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(I) the Five Jewish Influences on Ramah

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(I) the Five Jewish Influences on Ramah THE JACOB RADER MARCUS CENTER OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH ARCHIVES MS-831: Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation Records, 1980–2008. Series C: Council for Initiatives in Jewish Education (CIJE). 1988–2003. Subseries 5: Communication, Publications, and Research Papers, 1991–2003. Box Folder 42 2 Fox, Seymour, and William Novak. Vision at the Heart. Planning and drafts, February 1996-May 1996. For more information on this collection, please see the finding aid on the American Jewish Archives website. 3101 Clifton Ave, Cincinnati, Ohio 45220 513.487.3000 AmericanJewishArchives.org FROM: "Dan Pekarsky", INTERNET:[email protected] TO: Nessa Rapoport, 74671,3370 Nessa Rapoport, 74671,3370 DATE: 2/5/96 10:19 AM Re: Ramah and my paper Sender: [email protected] Received: from audumla.students.wisc.edu (students.wisc.edu [144.92.104.66]) by dub-img-4.compuserve.com (8.6.10/5.950515) id JAA22229; Mon, 5 Feb 1996 09:56:41 -0500 Received: from mail.soemadison.wisc.edu by audumla.students.wisc.edu; id IAA111626 ; 8.6.9W/42; Mon, 5 Feb 1996 08:56:40 -0600 From: "Dan Pekarsky" <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] To: [email protected], [email protected] Date: Sun, 04 Feb 1996 21 :12:00 -600 Subject: Ramah and my paper X-Gateway: iGate, (WP Office) vers 4.04m - 1032 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <[email protected]> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; Charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: ?BIT Nessa, I am finding the in-progress Ramah piece very interesting, and I'm struck by the number of times my own intuitive reactions are mirrored a few lines down by your own comments in the brackets. Below are a few reactions: 1. On p. 1, Marshall Smith was Dean at Stanford, not HaNard. Also Hutchins first and middle names are "Robert Maynard". 2. On P. 3, Seymour refers to Jewish education on the model of a cafeteria. Since he has just gotten done criticizing the "shopping mall" high school, it would be useful for him to clarify how the two differ from each other. 3. Bottom or 3, top of 4: I strongly agreeed with your sense that his view of the families that send kids to Ramah is somewhat harsh, at least with respect to those who sent their kids to the camp some 40 years ago. It is, by the way, interesting to me that you thought his view might have fit more accurately way back then, but not now; whereas I would have thought it's the other way around. 4. It would be worth, as you suggest, exploring with Seymour the tenability of the distinction he drew between camps and schools. Is he suggesting that even if schools become more informal institutions, they cannot by their very nature do the kinds of things that camps can do? 5. I suspect that Dewey's influence on the camp extends considerably beyond the the theme of "inseparability of Jews and social problems." My guess is that his ideas on pedagogy, on the place of experience in learning, and several other matters had an influence on the camp's development. I would be interested in what Seymour would say if asked to elaborate on the ways in which Dewey's ideas influenced the camp's educational philosophy. 6. At the very end there is a reference to lack of continuity between camp and home experiences, and you allude to an ideal that defines the proper connection between camp and the world beyond. I would be interested in hearing more about that ideal. In the ideal, how would the camp experience be followed up in synagogue and home? More generally, how was it expected/hoped that the camp would impact on families, synagogues, and on American Jewish life more generally? 7. Given the harsh assessment of the community in which Ramah emerged, one wonders where the appropriate staff would be recruited from and the kind of training that would be appropriate for them. You allude to this issue, and it's important to develop this further, I think. 