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Dainy Bernstein, "Artifacts of Orthodox Jewish Childhoods" (Ben Yehuda Press, 2022)
01:12:19
An interview with Dainy Bernstein, Goldie Gross, Yehudis Keller, Hannah Lebovits, and Miriam Moster
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- [00:01]
Chana Leibovitz
When it comes to gifting, everyone on.
- [00:02]
Goldie Gross
Your list deserves something special.
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Chana Leibovitz
Luckily, Marshall's buyers travel far and wide.
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Goldie Gross
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- [00:31]
Chana Leibovitz
Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body.
- [00:34]
Danny Bernstein
Relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.
- [00:38]
Chana Leibovitz
Well, I'm letting go of the worry.
- [00:40]
Goldie Gross
That I wouldn't get my new contacts.
- [00:41]
Danny Bernstein
In time for this class.
- [00:42]
Chana Leibovitz
I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts.
- [00:45]
Danny Bernstein
Oh my gosh, they're so fast.
- [00:46]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
And breathe.
- [00:47]
Chana Leibovitz
Oh sorry.
- [00:48]
Goldie Gross
I almost couldn't breathe when I saw.
- [00:50]
Chana Leibovitz
The discount they gave me on my first order. Oh sorry. Namaste.
- [00:55]
Goldie Gross
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.
- [00:58]
Danny Bernstein
1-800-Contacts Deck your home with blinds.com.
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Schneer Zalman Neufeld
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- [01:28]
Rules and restrictions may apply. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:35]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Welcome to New Books Network. I'm your host, Schneer Zalman Neufeld. The culture of mainstream American childhood is vastly different from the culture of Orthodox Jewish childhood, which is itself a rich and varied landscape of texts, music, toys, and more with new nuances, with nuanced shadings from one sect of Orthodox Judaism to the next. In Artifacts of Orthodox Jewish Childhoods, Personal and Critical Essays published by Ben Yehuda Press in 2022, Danny Bernstein has collected a treasury of essays examining the artifacts of Orthodox Jewish childhood and how they influence a child's development developing view of the wider world and their inner world. Danny Bernstein holds a PhD in English and a certificate in Medieval Studies from the City University of New York Graduate center and teaches college composition, Medieval literature, and Children's and Young Adult Literature at Lehman College of the City University of New York. We're pleased to also be joined by several of the contributors to this book, including Goldie Gross, Yehudis Keller, Hannah Leibowitz, and Miriam Moster. Goldie Gross earned a Bachelor's degree in Art and Business from Baruch College and earned a Master's degree in the History of Art and Archaeology at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Yehudis Keller earned a bachelor's degree in Psychology and Fine arts from Brooklyn College and will be pursuing a PhD in clinical psychology at Case Western Reserve University in the fall.
- [03:20]
Chana Leibovitz is an assistant professor of Public affairs at the University of Texas, Arlington. And Miriam Moster is a doctoral student in sociology at the Graduate center of the City University of New York. I'm so glad their new book has brought them to our program. Welcome, one and all.
- [03:40]
Danny Bernstein
Hi. Glad to be here.
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Schneer Zalman Neufeld
So, to get started, could you each tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to edit or contribute to this volume? Gold. Why don't you take it away?
- [03:55]
Goldie Gross
Sure. So I come from an Orthodox background. I grew up Chabad. And so when I saw the.
- [04:02]
Chabad.
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Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Chabad Lubavitch is an ultra Orthodox Hasidic community headquartered in Crown Height, the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.
- [04:11]
Goldie Gross
Yes, this is true. And so when I saw the title of the book in the call for papers, Orthodox Jewish Childhoods, like, oh, this. I had one of those.
- [04:23]
And as then I was in school, I studied art history. I thought it would be a great. I thought contributing to the book would be a great way to combine my interest in visual culture with my background and my course of studies.
- [04:38]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Very, very nice. Dani, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background?
- [04:43]
Danny Bernstein
So, like most of the others here, I did grow up Orthodox.
- [04:49]
For my dissertation for my PhD, I wrote about ultra Orthodox Jewish children's literature, and I am housed in the English department. So I was focused on children's literature. But I also wanted to incorporate a lot more than just the literature in my discussion and analysis of this. I also wanted to talk about lots of the music tapes and story tapes and various other cultural artifacts that form a whole part of Orthodox childhood. So this book was born out of that desire to include a lot more than just the texts.
- [05:24]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
And it really does. And we'll get into some of that shortly. Okay. Chana, how about you?
- [05:32]
Goldie Gross
Hi. So I too had an Orthodox Jewish childhood. I grew up in a home that was ultra Orthodox from a more Lithuanian background, what we might call Yeshivish, but was completely educated within the Chabad system, the ultra Orthodox Hasidic Chabad system. So I sort of had a dual perspective on my Orthodox childhood or ultra Orthodox childhood. But I did not enter this from the Jewish studies space. Rather, I am a qualitative social scientist and am very interested in autoethnography as a method for qualitative research. So I really came into this as an autoethnographer. And considering the bounds of that qualitative research method.
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Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. And that certainly does bring a different lens to your contribution, which we'll get into shortly as well. Okay. Miriam, how about you?
- [06:32]
Chana Leibovitz
I also grew up in a Haredi community. I'd call it a moderate Haredi community.
- [06:36]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
And Haredi is ultra Orthodox.
- [06:38]
Chana Leibovitz
Yes, ultra Orthodox. So mine was a more moderate one. And today I'm doing my PhD where I also study the Haredi community. My research focus is on parents who leave the Haredi community and are going through divorces. And so that's also a part of my interest in this subject as well. But the piece for the book focused more on my own childhood and navigating those kinds of experiences.
- [07:02]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Great. Well, thank you all for that. It helps to kind of set the stage and give listeners a sense of who all of our guests are.
- [07:12]
And now. Yes. Yehudis, could you tell us a little bit about your background?
- [07:19]
Yehudis Keller
Yeah. So I was raised also in the ultra Orthodox community of Chabad Labavich in Crown Heights. Goldie and I are childhood classmates and friends to this day. And I am about to start my PhD in clinical psychology, where I'll be focusing on the mental health of leaving religion. So Goldie did bring me onto this project to provide more of the psychological perspectives to her art history perspectives. And that was really interesting because I was at that time working on a literature review of eating disorders within ultra Orthodox neighborhoods. And one of the factors that are discussed there are how modesty affects disordered eating and that kind of pathology, which is related to our chapter.
