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Transgressive quest/ions? Navigating religion, institutional expectations, and sexuality education in modern Britain.
Author(s): Kasstan, Ben
Date: 2023
Topics: Ethnography, Jewish Teachers, Parenthood, Sex Education, Main Topic: Education, Teenagers
Abstract: All secondary schools in England have been required to teach Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) since 2019, which has raised particular challenges for – and confrontations with – religious minorities. This paper draws on ethnographic research to centre analysis on the fraught moral binds felt by Jewish parents and educators as they struggle to decide when and how to equip children with knowledge while needing to conform to institutional positions on what protection means. Bodily knowledge is redacted across religious/state models of education, which propagates the maintenance of social boundaries and definitions of sexual transgression, but do not stop the quests and questions that adolescents harbour during puberty and development. The paper draws attention to the use of bracketed words in feminist scholarship to convey how terms are projected as having universal meanings or connotations, which are, in reality, socially situated or at least used in socially sanctioned ways.
Aporetic differences? Equality entitlements, religious schools, and contours of protection
Author(s): Kasstan, Ben
Date: 2023
Topics: Jewish Schools, Jewish Education, Main Topic: Education, Orthodox Judaism, Haredi / Strictly Orthodox Jews, Anthropology, Ethnography, Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Religion and State, Sex Education
Abstract: The requirement for schools in England to implement equality education has led religious conservative minorities to voice a conflict between legally protected characteristics of religion and sexual orientation. Drawing on long-term ethnographic engagement with Jewish orthodoxies in England, the article critiques these apparent aporetic differences by tracing the grammars of protection that are fielded by custodians of state governance and religious conservativism in public disputes and how particular grammars of protection are rendered authoritative over others. The article excavates how the staging of authoritative grammars of protection by state and religious conservative actors forecloses an understanding of the subject-positions that manoeuvre at the sidelines to integrate ways of being and protect a space for difference. Through the framing of an arm-wrestle, the article critiques negotiations over policy and legal reform as it is grasped in social worlds, and explores how state and religious conservative actors move within the conventions of secular liberal governance to maintain their authority and stakes amidst challenges to continuity.
'I Didn't Know How to Be with My Husband': State-Religion Struggles over Sex Education in Israel and England
Author(s): Taragin-Zeller, Lea; Kasstan, Ben
Date: 2020
Topics: Sex Education, Haredi / Strictly Orthodox Jews, Main Topic: Other, Education
Abstract: Sex education presents a major dilemma for state‐minority relations, reflecting a conflict between basic rights to education and religious freedom. In this comparative ethnography of informal sex education among ultra‐Orthodox Jews (Haredim) in Israel and England, we frame the critical difference between “age‐appropriate” and “life‐stage” (marriage and childbirth) models of sex education. Conceptualizing these competing approaches as disputes over “knowledge responsibility,” we call for more context‐specific understandings of how educational responsibilities are envisioned in increasingly diverse populations.
Everyone’s Accountable? Peer Sexual Abuse in Religious Schools, Digital Revelations, and Denominational Contests over Protection
Author(s): Kasstan, Ben
Date: 2022
Topics: Main Topic: Education, Jewish Schools, Sex Education, Abuse, Mental Health, Jewish Pupils, Youth
Abstract: Since the emergence of the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements, online tracts have been
employed to publicly reveal experiences of sexual abuse and assault among women and men in
religious institutions and to shame abusers, which tend to be examined as an issue of women’s
rights or child protection from adult predators. Drawing on the use of digital reporting platforms to
testify against peer offences within religious schools, this paper asks how do such testimonies reveal
adolescent agency and provoke policy re/actions about the accountability of religious institutions?
Digital revelations submitted anonymously to Everyone’s Invited are analysed alongside interviews
conducted with educators, parents, and youths in Jewish schools in Britain. Findings indicate how
adolescent digital revelations of peer sexual abuse call for accountability by implicating the faith
schools in question, which in turn triggers pedagogical and policy debates from educators. Public
responses reflect diverging denominational positions on how to balance the protection of young
people and safeguard religious self-protectionism. The paper spotlights the agency of youth in
shaming peer abusers as much as faith schools and structures of religious authority, and in turn, how
online shaming reveals frictions over accountability
Sex and Relationships Education in Jewish Schools
Author(s): , The Derech Project
Date: 2006
Topics: Jewish Schools, Sex Education, Sexual Health, Health Education, Health, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Abstract: JAT has been protecting the health and well-being of young Jewish people for nearly 20 
years. We aim to shape our programmes and activities to meet their needs and those 
of their parents and their schools. 
The shocking absence of information about the state of sex and relationship education 
in Jewish schools, has hampered effective programme development. It was to fill this 
gap that JAT, together with National Children’s Bureau, commissioned this, the most 
comprehensive ever research into Sex and Relationships Education in Jewish schools. 
The research brings home three stark and urgent messages: 
• Children and young people in Jewish schools and their parents are 
demanding fact-based education and information about sexual health. 
• Some Jewish schools aim to deliver effective sex and relationships 
education but they (and parents and pupils) recognise they are failing. 
• Despite goodwill and good intentions, the health of children and young 
people in Jewish schools is being put at serious, preventable risk through 
the absence of effective sex and relationships education.