Measuring Hair at NJ's Lakewood Girls School Bnos Yaakov.
How Long Should a Schoolgirl's Hair Be?
Modesty Clampdowns Spark Anger in Haredi Circles!
A video shared on social media shows teachers measuring students' hair in a New Jersey school, while an Israeli school monitors the parents' wardrobe.
Ultra-Orthodox society is becoming more open in many ways – for instance, by allowing the teaching of non-religious subjects in some schools – but two recent incidents in the United States and Israel show that this trend may have sparked a conservative backlash.
A video clip circulating on social media shows an incident in New Jersey, which piqued a flurry of comments among the local community: Female teachers are shown measuring the hair length of schoolgirls at Lakewood Girls School Bnos Yaakov to be sure the girls meet the strict Haredi standards of modesty (tsnius).
Bnos Yaakov administrators wrote a letter to the girls’ parents, declaring that their hair may not reach more than four inches below their collarbone, with the optimal length being two inches below. The length should be measured with the hair left loose, the school wrote, though naturally while in class, any girl with below shoulder-length locks must tie them up in some fashion. If their hair exceeds the limit, the girls will be forced to have it cut, according to the letter.
The Lakewood school is not associated with conservative sects like Neturei Karta or the Satmar Hasids, but rather belongs to the relatively moderate Lithuanian stream of ultra-Orthodoxy.
The letter and the Youtube clip showing hair being measured have sparked much debate in the Haredi world – and not for the first time: In 2012 the American Jewish community was roiled by the description of hellishly painful punishment meted out to immodest girls, courtesy of Bnos Yaakov.
At present, many people, even those subscribing to the principles of tsnius, have been outraged by the school’s conduct. One anonymous response to the video was, “If the school has an issue with a child’s hair length, it should be taken up privately between the administration and the parents. How DARE this school humiliate these girls in front of their classmates and teachers.”
Other commenters blamed such regulations for causing children to go “OTD” – off the derech, in Haredi parlance – meaning to go astray.
Moms and dads, too
A second recent incident involving modesty occurred in Israel and was reported on the local Haredi website Bhadrei Haredim. The Clal Hasidei Elad girls' school sent a letter to parents demanding that they abide by certain strict policies to ensure modesty in the home.
The mother, the letter said, must be sure the wig covering her hair will not reach the bottom of the nape of her neck. There are even directives for the wig itself: It must be of a certain quality suitable to those of fine Hasidic families and it cannot have any curls. If the mother wants to use makeup, it must be applied with a delicate hand but is forbidden on the eyes.
Mothers must also undertake to eschew nail polish and not wear skirts that are any shorter than halfway up their shins, let alone to wear any tight or gaudy apparel. Nor may they wear anything made of Lycra, or bandanas, in keeping with the precept that “I am careful that not even one single hair on my head shows."
The girls’ fathers, according to Clal Hasidei Elad's administration, must wear suits and hats when leaving the house, and “not touch the beard.”
The parents must declare that they follow these directives in order for their daughters to be enrolled and to remain in the school, but its administrators are not satisfied with a mere statement: A third party must guarantee that the families are indeed adhering to the rules, and must sign a document stating: “I the undersigned guarantee that the ___ family, the signatory, will comply ... and if heaven forfend they do not, I shall make sure to remove their daughter from the school."
Chaim Walder, a religiously observant author and educational consultant in Israel, says he personally can’t understand such policies and wouldn’t send his daughter to a school like that, but stopped short of condemning it in a conversation with Haaretz.
“I haven’t heard about things like this in the past, but the parents who send their children to such a place want the strict rules. Nobody forces them to send their children there. Just as I don’t understand a person who takes jeans, tears them up [before wearing them] and thinks that looks pretty, but I don’t have a problem with it – it’s the same here," Walder said. "In contrast to many liberals, I am also liberal toward people who are not liberal. To each his own.”
