In our December 11 issue, the Forward published an opinion article from Rabbi Irving Greenberg titled “There Is No Alternative to Day Schools.” Lamenting what he sees as an increasing tendency in the Jewish community to look beyond day schools in favor of less expensive educational alternatives, Greenberg wrote: “I, too, wish there were a cheap, effective alternative to day schools — but there is not.”
“[O]nly day schools offer the tools to make a mature embrace of Judaism plausible for many of our young people,” argued Greenberg, former president of the Jewish Life Network and founding president of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He urged the Jewish community to step up its financial support for day schools and tuition-assistance in order to make day school education universally affordable and accessible.
The Forward invited a diverse group of scholars and Jewish education specialists to respond to Greenberg’s essay. They are published below — along with a response from Greenberg.
By Helene Z. Tigay
Rabbi Irving Greenberg states that there is no alternative to day schools. There is no doubt that day schools are the most successful venue for educating our children to become knowledgeable, committed Jews. However, much as we wish it were otherwise, a day school experience is just not in the cards for the majority of non-Orthodox Jewish families.
This is due to many significant factors, not simply the staggering cost. Factors that might cause parents to steer clear of day schools include commitment to public education; concern that children require a more varied school environment in order to live in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and socio-economically diverse world; and a need to find the right environment for kids with special needs or special interests.
Indeed, the overwhelming majority of Jewish families who send their kids to Jewish schools send them to supplementary and synagogue schools, not day schools. Until recently, these schools have been widely maligned because they’ve damaged many kids’ feelings about being Jewish. Some have advocated their disappearance altogether, with Israel trips or Jewish camping offered as alternatives. But while both of these Jewish educational experiences are excellent venues for developing Jewish identity, they are peak experiences, and their impact tends to dissipate unless accompanied by a week-after-week, year-after-year Jewish educational context.
The Jewish community must not abandon the majority of its families. We have a moral responsibility to embrace these families and children “where they are.” To do so, we must not jettison synagogue schools but rather transform them so that they offer an energizing and compelling engagement with Jewish culture, tradition, language and history, involving families along the way. That, in concert with Jewish camping and Israel trips, will provide a well-integrated, viable and positive Jewish experience — even for those who, for whatever reason, cannot or will not take access a day school education.
Helene Z. Tigay is an independent educational consultant who works with PELIE: Partnership for Effective Learning and Innovative Education. She was the founder of the Philadelphia-based NESS: Nurturing Excellence in Synagogue Schools.
By Deborah Dash Moore and Mac Moore
Yesh breira. There is an alternative to parochial education. It is called public school.
Many Jews want our children to attend public school because of our commitment to this openly pluralistic democracy that we call home. We value diversity within our community and among communities.
Public school students and their parents practice democracy in an appropriate institutional arena. Retiring from the field is not an acceptable option in part because, left to their own devices, religions do not promote democratic interdependence. Together — physically together — diverse people must practice negotiating in good faith. In public school Jews and non-Jews learn to explain traditions and aspirations to one another.
Jewish teachers and parents bring vital historical awareness to public education. Think of high school curricula on the Holocaust; such changes get implemented and sustained from the inside.
Public school is not the only educational commitment on the table here. We need multiple ways of learning to live Jewishly in the United States, as Reform, Renewal, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Orthodox and, yes, as secular Jews.
Jewish families who desire parochial education advocate for crossover support. But Rabbi Greenberg takes this to another level. He’s pressing the commonwealth of American Jewish communities to put all its eggs in one basket. Even “with depleted resources,” federations “should raid their reserves and spend down.” Continuity is the gun held to our heads. Bet the bank because the end draws nigh in this “war for survival.” “The” research demonstrates anti-assimilation potency of day school prophylaxis, Greenberg asserts. Actually, although Orthodox affiliation effectively wards off intermarriage, it is not clear that non-Orthodox day schools lower intermarriage rates any more than other kinds of long-term, intensive Jewish education. “Bang for bucks” is less the issue here than differently balanced value systems.
Some Jews value the combination of supplementary Jewish education and Jewish support of public schooling. Promoters of parochial Jewish schools must neither covet the funding base and the enrollments of supplementary schools nor try to undermine Jewish engagement with public schools.
Deborah Dash Moore is director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Mac Moore teaches in the American Cultures and Judaic Studies programs at the University of Michigan.