8. Evaluation: In what ways has Ramah been successful - and how do we know? That is, what are the bases for believing that Ramah has succeeded? What kinds of evaluation-processes were built into camp life -- and what kinds of studies of graudates have been done, with what results? That's it for now. In general, I think it's coming along very well, and that it's going to prove a mighty contribution. The vignettes seem particularly powerful to me. They concisely capture a lot very graphically and can be richly analyzed. I'll look forward to reading more as you progress. If more reactions/questions come to mind, I'll let you know. When are you meeting with Seymour? Is it this week? How would Friday morning work out as a time for us to sit down and have our conversation concerning the paper I've drafted? We could meet at CIJE or over breakfast at the Roger Smith. Will this work for you? I hope all is well. DP 1 Jumpy Juu1hrc. m1,lml w/uur Ca~fcxr- dwn'}· JLf wh); II,:_ f'((J A CONVERSATION WITH SEYMOUR FOX THE IMPORTANCE OF A VISION Education that' s parve, that isn ' t driven by a vision, is highly unlikely to work. M. Smith, the undersecretary o f education and a former dean o f Harvard, wrote a paper analyzing the various attempts to reform American education during t h e 1980s. But despite an enormous amount of legislation that was passed, very little was actually accomplished -- except in a f ew schools and institutions that were driven by a vision. You can see the same thing in Sara Lightfoot ' s book, The Good High School, where she described a handful of successful schools, each of which h ad an identifiable vision. Or in David Cohen's book, The Shopping Mall High School. Cohen says that American high schools are the academic equivalent of shopping malls . Virtually everything is available as a course offering, which means that the school stands for nothing. Or look at the University of Chicago during the Hutchins era. over the years, Chicago has produced more Nobel Prize winners and more university presidents than any other institution. It was a special place, a uniquely exciting place with a vision, and it still is. 2 In the Jewish world we've had many educational institutions with a vision, including the great yeshivot of Lithuania, and the pre­ state Zionist youth movements. I believe that the Jews have some special things to say about education, that we have something significant to offer. James Coleman, the sociologist who died recently, was a great friend of Ramah. He visited our operation in Israel, the Mandel Institute. "What's amazing about you people," he said, "is your optimism. You really believe in this. Other educators I meet are so depressed!" Just as doctors take a Hippocratic oath, which affirms that they refuse to give up, there ' s an Educator's Oath that states that we must refuse to accept failure, and that there has to be away to reach the hearts and minds of children -- and adults. WHAT WAS THE VISION OF RAMAH? The founders of Ramah made a basic decision. They had a choice:­ they could invest their energy in day schools, or in summer camps. It could have gone either way. They chose camping because the issues t hat had t o be addressed coul d not be handled by a school, even a day school. There's an Aramaic phrase, girsa de yankuta rishit -- that what really counts is the learning of an infant. People used to think that if you didn't learn a great deal as a young child, you were lost. But that's not true. Jack Neusner is an excellent example of why that idea is wrong. So was Rabbi Akiva -- although nobody, least of all Neusner, takes that legend seriously. 3 Ramah was a response to problems that Jewish education confronted in the 1940s and 1950s -- problems ·that we still face. First, most Jewish children are not exposed to meaningful Jewish experiences in their early formative years. Second, most Jewish families do not significantly contribute to the Jewish education of their children. And third, most North American Jews live in an environment that does not support the values of Judaism. In an era when most Jews were too busy trying to becoming Americans, the Jewish home was either negative or neutral . our response to that was to create a subculture, an e nclave, a new opportunity to accomplish what the family and the community were no longer doing. I was fortunate, because growi ng up I had all of that. There were no day schools in my day, but I had a better Jewish education that any day school kid. In addition t o a rich Jewish family life, I went to an afternoon school from 3 to 8 every weekday, and agnin on Sundays. The shul didn ' t o ffer a junior congregation; our job was to get into the adult congregation. My parents never asked me what happened in school , only in Hebrew school. My extended family rewarded me for how much Hebrew I knew, and how I participated. We were a moder n Orthodox family. My elementary s chool was most ly Jewish, and our d istrict, which was heavily Democratic, was completely for FDR.
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