Walder does agree, however, that some of the liberal trends surfacing in the Haredi world today may be causing a conservative backlash – and justifiably so, in his view, because of the mounting worry in ultra-Orthodox society about the burgeoning influence of Western culture on life today.
Menachem Bombach is waiting behind the gate outside his school
building on a dusty hilltop: long black coat, short beard, thin-rimmed
glasses, the look of a refined yeshiva student, hands folded in front of
him. He smiles and says, “Welcome, welcome!”
It’s hard to believe that this gentleman’s home has become the site
of frequent demonstrations by religious zealots. His apartment door and
lock have been smeared with tar several times; his neighborhood was
covered in pashkevilim, posters, denouncing him as a Haredi
imposter and calling on him to “return to Tel Aviv.” And when he was
recognized upon a visit to his childhood neighborhood Mea Shearim,
locals threw bottles and diapers at him, tearing off his yarmulke.
Bombach has faced this sort of protest ever since he first opened his
school in Beitar Ilit three years ago — a high school for Hasidic boys
that teaches math and science, and offers bagrut matriculation,
exams. While this model has always existed in the Haredi Lithuanian
community, though on the margins, this school is the first of its kind
in the Israeli Hasidic world, and it’s quickly beginning to attract
attention from prospective parents. A Mea Shearim Boy
Beitar Ilit is a colorless metropolis rising out of the Judean Hills,
a settlement-city 10 kilometers south of Jerusalem with a rapidly
growing population. With rent a fraction of the Jerusalem rate, Beitar
Ilit has attracted both Hasidim and Lithuanian Haredim alike, desperate
for space to accommodate their growing families. Walk down Rabbi Akiva
Street, and watch the perpetual rush of the crowd, fathers in long black
coats and black hats, mothers in headscarves and stockings, more
strollers than cars, boys with curled side-locks and girls in long
pleated skirts.
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“It’s a liberal city,” Bombach says.
I laugh.
“Nu, in Haredi terms, liberal,” he says, smiling. “It’s all relative.”
The zealous demonstrators, Bombach explains, are not Beitar Ilit
locals. They’re imports — either residents of Beit Shemesh, who
originally came from Mea Shearim, or Lithuanian Jerusalemite Haredim,
who are affiliated with Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach. Nothing is truly
monolithic here.
But he pays the protesters no attention. “They don’t worry me,” he
says. “After all, it’s thanks to them that many more people know about
me!” He waves his hand, as if to dismiss the shouts echoing in his mind,
and smiles calmly. “Anyways, they keep me on my feet, they’re a
constant watchdog, they keep me accountable for my actions.”
Despite his innovative thinking, Bombach is no outsider.
Raised in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim, with a Satmar Hasidic father and a
mother from a zealous Eda Haharedit family, Bombach did not speak
Hebrew — only Yiddish — until he turned 20. After studying in a local
heder, he went on to study in the Yeshiva Ktana of Vizhnitz and then at
the Lithuanian Mir Yeshiva. When he married at the age of 20, he left
yeshiva and eventually turned to education: He moved to Migdal Haemek,
where he started as a counselor at a boys yeshiva, and within four years
became vice principal. As his children grew, he sought a more Haredi
environment for his growing family, so he moved to Beitar Ilit, where he
began working in a yeshiva for Russian immigrants. It was here that he
began to dream of opening his own boys high school.
Tapped by an administrator at the Mandel Institute’s program for
leadership development in the Haredi community, Bombach completed the
institute’s leadership training program (of which he is now a senior
project director), and then went on to complete a degree in public
policy at Hebrew University, where he picked up a fluent English as
well.
His
dream was to open a school for Hasidic boys that taught secular studies
— a radical idea in this insular community. And three years ago, he
finally launched it, calling his project “Hamidrasha Hahasidit”: Not a
“yeshiva,” but rather a Hasidic “academy.” The curriculum includes the
usual schedule of hours spent on Talmud, the Bible, Halacha and Hasidic
thought — coupled with a packed schedule of classes in English,
mathematics, literature, Hebrew language, computer science and history.