- [08:15]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. Oh, thank you for that. Definitely whetting our appetite thinking about your chapter. So we're going to get to that soon. But let's get a kind of a broad perspective to set the stage for our discussion. I want to go to Dani, who did a masterful job editing and putting together this volume. Could you tell us, Dani, what is so important to understand Orthodox Jewish childhood culture?
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Danny Bernstein
That's a great question. And to start with, just more broadly understanding childhood culture in general. Childhood is a really formative part of our lives. And so understanding how artifacts of our childhood affect us and affect the way we think is really important in understanding who the adults are become and specifically for Orthodox childhoods, because most Orthodox childhoods are in a more closed community than their American counterparts. The differences are highlighted. And every community is going to have different artifacts that they give to their children, Whether it's from religion or, you know, political viewpoint or cultural or ethnic. They're going to have different artifacts. But for children who are growing up in a more closed community, like the Orthodox communities, and there are multiple Orthodox communities, as you said, there are nuanced differences among them. But the artifacts that the children have there really affect who they become as adults. Not all in the same way, but they do affect that. And it's important to understand who the Orthodox adults of today are. So looking back at the childhoods and whether it's medieval childhood, as one of the essays talks about, or, you know, our generation's childhood is so important to understanding how various Orthodox communities exist within America and the wider world today.
- [10:17]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. And is there a Jewish view of childhood and the status of children in society?
- [10:26]
Danny Bernstein
There are multiple.
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So childhood as a concept and childhood studies, there is a field of childhood studies. The foundation of that field is that childhood is a construction. Childhood is a social construction. There is no biological childhood. There is no inherent childhood. It really all depends on how each culture, each society of each era and each region defines childhood, whether that includes infancy and. Or adolescence, whether those infancy and adolescence are even categories, whether childhood is just one big thing, whether childhood extends until the age of 21. So those age boundaries vary across all societies and all cultures. The thing is that also what a child is varies across cultures and societies as well. So the concept of the child that is most prevalent in kind of American society now is the romantic child, where something that developed during the romantic period, where the child is innocent and pure and must be protected. And, you know, eventually thinking of William Blake, the romantic poet, songs of innocence and experience, where the child is first innocent, then experiences the world and becomes corrupt. There are other concepts of the child, like the sinful child, which is the complete opposite. Not that the child is innocent and pure, but the child is sinful and needs to be disciplined. So all of these are ideas of childhood that exist in the world. The idea of the Jewish child varies a lot as well. It's not just a single.
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Idea of a child. It's.
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It varies by community. It varies by time period, and it varies by what the purpose is, by what's being thought of. So there are ideas of the Jewish child as completely pure, right, Similar to the romantic child. And this appears, as I say, in the introduction of the book, it appears in songs like, it's going to be the little Kinderlach, and Kinderloch is children. It's going to be the little children who make Mashiach come, who make the Messiah come. This is an idea that the Torah learning of little children.
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Will bring the Redemption because of the purity and the innocence of the child. Then at the same time, there's also an idea that, you know, at the Bar mitzvah of a boy, when a boy turns 13 and becomes a legal Jewish adult, the father says, Baruch Shepetrani. Right. Thank God that I am redeemed from this burden. Because according to that concept, the child does not. Is not culpable for his own actions, but his father is culpable for his actions. And the child is sinful. So the father has been absorbing all of the sins of the child. So this idea of, are they pure? Are they sinful? Are they. Do they need discipline? Do they need love? That varies a lot. And it doesn't vary only by time.
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Yehudis Keller
It varies.
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Danny Bernstein
All of these ideas exist simultaneously.
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Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right, right. And you. We sort of touched on this before, but people who are familiar with the Orthodox or ultra Orthodox Jewish communities know that there are a lot of subdivisions or subgroups within this kind of broad framework when it comes to childhood cultures. Is there one unified Orthodox or even ultra Orthodox Jewish childhood culture?
- [14:18]
Danny Bernstein
Still no.
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Still no. So there are multiple subdivisions within them. One of the biggest ones in the book is between Hasidic Ultra Orthodox and modern Orthodox, where you can divide that up into three separate categories. And within each one, again, there are multiple subdivisions. The biggest one in Hasidic is between Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic and non Chabad Lebovitch Hasidic. So like Satmar, they're both Hasidic, but they have very different views of the world. Within Ultra Orthodoxy, there's also lots of different subdivisions. And again, within modern Orthodox, but, for example, just going with that.
- [15:02]
It'S more prevalent in Hasidic communities for the child to be seen as rebuilding after the Holocaust. And that's not as common in. In Ultra Orthodox and modern Orthodox communities. It is in ultra Orthodox communities, a little bit of the Hasidic influence of that idea of the child as the rebuilding after the Holocaust that does seep in. It's not as common in modern Orthodox communities. So that idea in itself, it really. It defines how children are treated. Right. If children are, you know, kind of the, quote, revenge on Hitler, and it's, you carry on all the hopes and dreams of all of those who were killed in the Holocaust that really influences how children are treated. If children are seen as the. In what's. What's very common in some ultra Orthodox communities, children are seen as the next generation of Torah scholars and mothers of future generations. And this kind of goes across all Jewish communities. Again, children are going to be raised that way, and that speaks to the gender difference in how children are raised. So there's no one idea but the idea of children as the future. If we could boil it down to one thing, the idea of children as the future, which is common across America in general, but it is really, really apparent in Orthodox communities.
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Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. And then when we think about the childhood culture, not just the.
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Ideology or ideas about childhood or children, but the actual culture, the material culture that are interested in exploring in the book, is there a unified culture that all the children in Orthodox Jewish communities or ultra Orthodox Jewish communities are participating in, or is that even that material culture kind of subdivided along communal lines?