By Peter Deutsch
For decades, the Jewish community in America has been trying to increase the percentage of Jewish children who have a strong, deep and intellectually based Jewish education. I agree with Rabbi Greenberg that a day school education can provide that type of education.
However, after decades and hundreds of millions of dollars invested, only a small fraction of Jewish children go to Jewish day schools.
The efforts that Rabbi Greenberg mentions to increase or even stabilize the percentage of Jewish children in day schools are commendable and significant in relation to other present efforts. However, they are very modest in relation to the challenge.
There are now three Hebrew-English charter schools in the United States. The two in South Florida presently serve 715 children. At least two additional Hebrew-English charter schools are expected to open in South Florida next year. The State of Florida is providing $4,900,000 to operate the two schools this year. To put that number into perspective, that’s about as much money as the Jewish Federation of Broward County (which serves the county in which the two schools are located) raised in its annual campaign in a community of some 200,000 Jews during the last fiscal year. The record gift that Rabbi Greenberg mentions is for $11,000,000 for the entire United States (the grant is really only a $5,500,000 grant per year over two years and the grant is supposed to include scholarships for early childhood programs and residential summer camps).
A Hebrew-English charter school education is not a day school education. However, a student completing a K-12 Hebrew-English charter school would have a strong, deep and intellectually based Hebrew language, history and culture education. That student would also have had the opportunity to easily enhance his or her religious education outside the public school setting.
Peter Deutsch is founder of Ben Gamla Charter School, America’s first Hebrew-English charter school. He served as a member of Congress for 12 years.
By Jack Wertheimer
As savvy consumers, American Jews know that “you get what you pay for.” Day schools are the most expensive, demanding and time-intensive form of Jewish education. But because day schools have the time to immerse students in an enriched Jewish environment, they can develop students’ Hebrew language and prayer skills and expose students to the texts, history and living culture of Jewish civilization. They can develop Jewish character by socializing young Jews to Jewish norms of behavior — derech eretz, respect for others, and chesed, acts of kindness and giving. And, most important, day schools embed students in a Jewish environment where what is learned is also lived.
Unlike past generations of American Jews, we are blessed with a well-developed infrastructure of day schools in communities across the country. Tragically, as Rabbi Greenberg notes, high tuition costs have been a deterrent for too many families. Equally tragic, some are prepared to dismantle that infrastructure rather than devise creative ways to support day schools.
What we need is a communal will to do what is necessary to enable the minority of Jewish families seeking a day school education for their children to have that opportunity. That requires, as Greenberg urges, a serious re-ordering of communal funding priorities.
But I would also suggest that Jewish philanthropy alone cannot solve the crisis of day school affordability. In other Western countries, Jewish day schools receive direct governmental support for the general studies education. In America, parents who opt to send their children to day schools pay huge school taxes from which they can derive no benefit. Rather than find ways to remedy this situation, the organized American Jewish community remains passive. It is more zealous in its faith in the strict separation of church and state than in spending its political capital to help its own children receive the best possible Jewish education.
Jack Wertheimer is a professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is the editor of “Family Matters: Jewish Education in an Age of Choice” (Brandeis, 2007).
By Richard D. Kahlenberg
Rabbi Irving Greenberg is concerned about preventing Jewish assimilation into the American mainstream. His solution is that Jewish individuals and philanthropists should finance Jewish day schools through private donations.
In America, every religious group — Jews, Muslims, Evangelicals, Catholics and others — has a constitutional right to use private funds to educate children outside of the public school system. What each of these groups does not possess is the right to use public taxpayer funds to encourage separate group identities or religious beliefs.
The fundamental purpose of public schooling is to teach children of all different backgrounds common American values and what it means to be an American. As Albert Shanker, the great teacher unionist and educator (who happened to be Jewish), noted, “the public schools, more than any other institution in our society… have brought together different groups — groups which in other societies would have been at war with each other — and taught them to respect and work with each other.”
Personally, I think all Americans would suffer if various religious and ethnic groups withdrew en masse into private education, even though they have a right to do so. But I’m pleased that Rabbi Greenberg does not ask in his article for government to pay for Jewish education, in contrast to efforts to start Hebrew charter schools or to gain government vouchers for private education. Using public funds for schools that cater to specific groups dangerously undercuts the unifying purpose of public education.
Richard D. Kahlenberg is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and author of “Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race and Democracy” (Columbia University Press, 2007).
