Since Oct. 7, 2023, many Jewish parents have looked at their children’s schools and wondered whether they are safe there, and whether they will grow up proud of who they are. As antisemitism has surged on campuses, in classrooms and online, the case for Jewish day school has been made with new urgency, and families are listening. By December 2023, 39% of Jewish day schools and yeshivas experienced an increase in inquiries for mid-year transfer from public school. Across Prizmah’s network, enrollment has climbed from 94,008 students in the 2021-2022 school year to approximately 101,041 students in 2025-2026, and new philanthropic investment is following close behind.

Advocates promise that children in these schools will be known, will belong, and will grow up certain of who they are. For many families, that promise holds. The case, however, excludes the Jewish children the bubble does not hold: the ones our schools are not yet equipped to serve, the ones who did not find safety there, and the ones who never walk in the door. What does the Jewish community owe them?

Illustrative. alswart/Adobe Stock

I come to that question as a parent of a child who is still owed the answer. Our children have attended Jewish day school. One of our children, however, only stayed until the middle of sixth grade when my husband and I removed her after years of bullying. The adults knew the pattern and made choices that did not protect her. Since she left, she has had almost no contact with Jewish peers in our community. Hers is one story among many.

Day school is more than a school. In many communities, it is where families meet, where Shabbat invitations get extended, and where bar and bat mitzvah guest lists take shape. A child who cannot attend, whether because of a learning disability, bullying, tuition, or distance, loses one of the strongest threads tying a young person to Jewish life.

These children fall outside the bubble in two ways. Some need support that our schools are not yet equipped to give, while others enroll and still end up unprotected.

The first group is large. A recent analysis of National Survey of Children’s Health data found that 8.9% of children ages 6 to 17 have been diagnosed with a learning disability, roughly 1 in 11. Public schools are required by law to serve these children. Jewish day schools are not, and most are not equipped to.

Matan’s report, Closing the Inclusion Gap, drew on assessments of 15 Jewish communities conducted between 2018 and 2025. In every region studied, 20% to 25% of people have identified disabilities. Yet fewer than one-third of Jewish schools employ a dedicated inclusion coordinator or learning specialist. One parent recalled being told, “Students with special needs are not who we cater to.”

Day school offers a kind of belonging that is easy to miss until it is gone: the relief of simply being normal. In most non-Jewish schools, a Jewish child is the Jewish child, the one who explains the holidays and quietly represents an entire people. That is a constant tax on a child, and since Oct. 7, 2023, it has grown heavier. For the children our schools cannot serve, there is no harbor to run to.

Now consider a Jewish child with a learning disability, ADHD, or anxiety. She already knows what it means to be different. She is pulled out for special sessions, given extra time, and watched a little more closely. A seat in a day school could give her one place where she is simply one of the kids.

The children who most need the relief of being normal are the ones least likely to be offered it.

A community that makes day school the price of admission to Jewish belonging has decided, whether it means to or not, that some Jewish children are acceptable losses. Every child whose learning disability sent the family elsewhere is one of them. So is every child who left because staying was no longer safe.

On Yom Kippur, we confess in the plural. “Ashamnu, bagadnu: we have trespassed, we have betrayed.” Most of us never turned a child away or looked past a bully, and we say the words anyway. “All of Israel is responsible for one another.” A community answers for what happens inside its walls, and for who is left outside them.

Day school leaders will rightly say that they receive no federal special education funding and that tuition is already out of reach for many families. That is exactly why this work belongs to philanthropy. Programs like Gateways in Boston and Keshet in Chicago show what inclusion looks like when someone funds it.

Funders have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Jewish day schools, and “The Surge” is drawing more. I would ask every funder in this space to attach three conditions to future grants.

First, inclusion benchmarks. Any school that accepts communal dollars should be able to say how many students with learning disabilities it serves, what support they receive, and how many families it turned away. Matan’s new Alliance for Disability Inclusion gives funders a framework ready to use.

Second, transparency on bullying. Schools that promise every child is known should make public how many incidents they see and how the restoration process is implemented.

Third, belonging beyond the school. A share of every education dollar should reach the children who leave or never enter. That means synagogues, youth groups and camps that are trained to welcome and fully include children with disabilities or learning differences. It means a community inclusion navigator, as Matan recommends, so families do not start over at every door. And it means teen and Shabbat programs where a public school kid walks in as a peer instead of an outlier.

Some of what these children need cannot be bought. In our Yom Kippur morning haftarah, Isaiah warns that God does not want a fast of bowed heads alone. He wants us to share our bread, shelter the poor, and never hide from our own flesh. These children are our own flesh. When one disappears from the day school roster, someone should notice. A rabbi, a youth director or a parent from the old carpool should reach out, with no agenda beyond making sure the family is still held.

We owe these children the lesson of love. Love of a people is learned the way most love is learned: by being loved first. How do we teach every Jewish child to love the Jewish People when we have not taught the Jewish people to love every Jewish child? Any serious plan for her Jewish life has to begin with repair.

The Rambam (Maimonides) teaches that complete teshuvah (repentance) is proven when the same situation arises again and we act differently. For a community, that proof comes through systems, like the three conditions above.

The bubble we build for Jewish children must be grander than any single day school’s: kinder to the child who struggles, more patient with the child who learns differently and more open to the family that never fit the mold. It must form around those children wherever they are: a synagogue, a camp cabin, a Shabbat table, a youth group.

Day school advocates like to say that the bubble is what prepares children to leave it. Many Jewish children leave early, while others never step inside. They are still ours. One day, those children will decide whether the Jewish People are their people. That decision will rest on a simple memory: whether, when the doors closed, anyone came looking for them.

Amanda Goldstein is a community leader, educator, and advocate dedicated to strengthening Jewish life and advancing inclusivity, wellness and access. She is a student at Yeshivat Maharat and a mother to four amazing children.