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Danny Bernstein
Yeah, it is definitely subdivided. One of the essays really highlights that Frida Wiesel's essay on the Hasidic Biblical coloring books, which are in Yiddish, those really belong to a Hasidic community, and they don't really go beyond that. This goes back to the, you know, when we were thinking about the. The concept of the book and what we would do with this, I was talking to our publisher, Larry Udelson, of Ben Yehuda Press. I mean, my work focuses on Haredi, Ultra Orthodox. When I started working on my dissertation, I made the conscious decision not to include Yiddish language texts, so not to include Hasidic texts. I was including Lubavitch texts because they are in English. And that's one of the differences between Lubavitch and other Hasidic sects. But when we were, you know, conceiving of this book, to be honest, we weren't sure that we would get enough essays just on Haredi communities. So we expanded it to Hasidic and Modern Orthodox as well. While I was editing this, there was a moment where I was thinking about dividing up the sections as Hasidic, Modern Orthodox, and Ultra Orthodox. Ultimately, I realized that that's not actually very productive because there's a lot of overlap. The terminology, you know, varies. People who call one thing modern Orthodox will call something else ultra Orthodox, and other people will see it differently because it's not. There's not a strict dividing line. So there is a lot of overlap. But at the same time, each segment does experience certain artifacts that are unique to them. For example, the. For another example, right. Chana will talk about the Journeys CDs. The Journeys Music CDs. Those are, you know, they. They feel like a universal Orthodox experience to those of our generation. But in fact, one of the things that Frida said, Frida Wiesel, when she was talking about, you Know, her experience as growing up in. In a really strict Hasidic community is that that was not part of her childhood because those lyrics were in English. So there's a lot of overlap, but there's also really interesting divides between the artifacts that cross boundaries.
- [19:27]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right, right. I think it is interesting that even, like you said, something like the Journeys music collection or other, I don't know if there's a contribution about schlock rock, which is another sort of, I guess, kind of modern Orthodox Jewish take on popular music. Well, as someone who grew up in the Lubavitch Hasidic community, those.
- [19:54]
Songs were considered gaish, were considered non Jewish. In other words, they were traf. They were not kosher enough for consumption in our community, even though they were produced and sung by Orthodox Jewish man. And they were intentionally designed to appeal to the Orthodox Jewish community, they weren't Orthodox enough. And so that plays a role in these issues.
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Danny Bernstein
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Shlok rock for us was completely not okay.
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Country Yassi was kind of on the border. There is an essay in this book about country Yesi. Country Yasi and schlock rock do similar things where they are parodying popular American songs. But, yeah, both of those were kind of not okay. Country Yassi was a little more okay because he used more Yiddish. I think that's kind of. I think the thing. But then there was also a lot about. There was a new group that formed the Khevra, which was for Orthodox men, and they were not allowed to us either because they used techno. So there were a lot of. There was a lot of things in terms of what is Jewish enough, what is not Jewish enough. Just because it was produced by Orthodox Jews did not necessarily mean that each community thought it was okay. So things like Black Hattitude. A lot of people during the, you know, over the course of editing this book and, you know, talking about the book and just spreading word of it, people would mention black attitude. And to me, that was a rebel group. Black attitude and blue fringe, these were all rebel groups. You listened to those if you were rebellious. But for other people, it was just a normal part of childhood. So, yeah, lots of variation in that.
- [21:42]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Yeah. And I think it might just be interesting to think about the analogy between the consumption of popular, you know, Jewish culture and the consumption of food. And just like with kashrut, with the laws related to food consumption, you know, many of these.
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Subdivisions within the Orthodox community have their own standards about what's kosher enough for their community members to eat. And I think There's a similar kind of.
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Boundary.
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Maintenance process going on when it comes to the consumption of culture, where even if things are designed for the Orthodox Jewish community, they may not be considered kosher enough for particular communities. All right, just to get a few more points in here before we go to some of the contributors, I'm wondering if you could give us a sense, Danny, of the range of the pieces in the book. Obviously, there's a lot to.
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Orthodox Jewish childhood culture. Could you give us a sense of just how broad the essays in the book are?
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Danny Bernstein
Yeah. So, like I mentioned, if we're thinking on it, if we're thinking about it on a scale from right to left, which is hard to really do because, again, there's a lot of variation in how people think of themselves on that scale.
- [23:11]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
A religious scale of liberal versus more conservative or more strictly Orthodox.
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Danny Bernstein
Yes. This has nothing to do with politics. This is strictly in terms of levels of religiosity, which. Or levels of.
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Fundamental religion, in a sense, which is really hard to qualify. Sociologists do this, social scientists and anthropologists do this. And I point you to their work to find out more about that. But sort of, moreover, to the extremist side, we have Frida Wiesel's essay on the Hasidic Yiddish biblical coloring books. And then way over on the, you know, far end of modern Orthodoxy, there's Jessica Russakaufman's essay on.
- [24:04]
Attending a modern Orthodox summer camp.
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Now she. The reason I kind of think about that all the way over on the other end is because she was coming from a, quote, out of town modern Orthodox community. She was from Seattle and in summer camp was encountering.
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Kids from the New York metropolitan area, which is much more kind of embedded in the modern Orthodox culture. So that essay is really talking about her kind of grappling with that culture of as an outsider. There are other essays dealing with modern Orthodoxy. There's the Heresy Zine or zine, which is a few girls growing up in. In Detroit, Michigan, created a zine in their high school, in their Akiva High school. So that's a modern Orthodox experience. There's also someone else, Dvorah Steinmetz, who has an essay on her experience in a modern Orthodox school and the moment when she, as a girl was separated from the boys and was not allowed to learn Talmud or was allowed to unofficially in a. Really. I love that essay. It's really great. So the range is really, really wide. But again, in between all of that, all of the things that are discussed in between some of them Even though the kind of. The positionality of the authority might be ultra Orthodox or modern Orthodox, some of them kind of overlap. So there's. On the Hasidic end, there's also a number of essays from Chabad Lubavitch people.
- [25:43]
Goldie Gross
Right.
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Danny Bernstein
Including some of the people here today.
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And there's. So that's kind of in there as well. But some of those experience, even though they're Hasidic, they also overlap with the just Haredi ultra Orthodox. So there's a lot of overlap in between them. But it really is a really big expense that we cover.
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Schneer Zalman Neufeld
All right, so, Dana, you were talking about.
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You were talking about some of the key themes that emerge from the essays in the book.
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Danny Bernstein
Yeah. So one of the big themes that emerged was music and songs, and so that kind of got its own section in the book. The middle section of the book is music and songs, and that combines from both of the other sections, which are more academic focused and more personal essays, but that music and songs are just a really strong part of emotional religiosity. So it kind of makes sense that that would appear there. One of the other big themes was gender, and this came mostly from women who were writing, which kind of makes sense. In general. Women tend to notice gender more because it's kind of outside of the norm of patriarchal society. And that goes for all of America, but also Orthodox communities.
- [27:11]
I think those were the two main themes that came up. There was also a lot of grappling going on. So while a lot of these essays, many of these essays are unambiguously embracing and celebrating some of these artifacts, there's really a lot of grappling with what did these artifacts mean to me as a child or what did they mean to children if it wasn't necessarily a personal thing? What do these artifacts mean to me now? And I think that one of the things the authors really did well, and we went through multiple rounds of revision, was to really dig into that not only on a personal level, but also on a critical academic level. And all of us here today are academics, but not everyone who was writing for the book is an academic. And I wanted to have that because I wanted not to shut out any voices. Not everyone who is. Who has something to say is necessarily an academic. So I worked with all of the authors, and really, they really put in a lot of work to kind of dig it down into that and think about, well.
