r H . 88. Friday, September 24, 1976 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Assimilation Blamed for Declining Jewish Enrollment By ALAN HITSKY "Jewish parents are not enrolling-Jewish kids 1.1 Jewish schools," is the blunt way Dr. Jay B. Stern, superintendent of Detroit's United Hebrew Schools, explains the declining enrollment ofJewish schools in Detroit and throughout the United States. . Brushing aside the declining national birth rate which is affecting U.S. public schools, Dr. Stern points to a long-term trend in Jewish education. "Birth rate is a part of it," Dr. Stern explained in a recent inter- view, "but Jewish parents are either not enrolling their Jewish children or they are enrolling them for shorter periods of time. In a word . . . assimilation!" He cited statistics from the American Jewish Yearbook and a year-old study by Harold S. Himmel- farb of Ohio State University that show that there has been a one-third drop in Jewish school enrollment dur- ing the last 15 years. Himmelfarb is co-editor of the American Jewish Committee's Commentary Magazine. Nationwide, the most seriously affected are the af- ternoon schools. Dr. Stern said the trend among Jewish parents seems to be toward either more Jewish educa- tion, via the day schools, or less education through en- rollment in Sunday schools. "There is probably less dissatisfaction on the part of the Sunday school parent than the afternoon school „parent because they expect less and get less," Dr. Stern said. He said the afternoon schools, such as United He- brew School, provide 200 hours per year of instruction for an average of five yearslorior to Bar Mitzva. Those 1,000 hours are the equivalent of one year of public Jewish School Enrollment Detroit 1975-76 UNITED HEBREW- SCHOOLS Adat Shalom_ Beth Achim Bnai David Bnai Moshe and Temple Emanu431 UHS High School Shaarey Zedek High School 1,807 257 395, 264 418 229 244 INDEPENDENT and SECULAR 4,334 Beth Abraham-Hillel 213 Adat Shalom nursery 12.6 Beth Shalom primary and elementary 274 Shaarey Zedek nursery and elementary 897 Temple Beth El Temple Israel Temple Emanu-El Temple Kol Ami 924 1,270 :301 345 DAY SCHOOLS Akiva Beth Yehudah-Beth Jacob Hillel Cheder 1,025 235 408 352 . 30 TOTAL 7,466 school, and according to Himmelfarb, "at least 3,000 hours of religious instruction are needed before Jewish schooling has any lasting impact." Dr. Stern suggests that Jewish students should Jewish Enrollment continue their Jewish studies at least through high U.S. --- 1960-1975 school so that they will at least begin to approach the 3,000-hour minimum. Age 4-17 Himmelfarb also states: 1960 600,000 • Supplementary types ofJewish education (Sunday 1970 460,000 schools and weekday afternoon schools) generally do not 1976 400,000* increase adult religious involvement beyond the level * = estimated obtained by those with no Jewish schooling unless one has more than 12 years of such schooling. • Even all-day Jewish schools generally do not increase adult religious involvement beyond the level obtained by those with no Jewish schooling unless one has more than six years of such schooling. At that level Dr. JAY B. STERN all-day schools are effective in producing a higher de- number of students in post-Bar Mitzva high school gree of four types of religious involvement: 1) ritual and that the financial problem, although always a observance; 2) interest in Jewish books, art and music; .problem, is not insurmountable. 3) charitable behavior and attitudes; and 4) a sense of Dr. Stern said synagogue schools are having the personal obligation to immigrate to Israel. •toughest time meeting rising costs (up an average of • There are no differences in adult religious in- 10 percent each year). "Their declining memberships volvement between those who had more than 12 years can't support these costs. When I first got started (in of supplementary Jewish schooling and those who had Jewish education) there were 80-90 large synagogue more than 12 years of all-day Jewish schooling. schools in the country with 800-1,000 students," he Himmelfarb says the last point shows "that said. "Now there are less than 10." supplementary schools can be effective if students at- He added that of the $200 million annually spent in tend for long enough" but "very few Jewish students the U.S. on Jewish education only $13-14 million is get that much religious schooling. provided by local Jewish federations. He said that fed- "Thus in terms of long range consequences for erations would not be able to fund their other Jewish identity, these data indicate that the type of priorities if they tried to totally fund Jewish educa- Jewish education received by 80 percent of those Ameri- tion. can Jews who have received any Jewish education has In terms of the role of the Jewish school, Dr. Stern -been a waste of time." sees changes that mirror the situation of the public But Dr. Stern points to some positive signs. The schools. "Kids are spending less and less time in schools, number of college programs in Judaic studies has risen yet schools are being asked to deliver more. In Jewish from just a few in 1960 to more than 600 in 1976. Most of the programs are in English, and more than 300 schools," he said, "the average used to be 10-12 hours per week-on Hebrew and prayer books. Now the average colleges offer degrees in Judaic studies. is six to seven hours on a wide variety of topics. The A few of the graduates of these American college tendency is to cover a lot of ground superficially, and the programs are beginning to filter into the Jewish basic problem is too much in too little time." schools as teachers. The trend before 1948 was that the Although 90 percent of all Jewish children get main source ofJewish teachers in the U.S. were Euro- pean trained. some formal Jewish education in their life --times, the After the establishment of the state of Israel 600,000 students in the U.S. aged 4-17 enrolled in many Israelis were hired in American Jewish schools. Jewish schools in 1960 represented only one-third of "Midrasha was founded here in 1948 to develop the potential Jewish school population. In Detroit this teachers," Dr. Stern added, bill