What I Learned as a Satmar Hasidic Girl

[Music] foreign [Music] when I was a teenager I kept pretty much everything we did in school in Maroon finders which I very much cherish that had albums I had collections of things I had my schoolwork I built it up into this whole collection of maroon biters that I was very proud of here is a picture of my closet in my pride and joy of the maroon theme notice I spray painted the closet rod maroon this is what was in my concert sure you don't need me to show you that uh I'm here to look at some of those maroon binders to show you what I as a sophomore acidic girl learned in our school system so do you get a sense of what my education was about and perhaps I can develop further a series on the acidic education system how it might have been before my time how it is during this time now which is 20 30 years later and how it is of course for the boys side of the aisle which is completely different okay um we're going to take a look at my grade 6 binder which for some reason is a picture of George W bush in here this is completely falling apart this has two parts the Yiddish side and the English side our school day was structured in two segments the morning was Yiddish which is what we call the judaic studies and the afternoon was English which is what we call the secular studies they had their own offices their own Administration their own reporting report cards and ptas it was it was very little overlap between the two administrations the secular subjects and the Yiddish subjects and generally we thought the secular subjects The English Department was cooler and and the teachers were more fun and the Yiddish was me pretty boring and dull because he just goes right to left on the right side of my binder we have Yiddish these are the subjects we had in school I had partial which is the weekly portion of the Torah we start with voracious and all the supernirish we had to ask what happened after after Noah and the flood God promised not to bring another flood parachute for here this is a test that was signed by my parents I got a 98. it's a pleasure I was not a great student by the way then we had Yahoo is holidays this is a document what did I pray up for which prayers did I recite during Passover it is empty hi Eid hi is Israeli Independence Day but the summer sect is anti-zionist so we didn't celebrate Israeli Independence Day instead it was a date to be critical of the Zionist movement and we understood Zionism as a secular anti-religious sort of innovation of a new Jew that was a affront to the traditions and the pious Heritage that we kept sacred the summer sect and the submariba famously believed that the Jews should not be a sovereign self-governed people before the Messiah came but I want to point out that we had many of us relatives in Israel so our anti-zionism was not anti the people of Israel but anti-designist philosophy and which school do you learn do you study I'm studying in bicycle the holy Rabbi Joel title Baum founded it with what goal did the rabbi found this school with a goal to to grab back Jewish children from the Zionist hands and to teach the children in the pious Jewish ways for example how to go in modest clothing and to observe the mitzvahs bring from Jewish history all the times when there were those who wanted Jews to to leave the path of the Holy Torah masculim which are our reformers zionists um apostates reformers who are the people in our era who lead the Jewish children from the true Pious ways I wrote zionists I have no memory of learning about zionists and all of this but this is just a small part of my education um this so this is the laws of Shabbos for instance I have a test over here what is allowed what is not allowed and what is the question and I had to answer for 14 questions are these Deeds allowed on Shabbos you see both my mother and my father signed off on the test so what for instance would be asked on a test like this let's say are you allowed to take food out of the pot while the pot is on the hot plate or are you allowed to carry a broche while you walk in a public space we had Fairly Advanced knowledge in laws through the laws subject which varied from year to year one year we learned the laws of Shabbos but other years we learned let's say the laws on blessings or for the laws on kosher and so on so these are these are various rules that we learned as part of the Shabbos laws this is history did you study for this test in the judaic studies section of my book is just judaic studies history so it is a very particular era of History okay so let me show you this page it is titled which means history summary and it is actually on shmiel Olive which is the book of Samuel 1 from the Old Testament so the review sheet summarizes characters of Samuel 1 and each year we learn different parts of the Old Testament as the that we covered that year what we called history in the Yiddish studies was actually parts of the biblical story so these are the times of the temple that we are learning about that that is called that is called history but this is apart from history in in the English Department this is touch which is translation from Hebrew as girls we didn't learn a lot of Hebrew in fact I had a hard time with it I think because I wrote that this this is a very difficult test next time it should be much easier we have paidek which was stories that we recited during the Shabbos afternoons along shops afternoons the flu is avoided which were the Miracles of God and lastly we have Yiddish vardhana was worth waiting and this was essay writings in Yiddish so as you can see there was a lot a lot of lessons about history morality the right way preserving piety against threats of assimilation this is the end of the intersection so for Yiddish in sixth grade we learned a portion of the torah's pieces of the story of the Torah as well as morality we learned about holidays in yahadas we learned about Shabbos lots of Shabbos in the lamentess of which was apart from the Parsha but also pertained only to judaic studies we learned taich which was about translating from Biblical Hebrew to Yiddish or learning how to translate some of the prayers we learned paidek which was also something that was recited in shops afternoons and we learned the stories around it and and lessons we learned which was the Miracles