Abigail Steinberg navigates the choppy waters of adolescence with apparent ease. But as a senior at a Jewish high school in Manhattan, she also observes many teenage girls overwhelmed by the push “to juggle it all, to have great grades and still have a great body image.” One acquaintance takes birth control pills with the goal of enlarging her breasts. At times, even for Steinberg, the mixed messages transmitted to adolescent Jewish females can be off-putting. “You’re a young Jewish girl. You have to be nice,” said Steinberg, a student at Abraham Joshua Heschel High School, who explains that although girls are expected to excel academically, female students often shy away from assertive comments in class. They don’t want to risk damaging their image. These
sorts of quiet but pervasive struggles of teenage girls may be old news to many, but until now they have also largely slipped beneath the radar screen of the Jewish community. Enter Ma’yan: The Jewish Women’s Project. As the Manhattan organization moves into its own adolescence, Ma’yan marks its 12th year with an announcement: After two years of regrouping and soul searching, it is turning away from its longstanding focus on feminist ritual and women’s leadership in favor of a new mission — Girl Power.Ma’yan launched “Koach Banot,” Hebrew for girl power, this month, with the aim of strengthening and promoting programs for teenage and “tweenage” girls in the Jewish community. In the process, the organization, which has achieved considerable success in drawing national attention to Jewish women’s concerns, hopes to empower the Jewish women of tomorrow. “Despite the documented success of hundreds of girls’ programs across the country, few exist within the Jewish community at a time when girls are at particular risk for eating disorders, abusive relationships, bullying and low self-esteem,” proclaims the organization’s Web site.The announcement of Ma’yan’s initiative comes at a time when the media has bemoaned the rise of “Mean Girls,” the title of a 2004 movie about high school cliques. In turn, some feminists attribute the focus on girls’ bullying to a backlash against the women’s movement. “Koach Banot” also arrives at an interesting moment in gender relations, just as the Jewish world has been spotlighting the issues of adolescent boys. Some experts say that many more boys than girls reduce their involvement in Jewish life during the teen years.But if it’s true that girls remain more involved than boys during these years, what better opportunity to address their issues and help them view Judaism as a valued resource, notes promotional literature distributed at the launch meeting. The meeting, which drew about 20 participants, all women, was held at the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan on Dec. 5.Ma’yan launches “Koach Banot” after conducting a two-year survey of Jewish women’s identity and needs across the United States, “Listen To Her Voice.” The inequities rooted in the Jewish community also played a role in the organization’s shift, said Rabbi Rona Shapiro, a senior associate at Ma’yan. “Why is it that girls are more active in youth groups than boys but every single officer in NFTY [the Reform movement’s youth organization] is a boy?” asked Linda Altshuler at the meeting. Altshuler directs the Hadassah Foundation, which has been funding programs for adolescent girls’ in the Jewish community since 2000, and plans to work in concert with Ma’yan.The Ma’yan initiative would strive to reach teens like Suzannah Herschkowitz, a junior at Beacon High School on the Upper West Side, who said her mother thinks she should become a rabbi. But at this point Herschkowitz said, “Judaism has always been in my life but not so seriously.” Herschkowitz also said she faces intense stress in both the academic and social spheres of her life, much of it centering on her tight-knit clique of girlfriends. “Sometimes I don’t feel like I can be myself, and because it’s a group it’s hard to link to one person. Yet we all have this idea that we need a group.”This past year Herschkowitz participated in “Teens Give Back,” a program at the JCC, and said she really benefited from the coed program, which included both volunteer work and a discussion session with peers. “I broke away for a little bit. I didn’t worry about offending someone. It was a chance for me just to breathe and let loose.”In at least one respect, adolescent Jewish girls have different expectations than their mothers. In every major denomination of Judaism, girls today become bat mitzvah, not only a rite of passage, but as a right of passage. Only a few organizations, however, tackle the distinct concerns of teenage girls in a girls-only, Jewish setting, and even fewer possess the resources or vision to approach it on a wide scale, according to Ma’yan.The best-known program, “Rosh Hodesh: It’s A Girl Thing,” gathers pre-teen girls in small groups for monthly discussions and activities. Leaders help girls confront issues such as body image, stress and family within a Jewish context, teaching participants that “Judaism has something for you,” said Deborah Meyer, executive director of Moving Traditions, which runs the program. “It can give you an enjoyable experience and the skills needed to stay healthy.” “Rosh Hodesh,” which was started by Kolot: The Center for Jewish Women’s and Gender Studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2000, currently reaches about 2,000 girls in 29 states, according to Meyer. Not enough, she said. And it shouldn’t be the only program so widely available, according to Ma’yan, which plans to promote sports programs such as “GoGirlGo!” and to enhance the Jewish component of proactive programs for eating disorders like “Full of Ourselves.” Some experts believe eating disorders are especially prevalent among Jewish girls.As for Steinberg, the senior at Heschel, she’s driven by social justice not social pressure. For that, she thanks the role models in her family: her two older sisters and her mother, all strong women and “do-gooders.” But Steinberg, who participated in a Ma’yan focus group earlier this year, says that she “really admires the organization for recognizing these issues” of teenage girls. “Girl Power,” she said, is about a girl “who isn’t afraid of her image, who isn’t affected by outside opinions.”
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