Gender, Hebrew Language Acquisition and Religious Values in Jewish High Schools in North America

Abstract

The present study examines gender differences in Hebrew language performance, and attitudes towards learning Hebrew in different groups within the North American Jewish community. The chosen groups differ in their religious affiliation (non-Orthodox vs. Orthodox) and gender class composition (co-ed vs. segregated). These groups range from the non-Orthodox groups, which see gender equality as a central modern-Jewish value (Fishman, 2000), to certain Orthodox groups which see gender inequality as a Jewish traditional value that should be preserved. Segregated education usually indicates agreement with the latter. We found a significantly wider gap in language performance, learning goals and attitudes between boys and girls, in favour of the girls, in the Orthodox/segregated group than in the other two groups (non-Orthodox and Orthodox/co-ed). This finding supports the poststructuralist approaches which view gender as a social, historical and cultural construct that mediates between culture and language behaviour (Gal, 1991; Piller and Pavlenko, 2001). We also showed that learning goals of the learner play a central role as mediators between gender and language behaviour.

The preparation and publication of this article was made possible by a grant from The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. We also wish to thank the AVI CHAI Foundation, Hebrew College and the NETA project for giving us permission to collect information on the process of Hebrew learning from the NETA curriculum students. We wish to thank the school principals, NETA coordinators at the schools, teachers and students for giving from their time and thought for this important initiative.