On Aug. 1, 1988, the philanthropist Morton Mandel convened the Commission on Jewish Education in North America. He was convinced that Jewish education was the best solution to combat assimilation and was eager to establish a set of philanthropic priorities to increase Jewish learning. Mandel’s Commission, 44 members in all, included lay leaders, education researchers and seminary heads. Harvard’s Rabbi Isadore Twersky was the only scholar of Jewish studies invited to the commission.

The episode is a reminder of the disconnect between Jewish studies and Jewish education — and the urgent need to remedy this.

Illustrative. Ashok Sinha/Adobe Stock

Mandel’s plan worked. The commission and “A Time to Act,” its 97-page call to action “heralded a decade-and-a-half of innovation, experimentation and growth, grounded in new philanthropic models and more tactical synergetic approaches,” wrote historian Jonathan Krasner.

The commission championed several core needs, including teacher pipelines and school affordability. Its findings also reported on the “shortage” of “educational content and curriculum development.” To remedy this, the commission hoped that, with increased funding, Jewish education agencies could recruit a rising generation of Jewish studies majors to mine the heavy rabbinic tomes and dusty archives for “the great ideas of the Jewish tradition.”

But why not enlist the support of Jewish studies scholars — those highly trained women and men best prepared to produce “new knowledge” on Judaica topics — to help furnish educational content? There was some precedent. For example, Samuel Melton engaged Bible scholar Nahum Sarna to develop a book, Understanding Genesis: The World of the Bible in Light of History, and an attendant curriculum in support of Jewish literacy.

However, Sarna was the exception that proved the rule. The commission determined that the impact of ivory tower Jewish studies was “limited.” Many professors were also apprehensive; they worried that too deep a connection to everyday Jewish life and learning could weaken — in the minds of the academy — their scholarly bona fides as dispassionate researchers.

Apparently, the presence of Harvard’s Twersky at the commission’s convenings was not enough to reverse decades of isolationism that siloed Jewish education from Jewish scholarship.  

Today, the tension between Jewish education and Jewish scholarship is even more complicated. On the one hand, educators are in greater need of reliable and sophisticated content. Fewer teachers in Jewish settings possess advanced degrees, let alone graduate training in Jewish studies or Jewish education.

The same is the case for many agencies that develop high production-level Jewish content. Many lack the wherewithal to convey, with historical precision, the founding of Hasidism, the origins of Conservative Judaism, Thomas Jefferson’s assessment of Jews and Judaism and the extent of the very important and fraught relationship between Black and Jewish Americans in the United States. The lack of subject matter expertise is also evident in more traditional areas of Jewish learning such as the Bible and the Talmud.

Jewish educators require a powerful conduit to scholarship. Without it, they are faced with the internet (or even worse, generative AI), that modern unnavigable Great Library of Alexandria, without the critical tools to pluck the foremost of our collective wisdom.

On the other hand, Jewish studies has not made the effort to ingratiate itself to the Jewish community. Many within its ranks share views on Israel that diverge from the American Jewish mainstream and its cadre of major donors. No doubt, many feel that Jewish studies faculty, and the Association for Jewish Studies in particular, have not satisfactorily leveraged their station to oppose rising antisemitism on university campuses since the Hamas terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.

Many of my peers have confessed to me the unenviable challenge to stand up for their Jewish students and themselves (not all, but most Judaica scholars identify as Jewish) without suffering the retribution of their colleagues. This should be interpreted as a need for leadership, now scholarly cowardice.

Our moment is too important to give up on this. Education remains the most important force in Jewish life, and we require the very best sort of it to fortify the Jewish present and ensure a flourishing future. Jewish education ought to leverage the $1 billion spent annually on Jewish studies professors and graduate students whose books and articles are meant to produce new knowledge and resurface forgotten wisdom.

We face a renewed “time to act.” We need Jewish studies scholars who “get it” to collaborate with thoughtful Jewish educators to create fresh content. But to revolutionize Jewish learning, both groups require leadership and the invitation to make something of it.

Zev Eleff is the president of Gratz College and a professor of American Jewish history.