Students are prepared to take the bagrut, Israeli matriculation
exams required for university entrance — a contentious issue in the
community, with many Haredi rabbis virulently opposed to religious
youths taking the exam at all.
Menachem Bombach
Menachem Bombach teaches students in his Midrasha Hahasidit in Beitar Ilit.
The school, however, is entirely in line with Haredi societal norms:
Teachers are all male, all Haredi or Hasidic. Eventual army service is
not discussed, and the school does not recognize Israel Independence Day
— though Bombach says the students do pray for fallen Israeli soldiers
on Memorial Day.
But this program isn’t just about secular studies, he says. “It’s
teaching them to be mensches, productive citizens of society. Not to
reject others.”
But how does one teach this, practically?
“Haven’t you seen my website?” he asks me.
You have a website? I am stunned. In a community where the internet
and smartphones are purportedly forbidden? What Israeli Haredi yeshiva
that wants to be taken seriously has a website?
He gives me an amused look. “Of course I have a website,” he says, and opens a sleek, well-designed page on his desktop.
Screenshot of the Midrasha Hahasidit website
On a page titled “Life Skills”,
a list of icons appears, subjects of seminars taught over the four
years: body language, the individual and society, team work, overcoming
preconceptions, personal hygiene, relationship with his parents,
relating to the state, citizenship, nutritious eating, personal finance,
personal boundaries.
Looking at the analytics, Bombach says 600 people enter the site daily to access information on education, parenting and recordings of lectures: “I think it’s becoming a resource for people, even those outside our school.”
But most community members don’t have internet, I counter.
“People ask me for information, and I tell them, go to my site,” he
says, simply. “They tell me they don’t have internet access. So I tell
them, find a way to get internet. I don’t have time for these games. I’m
very upfront.”
When Bombach opened Hamidrasha three years ago, the protests, the
angry articles and denouncements, were almost immediate. But so was the
demand.
Quietly, inquiries began to pour in. Parents were curious about this experiment.
Bombach takes only 20 students per year; for this incoming fall, he
says, there were 80 applicants for the 20 spots available. Half of the
students are local, the rest are from all over the country and live in a
dormitory nearby. About 60% of the funds come from the state, and the
rest from foreign donations. ‘There Is No Alternative’
Just this past week, after an article on Bombach appeared in the
Israeli magazine Makor Rishon, the Haredi daily Yated Neeman blasted him
as a “spiritual murderer.”
I ask him how it felt to be shamed in what is the most widely read paper in the Haredi Lithuanian community.
“I am blessed to have support from others,” he says. “But in the end
of the day, one must accept that one is alone. I am always walking on
eggs.”
“Most people tell me I’m making a mistake,” he says. “They tell me
that I have to work ‘under the radar’ [to improve my community]. But I
say that the radar is very, very high. Even if I work under the radar,
people will see me. It’s inevitable. People are just suspicious by
nature. But listen, Yated is the past. What I’m doing, this is the
future.”
Bombach is deeply concerned about the next generation of his
community. Between the ages of 0-14, there are approximately 500,000
Haredi children in Israel today, he estimates.
“If they don’t enter the workforce, we will become a Third World
country,” he warns. “And the Haredi world will be the first to suffer
for it. It’s hard for Haredim right now to understand how this can be.
But there’s no alternative. From here, we will have the future heads of
hospital wards, engineers, high-tech companies, scientists in the
service of the public. I really believe it. “
“Haredi society is a very good society,” he explains. “There is so
much idealism here, it is truly a world of chesed [acts of kindness], a
miraculous world. And it is turned to the future, it understands there
will be challenges. And we are figuring out how to protect our identity
throughout those challenges. You have to understand, I’m not changing
the community here. I’m protecting it.”