of God where we would learn about the the amazingness of the world and the lesson of the amazing work of of God in creating this world Yiddish was essay writing in the Yiddish language and finally extra and then the we would have a lunch and then the good part would begin all of the Yiddish also was accompanied with periods of reciting songs and reciting all of the prayers we also had breakfast every day as part of the Yiddish program after lunch begin our English curriculum the English teacher we had one teacher for the entire day of English and she would teach math we are learning to work with money we have problem solving we have division these are regular often regular worksheets that have been copied and used for our curriculum often with bits of them censored the next subject is history and this is very different history this history we are learning about the history of the world social studies test Mesopotamia and Egypt I will tell you I had a completely to completely different parallel concept of the history of the world one that we learned in the morning which had to me no overlap and and was a very different story of the past and the other that we learned in the afternoon where we learned about Mesopotamia and Egypt and and just the whole fascinating world wars we learned about American independence in its early days Rome was first ruled by a king the majority of citizens and Emperor of the Greeks so these were very different but also they were censored as needed this is spelling so we learned how to spell words I have a gift of being a terrible speller we learned grammar so we learned to understand the noun a verb eventually by 11th grade we're supposed to be able to really take sentences apart um and and be able to identify the type of words tenses of a sentence we had map skills Peninsula song uh well chug away from the USA to Peninsula far away for just a very short day from all four corners classic D here we come from the Balkan Peninsula then that's uh we had literature for instance we read The Crickets in The Cricket in Times Square and then we had questions what type of story is Cricket in Times Square so we were obviously reading stuff that wasn't made for the community directly I believe now there's a lot of school material that's been made for the community directly oh my God School yards filled with children so we learned very fancy English language songs in school I remember this I remember where I sat by the window in school when we learned this song Running happy running free smiles and Youthful faces Lively shouts of Glee watching from a window in a bracelets made of steel sits a lonely little boy whom doctors cannot heal I did give a child a chance the parts I remember you know this song is very interesting it's a song that we learned to recite about a child that is friendless a lot of what we learned in school didn't sink in for me very much you were supposed to be very serious about the laws of Shabbos and I feel like it didn't touch me in a very strong way but the lessons we had in some kids are lonely and and they look at them how sad it is for them and no one is their friends and you need to make an effort to be their friends which was what we were taught repeatedly in Yiddish in English the entire school was very much aware of the importance of making sure no one is without friends and no one is lonely and how important it was for everyone to look after the girls who didn't have friends and that really touched me I took it very very much to heart songs like these would bring me to tears we had reading comprehension we had science where we learned about photosynthesis and we had writing this was the highlight we had a poetry notebook where we had to take our essays and decorate it into a beautiful poetry notebook so this is my sixth grade poetry notebook titled expressions and in here there was a greeting card so when you opened it it's saying and you could play the piano and this is supposed to be the table of contents I spent hours with my friends working on decorating our poetry notebook this is the first essay I had in my notebook it is the about the author from the desk of FW hi this is the author Freddie wertheimer I'm born in year 85 in Brooklyn New York 11211 my mother and father came from Australia this is not true by the way they love writing it was in year 89 when I started writing I made cute little articles in year 92 I started writing some small papers writing God beloved to me in year 94 I started writing excellent compositions and now in year 96 97 I published this book I hope you'll enjoy it well kind of was a little sad that it's here 2023 and I have no book and this version of me was really ahead of the game you always put your essay in a qt presentation you know what I did not know this to me this was a cute pig I did not know that this is Porky the Pig I think the vast majority of people would identify this illustration as a character named Porky this is my school pictures I collected a lot of pictures Yiddish teachers English teachers everything big collector of pictures this is me we were having a lot of fun oh see this is a mock wedding she's obviously dressed up as the bride we played so many mock weddings there's the group this is me and here's me with maroon binders during the break after the school year we went to summer camp where we spent our time in an all-girls summer camp putting up performances another way I can show you what we learned in school is by showing you my report card this is for instance the Yiddish report card this is the school building that we went to it's very pretty it is also a wedding venue and it's where I got married my report card has a section on behavior on respect for The Elder on modesty on responsibility on prayer on sewing on behavior in the lunchroom and on keeping the times we would also have a report card that was mixing our grades and our Behavior so we had sewing classes that were part of the Yiddish curriculum this is one year my courses I already threw up all of these things so I only have digital version where we learned the goal of the course would be to be able to sew clothing um in its entirety dive oh is those who can't sew clothing in its entirety and need to buy really cheap things uh to be able to fix them to make them modest so what does it mean to be modest it