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Special Articles Jewish Education in the United States: Recent Trends and Issues

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Special Articles Jewish Education in the United States: Recent Trends and Issues Special Articles Jewish Education in the United States: Recent Trends and Issues BY JACK WERTHEIMER L/ON, G REGARDED BY EDUCATORS AND THEIR ALLIES as the ne- glected "step-child"1 of the American Jewish community, the field of Jew- ish education finds itself at the close of the 20th century the object of in- tense scrutiny and great expectations. Writing of the current "plastic moment" in American Jewish education, the historian Jonathan Sarna sees it as one of "abundant innovations, an unlimited number of poten- tial directions, innumerable theories, and vast uncertainty."2 Perhaps never Note: I wish to acknowledge with appreciation a number of individuals working in the field of education who gave generously of their time and expertise to answer my questions and steer me toward sources of information. At the William Davidson School of Jewish Education of the Jewish Theological Seminary, I consulted with Aryeh Davidson, Barry Holtz, and Carol Ingall. Mary Boys of Union Theological Seminary and Linda Vogel of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary helped me with the larger context of religious education in America. At the Jewish Education Service of North America, Jonathan Woocher and Leora Isaacs conversed with me at length; Paul Flexner and David Shluker provided valuable data. At other Jewish institutions based in New York I was advised by: Robert Abramson of the Education Department at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and Jan Katzew, his counterpart at the Union of American Hebrew Congregations; Steven Bayme of the Department of Jewish Communal Affairs at the American Jewish Committee; Jerome Chanes of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture; Alisa Kurshan at the Continuity Commission of the UJA-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of Greater New York; Yossi Prager and Marvin Schick at the Avi Chai Foundation; Nessa Rapaport of the Mandel Foundation; and Elliot Spack of the Coalition for the Advancement of Jew- ish Education. My key informants outside New York were Adrianne Bank of the Whizin Institute at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles; Shulamith Elster of Hillel in Wash- ington, D.C.; Carolyn Keller of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston; Sara Lee of the Rhea Hirsch School of Education at the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles; Daniel Margolis of the Bureau of Jewish Education in Boston; and Susan Shevitz of the Hornstein Program at Brandeis University. David Behrman shared his knowledge of cur- ricular materials. Two students at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Dina Gerber Huebner, a doctoral candidate in education, and Lowell Appelbaum, an undergraduate, served as su- perb research assistants. The Abbell Faculty Research Fund at the Jewish Theological Sem- inary helped underwrite some of the costs of my research. 'Such was the characterization of the field presented by Joseph Schechtman of the Re- search Department of the Jewish Agency in an unpublished typescript entitled "Jewish Ed- ucation in the United States: A Working Paper on Facts and Problems," ca. 1967, p. 31. Jonathan D. Sarna, "American Jewish Education in Historical Perspective," Journal of Jewish Education, Winter/Spring 1998, p. 18. One observer who bemoaned the indifference 4 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1999 before has there been so much talk about investing large sums of com- munal and philanthropic dollars in the enterprise of Jewish education. And perhaps never before has a Jewish community pinned so much of its hopes for "continuity" —for the transmission of a strong Jewish identity to the next generation—on programs of formal and informal education. The challenge of strengthening Jewish education is enormous because the field itself is so vast and complicated. Jonathan Woocher, a leading national spokesman on Jewish education, has taken the measure of its ex- pansive dimensions: "American Jews today spend more than $1.5 billion annually to maintain an educational system that includes 3,000 schools and thousands more educational programs held in a wide variety of in- stitutional settings. The system involves close to 50,000 teachers and more than a million Jews who study regularly—almost half of them young people between the ages of three and eighteen."3 Since this far- flung network of autonomous schools and programs is primarily gov- erned and funded through local initiatives in hundreds of Jewish com- munities throughout the United States, the field of Jewish education is highly diffuse. From a qualitative perspective, the situation is even more complex, for, as Woocher also notes, American Jews maintain a "love-hate relationship" with Jewish education: on the one hand, a broad consensus that Jewish education stands as the final bulwark against powerful tides of assimilation; on the other, a "perception of failure and mediocrity in the system," prompting some to question the wisdom of "pouring addi- tional