Rabbi Irving Greenberg responds:
Regarding Helen Tigay’s and Deborah Dash Moore and Mac Moore’s responses to my essay, I want to be clear: I wrote that there is no cheap equivalent to day schools — and that the community that wants to live must pay up, whatever the cost. I did not say that we should abandon synagogue or supplementary schools.
Still, the vast majority of Hebrew school alumni had bad experiences, and their intermarriage and assimilation rates are high. We owe it to parents to tell them this truth: Taking inadequate medicine will not guarantee your children healthy Jewish identities.
We should help those who wise up and want to switch to day schools by bringing down tuition costs. At the same time, we must invest serious money to enrich synagogue schools in the hope that they can make a positive difference. I salute projects like PELIE and NESS, and I have solicited funds for them. I hope they will succeed, but I also believe that supplementary schools will never match the impact of day schools.
After two decades of significant growth, day school students now represent perhaps a fifth of school-age Jewish children. The bulk of those enrolled in Jewish day schools may be Orthodox children, but I believe the non-Orthodox share of day school students is underestimated because many children in modern, centrist and Chabad Orthodox day schools come from non-Orthodox families.
Non-Orthodox day school graduates do better than their peers who do not go to day schools in terms of in-marriage and Jewish identity; they can be leaders in strengthening the Jewish identities of others. We don’t need 100% of children to go to day school. Day school graduates are like the 10% of steel or chemicals added to cement that strengthen the total mix enormously. We need to increase the proportion of non-Orthodox children going to day school. Better quality is key to attracting them. That takes money.
Peter Deutsch correctly points out that major government funding can strengthen Jewish education. The problem with charter schools is that to qualify for government funding, the community must strip out the Jewish content, religion, values and advocacy from the educational program. I fear that such schools will fail to transmit Jewish identity. Perhaps such schools can succeed when supplemented with Hebrew school education or Jewish camping. Therefore, I favor this experiment. Unfortunately, the most likely outcome is that charter schools will teach the language but lose the identity battle.
I absolutely agree with Jack Wertheimer that government support is needed in addition to community money. I support vouchers. A voucher of $2,000 per day-school student, usable only for general studies, would result in more than $400,000,000 in new money annually for Jewish education.
I left this issue out of my original article because there is a fierce debate about this issue in the Jewish community, and I could not do justice to the topic in the course of a brief article on the need for redirecting community funds toward reducing the cost of day school tuition.
The Moores and Richard Kahlenberg are committed to public schools for the sake of strengthening democracy. Kahlenberg, in principle, is against government funds being used for strengthening religious or ethnic identity.
In fact, Jews come out of modern day schools as committed to democracy as any public school graduates. Furthermore, Jewish numbers are so small that Jewish students are not sufficient to save or upgrade public school education.
I believe that the British and some Canadian provinces’ models of religion-state relations, which allow for support of multiple religions’ schools, are just as legitimate as the current American model, and yield equal democratic outcomes. In fact, a mix of parochial, private and public schools is more pluralistic than a dominantly secular public system alone. We need plural values and standards to maximize democracy. Religious schools can contribute to this variety.
I am willing to take the risk that some religious groups will use public money and teach a sectarian ethos that “others” other groups — and Jews in particular. This risk should be monitored and prevented or reduced.
Fundamentalist liberals will place their conception of democracy as the highest value and shun day schools. As I said above, I don’t believe that this will meaningfully help public schools — or democracy — to flourish. Furthermore, the desired social mixing can occur in college and in the workplace.
Those who make it their highest priority to assure the Jewish future will reject the liberal fundamentalist view and support government aid. They will be rewarded with more Jewish education and more pluralism.
I reiterate my main point: The Jewish community must increase its financial support for Jewish education massively. Day schools, camps, Birthright Israel — the vehicles that work best — should get priority. But all forms of education should be helped. Where and when there is a will to do whatever is necessary to nurture a mature Jewish identity — the kind needed in an open society — a financial way will be found.
Rabbi Irving Greenberg is past president of the Jewish Life Network and was the founding president of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.
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As a young Jew, I went to after-school Hebrew school, Jewish camps and visited Israel. As an adult I dated both Jewish & Gentile women. I am divorced from a religious Jewish woman and married to a Gentile woman. My two adult children went to after-school Hebrew school programs and Jewish summer camps. They graduated prestigious public universities.They also dated Jewish and Gentile partners. Both are in their 20s. Niether one is currently dating anyone special. According to the gist of the talkbacks one would get the idea the idea that "the jury is out" as to whether their education was successful.....because they haven't made their mate choice yet? What about other indicators? Do they contribute altruistically to society? Have they chosen professions that will enrich humanity or just themselves? Are they kind in their interpersonal relationships? The analysis of what defines a successful education, on some of these replies, are to me, of dubious value. As far as getting what you pay for? Our taxpayer supported National Parks offer vastly superior aesthetic and recreational experiences over any private "country club" institutions. There are reasons that expensive private segregating solutions seldom trump the "commons" of humanity.