means it has to be entirely closed at the at the neck the sleeve has to be long and any stand with let's say a cuff or a pleat the length needs to be long enough of the skirt and any slit has to be closed through various um ways you can close a slit so what we actually learned in sewing class that year was how to do various pleats for instance this is a skirt pleat extension and we did little models pleat insert in slash skirt double pleat skirt Center pleat we also learned how to properly clean natalus a men's prayer shawl which is really difficult to clean because it has an attachment of silver on it that has to be sewn off it has to be removed and then sewn back on and this is the lesson on how to clean the Telus which I found to be particularly challenging this is uh part of my ninth grade education in Yiddish we learned about anger about uh enemies breaking peace he who believes that everything comes from God doesn't get angry at his Messengers is what I wrote here you should remember not to get angry there was a lot of that um as far as I remember learning to temper expression of of expansive emotions like rage people do not like to spend time with someone who has anger issues I want to take a look at some of the ways in which our curriculum was censored let's let's take a look at a little bit of censorship [Music] foreign exploration we learned most people think that Columbus was the first person to discover America this is not true both the Indians and the Vikings arrived before Columbus many thousands of years before Columbus was born groups of people from Asia followed animal herds across a narrow strip of land that once connected with connected North America to Asia and this has sort of been censored out with a bunch of question marks and a parentheses on it I suppose it goes too much into the history that takes us back to conflicted with the world being as uh six thousand years old or so Clinton's tough new law will Outlaw cigarettes advertisements at sport events on items like t-shirts and hats and in youth oriented try to figure out what this word means I think I have an idea but this is kind of how parts of these standardized sheets were censored Cinemas I think it is Paige who's among who's who among governments we have various countries and the segment on Israel has been crossed out because our education was anti-zionist and the idea of Jews having a sovereign government I suppose was something that the sensors believed needed to be taken out here's another example of censorship funny she thought she didn't know why but she was even more uptight than usual she was tired and looked forward to A long soak in the tub and her new crossed out and they said periodical I suppose the word magazine was not Kosher enough Dear Mrs Feldman apologize for our ruid Behavior we now know that it is wrong to misbehave I hope that we are forgiven and we'll try our utmost to improve thanks you for teaching us a good lesson ah choosing words that say exactly what you want to say is like fine tuning I'm guessing a radio I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists that one day right there in Alabama little black boys join hands with little white boys I have a dream today so the boys and girls holding hands together has been censored out the thing that's interesting about censorship is how pronounced it is when you go back in adulthood and with adult eyes to look at that which has been censored of course selectively it's especially interesting to look at it because I have no memory of anything I'm seeing that's been censored here this is what we learned in English in grade seven we learned history spelling math grammar literature poetry reading comprehension writing science and lastly geography and it is quite interesting we learned about all sorts of world events we we really covered a lot of Concepts like phobias poems literature I only have these two years but in high school we had home economics where we learned how to take care of the home which was one subject of let's say 10 English subjects we had sewing that was it there was no art there was no extras what my son calls extras there was no music oh there was computers it started in ninth grade with typewriting we had a big typewriting room we learned how to how to touch type this was before the internet was on computers and computers were a little more innocent back then finally at the end before my graduation from school we did a yearbook which was called a flame where various essays were published by other students jokes give me jokes uh let's see I have a limerick a walking encyclopedia and actress number one a popular ringleader and a World of Fun I don't remember this at all so this was our yearbook and after 11th grade we graduated and went out to work and that was the end of my formal education I don't know how much things have changed today and perhaps we can explore more of that but certainly all of this and the extent to which we learned about the world differed enormously from what my brothers were learning however I still had a really hard time grasping a linear story about the world because of the The Duality of the versions of the world we learned about well that wraps up all I have just a couple binders of course we had textbooks and notebooks and a ton of things I think they illuminate a little bit of what my education was like and if you like this kind of thing please let me know leave a comment tell me what questions you have what I didn't answer what else intrigues you and I'd love to continue exploring education in the religious community with you Mona I gotcha subscribe so I can make me like it we can climb around [Music]

Channel: Frieda Vizel - Brooklyn Tour Guide

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Keywords: hasidic girls, ex hasidic girls, ex satmar girls, satmar girls learning, satmar education, hasidic education, orthodox jewish education, ultra orthodox jewish education, new york times hasidic education, nyt hasidic boys learning, nyt hasidic private schools, hasidic private school curriculum, footsteps, otd girls, otd satmer girls, chasidic education, kiryas joel, bais rochel, zionism, anti zionism, satmar anti zionism, bais rochel girls education, joel teitelbaum

Id: ZRhOovJLcBY

Length: 23min 32sec (1412 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023