by Deborah Fishman
Though Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest Jewish leaders of our time, not everyone is privileged to be exposed to his words in person. Monday night, the attendees of the iJED Day School Conference had that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The crowd of day school leaders and educators was spell-bound as Rabbi Sacks painted pictures – with almost equally vivid and engaging strokes – of exchanges between European leaders; words of Torah; and jokes about the Academy Awards and Jews and Chinese food. All of these components were masterfully woven together toward one central message: the vital importance of Jewish day schools, throughout Jewish history, today, and for our future.
Rabbi Sacks’ staunch support of day schools first stemmed from a broad survey of history. He listed names of famous empires which seemed impregnable in their day – all of which have ceased to exist, while our tiny people can “still stand and sing ‘Am Yisrael Chai’.” His analysis of the situation: “To defend a country, you need an army. To defend civilization, you need education.” He pointed out that a focus on building schools has been there “in every syllable” of our history. While others built coliseums, we built schools.
Then, Rabbi Sacks began to speak not of education in the abstract, but specifically about Jewish day schools, and hard data of their impact in the present day. He discussed the American Jewish and British communities, where 30 years ago intermarriage rates were equally rising. Today, the younger generation of British Jewry is more religiously and Jewishly committed than their parents – while the recent Pew report indicates that the intermarriage rate amongst American Jewry is higher than ever before. Rabbi Sacks squarely attributes the state of his community to the fact that, in those 30 years, his community built more day schools. Whereas 10% of those 65 or older went to a Jewish day school, in 2013, 70% of Jewish children were attending.
“If you want to save the Jewish future, you have to build Jewish day schools – there is no other way,” said Rabbi Sacks.
How did Jewish attitudes toward day school change in the UK? In part, Rabbi Sacks credited the schools themselves, for their great secular and Jewish results, emphasis on chesed, and active engagement in British society. In addition to that, he explained, British non-Jews love to admire Jewish day schools – and love to fund them too. Why? Because the Jews themselves take pride in them. Even while regaling us with stories of British and French leaders who were Jewish day school fans, the overall message was clear: We have to have pride in ourselves first for others to respect us as well.
In addition to speaking about the role of the day school institution, Rabbi Sacks also spoke about the vital role of teachers. He approached this topic through tales about Moses. He pointed out that we don’t refer to Moses as our “Liberator, Lawmaker, or Miracle-Worker.” Instead, he is “Rabbeinu” – our Teacher. Rabbi Sacks fully acknowledged that, when you are a teacher, there are times when you feel undervalued. In fact, he related how Moshe Rabbeinu himself had such feelings – until G-d permitted him to see the great influence he had had on the Council of Seventy Elders appointed to assist him in the governance of the people. After he was able to see that he had made a difference in their lives, he never suffered from depression again.
Even if, unlike Moses, we are not privy to understanding the full impact we have on others, Rabbi Sacks made an enormous claim: “The only thing that can be compared to G-d is the impact of teachers”! Even if we don’t hear it from our own people, he suggested, they will remember us, and they will walk a little taller because of what we do.
Rabbi Sacks urged the day school field to own who we are and understand the importance of what we do. His words of encouragement could indeed provide powerful inspiration for other topics that have been discussed throughout the conference: how to tell your story to gain lay leaders, students, and philanthropic dollars; how to unleash creativity in our students; and how to boldly set out toward new territory in 21st century learning, new financial models, and online and blended learning. Let us hope that we are up to the challenge of answering his inspiring call to action – indeed, the future of the Jewish people depends on it.
Deborah Fishman is Director of Communications for The AVI CHAI Foundation.
Top
This is a must read for anyone who works in Jewish education or is passionate about the future of the Jewish people. Jewish day schools strengthen both Jewish identity and Jewish literacy in students, which results in individuals who are committed and engaged in the history and value of Judaism and are more likely to be active participants in creating a strong and robust Jewish future. Truly day schools are our best source for the next generation of Jewish leaders.
Having worked in day school administrative positions for over 20 years, I agree totally in the importance of day schools. The real problem is not building them, but filling the seats. If you build it…they don’t necessarily come! We have to market the day school experience properly and educate today’s Jewish families as to its importance.
I am a big supporter of day school education. My son is currently attending one, but I agree with Susan. Day School numbers are decreasing, the tuition is too high and teachers are not always given the same resources as public schools The community needs to come together to figure out how to make day school (and Jewish camping) accessible for the masses. If it is so important it should be for everyone.
Just to clarify: was Britain able to promote and fund day schools because they have a centralized Jewish community? Were they able to do it because some schools are actually what we (but not they) would call “public schools”–and are therefore free– and they add Jewish studies on, and that is all the parents pay for? A large part of this is linked with the funding issue, and for that we should refer back to Yossi Abramowitz’s brilliant plan of Israel donating a small percent of its proceeds from its newly-developing energy resources to diaspora day school education.
However, I would go one step further than Yossi: I would use these funds not only to provide free loans to parents for tuition, diminishing the pay-back for each year the child remains in the school; I would use those funds to close the pay gap between what day school teachers make and what a public school teacher in the same community would make. That would be a real incentive for very smart, very sophisticated, very knowledgeable Jews to go into Jewish education. That would raise the level of education, raise the reputations of the schools, and create a “virtual circle” of increasing quality in Jewish life. The current model poses day school education as “private education” and therefore the responsibility of the individual. We need a model which poses it as a communal responsibility, amenable to communal funding. Support for Israel was seen as a communal responsibility, and it has succeeded. No one said, “I have no relatives who live in Israel, or who plan to, so it is not my problem.” Jewish education needs the same dimension of support.
I’ve heard that Rabbi Sacks is a phenomenal speaker and a learned scholar, but his understanding of statistics and educational outcomes leave something to be desired.
Just to get the most obvious out of the way, there is no even remotely realistic proposal that will increase the number of Jewish kids in the United States who will Jewish day school education by more than 10% within the next 20+ years. I’m not even sure if unrealistic proposals have this as a goal. If the future of Judaism in America requires a significant increase in day school enrollment, then the future is dead. The future requires improving Jewish education to the 65-75% of Jewish children who don’t attend day schools. Anyone who prescribes a solution that ignores these children should be laughed out of the room.
As for his actual numbers from the UK survey ( http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/JPR.Jews-in-the-UK-in-2013.NJCS-preliminary-findings.January-2014.pdf ) The differences between US vs UK numbers seem to be primarily driven by a different ratios between various denominations in the two countries that existed before the rise of UK day schools. The intermarriage rate is still high in the UK and continued rising during the rise of day schools, but has always been lower than in the US. There’s little reason to believe that the differences have anything to do with education differences. Most of the other general differences within the UK seem to be barely large enough to be outside the survey’s margin of error.
I respect that this is a message that makes the attendees of a day school conference feel good and that a staff member at a day school focused organization wants to promote but that doesn’t make the message correct.
We still haven’t done enough to ‘break down the silos’ between our day schools and the rest of our Jewish community. Are we using the day school teachers as resources in our supplementary or adult ed programs? Is Jewish camping (and experiential education) integrated into our schools? Are local camp counselors tapped as teachers, youth workers and Hillel resources? When we look at the whole ‘eco-system’ of our Jewish community, are we using the resources and strengths of each individual organization to strengthen the whole?