This Week

Insight

Ideas & Issues

A Stronger Identi

Israeli journalist extols the virtues of a day-school education.

ROBERT A. SKLAR
Editor

Jewish education is a defining
part of living Jewishly. And a
day-school education is the
ultimate learning experience.
So said an Israeli journalist and
American yeshiva graduate in address-
ing a group of local day-school support-
ers on May 4.
Author, screenwriter and teacher,
Stuart Schoffman, assistant editor of the
Jerusalem Report, spoke at Hillel Day
School of Metropolitan Detroit's Dream
Maker Patrons Party honoring Doreen
and David Hermelin, major benefactors
of Hillel and Detroit Jewry. The annual
event raised $150,000, boosting Hillel's
1999-2000 Patron Campaign to
$350,000 for programs, scholarships
and operations. The school has an oper-
ating budget of $6.5 million.
Referring to the 770-student day
school hosting him, and others like it,
Schoffman said: "This is the future for
Jewish communities and for American
Jewry. This is the future for helping
bring the products of the day-school
environment together with Jews in
other parts of the world, especially
Israel."
Son of two Jewish educators,
Schoffman made aliya in 1988. The
former Fortune and Time journalist
joined the Jerusalem Report two years
later.
"There is a fundamental, intrinsic,
paramount value placed on Jewish edu-
cation," he said, noting a divine com-
mandment to study Torah.
Building a foundation for that per-
spective, the Brooklyn native and
Yeshiva of Flatbush graduate said one in
five Jewish children of elementary
school age go to a day school.
Schoffinan said an Avi Chai
Foundation study found 676 day
schools operating in the United States
with 184,333 students — an enroll-
ment triple that of 30 years ago.
Three-quarters of the day schools are
Orthodox-based, but the greatest
growth of day schools is in the non-

A

Orthodox streams, he said.
A former American history instructor
at California and Texas universities,
Schoffman said public schools "used to
be the great American socializer."
Eastern European immigrants sent their
children there to learn English, civics
and the American way to avoid "ghet-

als and readings, you- can enrich as you
see fit later on."
• They build Zionism. Recalling
Eretz Yisroel pioneer Eliezer Ben
Yehudah's passion to speak Hebrew,
Schoffman said, "There would be no
Jewish state without the language. The
key to the kingdom doesn't fully fit

Remember
When • •

From the pages of the Jewish News for
this week 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50
years ago.

AN.

Lathrup Village police are searching
for the three youths that vandalized
Akiva Hebrew Day School, forcing
the school to close for a day.
Jack Robinson was named asso-
ciate chairman of the United Jewish
Charities' investment committee. .

Carl J. Wolfe has been elected pres-
ident of the newly formed
Michigan Club of Kings Point in
Delray Beach, Fla.
El Al announced the closing of
its Detroit office as part of its eco-
nomic retrenchment program.
The Chana Nosanchuk
Memorial Grove was established in
Sanhedriya, Israel.

ieas

Stuart Schoffman

toizing" them.
But for many American Jews, he
said, a diluted Jewish identity was the
net effect of that acculturation and
assimilation. Now, he said, American
Jews are committed to reversing that
trend. "You have enough confidence to
send your kids to Jewish school because
others no longer will look at you
funny."
Schoffinan gave these "five reasons for
why day schools are important:
• They create identity "You unabashedly
look at the world through Jewish-col-
ored glasses," he said. And in the less-
traditional streams, "you create a clear
identity of learned non-Orthodox Jews,"
easing the Orthodox hammerlock on
claims to Jewish authenticity. "Pluralism
is not a dissolution of Judaism," he said,
"but an enrichment of it."
• They create competence. "From a
bedrock of competence in holidays, rim-

David Hermelin

without it. It is what brings you close to
Israel, where Jews can be themselves,
where there's no such thing as 'too
Jewish' because there's always someone
more Jewish. Israel is like a giant Jewish
community center where you just let
your Jewish hair down."
• They inspire excellence and values.
Schoffman expressed pride in the career
and communal achievements of day-
school alumni. And he gushed about
student scholarship opportunities like
Hillel's Goldman-Hermelin Education
Foundation, which allows any child
who wants to learn to do so without
regard for family income.
David Hermelin — developer, phil-
anthropist and community leader —
addressed the crowd of 350 after
Schoffman spoke. Through what Hillel
and other day schools teach, Hermelin
said, students and their families "always
have something rooted in fundamental
Jewish values." ❑

Foreign Minister Abba Eban
demanded that the Paraguayan gov-
ernment punish the two gunmen
who killed a secretary at the Israeli
embassy in Asuncion.
Congregation Beth Moses elect-
ed Sam Wilner its new president.
Attorney Michael C. Hechtman
has been named the Oak Park
Jaycees' Outstanding Young Man of
the Year.

The Carnegie Library in Windsor
featured an Israel display for the
12th anniversary of Israel.
Rabbi Israel Flam, director of
the Hebrew Academy of Oak Park,
announced registration for the fall
term.
Mrs. Sol Hammerstein was elect-
ed president of the Adat Shalom
Synagogue Sisterhood.

100:K\CMCW:M.
The Library of Congress presented
about 5,000 volumes to Israel insti-
tutions.
Three former members of the
antisemitic Iron Guard have been
sentenced to heavy prison terms by
a Bucharest criminal court.

— Compiled by Sy Manello,
editorial assistant

5/12

2000

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