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: ayalafader@juno.com

Linguistics and Education 12(3): 261 – 283. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
Copyright D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. ISSN: 0898 – 5898
262 FADER

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.
 LITERACY, BILINGUALISM, AND GENDER 263

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.
264 FADER

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
 LITERACY, BILINGUALISM, AND GENDER 265

(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
266 FADER

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-
 LITERACY, BILINGUALISM, AND GENDER 267

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
268 FADER

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
 LITERACY, BILINGUALISM, AND GENDER 269

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.
270 FADER

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
 LITERACY, BILINGUALISM, AND GENDER 271

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
272 FADER

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-
 LITERACY, BILINGUALISM, AND GENDER 273

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
274 FADER

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)
 LITERACY, BILINGUALISM, AND GENDER 275

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
276 FADER

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
 LITERACY, BILINGUALISM, AND GENDER 277

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
278 FADER

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.
 LITERACY, BILINGUALISM, AND GENDER 279

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.
280 FADER

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 the mixture 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.
 LITERACY, BILINGUALISM, AND GENDER 283

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.

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.