- [28:29]
What do these artifacts mean to me? What do they mean to children more generally?
- [28:33]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. Well, thank you for all that. So now we're going to shift to Goldie and Yehudis and talk about their contribution. And your article focuses on the issue of SNEAs. What exactly is SNEAs and just how all encompassing a concept is sneeze in the life of Orthodox Jewish girls and women? And why don't we start with Goldie?
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Goldie Gross
Sure. So tnius translates to modesty, and it refers not only to dress, but also to attitude, behavior, thoughts, and actions. And so it is a very important aspect of a girl's life, I think, also a boy's life to a lesser extent. But it's. The emphasis is placed very strongly on girls and women to dress and behave in a manner that befits a Jewish woman to have a sort of tnius attitude and demeanor.
- [29:35]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
What is a tnius attitude? What would that be like?
- [29:39]
Goldie Gross
That's a great question. I think just somebody who's maybe who conforms to standard gender roles. A woman who isn't too loud, who doesn't, you know, doesn't take up more space than she's meant to in traditional thought.
- [29:54]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
I see. Okay, we're gonna shift to Hodes.
- [30:01]
Your article, your chapter focuses on Sneha's diagrams. What are sneeze diagrams? And how widespread a phenomena are they in Orthodox Judaism today?
- [30:15]
Goldie Gross
Sure. So tinnius diagrams are sort of pictures of how to dress in a tneous manner. They're drawn usually and scanned. There's some that are more professionally illustrated.
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And so they sort of depict somebody either dressing sneakily or not sneasily. And they refer usually to what has to be done. And if the person illustrated is not, this is like, not what you're meant to do. And if somebody is more modest, like, this is how you're meant to dress.
- [30:49]
And they are pretty widespread. They're given out in schools. I received them growing up. I remember very memorably in 10th grade receiving from a certain teacher. I've heard you could find them in dressing rooms in stores that sell modest clothing for women.
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And the Internet has a plethora of them taken from various sources.
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Schneer Zalman Neufeld
And could you give our listeners a sense of what kinds of issues the tnius diagrams are trying to instruct the girls or women about? Like, what are some of the problems or clothing concerns that the girls and women are being instructed to be conscious of?
- [31:33]
Goldie Gross
Sure. There's one that's very memorable. It's a woman walking up the step.
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Onto a bus, and it's showing her stepping to the side with one leg on the bus step and one leg on the ground. And it's illustrating that her slit in the back of her skirt is closed and that her skirt is long enough that her knee is not shown. But it's sort of implying that if your skirt's a little too short, if you have a slit in the back, this. This movement you would do to get onto a bus would become immodest.
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Schneer Zalman Neufeld
So just to help listeners understand this, the idea is that that in general, according to Orthodox Jewish law and custom, women's women are only supposed to wear skirts or dresses, not pants. And when they're wearing these skirts or dresses, they're supposed to cover their knees. Right?
- [32:28]
Goldie Gross
Yes.
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Schneer Zalman Neufeld
But what you're saying is not only is it important that the knees are covered when the woman is standing or sitting, but even for the very brief moment that the woman is involved in.
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A more aggressive activity like boarding a bus, there is the possibility that the knee will suddenly become uncovered and that this would be considered a big problem.
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Goldie Gross
Yes. And I guess to further elaborate, the two other major areas are the elbows that have to be covered and the collarbones. And most of the illustrations are sort of geared towards proper items of dress that would cover your knees, elbows, and collarbone.
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Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right, right. Okay. And now, Yehudis, you're with us.
- [33:19]
Yehudis Keller
I am with you.
- [33:21]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Terrific. Terrific. So we were just talking about your article, and.
- [33:28]
1, 1. One question I had was that ultra Orthodox publications, out of a concern for modesty, tend to avoid publishing pictures of women. That the very. Just publishing the picture of a woman's face and body is often considered immodest for many Orthodox publications. So how do. How detailed are the diagrams of women that you are discussing in your chapter? How detailed are these diagrams? How do they deal with the fact that they're trying to represent women? And at the same time, there's a problem with publishing a picture of a woman.
- [34:12]
Yehudis Keller
Yeah. So these illustrations are done very cleverly. Cleverly in the sense where they do have to depict the actual rule. So let's say if they're talking about a collarbone and how that is to be covered correctly, they will make sure that there's a figure that has a neck and shoulders, but not much more than that is necessary. So in order to avoid that problem of distraction or showing women in improper ways, only what's necessary is included in these diagrams. You'll see in some of these diagrams, you'll see even a more realistic one where the part of a body where a chest is supposed to be. You'll see it's completely flat, because that would be considered inappropriate.
- [35:08]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. So they're like, profoundly Minimalist in terms of the physical representation of women, their bodies.
- [35:18]
Yehudis Keller
Yeah, that would be a nice way to say it.
- [35:22]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Okay. And Goldie, I'm wondering, what is the relationship between the push for these sneeze diagrams in books or other published materials for Orthodox girls and the general perception among male rabbis? Because in the Orthodox world, or certainly the ultra Orthodox world, all the rabbis are male. So what is the relationship between these diagrams and the percept male rabbis of the intellectual capacity of women?
- [35:54]
Goldie Gross
So the tne, the booklets and pamphlets containing the tneous diagrams are often written by men. And this contrasts with sort of the typical classroom instruction, which is usually a female teacher teaching tneas to female students. So it's men writing these pamphlets. And in the introductions you'll find them saying things like women are so busy, so we simplified it for them. Or even after holding shiurim, which are classes about this, it seems that women still can't do it properly. So here's some drawings. And I think that this sort of negates the fact that maybe women don't want always to be so sneas and maybe, you know, I think, I think it sort of negates half the population's intelligence in a very pedantic and.
- [36:43]
Rude, frankly way.
- [36:45]
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- [37:58]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [38:13]
Goldie Gross
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [38:16]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Cut the camera.
- [38:17]
Goldie Gross
They see us.
- [38:18]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Ferry Unwritten by.
- [38:24]
Chana Leibovitz
Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts.
- [38:26]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right, Right. And you heard this. I'm wondering what message do you think these things diagrams sen to girls and women about their bodies and their responsibility for male sin?