You missed one crucial point Rabbi Greenberg: you assume American Jews instilling their children with a strong Jewish education and identity is DESIRABLE. Don't you know that many American Jews (some who are the big advocates of democracy , pluralism, etc. ) do NOT want their children to be too Jewish? Their utter ignorance of basic Jewish values and beliefs is a small price to pay for their becoming financially and professionally successful Americans. No Jewish clutter needed. Some American Jews are against parochial education because they don't want the added weight of being Jewish. Being American is good enough. Assimilation is the price we will continue to pay in "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave". Some of us think that is a tragedy (losing hundreds of thousands of Jews whose offspring won't be part of our people or don't care to be). Some think it is just fine.
Here in England about 60% of Jewish pupils attend Jewish schools. Of our 97 schools about 95 are Orthodox, either mainstream or Haredi, and the mainstream schools get government support for secular studies. Many Jewish schools are oversubscribed with govt panels handling complaints from those who haven't received places. And you don't have to be Jewish to attend Jewish schools. I have taught Biblical Hebrew to Anglicans and Catholics in one Jewish school. I understand that American Jews support the strict separation of church and state, but there should be some way of using vouchers or some other system that allows parents to have genuine choice regardless of income. Under the Conservatives and Baroness Thatcher the assisted places scheme meant that any pupil accepted to any private school could receive financial help depnding on parental income. Labour abolished this, but has increased the state aide for 'faith schools' that reflect parental demand.
I attended public school.
I am not sure what planet the Moores and Kahlenberg are living on when they say things like, "In public school Jews and non-Jews learn to explain traditions and aspirations to one another."
The only cultural traditions and aspirations I discussed with fellow students in public school was whether they preferred Duran Duran or Madonna.
I would rather send my own children to day school where teachers can transmit values that spring from a 3,000-year-old tradition, so that by the time my kids are adults they have something of substance to discuss.
I attended public school and Hebrew school. Then I went to Yeshiva University. All my children attended Yeshivot and Yeshiva University.Lesson learned. Our best defense against assimilation and intermarriage is Jewish education.
The problem is in America Jews have always been very ambivalent about being Jewish and religious belief and practice. The vast majority have opted out because the most important thing for them was not being Jewish but assimilating and today intermarraige for many Jews is not only not looked down upon but embraced as a positive value. All this began in earnest over a hundred twenty years ago when NYC statistics show 99% of Jews went to public schools. Jews learned theri lesson in the progroms and the opportunities that sent them here being Jewish is something that will only cause me problems. For example shabbat observance the classic line was if you dont come to work on saturday dont come to work on monday. The funny thing did a single Rabbi ever do anything, did they ever speak to an employer ever, most of the garment factories owners were Jewish. The owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory were Jewish did a Rabbi ever say anything to these killers.
I know I am harking back to a lost era, but I will paint this picture anyway. I attended an independent Hebrew School system. I also had parents who gave me my strong Jewish identity through their own Jewish actions and through being very involved in my Jewish education. To me, the elephant in the room is that schools are schools and synagogues are synagogues (or shuls are shuls). We use our synagogues to offer our children Jewish education and that is not really a strong model. As a result, day schools are up against poor competition educationally and culturally. Watching synagogues provide Jewish education makes me think of the injunction "do not place a stumbling block before the blind" - it is simply not a task for which a synagogue/shul is well designed. (For different reasons, but ultimately perhaps for this one, the Orthodox don't fall for that, even if that.) For those who do not want to retreat completely from the larger culture, it is even possible that if Jewish schooling did not bankrupt parents, they might have a bit more energy for living a Jewish life with their children and communicating what is lovely and positive about that. Of course, it is the larger American culture that also makes the independent Hebrew school a dinosaur for most, since the alternative activities (music, athletics, etc.) for children are so compelling (requiring blackberries to coordinate them). And, yet, there are kids who may be up to this balancing act - public schooling and serious Jewish education outside of a synagogue - and we are not creating a space for that option anymore.
