Voices in Jewish Education

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Retaining Identity

Day school learning is a major force in living as a Jew and an American.

Q: What will it take to make jewish learning
exciting, meaningful and ongoing for all ages?

ROBERT P. ROTH

Special to the Jewish News

I

t was the Fourth of July and it happened to
be Rosh Chodesh Tammuz as well. I was dav-
ening [praying] in the corner of my living
room, which faces the front windows.
Wrapped in tefillin, I caught a glimpse of the flag
hanging from our front door; a notion from my
early teens was triggered. I felt very fortunate to
have been born an American and a Jew.
The state of American Jewry presents a half-
full, half-empty glass scenario. The good news — in their climb up the
socioeconomic ladder, Jews have broken every barrier, excelled in every disci-
pline and attained a standard of living that is hard to match. The bad news
— a majority of American Jews have become disconnected from their histo-
ry, culture, traditions, rituals and knowledge base.
The 1990 National Jewish Population Study alarmed the Jewish commu-
nity with the following statistics: (1) a greater than 50 percent intermarriage
rate; (2) a greater than 50 percent rate of Jewish children younger than 18
not being raised Jewish; (3) a greater than 50 percent rate of Jews not affiliat-
ing with a synagogue or Jewish communal institution. American Jewry was
losing its identity — not through oppression, dispersion, discrimination or
even attempted extermination — but by the seduction of American popular
culture and choice!
Backed by data from formalized studies, a consensus is forming that a
critical piece to combatting the negative trends is Jewish education. Ergo, the
choice of Jewish day schools — a dual curricular approach providing general
studies at the highest levels of excellence with Jewish studies in a religious
context. Today, there are more than 200,000 Jewish children enrolled in
more than 700 day schools. The majority of these children are in Orthodox
schools; a growing component are in Solomon Schechter (Conservative)
schools. Yet the most intriguing development in the late '90s has been the
creation of Jewish day high schools not formally affiliated with the Orthodox
movement. Detroit is among the vanguard with the advent this fall of the
Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit. JAMD is a non-denominational
school providing a dual curriculum at the highest levels with a traditional
religious philosophy.
Several factors are fueling the increasing parental choice for day school
education. Many of the parents choosing this option are products of supple-
mentary school education. The overwhelming reaction of those who came
through that system was not only decidedly negative, but resulted in adults
who are Judaicly functionally illiterate. This was not so much the fault of the
school. The concept is simply a flawed one — not enough hours to accom-
plish minimalist objectives at a time during the day in which kids do not
want to be in any classroom of any type.

9/15
2000

54

There is no question that another factor is
dissatisfaction with the public-school challenges
of overcrowding, drug use and violence.
Administrations are forced to expend great ener-
gy in non-educational spheres, which used to be
handled by home and church.
Further, there is concern over the value sys-
tem in which the academics of a general cur-
riadum are being transmitted. These factors are
brought to bear most critically in the high
school years, when identity formation of the
adolescent is in its most vulnerable and mal-
leable condition. What identity do you want
your child to have formed before he/she leaves
home? From what value system do you want
your child to be making life-altering decisions as a young adult on some dis-
tant college campus — decisions that will affect his/her choice of spouse,
occupation, lifestyle and even religious affiliation? Our children are inundat-
ed with popular culture values through television, movies, rap music lyrics
and access to all and anything under the sun on the Internet. The relentless
exposure to this media barrage glorifies the importance of physical appear-
ance, overt sexuality, the primacy of material accumulation and the elevation
of self-gratification and individuality over all other collective considerations.
Parents are searching for a means to effectively counterbalance these aspects
of our culture. Jews need not look beyond their own back yard to do so.

Path
For Life
Our tradition, emanating from Torah, sets forth a pathway for life (literally

— Halacha). It is imbued with notions of responsibility and obligation to
God and people: respect for parents and teachers; discouraging gossip; values
modesty; promoting assistance to the sick, poor and bereaved; positing the
pursuit of study for its own sake, just to name a few. This way of life sub-
sumes an acknowledgement, through prayer, that all is a gift from God —
providing a meaningful rhythm to daily life within the ebb and flow of the
Jewish calendar, with Shabbat as its cornerstone. It is our task to reconnect to
this tradition. We must give our children the ability to access Torah, our clas-
sical texts, the siddur, our heritage — the sources of our identity.
Studies now confirm what common sense would predict. Alumni of day
schools, particularly day high schools, as Jewish adults, demonstrate at signif-
icantly higher percentages than non-day school graduates the following
behavior: observance of Shabbat and kashrut; financial contribution to
Jewish communal institutions; membership in synagogues; much stronger
ties to Israel and from a self-preservation standpoint, most important of all,
marry other Jews (a 4 1/2 percent intermarriage rate verses the 52 percent in
the general Jewish population).
The two most oft-cited reasons by parents resisting this choice are money
and a notion that their kids will be too sheltered. Money is definitely a prob-

ROTH

on page 61