- [38:40]
Yehudis Keller
Yeah. So one would think that males have an equal if not greater responsibility to guard their sexual thoughts and behaviors that involve women. However, since the responsibility is put on women, you have the effect where in a religious environment that is supposed to be spiritually focused, community focused, where the focus is not supposed to be on bodies, ironically, the focus becomes on bodies and how to guard them. How to make sure that your body is not seen, is not loud, is not distracting, does not cause males to sin. And you know, there is some work that suggests that that could have negative impact on.
- [39:37]
A woman and girl's view toward her own body as seen through body image dissatisfaction, which is very highly correlated with eating disorders, disordered eating, which can be life threatening.
- [39:53]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right, right. And Goldie, how effective do you think this strategy of the tneous diagrams and more generally this focus on kind of intense focus of quote unquote modesty as it relates to girls and women's dresses?
- [40:18]
Goldie Gross
I think effectiveness is hard to quantify.
- [40:24]
I think that we found in the article.
- [40:28]
They'Re probably doing more harm than good just by erasing so many details and sort of.
- [40:37]
Making it seem that women are responsible for a man's thoughts and actions. So we think that they are more counterproductive.
- [40:48]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
More counterproductive. I hear you. Okay, well, it certainly gives us, gives us a lot to think about. Okay, we're going to shift gears here a little bit. Chana, are you with us?
- [41:04]
Goldie Gross
I am here.
- [41:05]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Terrific. Okay, so we want to ask you some questions about your. Your essay in the volume. So you wrote about the music produced by AB Rottenberg. Who is Ab Rottenberg? And are there basic features that stand out about his music?
- [41:27]
Goldie Gross
Sure. So as I mentioned in the beginning, I grew up in what might be considered sort of a mixed socialization. So I grew up in an out of town community which Janie mentioned, which is a place outside of the tri State area, which I think actually sometimes gets an incorrect understanding at times. Nothing to do with what Danny mentioned. But.
- [41:52]
Because there is a. Because the communities tend to be smaller, there is a different kind of mixture of values and expectations that occurs there. In some ways, the religious intensity, for lack of a better word, might be.
- [42:11]
Less.
- [42:13]
Significant for it. Within the young childhood socialization, for example, it's very unlikely that a child will get kicked out of school for something like not wearing the right clothing or wearing a backpack incorrectly or something small like that. On the other hand, if a family does consider themselves to be ultra Orthodox within the quote unquote, like out of town community, there's actually a more significant amount of leverage placed upon them as sort of these exemplars of religious behavior. So when I was growing up within one of these families that was considered an exemplar. I, for example, did not have the ability to, you know, go with the flow or be in a broader school of fish, for lack of a better terminology here, wherein I didn't, you know, think about wearing tights or listening to non Jewish music or whether I was going to marry someone in Kollel. These were things I had to constantly explain, give proof for, give reasoning for, and which in my Chabad education I was taught not only to internalize, but also to be able to teach. So I was basically being taught to be what we would call an emissary of the Rebbe or a Shliach or Shlacha of the Rebbe from the great seventh Lubavitch Rebbe from a very young age. So I did not get a socialization wherein it was only that I should be internally very holy, but that I should be geared towards this ability to give over to others.
- [43:44]
So within this ecosystem, I both got a very Lubavitch Hasidic education, but then in my home was socialized through artifacts of a more Yeshivish household, which included things like A.B. rottenberg's music, which actually he began to produce well before I was born, in the 90s, in the late 70s, early 80s, he began to produce this specific version of Jewish music which was not like Khantriasi. It did not parody non Jewish music. It actually built on this much older version of Jewish music which was like this melodic, you know, almost building on the chazanas.
- [44:25]
Yehudis Keller
The.
- [44:27]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
The.
- [44:29]
Danny Bernstein
Leader.
- [44:30]
Goldie Gross
Yeah, there you go. But.
- [44:34]
Yes, but cantorial, not just in the sense. I don't just mean in the sense that it's given over in a synagogue setting, but that it's built out of these phrases from within the Torah, from within the davening, from within the prayer, that that's what carries the melody. That's what carries. And your ability to associate with the meaning of that because you've been a learned Jewish, ultra Orthodox child, leads you to feel the mean within that melody, right? So you connect with the story, you connect with the words, because you've learned them, because you know where that phrase from the Psalms comes from, right? You know what it's supposed to mean to you. And that's why the melody counts, or that's why the storytelling effort works. So he began with a series of mostly just Hebrew CDs, and then he broke into this world of more specifically child and family oriented. And then it became fully child oriented in the marvelous Meatos machine. But this child and family oriented storytelling where he took not just parables in Jewish tales and sort of Jewish folklore, but everyday Jewish dilemmas or everyday situations within the socialization of the Orthodox world and sang about them and spoke about them. And as a child growing up in one of these exemplar families in this community, I very much resonated with these stories. I very much resonated with these songs because they felt like the authentic Judaism. I was being socialized and cultivated to not only experience, but to give over. And so, you know, I was sort of expected as a child. And I have five older siblings and one younger sibling. And specifically within those five older siblings, I have four older brothers who all went to yeshiva out of town. That is not within the community that I was in, but out of our community to go to a, quote, real yeshiva, right? To be embedded in the more authentic Jewish Yeshivish experience. And I look to them with a lot of jealousy. I also wanted to be authentically Jewish. I also wanted to be authentically within this more religious structure that I was being raised to dedicate my life to. So that's why these songs were so significant to me. My brothers would sometime bring home a new CD when they came home from yeshiva. And so this was sort of our connection to this world as this family that was expected as an exemplar to embody this at all times, right?
- [47:01]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
And what picture of Orthodox Jewish life did Rotenberg's Journeys, this set of CDs with songs, what picture of Orthodox Jewish life did Rotenberg's Journeys the songs of in these CDs represent for you?
