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‘Just Jewish’ Schools
Students at Boston’s Jewish Community Day School learn Jewish and secular subjects and play together in a pluralistic environment. by Carolyn Slutsky At one time it was a Solomon Schechter school, affiliated with the Conservative movement. But several years ago, the community decided that a nondenominational, or community, day school would better serve the needs of Jewish families around Providence and also draw families from elsewhere. “If you want to embrace all Jews in the area, it’s a shame to be limited to [one denomination],” said Robert Sarkisian, interim head of school there. “The goal was something that embraces all.” In many ways community day schools — the fastest-growing segment of the non-Orthodox day school market, currently educating the largest number of students — reflect one of the most telling trends in Jewish life today: the drift, especially by young people, away from the designations Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. Those who identify themselves as “Just Jewish” are the fastest-growing segment of the Jewish community, according to census data. Experiments in Jewish learning, such as the popular and growing Limmud, stress a transdenominational approach. Independent minyanim, led by young people tired of the old boundaries, are thriving around the country and creating a new, cross-denominational vision for Jewish worship. And community day schools, which draw from all segments of the Jewish spectrum and focus on accepting a multitude of Jewish practices and beliefs, have sprouted up in recent years from major cities like Boston and New York to smaller communities in the south and west and beyond. In 1990 there were 23 community day schools; today there are more than 120 in 34 states as well as Canada, Latin America, South Africa and Europe. “The Jewish community day school as a phenomenon is reflective of a Jewish community more aware and embracing of diversity,” said Marc Kramer, executive director of RAVSAK: The Jewish Community Day School Network, which provides resources and professional development to community schools. “At the same time they open the door: there are those who have yet to find ways to write themselves into the script of the Jewish community and see themselves as outsiders. The community day school is designed for outsiders to be part of the community.” Bruce Cooper, a professor in the Graduate School of Education at Fordham University, said Jewish community day schools have met a need in a climate of intermarriage, assimilation and a shifting Jewish community. “They give children a real Jewish identity and they become comfortable with other Jews, which is critical to the survival of the Jewish community,” said Cooper. “These schools are really on the frontier out there. I think it’s the most important development in Jewish life in the past 60 years.” Community schools straddle the line between the philosophical and the pragmatic, according to Kramer. In cities like New York, with a plethora of options for Jewish education, community day schools become for families and students a conscious choice, a commitment to working together, exposing themselves to differences and building a cohesive Jewish community from disparate experiences. “At the core is the belief that the Jewish community has much more to gain by living together than by living apart,” said Roanna Shorofsky, head of school at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School on the Upper West Side, of why New York families choose the community model. “We would like our students to develop a moral compass and to lead meaningful Jewish lives. And they may differ as to how they lead these meaningful Jewish lives.” In contrast, in places like Overland Park, Kan., where there are only around 20,000 Jews in the greater Kansas City area, a community day school becomes, in Kramer’s words, “the primary portal for Jewish identity-building, not only for the children who attend but for their families as well.” “Synagogues are difficult,” added Kramer of the reluctance some Jews have to making synagogues the centerpiece of their Jewish connection. “They’re predicated on belief and knowledge, and that’s not the presumption at school. There, it’s Jewish purposefulness.” Howard Haas, head of school at the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy in Overland Park, where “people don’t even know there are Jews,” agreed. “The ideal of the synagogue being the central location for all Jews is not a reality anymore,” he said. “One of my goals is to make this a kind of community center for parents, grandparents. They’re here and our job is to bring them in and make certain we meet their needs.” n In the cozy B’nai Shalom school, set in a leafy neighborhood in Greensboro, N.C., students learn a fluid blend of Jewish and secular studies at the oldest Jewish day school in the state. The hallways are bright and colorful, and in one section art projects created by graduating classes adorn the wall for posterity. Lockers line the hallway of the middle school, but no one seems to use the locks. Like the Providence school, B’nai Shalom was once a Schechter, but changed to a community school 17 years ago to reflect the idea that “no movement philosophy is carved in stone here,” as Judy Groner, the head of school, put it. Founded in 1971, many of the original students now have their own children in this school of about 150 students. This corner of the Southeast has some Israeli industry, and so Israelis send their children to the community school, along with a few Orthodox and a number of those who affiliate with either the Conservative or Reform synagogues here. Or both. Or neither. “In a community as small as ours, the differences between movements blur in comparison to creating Jewish identity,” said Groner, adding that even on the soccer fields here in the Christian South, kids will ask each other where they go to church, making the need for a strong Jewish identity key. North Carolina, like other areas of the South as well as the West where Jewish demographics have shifted, is an ideal setting for a community day school. The Jewish population is not large enough to sustain multiple denominational schools, but the Jewish connection is strong and pluralistic, with Orthodox people who will walk to the Reform and Conservative synagogues for a Saturday bar mitzvah, and about a third of the families intermarried. The school here is not only a meeting place for a community in which “there are no Jewish strangers,” but is also a gateway to Jewish life and the Jewish community as a whole. “Within the Conservative community now it’s mostly very religious. Eventually they’ll feel more comfortable in a Modern Orthodox setting. So the less religious Conservative [Jews] become more like Reform,” explained