dollars into the very enterprise that has brought American Jewry to its current sorry condition."4 The upgrading of Jewish education—long a preoccupation of insid- ers —has taken on particular urgency since the release of the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, which found that younger American Jews iden- tify less intensely than their elders with fellow Jews, the organizations of the Jewish community, and Israel and, most dramatically, that by the late 1980s, more than half of all Jews were marrying outside the faith. "That figure served as a wake-up call to the American Jewish leadership," ob- served John Ruskay, a top executive of the New York Jewish community.5 to Jewish education was Isaac Unterman, who claimed that "American Jewry has given abundantly of its thought and wealth to the care of the sick and the aged, to the relief of visible distress and suffering, but it has done nothing, if we except a few attempts, toward grappling with the problem of Jewish education." (Quoted—with a healthy degree of skep- ticism—by Sarna, p. 9.) '"Foreword" to Joseph Reimer, Succeeding at Jewish Education: How One Synagogue Made It Work (Philadelphia, 1998), p. xi. 4Ibid., p. xii. 5Quoted by J.J. Goldberg, "U.S. Jewry Pins Its Future on Education," Jerusalem Report, Oct. 6, 1994, p. 26. JEWISH EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES / 5 Many analysts of the 1990 study also arrived at the conclusion that "the only serious antidote the Jewish community can muster to stem the es- calating rate of intermarriage and other forms of assimilation" is Jewish education.6 As noted by the Commission on Jewish Education in North America, "the responsibility for developing Jewish identity and instil- ling a commitment to Judaism . now rests primarily with Jewish education."7 In light of this assessment, virtually every major sector of the Ameri- can Jewish community has directed more sustained attention and new re- sources to the field during the 1990s. The large umbrella agencies of Jew- ish philanthropy have created "continuity commissions" to plan new initiatives and fund innovative programs. The religious movements of American Judaism have expanded their efforts to address the educational needs of their members, beginning with preschoolers and encompassing various types of formal and informal education for children, teenagers, college students, and adults of all ages. Jewish community centers have strengthened their capacities and their resolve to deliver a strong educa- tional component. Agencies designed to raise money for Jews abroad now offer study opportunities for American Jews. And a number of richly en- dowed family foundations have begun to invest in educational programs designed to bring about systemic changes. Not surprisingly, given the high stakes for the future of the Ameri- can Jewish community and the potentially large financial resources available to be tapped, educational programs and institutions have taken to making extravagant claims to tout their "successes." Advertisements in the Jewish and general press routinely promote the efficacy of par- ticular solutions. "1,000,000 Jews can now be rescued . right here in North America," reads the banner headline of one ad, which then goes on to claim that "the intermarriage rate drops to 7% for students who complete a Jewish day school education."8 After listing some of the major national agencies of the American Jewish community, another ad asks: "What one cause should you also support to guarantee the sur- vival of all these causes in the next generation? Jewish Day School Ed- 'Bernard Reisman, "Needed: A Paradigm Shift in Jewish Education," Journal of Jewish Education, Summer 1993, p. 30. (Note: hereafter the journal will be identified simply as Jew- ish Education.) 1A Time to Act, The Report of the Commission on Jewish Education in North America (Uni- versity Press of America, Lanham, Md., 1990), p. 15. That this report was issued prior to the release of the NJPS is indicative of a long-standing concern among some sectors of the American Jewish leadership with the need to strengthen Jewish identity and education. This process will be traced below. 8From an ad placed by Torah Umesorah National Society for Hebrew Day Schools, Jew- ish Week (New York), Nov. 6-12, 1992, p. 25. 6 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1999 ucation."9 A denominational youth movement promotes itself as "not just a youth movement but an answer."10 And advocates of trips to Is- rael for teenagers and college students seem to suggest that such an ex- perience alone will transform young people otherwise alienated from Jewish life." If nothing else, these sweeping claims highlight the yearn- ing of many American Jews to stem rates of assimilation and defection through programs of Jewish education. The heightened sense of urgency to devise new solutions and shore up existing programs has generated a great deal of ferment in the field of Jewish education. In recent years, new ideas have been promoted, new al- liances for change forged, bold new initiatives announced, and new "play- ers" and institutions have joined the undertaking.12 All of these devel- opments have thrown the field into considerable turmoil.
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