- [47:24]
Goldie Gross
So I titled the piece Journeys. And I think that it is essentially, it was essentially supposed to be a journey, right? That within each of these songs there is some sort of Dilemma. There is some sort of concern you're supposed to have or a frustration you're supposed to have. There's a feeling of uncertainty that you're allowed to engage in. But by the end of the song, there's this completion. There's this sort of idea where. But now we've gotten there because actually within Orthodoxy, we have everything. You just need to uncover it, you need to find it, you need to work through it, but it's actually all there, and you are safe here. And this is a wonderful place because even though sometimes it's rough around the edges, or sometimes we battle to get in or to get out, or to figure out how these mechanisms work, really everything is there. And the song always ends on this sense of, you know, really, we got it, we make sense, we have everything. And especially as a child, that's a very comforting idea. It doesn't underestimate your ability as a child to recognize that there's tension in the world. Right? He doesn't underestimate, especially the child listener. In fact, he engages directly with the fact that there's tension and there's uncertainty. But by the end of the song, you feel like it's going to be okay. Right. Even a Jewish mother who hates preparing for Passover, who hates doing all the cleaning. Right. By the end of the song, it's a male who sings it, which we can get into all the gender dynamics of that, too. But at the end of the song, this woman says that she really does appreciate being able to do this because it's a service to the religion and to the experience and to the socialization. So that's, I think, a key component is there is a struggle, but there is sort of this conclusion where everything good here.
- [49:09]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. And then you talk about how.
- [49:13]
At one point after you were finishing high school, you went to. To attend a girls seminary in Israel, and then later you moved to one of the major hubs of Orthodox Jewish life in New York. What happened to the image of Orthodox Judaism that was personified, represented by these songs from Rotenberg, that you came to know and love so much? What happened to that image of Orthodox Judaism when you became. When you sort of confronted more.
- [49:51]
Kind of major Jewish communities that you were suddenly a part of?
- [49:57]
Goldie Gross
Yeah, so going back to what I mentioned earlier about being more of a social scientist than a Jewish studies scholar, I wrote this piece to be autoethnographic. And what I mean by that is I wanted to study the culture that I am a part of. And one of the key ways to do ethnographic and autoethnographic work is to pay attention to what we call the measures of the ordinary. And so those are spatiality or like actual, you know, distance, physical space, geographic space, things like that, temporality. So the elements of time and relationality, the fact that you don't experience anything in a bubble. No one experiences anything in a bubble. There are always relationships involved. So what I really tried to do with this piece was to use AB Rottenberg's Journeys again, you know, using this, this idea of a journey to speak to the spatiality, temporality and relationality, the social elements of Orthodox Jewish life and of Orthodox Jewish socialization. Key here, I think, in your question is that there is a time element to Orthodox Jewish childhood, which is to say that it ends and your Orthodox Jewish childhood is expected to transition into an Orthodox Jewish young adulthood and then complete adulthood, and then the giving over of an Orthodox Jewish childhood to your own children. And what I wanted to do with the piece was to walk through each one of those steps with A.B. rottenberg, with the Journey CDs, and to note that there was a point in my life where I transitioned from my Orthodox Jewish childhood in both a temporal element, right? I physically was no longer a child, or I moved through time, but also I moved through space. I went to Israel and then I went to New York City to be amongst the Haredi Orthodox Jewish community in town, right, in the Tri State area. I also lived in Lakewood for a time on and off. And so I wanted to highlight that when I was actually physically in those spaces and dealing with this temporal element of going from a childhood to a young adulthood, I actually found the Rottenberg CDs to be just incorrect. I found them to be not useful. And then at some point I found them to be harmful to me, that they continued to present a reality that I could not find. And that felt that either I was making mistakes in how I was trying to approach Judaism, or that this Orthodox Judaism that he presented to the childhood version of me did not exist. And that was actually really, again, looking at this from an auto ethnographic lens, that was sort of a breakdown for me where when I was in a specific time and place, I believed something to be so real. And I believed it to be real specifically because I didn't see it, right? I thought, oh, it's not here because it exists somewhere else. But then when I got to that place and it didn't exist there either, I had to then question whether it exists at all. And at that point I couldn't Then say, well, maybe it existed somewhere else because I had been in that other place.
- [53:01]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. What was it that you felt didn't exist? What were you confronted with? I mean, what was the actual substance?
- [53:09]
Goldie Gross
Yeah, so what I was confronted with was a world that actually seemed highly unintentional. And I think the storytelling of Rotenberg is that there's this intentionality to the orthodox community that sort of self corrects. If you think of it as a thermometer. I live in very hot Dallas, Texas, and so there is a thermometer in my home that I set to a certain degree point. And when it's hotter, it has to blow harder, right? The air conditioning has to blow hotter. And when it's not as hot, the air conditioning doesn't blow as hard because it has to stay at that temperature. And A.B. rotenberg's music presents this version of orthodoxy which I mentioned. You know, there's this tension point, but then there's this fix, right? That there's this. There's this thermometer going on. You will always reach 70 degrees. You will be comfortable, you will be fine. Some days it'll be really hot and we'll have to blow harder and we'll have to work through it, but you'll get back to 70 degrees. And what I found was that there was very little intentionality that I could find that was going to bring me back to 70 degrees or bring anybody back to 70 degrees. And in fact, when these tension points were reached, you know, I was, for example, in the matchmaking system, in the Shidduch system, trying to, you know, get married, which I did, still relatively young, but I was trying to work through this with these tools that I believed AB was giving me of this belief that we were going to go back to 70 degrees. And finding that in fact I wasn't going to. And if I had questions about, well, I want to do this in my life, but surely he'll balance this out and it'll all work. I was being told, no, you actually have to not pursue your life because he's not that person isn't going to exist, right? Things like that, where there isn't actually this self correcting system that in fact, especially as women, we have to be the self correcting system. And there is no correction built in. And in fact, there's a lot of danger, there's despair, there's calamity, right? There are these actual major issues that we haven't fixed, we haven't resolved, and it's not self correcting at all, right?
- [55:05]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
So given everything that you said, essentially you're kind of disappointment with the Rotenberg songs and their messaging. I'm curious. You end off your essay by writing that you've arranged that your children now listen to Rotenberg's music. Why?
- [55:28]
Goldie Gross
So I think that that was actually, you know, sometimes when we write as social scientists, as autoethnographers.
