wortham, Bambi Schieffelin,

Barbara Miller, and Christine Walley. Finally, I would like to thank the Hasidic

women and children who shared their lives with me.

NOTES

1. For a fuller historical discussion of research available on the Hasidic movement historically,

see Hundert (1991).

2. For a fuller discussion of the fieldwork and the positioning of the anthropologist, and the

ethnographic literature on Jews, see Fader, A. (2000). Gender, morality, and language: Socializing

practices in a Hasidic community. PhD Dissertation. New York University, 2000.

3. I use pseudonyms for individuals and institutions. Following the sociological and

anthropological literature, I use the actual names of the Hasidic sects.

4. While the data in this article were primarily collected in school, there are some data from my

work in home contexts. In homes I made audiotapes during significant socialization contexts, which

included bathtime, homework, dinnertime, and playtime. During recordings in homes and schools, I

took detailed context notes in order to coordinate talk within non-verbal interaction. Audiotaped

recordings in Yiddish and English were transcribed and often reviewed with a community member

who provided valuable linguistic and cultural commentary.

5. There is a huge secular Yiddish literature, which I have not seen read in homes or schools.

This can be considered one more form of censorship which Hasidim engages in to create clear and

stark contrasts between gentile and Jewish, secular and religious.

6. Jewish books for children are orthodox but clearly not Hasidic, evidenced by the clothing and

Jewish practice in the books. However, Hasidic children are exposed quite often to non-Hasidic

orthodox Jews and are familiar with the differences that mark Jews along a continuum of orthodoxy.

7. One of the few books in English I found aimed at adolescent boys was a series called

Gemarakup Super Sleuth by Miriam Zakon (Zakon, 1990). (Gemarakup literally means Gemara-head.


The Gemara is a sacred text, which contains commentary on the Torah). The main character is a boy,

Yisrael David, who solves mysteries using ‘‘his brilliant memory and the wonderful stories of

tsaddikim, scholars and sages that fill it.’’ (1990:1) In the series, Jewish texts are placed in the service

of solving practical, mundane problems. This text seems explicitly modeled on the secular series for

boys Encyclopedia Brown, although the author does not acknowledge that source. Hasidic boys are

exposed to the Encyclopedia Brown series in their English studies. Given the importance of memory,

study, and the ability to logically reason in the Hasidic male community, these kinds of books do not

seem to challenge Hasidic values and beliefs about gender and knowledge.

8. Tapes are in Hasidic varieties of Yiddish and English, which includes routinized borrowings

and codeswitches. I did not listen to the Hebrew-language tapes, but understand they were in modern

Hebrew as there were many Israeli Hasidic women who attended the lectures. For Israeli Hasidim,

modern Hebrew takes on a similar role to English for Hasidim in the United States.

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APPENDIX A.

Transcription Conventions

I. To represent themixture of linguistic codes in the everyday speech of Hasidim,

I have devised a system to facilitate reading transcribed portions of speech.

a. Yiddish is in italics. Within Yiddish discourse, routinized switches and

borrowings from English that maintain English phonology (which is the

majority) are both italicized and underlined.

b. English translations of Yiddish lexical items are in parentheses. For

example, Hasidic men have long, curly payes (sidecurls).

c. Hebrew is in italics and noted as Hebrew in parentheses. Hebrew used

by North American Hasidim is Ashkenazic Hebrew and is represented

as such orthographically.

II. Yiddish is transcribed from its Hebrew orthography using a modified

version of the YIVO system (see Weinreich, 1990). This was done to best

represent the dialect of Yiddish spoken by the Hasidim with whom I worked.

Throughout the article, I attempt to maintain the dialect of Yiddish and the variety

of Ashkenazic Hebrew, which is generally spoken. However, speakers’

phonological repertoires include a range of pronunciation. Thus, for example, a

speaker might use the word frum (religious) in some situations and frim, in others.

These are represented as accurately as possible in the quoted portions of text.

The system, which is based on Harshav (1990) and Peltz (1998), is as follows:

a is similar to a in the English father.

u is similar to oo in the English boot.

i is between the i of English fit and ee in the English feet.

o is similar to the aw in the English paw.

ou is similar to ow in the English cow.

oy is similar to oy in the English boy.

ay is similar to the English i in fine.

ey is similar to the English a in hay.

282 FADER

An exception to the transcription conventions are words in Yiddish or Hebrew

which have a standard, recognizable spelling in English. I have retained the

English spelling in order to facilitate reading. For example, I write Yiddish rather

than Yidish and Hasidic rather than Khsidic.

III. Transcription conventions to represent spoken language include:

a. Empty parentheses, ( ), represent an unclear utterance.

b. An equal sign, = , signals interrupted, overlapping speech.

c. Context notes are in parentheses in plain type.

d. Capital letters indicate that the utterance is spoken more loudly or

emphasized. For example, ‘‘Pharaoh was a BAD king.’’ Bad is spoken

more loudly for emphasis.

kh like the German ch in ach.

tsh like ch in the English church.

ts like the ts in the English cats.

r produced by trilling the tip of the tongue.


ayala fader

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