The Next Big Idea: Affordable Jewish High School

by Steven Bayme
Special To The Jewish Week

Attending my 40th high school class reunion last fall at the Maimonides Day School in Brookline, Mass., (yes, Noah Feldman and I share an alma mater), suggested to me one answer to securing Jewish continuity. The occasion provided a meaningful opportunity to revisit my high school experience and learn from the reminiscences of classmates about the impact their education had upon them. I left saying that there is neither mystery nor a magic bullet to securing Jewish continuity. It is available to those willing to invest seriously in our heritage.
From the perspective of Jewish continuity, Maimonides, indeed, received superb grades. Out of the 1967 class of 19 graduates, six had settled in Israel. Six had pursued careers in Jewish public service in the United

States. Others had followed more universal pursuits, including academia, medicine and law. All marriages, including remarriages, had been with Jews. Generally, couples averaged three children per family. Almost all had grandchildren with one reporting as many as 20.
Most significantly, all who attended the reunion spoke of how formative their high school years were in shaping their Jewish identity. Far from being an isolating experience, the day school had challenged them to question inherited truths, seek answers for themselves, and bring the teachings of Judaic heritage into dialogue with those of modern culture and society. Nor was the range of Jewish expression limited to Modern Orthodoxy. Graduates had chosen a broad spectrum of Jewish identities and affiliations ranging from haredi Orthodoxy to Reconstructionism. Virtually all present testified to the power of clal yisroel as an ideal uniting Jews across ideological boundaries.
Beyond personal interest, my concern is why the Jewish high school experience has failed to capture the loyalty and support of American Jews generally. Some, of course, dismiss these findings on the grounds that graduating classes form a self-selecting group with already strong Jewish commitments. Yet virtually all who attended my class reunion credited the school itself with laying the foundations for extensive Jewish involvements.
A Jewish high school education has, in fact, been proven to be enormously powerful in study after study. And there are, at least, four aspects of these success stories:
First, Jewish civilization is a bookish culture celebrating the beauty and power of Jewish ideas. Only during adolescence do students become sufficiently mature to understand the complexities of Jewish ideas, not to mention their interaction with Western mores and values.
Second, the friendship networks established during high school are particularly important and often serve as predictors of degree and intensity of long-term Jewish involvements.
Third, it is during adolescence when questions of dating, marriage, and family expectations begin to assume salience for young people.
And fourth, day school education, at its best, provides an enormous opportunity to explore the fundamental assumptions of modern Jewish identity: that Judaic heritage and modern culture may feed upon one another in exciting ways, and that the conflicts and tensions between these two value systems need to be weighed carefully rather than ignored.
Yet most American Jews remain unconvinced of the potential of Jewish high schools. There has been growth in Conservative and Reform day schools, but few of these have been high schools. Most students leave the day school system after eighth grade, acting perhaps on the mistaken assumption that Jewish education remains primarily a pre-bar or bat mitzvah affair. Some are concerned about college admissions, again mistakenly believing that the high school diploma from a Jewish day school is an impediment rather than an asset at quality American universities.
Still others are concerned that intensive day school education may mean diminished involvement in the broader American culture and possibly negative impact upon community relations. This is an untested and unlikely assumption given the unprecedented degree of Jewish integration into American society, and given that day schools outside the haredi sector remain dedicated to educating students that American Jews indeed do live in two civilizations.
Nonetheless, collectively, non-Orthodox high schools report barely 4,000 students nationally.
Policy implications, therefore, are clear but warrant alternate priorities and norms within the Jewish community. First, the Conservative and Reform movements need to be challenged to build and maintain more high schools. School closings need to be prevented and successful school programs widely disseminated. Both movements are committed to Judaic literacy, and Jewish high schools provide ideal vehicles for realizing that aim.
In addition, high schools must be made affordable for all Jews. The Jewish community, to date, has resisted tuition subsidies for day school students generally on the grounds that their numbers, currently over 200,000, have so increased that meaningful subsidies would prove too heavy a communal burden. Yet if day schools make the most difference on the high school level, the policy implication is to target subsidies to those attending the ninth grade and beyond — a more limited, affordable and worthwhile goal. To maximize incentives, tuition subsidies might be increased per number of years a student attends, with graduating seniors receiving the maximum grant.
Most importantly, however, the Jewish community needs to undergo a profound cultural change in how it perceives day schools. Adolescence remains the critical age for formation of Jewish identity communal intervention to secure that identity is warranted. The Jewish community’s embrace of day schools to date, albeit significant, has not extended to the high school level, with the critical exception of American Orthodoxy. Current frustration among Jewish educators is that we lose the teenagers precisely when Jewish education makes the most difference to them Jewishly.
Clearly, the time has come to overcome lingering ambivalence about day school, and for significant communal investment in high schools. Let us stop being a community of post-bar mitzvah dropouts and become a community of literate Jews who embody “the People of the Book.” Judaic literacy, of course, is no guarantee of Jewish commitment — remember, there is no magic bullet — but it certainly helps. n
Steven Bayme serves as national director of the Contemporary Jewish Life Department for the American Jewish Committee.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization