Daughters of Queens- On producing the next generation of religious women

There was something powerful, and disconcerting (in a positive way) about watching 93 Queen as one of only a handful of men in a room filled, almost entirely, with Modern Orthodox women and teenage girls. As I watched the movie, I often found myself thinking about what those around me were thinking. I grew noticeably uncomfortable while seeing how the many men in the movie often stood in the women’s way, often in a heavy-handed manner. While the movie, which deals with the attempt of Ruchie Freier and a group of primarily chassidish women to start an all-women’s Hatzolah unit, was excellent, and I highly recommend it, I’d like to address the movie from a religious/sociological perspective. Specifically, I’d like to use my experience to think about some questions I’ve been thinking about on women and orthodoxy. In my next post, I hope to address a different aspect of the film.

As a father of three girls, and a teacher of many teens and pre-teens I constantly wonder about the future of Orthodoxy in general, and Modern Orthodoxy in particular, when it comes to women. What future is there for these groups (and others more to the right as well) in terms of holding onto the minds and hearts of women, in a world where women are more or less accepted as equals in pretty much every area of society? To put it differently, why would girls and women choose to be part of a world where they face restrictions of many kinds, when a world with few limits exists around them, and is easily accessible?

One perspective is to push Orthodoxy as far as it will go (according to various yard sticks) in an attempt to make it as egalitarian as possible. While I know people who take this approach, it doesn’t seem to me to be such a successful approach. No matter how liberal a yardstick one uses in attempting to move halacha in this way, they are assured of falling far short of anything remotely approaching egalitarian society. A lower mechitzah is still a mechitzah. Partnership minyanim still show the fact that women can’t lead the most significant parts of davening.

93 Queen seemed to gently suggest another possibility. What particularly moved me, and stood out to me about the women in the film, was the fact that they had a strong sense of knowing what they wanted, and what they had every reason to expect to get, while at the same time feeling strongly at home in, and comfortable with their community. As I watched the story unfold, seated in a Modern Orthodox girl’s high school, I couldn’t help but wonder about how the girls around me were seeing these women, as well as whether they could identify with women who identify so strongly with their religious community, restrictions an all. In particular, I found myself wondering whether there could be aspects of the more yeshivish and even chassidish girl’s educational system, which could be incorporated into the Modern Orthodox education system (to be clear, I have similar questions about the boy’s educational system as well).

I was moved by the strong women portrayed in the film. As I watched, I couldn’t help but hope that we in the modern world are providing a complex and nuanced enough education to our daughters to allow them to look at women from a very different part of the Orthodox world as heroes and role models. Where there are clear and obvious ways where we will part ways in how we educate young women, I hope that a high dividing wall is not being built to keep the two worlds apart.