- [55:39]
We are also coming to findings ourselves, right? We're not writing personal narratives where we know the ending. We're opening ourselves up to new findings. And I didn't realize when I first started out this essay on Dani knows from the prior versions that I had submitted or the prior thoughts that I had, I didn't realize that I was going to end off with this. But actually, interestingly enough, as I started working on this piece, that's actually when my kids hit an age where they sort of needed more Jewish music in their life. Typically we do play a lot of Nigunim or Hasidic melodies in our home. And I felt like my children needed something more secular that they could relate to and sing as well, but also not something that was going to be entirely pop, non Jewish music, which I personally don't like and don't see any usefulness for my kids. And so I actually came back to these CDs and I think that for me, the realization, again thinking of this spatiality, temporality and relationality was that I'm now at a point in my life where I am very distant from that major hub of Orthodox Jewish life of the New York area. So spatially I am away from a lot of that. I've now grown into an adult. I am confident in my relationship with Judaism and in my just general kind of relationships. And I'm now at a point where I'm okay with introducing these to foster a conversation where I'm sort of doing a tikkun or I'm sort of doing a repair for my kids and where I'm introducing this intentional self correcting Orthodox system, but with the knowledge that it doesn't exist to then create conversations with them where they can approach Orthodox Judaism by recognizing that there is this happy way that all kids deserve to know the world exists. Kids deserve. And in fact, a lot of what we think about in terms of negative childhood experiences are children who don't get the opportunity to engage with a world that's whole, right? That's a negative, that's an adverse childhood experience. Child good childhood experiences are childhood experiences in which they engage with a whole universe. Right? And so I want to give my kids That I want to give them a sense that the universe that they're in is whole as well and self correcting. But I also want to do so now with the tools where when they notice a lack of intentionality, we can talk about that and they can come and talk to me about it and they can talk to others about it because they're going to realize that in any world. So yeah, actually, Dani, with the help of this book, it really helped me to start having that conversation with myself too. So it was a little self correcting on my end. There was a little tikkun there on my end.
- [58:18]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
That's fantastic. Well, thank you for all of that. We're going to shift gears again to Miriam. Miriam, you also wrote about music and you wrote about how ultra Orthodox music is a mix of traditional elements along with more modern ones, often incorporating or mimicking aspects of non Jewish music. Could you expand on that, please?
- [58:44]
Chana Leibovitz
Yeah, sure. So this was from just a quick literature review that I had done when I decided to write about Hanukkah music. And I was curious to see what other academics might have written about music. And that's where you actually see the literature, where it talks about the kind of like movement you see between the religious world and the outside world that you see in the music, where you see them borrowing tunes, borrowing trends, borrowing styles. So that's where you actually see a bit of a literature that discusses that in general in the academic world.
- [59:17]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. And you also wrote that ultra Orthodox English language songs often mix in Yiddish or Hebrew words. Can you give us an example of this at work using the Miami Boys Choir song We need you?
- [59:34]
Chana Leibovitz
Yeah, so that's one that I talk about in the piece. It's an interesting contrast to the Hanukkah music that I was talking about, where you often see English language music with pure English language within the songs. But in general, in Haredi music, you find that there's this blend, this blend of jargon. So in we need you, it's a song about the need for people to pray to God, to daven, to hashem. And in that song, in their chorus, they say, we need you, we need your tefillos, we need your prayers. But Hebrew tefilos, each and every Yid, each and every Jewish person, Yid is Yiddish, can bring the geula, the Gaula is mashiach, messiah, redemption. But again, a Hebrew word that's more commonly used in the Haredi world. And what was interesting to me is how that stands in contrast to the word prayer, the English word that's used in a lot of the Hanukkah music that reference praying. They don't say the word tefillah. They don't say the word that's, you know, the Hebrew. They don't use the word daven, the Yiddish, but they'll use the word pray the English.
- [60:35]
And to me, that signified that it's appealing to a slightly different audience, a slightly different demographic, because when it's completely inward focused, the songs will use the jargon and they'll be written in the way that haredim usually speak with Yiddish, with Hebrew, you know, especially for words that have to do with rituals, observances, beliefs.
- [60:56]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right, right. And what messages do you see present in the ultra Orthodox pop songs related to Hanukkah that you look at?
- [61:06]
Chana Leibovitz
Yeah, so related to Hanukkah, what I found is that.
- [61:11]
A lot of them seem to be directed both inward and outward, in contrast to haredi music that typically is directed inward toward the community for consumption. And it seemed to have more of a keyword focus, like an outreach focus, an intention to loop people in and bring people closer to a haredi way of life. And you see that in the themes of the songs, like, there's the song about a secularized family, an assimilated family that lights Hanukkah candles. And the reason this happened was because the child in the family had been asking his father to set up a Christmas tree like the neighbors had set up. And the father's awakened his Jewish heritage, and he's like, that's a line he won't cross. So he lights the Hanukkah candles, and it kind of like brings them back home. It brings the family back home, but not only that, like, back. Back to their Jewish roots. It also awakens the rest of their neighborhood, the rest of their block. And suddenly they're looking out the window and they see the houses. Their neighboring houses have lit menorahs, too. The neighbors that they thought were Christians and that had Christmas trees were lighting their menorahs too, because that spark awakened something in them. That lighting of the menorah awakened something in them that brought them back to their heritage. And you see that in other songs, too, that these Hanukkah songs have messaging about Kirov and seem to be being used as a vehicle for Kirav as well. Kirav meaning in reach. Bringing people inward, outreach, you know, bringing people from the outside closer to a haredi way of life.
- [62:37]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. So ultra Orthodox Jews who are trying to encourage other Jews who are not Orthodox to become more Orthodox, more observant in an Orthodox way.
- [62:50]
Chana Leibovitz
Exactly. And it's still, and I would say in reach too, because it's still aimed at a Haredi audience as well. Like, these are part of their albums that are geared toward Haredim. So sometimes it's hard to tell, are they writing these songs for outsiders to listen to and be awakened to Judaism, or are they writing them for insiders to listen to, to sort of validate their own belief system that other people are awakened to their way of life? You know, it's very validating to feel that other people see your way of life and find it inspiring and find that it gives meaning and then come to your way of life. Because that's the meaningful one, that's the true one.
- [63:17]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. Regardless of how many people are actually coming over. Just this idea that there are all these people from the outside, the non Orthodox Jewish community, who are going to suddenly embrace a more Orthodox way of life, that could be kind of reaffirming for members of the Orthodox community itself.
- [63:36]
Goldie Gross
Exactly.
- [63:36]
Chana Leibovitz
And arguably you could say that's a function of Kirov, too. That a function of Kirov is not purely to bring people from the outside in, but it's a way of validating their own belief system by being able to tell these narratives of people from the outside coming to their way of life.
- [63:52]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. And there certainly are books written or articles written by people who were kind of mini celebrities or had some.
- [64:03]
Yehudis Keller
You.
- [64:03]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Know, prestigious position outside the Orthodox Jewish world and then embraced Orthodox Judaism. And they're looked at as basically, you know, to say, hey, this person was a big shot outside the community. And then they joined us. So like, obviously we, the Orthodox or ultra Orthodox community, are obviously on the right track because we attracted such a, you know, wonderful person from outside our ranks.
