schmoozED

Florence Melton, the woman who revitalized adult Jewish learning in the English-speaking world died earlier this week. Over 20,000 Jewish adults have studied about Judaism in the Florence Adult Mini-Schools since they were established in 1986. Florence Melton said that she pursued adult Jewish education because Jewish children learned how to observe the rituals, but they grew into adults who did not know about “their history, Jewish values, the ideas of Judaism and why they should be proud to be Jewish.”

Read the full JTA obituary here.

Labels: community, global education

A lot of people in the Jewish orthodox blogosphere are talking about this article. When I first read it, all I could think is -"what's wrong with these people?" Why would any society go out of it's way to undermine the growth of one half of its population? A lot of modern orthodox people who read this article reacted like I did at first - e.g how sad, how unfortunate! but it doesn't really influence me.
And then I realized - hey, this is part of my world. Hareidi Jews are not a separate people. These are Jews too and their rulings impact on me - a lot of our teachers are Hareidi and more and more community Rabbis across Europe are from the Hareidi world. And we all know that Hareidi rulings tend to influence modern orthodox thought. It' sad amazing how so many MO Jews think that Hareidi Jews are closer to the real thing. We shouldn't be looking from the side. We should be getting right in there and arguing. We should be saying loud and clear, hey guys, this is a mistake, both socially and halakhically. We should be shouting it out and we should make it clear to the people around us and to our children that these type of rulings are just not acceptable to us.

Labels: community, Orthodox Judaism

Q: What are the two most important reasons to become a teacher?
A: July and August

This joke has been around for as long as I can remember. I recall one summer being challenged by someone in the business world who wanted to know why teachers need so much time off. The answer was simple - if you want your kids' teachers to come in with lots of energy and creativity, to have new ideas and not simply repeat the same things they've been doing for the past five years, they need the opportunity to actual;ly think about what they do, learn, read, plan. All the things that they have no time for during the actual school year.

When I first moved into an administrative position, I really missed July and August. Running a school is a full-time business. True, the schedule during the summer was lighter, and I did get to take two weeks away and squeeze in some much needed reading, but it was not the same.

It turns out, however, that many teachers don't have July and August. To supplement their salaries, they need to work in camps and other summer environments, so that they, too, barely have time to catch their breaths. Certainly not time to rejuvenate themselves, learn, free their minds to think creatively.

A colleague of mine recently wrote to me that he had to turn down a professional development program (with full scholarship!) because he could not afford it. Listen: a senior administrator in one of the wealthiest communities in the world, had to commit to working in camp so that his kids could attend. He couldn't afford two weeks for professional development.

And people want to know why it's hard to get good people into the field?

Labels: community, teacher recruitment

In my early teens I discovered that I was an FFB (Frum From Birth).

I fully acknowledge that I am observant because that is the way my parents brought me up. Would I have chosen to be orthodox had I been brought up secular?

In my naive youth I was confident that I would have. It was obvious to me that Jewish history was being governed by a prime mover and that the only way to “guarantee” Jewish survival was to be observant. I still believe this to be true, but I was far more naïve about my second article of faith.

I believed, perhaps because of the influence of a number of BT (Ba’al Teshuva) friends, that non-religious Jews would on masse choose to be religious, however not just because of the reasons stated above, but because I believed that observant Jews were honest, good and tolerant people able to lead rich and satisfying lives without disregarding the positive aspects of wider society. Their behavior would be a shining example to others for others to emulate.

How wrong have I been about this!! Not only are orthodox Jews not shining examples, neither is their leadership. In Israel, one of the Chief Rabbis is being investigated on corruption charges, the other had a criminal act of violence perpetrated in his house, involving his son daughter, and wife for which his son was imprisoned, yet, the only desecration of God’s name that bothered the rabbi, was that people might think he had Internet in his house.

A gay parade was cancelled in Jerusalem, because the police did not believe they could safely protect the demonstrators from religious counter-demonstrators. Apart from the fact that rabbis barely address the serious issues of sexual identity, few rabbis seemed concerned that it was real violence and murderous threats that stopped the parade. Apart from a few calls of abomination, violence seemed to be the extent of the religious arguments.

While there is bias in the ways that religious issues are reported in the Israeli press, we cannot get away from the fact so many serious issues, such as the plight of agunot and sexual abuse in the community, are not taken seriously enough by religious Jews and there is very little debate abut these issues. We are light years behind our brethren on these issues.

Furthermore, religious leaders have shown themselves to be no better morally than their secular counterparts and a good portion of the religious community has shown itself to be narrow-minded, hugely intolerant and to simply be missing the plot. Would I become religious today? I am afraid to answer that question.

