“Being Jewish makes me feel special.” “My parents want me to have the best education possible.” “How can I get him to pay attention to me?” “Hebrew school is boring.” “Should I go to the school play or to services on Friday night?” “My family, friends and God are the most important things in the world to me.”
Sound familiar? Many of you probably recognize your own teenage daughters somewhere in this litany. In fact, these sentiments were actually expressed — in less contemporary parlance — by adolescent American Jewish girls who lived up to 140 years ago.
Writing of Passover in 1876, Amelia Allen joked, “I am not at all tired of matzos though they seem tired of me for they feel just now as if they were all sticking in a lump in my throat.”
In 1890, 17-year-old Jennie Franklin fretted, “I am anxious, crazy to learn but at the same time want to go out and have a good time; true I am not quite so crazy for the boys as the majority of girls are.”
Bella Weretnikow confided to her diary in 1896: “My greatest ambition for the near future is to attend the university.”
When I began to research the lives of adolescent Jewish girls in America between 1860 and 1920, I was warned that I might not find any material. What could girls possibly say that anyone would think worth preserving?
As it turned out, a lot.
In diaries, letters, memoirs, scrapbooks and photo albums, Jewish girls took themselves seriously as individuals and members of families and communities. They were taken no less seriously by those around them. American Jewish periodicals across the religious and political spectrum spilled rivers of ink ruminating over “The Religious Education of Our Females” or “About Our Daughters.” As potential teachers, communal workers, wives and mothers, girls were seen as the core of American Jewry.
“They are the future mothers of Hebrew citizens … and upon them depends what the coming Jew will be,” said one contributor to an 1890 symposium on Jewish girls.
It would not have occurred to many Jewish girls of the time to resist these domestic assumptions about their future. On the contrary, these roles granted them prestige and influence within their families and communities. They would grow into women, so they were expected to function as carriers of tradition. Because of their youth, they were expected to function as agents of acculturation.
Jewish girls responded to their dual tasks by finding ways to integrate their American and Jewish identities. They enjoyed the same books as their classmates but also read explicitly Jewish material. They attended dances with their peers but moved into increasingly Jewish social circles as they neared marriage. They went to high schools and colleges, but also Hebrew schools.
What struck me most was how familiar the girls seemed to me. True, I was a middle-class adolescent Jewish girl myself not so long ago. But it was more than that. Across the decades, these girls shared concerns about education, religion, family and social life that still resonate today.
The words of these young women of so long ago testify to the concerns central to Jews throughout their history in America. No historian would ever argue that little has changed over the past century. American Jews participated in the transformation of their nation and their religious and ethnic lives. Yet it may be telling that so many of their struggles, as exemplified in the history of adolescent Jewish girls, remain with us today.
What is women’s role in Judaism? How important is formal religious education to the development of strong Jewish identity? How do we balance commitment to tradition with interest in modernization?
At the turn of the last century, as at the turn of this one, there was no one answer to any of these questions. Individual circumstances of class status, geographic location, family structure, religious observance and personality affected each girl’s experiences and attitudes. Still, all of them dealt on some level with the central issue of modern Judaism, the fluidity of identity made possible by free societies. The core task of developing an American Jewish identity influenced all of them as it does all of us.
The past was never paradise, and the turn of the century was a contentious period in American Jewish history in terms of institution-building, denominational development and immigration. However, a usable past does emerge from studying the fresh perspective of adolescent girls’ lives. Jewish girls, too, worked to balance the heritage of the past with the demands of the present and the hope of the future. As the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in America continues, it is worth pausing to take note of how even previously ignored groups of historical figures contributed to the encounter between “Jewishness” and “Americanness.”
As Amelia Allen put it, “Thankful ought we to be both as a nation and as a religious body that we are allowed to think and act as we wish!”
We should not assume that only experienced adults contemplate critical issues or develop strategies for dealing with multifaceted identities. It might behoove us to listen carefully to the youth of yesterday and today as we try to set a course for the American Jewish community of tomorrow.
Melissa Klapper is an assistant professor of history at Rowan University in New Jersey.