When my daughter was about 3 years old, we visited a shul where the men broke into joyous song and danced around the bimah during tefillah. She stood on her chair, clapping and swaying and suddenly turned to me and shouted, “I don’t want to be a ballerina any more! I want to be a rabbi!” Years later, when we planned her bat mitzvah, she insisted she wanted to read her entire parsha and haftarah, even though it was far from the social norm in her day school and there was no minyan in our neighborhood to accommodate her.  

Now, at 15, my daughter is vaguely indifferent about issues of Jewish feminism. She comes to the partnership minyan we started (at her urging!) but has to be coaxed into leading pesukei dizimarah  and reading Torah. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t want to be associated with a cause her parents have championed. Or maybe it’s because she goes to a Modern Orthodox school where there are few opportunities for girls to take leadership roles in tefillah. As a result, her peers are largely uninterested in taking on more responsibility in a minyan, fighting inequities or eliminating double standards. The status quo is comfortable and most teenagers don’t want take an unpopular stance alone. That’s why, as a co-chairwoman of the programming committee for this year’s conference, I believe our middle school track and sessions geared to high school students will be a great opportunity for teens to discuss, among other issues, what they believe and how their actions are shaped by peer pressure. Who knows? Maybe my daughter will wander in and be inspired. I hope so because she’d make a great rabbi. Besides, she hasn’t practiced her pirouettes in some time.