To amend the comment above, I would not say "we are not creating a space for that option anymore." There are some notable schools which still fit this model to some extent. And it would be helpful to include these school options equally in considering the Jewish educational landscape.
One might also get back on the soapbox and summarize it this way. A multi-faceted approach to communal involvement has traditionally enriched our self-understanding of what is Jewish. If we can recapture a division of labor among schools, shuls and even mikvaot and community centers, as well as other Jewish institutions, we are asking ourselves as American Jews to drive, both literally and figuratively, to more than one location for our Jewish connections. Not to worry - that's what GPS systems are for.
I doubt if many Rabbis ever spoke out about the garments industry and the Jewish owners who told Jews to work on Shabbat or not come in on Monday .How many Rabbis spoke out about the Holocaust and attended the few rallies held at that time.? This is a sad commentary.
As a parent, I want a middle option. I want my children to get the Jewish education I did not get in 3 hours/week of synagogue supplemental schools with extremely low expectations. But I also want them to get their education in secular subjects alongside their fellow American children of many backgrounds, especially since we live in an area with very good public schools. It is especially galling because the Sunday schools seem to focus on teaching the basics of Jewish holiday observance--things they are learning at home in our house--instead of teaching them the Hebrew language and text skills that I cannot teach them myself.
The options available to me in my area are to spend $20,000 per year per child for 30-50 hours per week of day school (and take them away from all the resources of our local public schools), or to spend $1,000 per year per child for 2-4 hours per week of Sunday school with low expectations for their Jewish education. I do not like either of these options. I would happily spend $5,000 to $8,000 per year for a 4 day-per-week Jewish afterschool program that aspires to teach my children the skills they need to be full participants in Jewish life (with a direct bus from the public school so I can work full time). I want a good Talmud Torah. I want to bring my children to shul on Shabbat mornings and relax as a family on Sunday mornings. Surely I can't be the only one!
Some day schools give the best possible Jewish education to individual Jews. Still, the primacy of day schools has been an abject failure for the Jewish community. While correlation is not causation, the rise of day schools and the decline of synagogue based options parallels the rise in intermarriage and everything else the organized Jewish community complains about.
I do not think this is a coincidence. Day schools are triage. The idea is that if everyone can't learn everything, we should pour resources into 10% or maybe even 30% of Jewish children to create the leaders of the next generation. While some of them become leaders, you're also causing 70% or 90% of Jewish adults to barely have enough education to follow a service, read Hebrew, or know basic Jewish history. For reasons of money and parental desires, the number of people going to day school won't get too high. As Joseph notes above, it's only 60% in England where there are government subsidies!
Day schools are important and they are important to fund. Still, if people care about the future Jewish community, giving time, intellectual energy, and money to other options for quality Jewish education is a necessity.
Dan in Maryland, nobody is doing anything to the vast majority of Jewish youth who do not attend yeshiva or day school. The yeshivas and day schools pay their own way, the costs of tuition is squarely placed on the shoulders of the parents,the additional funds are raised within the orthodox community for its yeshivas support, yeshivas and day schools today as in the past get almost zero support from any federation or communal funds. The families of yeshiva and day school students pay the freight almost exclusively at great sacrifice and are not taking anything away from anyone else because that anything simply does not exist. Funny if you want to mindlessly bang drums, practice yoga, learn chinese or swim you can go to the JCC which does get federation dollars.
I'd like to know the list of yeshivot who are self supporting on tuition alone, never ask for extra donations from non-current parents, and never get "donations" from teachers who are willing to work for substandard wages or without health insurance. This is not to criticize the schools, but to point out that these aren't independent entities. They rely on well more than parents tuition checks to survive.
As for where federations send their money, I definitely wasn't speaking in favor of their current priorities.
There is another factor unrelated to Jewish education in and of itself. That is to say the family environment in which one has grown up. I can see clearly that those of us who grew up in happy Jewish families, regardless of their level of religious observance or Jewish knowledge, were and are more likely to marry Jewish partners. Those who didn't and this includes people who grew up Orthodox, are less likely to marry other Jews. Jewish knowledge and culture and religious practice is important, but the basis of any sort of Jewish continuity is the family. When the family fails the Jew, he is "out" regardless of what he knows or how observant the family is or was.
Simona, I live on the same planet you do. Planet Earth. My public school was obviously more intellectually and culturally rich than yours. I support your choice of parochial education for your children. The larger issue is whether parochial schools should be THE choice for all American Jews and whether communal funds should be channeled into supporting them.