SPECIAL COMMENTARY

Your First
Payment Is

Barking Up The Wrong Tree

New York

0 ne of every five American

On A Second Mortgage
With Flagstar Bank...

®
TAR
I
FACAES
6..,_ BANK

114

Fully Disbursed Second Mortgage

O

2600 Telegraph Road
Bloomfield Hills
248-338-7700 or 248-352-7700

1131 W. Warren
Detroit
313-832-7971

42200 Ford Road
Canton
734-981-4942

28177 Orchard Lake Road
Farmington Hills
248-324-0013

37655 Six Mile Road
Livonia
734-953-6890

Cr

Member
ENDER
www,flagstar.com
FDIC
Some restriction apply. The first payment will be paid by Flagstar Bank up to a
maximum of $250.00. Subject to approval. Not valid with any other offer.

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21325 Telegraph, Southfield

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(248) 948-1060

9 / 15
2000

66

36539 Gratiot Ave„ Mt. Clemens 3337 Auburn Rd., Auburn Hills

(South of 16 Mk)

(810) 790-3065

(Between Adams it Squin'el)

(248) 853-7440

Jewish schoolchildren now is
enrolled in an all-day Jewish
parochial school,
according to a
comprehensive
"census of
Jewish day
schools released
this year by a
family foundation
in this city.
The enroll-
ment figures —
J.J. GOLDBERG 184,333 students
total, up a brisk
Sp ecial to
15 percent in the
the Jewish News
last decade — are
being hailed far
and wide as evidence that American
Jewry has finally taken day schools to
heart. Spurred by "frightening statis-
tics" of intermarriage, Jewish leaders
have seized upon day schools "as a
centerpiece of the communal strategy
to promote Jewish identity and ensure
Jewish continuity, census author
Marvin Schick
reports approvingly.
E
The Avi Chai
Foundation, a major
force in the cam-
0
paign, sponsored the
census to help move
things forward.
6-1
The actual num-
bers, awkwardly
enough, suggest
they're all barking up
the wrong tree.
Examined up
close, what the cen-
sus shows is not a
day-school system
reaching out to
growing numbers o f
uncommitted Jews
No, the great major- Tracey Jackier, a teacher at the newest day high school,
ity of day schools
the Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit, with Ari
are more like
Mendelson, a ninth grader.
fortresses, where the
most committed
the total school-aged Jewish popula-
Jews wall themselves off from the
tion in the U.S.
society around — including most of
their fellow Jews. Barely two-fifths of
Not Rosy
all day schools even try enrolling
That's the situation at the end of a
less-committed Jews. The numbers
decade of unprecedented growth in
they reach are tiny, virtually mean-
day-school enrollment and new school
ingless in relation to the overall Jew-
construction, at a cost of tens of mil-
lions of dollars. It's not pretty.
author
of
"Jewish
J.J. Goldberg,
Schick, the author of the school
Power" and formerly a national Jewish
census, is a respected educational con-
columnist, is editor of the Forward, a
sultant and lay president of New
Jewish newspaper. He can reached by e-
York's oldest day school, the Rabbi
mail at jjg@compuserve.com

0

Up to I 00(% of the value of your home
-Fully Disbursed -Fixed Terms
-Fixed Rate -Fixed Payment

10.00 OFF

ish population in this country.
In plain numbers, the census shows
that about 75 percent of all day-school
students, some 138,000, come from
Orthodox families. The remaining 25
percent, about 47,000 students, come
from non-Orthodox homes. Except
for a small fraction crossing over in
each direction, the two groups attend
separate schools. Most Orthodox
schools are effectively closed to non-
Orthodox students.
Put differently, virtually all school-
aged Orthodox Jewish children in
America attend day schools, but barely
5 percent of non-Orthodox Jewish
children do. And that 5 percent
appears in the main to represent the
most Jewishly committed segment of
non-Orthodox families.
Students raised in marginally affili-
ated homes, who might be considered
the youngsters most likely to benefit
from day schools' outreach potential
— as opposed to students enrolled
because of already-strong family com-
mitments — number at most 15,000
to 20,000. That's 1.5 to 2 percent of