This article presents a critique of standard responses to issues of tsni’uti through online 'ask the rabbi' websites, guidebooks and similar phenomena Instead, author offers guidelines for High school sex and family education curricula (developed by the author, along withRabbi Barukh Kehat, Rabbi Dr. Ariel Pickar, Dr. Hannah Kehat) for girls and boys, equally.  These guidelines are based on learned feminist religious perspective, and re-envisioning ts'niut as a positive ethical and spiritual value.

A concise review of the curriculum “Life Values and Intimacy Education: Health Education for the Jewish School,”  developed by Yocheved Debow and Anna Woloski-Wruble.  The scope of the course extends far beyond mere “sex education” to include “life values,” only a portion of which relate to sexuality.  The curriculum has been field-tested at various schools in grade levels four through seven and adjusted, based on the varied reactions of boys and girls.  The reviewer deems this to be a finely tuned and tested, comprehensive curriculum on issues of life values, sexuality, and self-image.

According to a legend recorded by Rashi in his commentary on the Talmud (b. Avodah Zarah 18b), Beruriah succumbed to the seduction of one of the disciples of her husband, Rabbi Meir –at his request-- and when the affair was revealed, she strangled herself and Rabbi Meir fled in disgrace.  Joel Wolowelsky suggests that the purpose of Rashi's anecdote was “to reprimand Rabbi Meir for his outrageous behaviour.”  Brenda Bacon responds with evidence for how the story was understood as a justification not to allow women to study Talmud.

Mitzvah Girls is an ethnographic study about how Hasidic Jewish girls are brought up in Brooklyn to become the women responsible for raising the next generation of non-liberal Orthodox Jews (haredim).  Ayala Feder gives us a fascinating view of the “other side”, examining language, gender, and attitudes to the body from infancy to adulthood in the context of homes, classrooms, and city streets.  She points to several examples in the lives of these young women that collapse conventional distinctions between the religious and the secular.

See David Wolpe's book review:  Mitzvah Girls (Book Review), Commentary Magazine Dec. 2009: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/mitzvah-girls--by-ayala-fader-15301?search=1

This essay is reprinted, with permission, from Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies (Yale University Press, 1996), one of the first books to be concerned with the role of gender in the production of knowledge about Judaism in the academic world.  It evaluates the development of feminist scholarship in various fields within Jewish studies. Eminent scholars in biblical studies, rabbinics, theology, history, literature, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and film studies assess the state of knowledge about women in each field, analyze how this knowledge has affected the mainstream of the discipline, and propose new questions and concepts to pursue.  To purchase the book: http://www.amazon.com/Feminist-Perspectives-Studies-Professor-Davidman/dp/0300068670