Labels: community, Orthodox Judaism, religious convictions

In his blog last week, Yakov Horowitz brought up the important issue of sexual abuse in the community and announced that he was planning on partnering with Prof David Pelcovitz to create a pamphlet on this topic to distribute among parents. Horowitz was responding to a post by Sephardi Lady, who asked, among other things, about the role the school has in dealing with this. I cannot remember sexual abuse being discussed in any of the schools I attended and thinking about it now, I wonder at this. Surely the school has a role here. Perhaps it should be part of a health education curriculum, perhaps there should be informal discussions with a homeroom teacher. But if the school does not take an active role, how will a student know what constitutes abuse? How will a student feel comfortable coming forward if necessary? And as important, what does it say about the stance of the community at large if sexual abuse is taboo to discuss in our schools?

Labels: community, sexual abuse

Some twenty years ago, while running an educational seminar, the question came up regarding a recreational activity for the staff. It turned out that one or two of the team was religiously uncomfortable with the choice of the activity, and a discussion ensued as to whether we should show respect for the strictures of that team member or whether that team member would have to bear with the desires of the rest of the group.

I am reminded of that scene often as I visit day schools. Certainly in Orthodox schools, but also in many schools (both day and congregational) affiliated with the Conservative and Reform movements, it is easy to find teachers whose religious convictions are stronger than those of the parent body (and, hence, the student body). It is rare to find Jewish studies teachers whose commitments and convictions are less than those of the parent body.

That seems perfectly reasonable, as parents send their children to day schools to strengthen their Jewish commitments, not weaken them. One outcome of this is that schools tend to lean to the right, sometimes to the delight and other times to the chagrin of the parents and the community.

Is this inevitable? Can schools be confident enough in the commitments they seek to inspire to expose students to role models who are more open (not less religiously committed)? Is it possible to have schools which acurately reflect the spectrum of the parent body? I know that this is the theory of the cross/trans-denominational community schools. Can it hold true in denominational schools as well?

Labels: community, day schools, religious convictions, supplementary schools

Here’s another take on the tuition crunch: Last week, the Jewish Advocate reported that putting one child through day school from K-12 costs $180,000 for the family, at least in the Boston area. That astronomical number gives grounds for posts like these.

It also brought to mind an article I read a few years back about a new form of “birth control” used in Jewish circles. It seems that some young families, troubled by the high cost of day schools coupled with their concern that their children stay within the framework of formal Jewish education, are opting to have fewer children than they’d like. The argument, in short, goes like this: “We can’t compromise on Jewish education for our children. At the same time, we make enough money to be charged full tuition, but if we pay full tuition for four children, we’d have to live on an extremely tight budget. So we’ll have two. Three, tops.”

That in mind, I conducted an informal and admittedly, not very scientific, survey of some young families I know on the East Coast. They are all middle class professionals – lawyers, doctors, software designers, etc. The results weren’t too encouraging—almost everyone mentioned it as a concern, and more than half said it was a significant factor in their family planning and that they weren’t going to have more than three children as a result and even that was a stretch.

Let’s not get into a discussion about the values involved in decisions like these, or the various options available to help finance your kids through schools (even if there are enough tuition breaks out there, perception is sometimes more important than reality). What’s clear is that this is actually happening, possibly in your neighborhood. So what is this going to do to American Jewish demography? Yes, there will be Orthodox families who aren’t going to let tuition influence family planning (some of those families will eventually make aliyah, in part to eliminate the need to pay day school tuition). And yes, there will be families who wouldn’t send their kids to day school anyway. But there will also be mainstream committed families--the ones whose kids have a lower chance of intermarrying because they're in day schools--who will have less children because of financial constraints imposed upon them by their Jewish commitment. So what does this mean for Jewish America?

Labels: community, day schools, Jewish demography, tuition

In recent years there has been an explosion in the number of trans-denominational/non-denominational community schools designed to service the spectrum of the Jewish community without making any of their students feel like they were (borrowing from a phrase popularized by a dynamic Rabbi from the NY area) "not yet Orthodox." These schools have been embraced by many, but not all, Central Agencies and visionary groups, as opening the doors to a population that would not otherwise attend day schools.

Interestingly, in some communities, the local Federation was against the institution of these schools - fearing that they would drain money and students from existing schools without generating a substantive increase in enrollment.

One school, questioning why their enrollment was falling far short of their projected numbers, came to the conclusion that they were too religious, and that they could only attract students by becoming less religious. (Note: their Jewish studies component consisted of one period a day of Jewish studies plus prayer.) It's hard to know if lessening the Jewish studies will or will not increase the enrollment in the school, but even the enrollment doubles or triples in the next two years, is it worth the investment of untold millions of dollars of Jewish communal funds to pay for what amounts to Jewish private schools with minimal Jewish content?

Labels: community, day schools, Jewish Studies