Although I am not Jewish, I spent about eight months as a long-term substitute at two schools run by Chabad Lubavitch. This experience has given me a different perspective. Before that, I taught at a public high school so tough that a policeman I spoke to after being mugged winced and rolled his eyes when I told him where I taught.

First, let me say that the Chabad students were the loveliest students I have ever taught. They were polite, helpful, and mature. While they were kids and had kid problems, for the most part, the schools had an air of peace that I loved.

Modesty, for me, has both good and bad aspects. The most important benefit of modesty is that it teaches girls that their value as human beings and as women does NOT come from being eye candy for lascivious males. It comes from being a good person. Since youthful beauty is fleeting, the girls are learning a valuable lesson.

A Pentecostal minister put the same idea in a different way. There is a difference between being attractive and being an attraction. The girls were attractive. They were well-groomed. Many were quite pretty. But they did not highlight their attractiveness at the expense of other attributes.

I found modest dress a refreshing change from the wild dress adopted by students in the other school who often had tattoos on their lower back which would show when their pants slid down. Orthodox girls can always change their mind about dress. The other girls can not change their mind about tattoos.

If religious girls were taught that unwanted male attention was their fault, that teaching was clearly wrong.

I also deeply disagree with the imposition of the marriage wig for married women as the women are forced to cut off most of their own hair or even shave their heads in the most extreme sects. This policy is a cruel one. The demand for real human hair often forces women in poor third world countries to sell their own hair, which in those cultures is an integral part of femininity. Thus, this requirement perpetuates a system that is cruel to both the Orthodox and poor women abroad. If my statement seems extreme, read accounts of female Holocaust survivors. Even though the women daily faced death, starvation, disease, and violence, having their heads shaved was remembered as a brutal and distressing and was not dismissed as a trivial matter.

One problem with modest dress is that the rules effectively prohibit many healthy sports such as swimming, gymnastics, and many kinds of track and field sports, among others. I guess they could not do ballet and other forms of dance either. Since we now know that exercise is vital for physical, emotional, and cognitive health, depriving girls of this will have long-term negative consequences.

Another troubling aspect for me was that because families are large, girls in elementary school are required to assume the role of "nannies." When looking at children's writing assignments, I found that girls often wrote things like "When I want to play outside in the yard, HaShem gives me the strength to care for my younger brothers and sisters." These girls were in third or fourth grade. I read or heard comments like this from kids numerous times.

While I do disagree with some aspects of traditional Orthodoxy, there were many more things I did like. While divorce exists in the community, most of the kids came from intact homes. They had the healthy self-confidence that came from being raised with love. They were not embarrassed to show love to younger family members. I remember one young boy, maybe fifth grade or perhaps middle school, who would go over and tenderly kiss his young female cousin during recess. Child abuse and drug addiction seemed to be rare. Most of the men I encountered treated their wives with respect. On the whole, family bonds were strong.

Everyone there knew I wasn't Jewish but treated me well.

On the whole, I very much like the Orthodox way of life and the people who follow it. My disagreement with some aspects of it does not negate the positive regard I have for most of it.

I would also point out that modern Orthodoxy does not have many of these drawbacks and provides a middle way that merges Torah observance with a respect for women and a rapprochement with the modern world.