ABSTRACT
The study of the social significance of scholarship among orthodox men shows that scholarship is the most significant expression of their Judaism. Women's education is the outcome of the tension between the changes taking place outside the orthodox community and its internal durability. Women's education has become an irrevocable fact, so it is presented on an ideological level as "education for ignorance." When the cultural market around them offers educational alternatives, orthodoxy constructs an educational framework that is, in its external form, a school, but its goal—at least, its declared goal—is to duplicate the Jewish mother's home in Poland. Women define as "practical" classes those that touch directly on their daily lives as women, wives, and mothers. The women maintain a dual literacy. "Know-how literacy" is relevant to their existence as haredi women in what would seem to be a total and authoritative framework.