few of the students fall, roughly 7,000 Jewish students will attend Jewish schools, if only once per week, out of a potential Jewish wanted to teach the lower grades because of the part- time nature of the job. The bulk of the teachers in student population estimated at 15,000. afternoon schools now are women, he said, because of To make Jewish schools more effective Dr. Stern the part-time factor. suggests more realistic expectations. "We have to He said personnel will continue to be a problem. have a more limited view of what schools can do. The "The teachers won't be American-born, America-- people who want the schools to make their children trained for a long time to come." But, he said an -excep- committed Jews in spite of the home environment, or tion was the substantial number of day high school ask the schools to prevent intermarriage, in this sense graduates who want to go into Jewish education. the schools are a failure. Other positive signs in Jewish education cited by "Jewish schools should be converted to skill- Dr. Stern are the growth of camps with Jewish prog- schools," he said, "but it would be tough to get a con- ramming, the improvements in Jewish curricula, the sensus of which skills should be emphasized." Hebrew Scholarship Perpetuated at Oxford University BY MAURICE SAMUELSON (Copyright 1976, JTA, Inc.) like "an isolated maniac" here. Though Oxford's theology department taught classical Hebrew, it had little to do with the language of the - modern Jewish renaissance. OXFORD — In the Middle Ages, one of Europe's principal Jewish communities was _ in Oxford, where its rab- But things changed bis and sages helped churchmen in their study over the past two decades of Hebrew and the Old as a growing number of Testament. Seven cen- Jewish scholars came to turies after the Jews were Oxford University. Many expelled from England, were drawn by its lib- and three centuries after raries; some to study Cromwell readmitted modern Hebrew under them, the flames of Patterson, whose appli- Jewish scholarship are cation of modern literary burning brightly in this criticism to Hebrew had, famous city. For the first as one leading scholar has time, though, it burns in a testified, "virtually specifically Jewish set- created a new branch of ting, the oxford Center Hebrew scholarship." for Post-Graduate He- After prolonged negotia- tions, the university fi- brew Studies. Modelled on the Prince- nally agreed to give its ton post-graduate center recognition to a center for in the U.S., it is the post-graduate Hebrew brain-child of Dr. David studies. Patterson, who Patterson, who arrived in had conceived it, became Oxford nearly 20 years its first principal. ago to become a lecturer The center began hum- in post-biblical Hebrew. bly in 1972 in one room in For many years, the the Oriental Institute quiet-spoken scholar felt where Patterson had taught since 1957. Since then, as a result of private financing from Britain and abroad, it has acquired its own building which gives it the dignity and aspect, if not the full status, of an Oxford college. In the middle of town, lectures, research and seminars take place in a fine Geor- gian house. Here, T. Carmi, the poet, is putting the finish- ing touches to the Pen- guin Book of Modern He- brew Verse, on which he has worked for 10 years. N.S. Doniach is supervis- ing the compilation of an English-Hebrew dictio- nary of current usage, a five-year task due to be completed in 1979. Stu- dents of varying standards study Yiddish and Hebrew in the lan- guage laboratories. But the center's main home is at Yarnton Manor, an imposing Jacobean property set in 8 1/2 acres of land five miles north of Oxford. Here, amid rural quiet, some of the world's lead- ing Judaic scholars, to- gether with younger stu- dents, engage in writing and research. Some are accommodated in the honey-colored stone manor, while others live with their families in the six cottages dotted around the grounds. Although opened less than three years ago, the place already exudes an atmosphere of friendli- ness and learning. Espe- cially popular are the after-dinner talks by visiting Fellows on their fields of research, which attract audiences from many parts of Oxford. Of the 50 distinguished scholars enrolled on Yarnton Manor's academic staff, most are from Israel, the United States and Britain. Prof. Ezra Spicehandler, dean of Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem, is spending his third summer here, com- pleting a book on Bialik. Also here this year were Dr. Wolf Kelman, of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York, and Prof. -S. Werses, of the Hebrew University. Israel's leading Yiddish scholars also come to con- sult the Bodleian Lib- rary's collection of publi- cations printed between the 16th and 19th Cen- turies which has no rival anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, the basis of Yarnton Manor's own li- brary has been laid. The center has acquired the life-time collection of the leading bibliographer of modern Hebrew litera- ture. Since arriving in Is- rael from Galicia 46 years ago, Getzel Kressel has built up a specialized li- brary of up to 30,000 vol- umes and pamphlets dealing with Hebrew writing and the growth of the yishuv. He has also amassed a newspaper archive containing be- tween a million and two million clippings. When the news broke in Israel two years ago that he was letting the collec- tion leave the country, there was an outcry in the press. But Kressel, a small, white-haired man of 65, says that he sold it to Oxford only after nine years of negotiations with Israeli universities. They apparently balked at his insistence that the collee tion should_not be broke up. Patterson gave him this pledge. N Ow, Kressel and his wife are unpacking the last of the 186 boxes in which the collection ar- rived two years ago. Among the rarities he sh-owed me with pride were bound volumes of the first Hebrew news- paper in paper Jerusalem 105. years ago, "Havatselet," and the full run of Theodor Herzl's Zionist newspaper, "Die Welt." Despite his • initial de- sire to keep the collection in Israel, he was now very happy about its new home.