Andy Silow-Carroll weighs in on Hebrew school
The editor of the New Jersey Jewish News shares his thoughts on Hebrew school: Should it stay or should it go?
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Hebrew school. Okay, I exaggerate. Many of them weren’t the best minds at all, and most spent way too much of their time watching Brady Bunch reruns.
But they hated Hebrew school, and it turned them off to Jewish life, sometimes for good.
And I’ll even say this: Bad Hebrew school experiences not only shaped the Jewish worldview of alienated baby boomers, but helped establish the priorities of our most active, most highly identified Jews. I have a hunch that the rise of the day school movement in the past 20 years is owed in no small part to Jewish professionals and philanthropists who, drawing on their own childhood trauma, felt the supplementary school model was unsalvageable. The best minds, and the big bucks, went into the day schools, attracting, in turn, parents with grim Hebrew school memories of their own.
And yet, the majority of children receiving a Jewish education in this country are enrolled in supplementary schools. That’s 230,000 kids at some 2,000 part-time schools.
And here’s another hunch: As the economy continues to falter, parents who were willing and able to pay day school tuitions will start to take a look at alternatives. It’s happening already.
The best and worst of what they’ll find is contained in a new report from the Avi Chai Foundation, “Schools That Work: What We Can Learn from Good Jewish Supplementary Schools.” Jack Wertheimer of the Jewish Theological Seminary led a research team that looked at 10 schools with reputations for getting it right. The optimist in me reads their report and thinks that where there’s a will there’s a way; the pessimist wonders if there is enough will and talent out there to carry its lessons into hundreds of synagogues and community schools.
Read the rest at the NJJN.
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I am a Hebrew School drop out. I quit after my Bar Mitzvah. It just didnt challenge me. When teaching education at HUC-JIR, I used to ask the question--so am I a religious school success or failure?
I’m not surprised that so many people have poor memories of part-time Hebrew school..without a full time committment to Jewish learning, it’s just one more burden on top of public school, to be flushed away as soon as the bar-mitzva’s finished.
In a full time environment, there is more time for the kids to get the full flavor of what a Jewish education has to offer aided by loving and dedicated teachers, without it being crammed into them in the space of an hour or two on Sunday.
My kids started full-time day school in 3rd and 5th grade, even though the finances and commute were a challenge. After four years, they have a firm foundation in moral education, Jewish life and Torah that will be with them for life, and they’re at least three years ahead of the local public schools.
I was raised totally secular and am moderately observant today, so I had some doubts about this in the beginning. But as I see what kind of people they’re growing up to be, I know it’s one of the best things I ever did for my kids.
Think about it.
Robert Miller, Los Angeles
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ASC
04/30/09 01:20 PM
I didn’t mention it in my piece, but my two oldest boys are enrolled in an excellent one-day-a-week Hebrew high school in Bergen County, NJ, (after attending Schechter through 8th grade) and both enjoy it quite a lot. That’s mainly because the school seems to emphasize the very things recommended in the AVi Chai report—building a sense of community, taking the classes seriously, offering a lot of extracurricular stuff to augment the classroom learning, etc.
I also make my kids go to the dentist, but not every Sunday morning. If kids are going to value their Jewishness. we have to give them a better reason to go then “I say so.”