Mr. Gerald Lazar
Director of Student Life, Yeshivat Or Chaim
A couple of years ago, I chaperoned a school trip to attend Me to We Day, run by the We organization (previously Free the Children), started by the Kielburger brothers. The purpose of the day is to inspire students to engage in social action and to spread awareness of world issues that impact young people. A number of speakers and videos that year focused on how much women can achieve, all presumably in efforts to inspire girls and young women in the audience. One of the boys said to me, “I’ve grown up believing women are equal. Why are they making me feel as if only women are encouraged to achieve in today’s world?”
I explained that women are still not treated equal in today’s society. Among other things, they are paid less, have a more challenging time getting hired/promoted, etc. While he understood that, and even agreed, he was still left with a feeling that he was being told it’s time for men to stop achieving.
Because of recent news reports and current events, many of us at YOC have been thinking about how we teach respect for women to young men in an all-male school. As news continues to come out about men who have abused their positions of power, I have continued to think about the importance of educating our students about how to treat others. As a man, I have truly been shocked by the sheer number of men who have engaged in vile acts against women.
At Or Chaim this year, we’ve been having weekly discussion with groups of students in a “Rebbe Period,” which essentially acts as an advisory group where students engage with topical issues and character oriented learning. Among the many topics addressed, each of these groups discussed the St. Michael’s sexual assault allegations and issues related to “masculinity” today. My group (who know that I’m a non-Rebbe, despite the name of the period!) has discussed the #MeToo movement and issues related to sexual harassment and abuse. During one conversation, one of the boys expressed skepticism over a news story about a woman accusing a man of sexual assault 40 years later. The boy – innocently – asked me, “why would someone wait 40 years to say something?” I suggested the entire group consider the perspective of this woman for a moment. At the time of the event, she was close to their age, living in an era when it was even less accepted than today to come forward. A woman who has been assaulted is left feeling violated, embarrassed, humiliated. If she would come forward, she would face interrogations by police, and likely verbal attacks from her accuser. If the case became public, she would be vulnerable to the media who could portray her as “asking for it.” If there was enough physical evidence for a trial, a lawyer could question her credibility, expose embarrassing moments from her past, and maybe even suggest she “invited” the act. And after all that, she’s lucky if the accused is found guilty. This set of explanations really got the boys in the room thinking in a way some of them had not before.
This past February, I chaperoned the Yeshiva University National Model UN conference. I was sitting with a colleague from another school when one of the committees decided to stage a mock women’s march through the hotel lobby as part of their committee’s topic. We talked about the challenges of teaching in today’s era, comparing her experiences in a co-ed school with an all-boys school. I shared my account above with her; she responded by telling me how she addresses the topics of personal safety and security. She drew a line on the board, wrote “boys” and “girls” on either side and then asked the question they would each answer: “what do you do to protect yourself when you go out?” The boys did not understand the question. They had no responses to put on the board. The girls were easily forthcoming and all had a list: holding keys between knuckles in case they were approached by someone on the way to their car; carrying pepper spray in their purses; never parking in an unlit area; not walking alone at night, etc. With this simple exercise, some of the boys immediately saw a perspective they had not considered before.
As discussions among teachers and students have continued throughout this year, we realized the value of taking a school-wide educational approach. Last month, we invited Dr. Guila Benchimol, a sociologist and expert in issues of violence within religious communities, to address our full faculty. Dr. Benchimol encouraged open conversations and shared findings from her research and fieldwork with religious communities around issues of gender and power. She explained the origins of the #MeToo movement, and shared important statisticsthat helped contextualize the issues our students are facing. She addressed a range of issues, from inappropriate behaviors and comments to potentially criminal behavior. Dr. Benchimol noted that, despite having spoken to many groups across North America, ours was the first Orthodox high school to invite her. Moving forward, we plan on expanding our school-wide approach: from integrating current issues into Phys Ed curriculum to teaching Rabbinic perspectives on healthy relationships.
For many years when I taught grade 10, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was a centrepiece of the curriculum. One of the most famous quotes from the novel is a comment made by lawyer Atticus Finch to his daughter, Scout: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view….Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Setting aside the irony of Lee’s character excluding women – Atticus suggests this advice is the key to understanding the world. Perhaps this is the answer I’ve been looking for all along: to teach our students how to understand why #MeToo has become a movement, they must first consider the perspective of their female counterparts and factor in previous generations’ experiences when people consciously or unconsciously supported social inequities and systemic biases. To understand why We Day must devote time to encourage women to achieve – and not focus specifically on men’s ability to achieve – it is necessary to continue to examine challenges women continue to face. The first step is recognizing deep societal problems, followed by empathizing with those who have been disadvantaged. Only then can we create ways to remedy situations.
There is much work to be done.