- [64:31]
Chana Leibovitz
Exactly. You see this a lot in the high schools as well, where they'll bring in care personalities to speak to the kids. And that's also a time when kids in adolescence, kids start questioning and bringing in these people, either who have left. I'm sorry, not who have left, who have. Who have been raised outside of their world, but chosen to adopt a Haredi way of life, or people who are cure of professionals who work with people to bring them back to Orthodoxy, or from a secular life into Orthodoxy, though they had never experienced it before. So I think it's interesting and telling that you see these people talking to kids at this formative stage in their life, in their adolescence, and that's their way of validating the faith. It's not necessarily through proofs. It's often through these kinds of narratives like the one you gave. I mean, I remember this from when I was a teenager. We had one Kira personality who came like. I think it was like, in the name of he's going to prove to you, he's going to answer all your questions. And in the end it ended up being a slew of narratives like the one you said. I spoke to this guy and I made him from. He was like, I don't remember, like a Hollywood personality. And I made him from. It was like a slew of narratives like that. And that was supposed to be validating the fact that other people find truth in what you're living already.
- [65:39]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. And from is Orthodox is a kind of Orthodox or ultra Orthodox term for being part of the Orthodox community. Right.
- [65:48]
Danny Bernstein
So.
- [65:48]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Okay, last question. And I really enjoyed reading all of the essays in the book and I really enjoyed thinking about Chana's.
- [65:59]
Reflections on the journey's songs and whether or not she should share them with her, with her children, and connecting that with Miriam with your take on this. And I thought that was really interesting when you wrote that often the ultra Orthodox community is concerned about consuming non Orthodox music, and especially for their children consuming it, that they feel that this could be morally or spiritually.
- [66:31]
Counterproductive. And I'm wondering, you raised issue about what happens for someone who grew up in the ultra Orthodox community and then is no longer a part of it. How should they feel about sharing the music of that community with their children who are not living an ultra Orthodox life? And how did you think about that?
- [66:56]
Chana Leibovitz
Yeah, so that's something I'm constantly grappling with. It's very nostalgic for me. I do love the music. I think listening to other kinds of Jewish music doesn't feel authentic. And authentic, that's a complicated word. But just because that's the music of my own upbringing. So that's what I associate with the holidays. And it's funny because, like, even.
- [67:18]
The newer tunes or the newer CDs, if I were to listen to those, I wouldn't relate to them in the same way as if I were playing for my kids the songs that I actually grew up with.
- [67:28]
So even there, there's a bit of that rupture for me, but that's a big part of it, the feeling, the semblance of authenticity. Because I don't think we have a claim to authenticity in music over other traditions. Especially since going back to what you started with, even a lot of Haredi music is borrowed. The tunes are borrowed. This is what Dani was talking about in the beginning also. Right. The techno that you see in. What was it? The khevrah you were talking about. Right. Very much borrowed. And yet it feels authentic when you're in the Haredi world and you're growing up with that, if you're in a community that allows that kind of music. Of course, there was a lot of debate around it.
- [68:05]
But, yeah, that's definitely part of it. Like, it feels authentic. It's the music I associate with the different holidays. What's funny is now on Echo, you know, the Amazon Echo, you can actually play this music. You don't even. You don't need CDs anymore. You can just tell Echo to play the songs as you get closer to the holidays. It'll play Uncle Maishy. I play that for my kids on Echo sometimes, too. So I think it's also. Part of it is also the accessibility that made it so easy to pass this on to my kids without going out of my way to find the specific songs. It's just like it's in my home already. It's on that little device, you know? So the accessibility was also a big part of it, which I don't write about, but I'm going to be honest about all the pieces. That's definitely a part of it. But then at the same time, like, I'm listening to the songs and I do have to wonder, like, is there anything that I. That I'm uncomfortable with in this music? And it's something that I'm constantly thinking about, like, is there any part of this that I'd be uncomfortable passing on to my kids? Is there messaging that I'm uncomfortable with? Is there messaging that's inappropriate? You know, in the Haredi world, inappropriate is anything that's not Haredi, that's opposed to their lifestyle. But there are things in the Haredi world that I find inappropriate in their worldview. So is that coming through in their music? It's something that's always on my mind and I have to be looking out for, like, how. How do they talk about the non Jew? Does that come up in their music? Do I want my children hearing the non Haredi denigrated? If that's coming through in the music, you know, so that's definitely a part of it that's on my mind.
- [69:31]
Goldie Gross
And.
- [69:32]
Chana Leibovitz
And I think a lot of the songs feel more innocuous and just traditional. And those are the ones that I'm bringing into my home.
- [69:41]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right, right, right. Well, obviously, there's so much more to Explore here. We're going to have to leave it there, except we have the last question for Dani. I'm wondering what do you hope the readers of your edited volume will take away from it?
- [69:57]
Danny Bernstein
The main thing I hope people take away from this is that Orthodox childhood, while it is two things, that it is unique and varied and that it also is actually not all that different from other childhoods. There's a real kind of attitude toward Orthodox people and it's kind of ramping up a little bit with, you know, we're seeing more attacks on visibly Orthodox looking people.
- [70:28]
There's this idea that Orthodox people are very different and that's not entirely true. They are. The Orthodox communities are very different from more mainstream communities in the fact that they are closed communities. But a lot of the things that children experience and that adolescents experience in the Jewish community, in the Orthodox communities do cross boundaries. And what I hope happens here is that there is more of an interesting. In thinking about Orthodox childhoods and thinking about these kinds of artifacts, one of the things that happened was, you know, there's an essay on the. On toy production and that has generated some online discussion about other, other toys that were made for Orthodox communities and how that overlaps with some, you know, some of the mainstream toys and the considerations in, you know, the actual technical aspects of that. And then also there's some overlap with some, you know, really Christian communities and how they're developing toys and the books and the music. There's a lot of overlap here.
- [71:34]
So what I hope for this edited volume is first of all that people have an awareness of this. And we have seen that in some of the responses to this book, people have been saying like, I never thought about it that way. And I think, I mean, books exist about Orthodox childhoods. You know, anthropologists like Ayala Feder have written about Orthodox childhoods. But what I think is this is this is really more accessible to a non academic audience. And that's kind of what my point was, to kind of gain an awareness of how important this field is. And specifically my goal in all of this is kind of thinking about the real people that grew up or are growing up with these things.
- [72:19]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Right. Well, thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts with us today.
- [72:25]
Danny Bernstein
Thank you so much for having us here. Zalmen.
- [72:29]
Schneer Zalman Neufeld
That concludes our program. Thanks for listening and have a great day.