Groner. “People identify as traditional, or not. In the ‘not’ category, a community day school is a comfortable place.” n “There’s a trend in American society in general to learn from as many cultures as possible,” said Michael Kay, a doctoral student at New York University writing his dissertation on leadership and community-building in pluralistic Jewish schools. “Community in this country used to mean people essentially the same getting together to celebrate how they are the same. Now that’s changed, people may have something in common but also celebrate those differences. “The Jewish community school plays on both of those,” he continued, adding that America should no longer be looked at as a melting pot, but rather a place where individuals with strong identities can share them to make a more diverse whole society. “We hold something in common, but rather than effacing our differences we want to emphasize them. And I think that’s something new.” Or as Marc Kramer of RAVSAK put it, “It’s fair to say identity in America right now is very idiosyncratic; a lot of people check the ‘other’ box.” The increase in community day schools may also reflect a greater trend within the Jewish community of people identifying as “Just Jewish,” rather than with a particular denomination. Demographer Len Saxe of Brandeis University said that in his studies of young adults who participated in the free Birthright Israel trip, there has been a steady uptick of “Just Jews,” over the past eight years that mirrors a decline in people identifying as Conservative. He also noted how that designation has changed in its meaning since it first came into vogue. “Ten years ago, it was often a designation for people who weren’t religious. They’re “just Jewish,” they don’t go to a school, they’re not part of a specific religious group,” said Saxe. “Now the designation is used by people who in many cases have serious Jewish learning as part of their background. They’re engaged in the Jewish community in various ways, they just don’t identify with a specific denomination.” Given the shifting, multiply acceptable notions of identity in the Jewish community and beyond today, are community schools poised to reflect the new Jewish ideology? Are denominations becoming passé? Steven Bayme, national director of Contemporary Jewish Life for the American Jewish Committee, thinks not. He paints the ideal community day school as one that teaches a Judaism that allows ideological cleavages and is open to sharing ideas and debate, but said transdenominational doesn’t mean post-ideological. “Schools will do better the stronger they are in terms of inculcating ideology,” he said. “The religious movements are better prepared [to do that.]” Yossi Prager, executive director of the Avi Chai Foundation, said the growth of community schools nationally echoes a decreasing sense of commitment to denomination, but that, especially in smaller communities, they are also born of economic reality. “It’s rarer for community day schools to be founded on ideological views,” he said. “Schools back into [pluralism] rather than start with it.” But if community schools can be seen, in Kramer’s vision, as buffets with offerings for everyone at the table of Jewish learning and identity, who, then, determines what Jewish self students leave with, and what kind of Jews they become as adults? “The major challenge is how to transmit identity,” said Kay, the doctoral candidate, of community schools’ focus on accepting multiple ways of being Jewish. “If you walk out of school knowing five different ways to do X, then you might not [actually] know how to do X.” “The community school on many levels is ... a challenge: What are you going to hang your hat on?” said Haas, the principal in Kansas. “My vision is that every child coming out of here will feel extraordinarily strong and powerful about who they are from a Jewish sense.” Kramer said there’s an enormous misconception that because community day schools are broad and open, they are also rudderless. “[Community schools] give kids the opportunity to engage in intellectually authentic ways with what it means to be a Jew,” he said. “They get the amazing gift of respect and understanding, they learn it’s not a competition and that more than one pathway can be seen as valuable and meaningful.” n The Jewish Community Day School of Boston sits on a nondescript lot in suburban Watertown, Mass. Inside, the school’s 170 children in kindergarten through 8th grade learn in classrooms each with one Hebrew-speaking teacher and one English-speaker. There is a casual, family environment throughout the building, and classes study Japan and Israel, art and Torah, equally. “Hebrew is a way of life here, not just a subject,” said Helen Quint, director of admissions. Many JCDS students go on to the pluralistic Gann Academy, in nearby Waltham, for high school. Ruth Gass, JCDS’s head of school, said families here consciously choose to attend a pluralistic school; Orthodox families seek to expose their children to nontraditional Jews while retaining their observance, and secular Jews hope to introduce Judaism in a way that wouldn’t be natural in the home, while Russian immigrants and Israelis join the mix as well. “It’s a measure of the vibrancy of the Jewish community that people can live and grow together with different beliefs,” said Gass. “Community schools are thriving because Jews are willing, within the broad embrace of Judaism, to get a strong education but not have prescriptive beliefs.” “They learn how to be Jewish but not segregated off into denominations,” said Quint of what families seek and what the school provides. “Nobody’s outside the pale; we’re all part of the Jewish community and can learn together.” n Whether they live in areas where they can make an intentional choice to attend a community school, or whether they send their children to a school that is pluralistic only because that is the only way to get a critical mass of students, once on board, parents seem to embrace the idea of a Judaism that doesn’t exclude because of practice and belief and that accepts all comers. For Ellen Brickman, a parent at the Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn, a community school allows her to reconcile her Orthodox upbringing with her Conservative practice today. She said the school reflects the way she is “straddling two worlds,” and that kids have a greater tolerance for ambiguity than many adults would allow. “I really want Shosh to grow up understanding and believing that there are a variety of ways of identifying as Jewish and observing that are all legitimate — it’s not a one-size-fits-all religion,” said Brickman of her daughter. “We have a particular way of celebrating Judaism, but I don’t want her to think it’s the only way, or the only right way. There’s no message from on high that this is the way to be Jewish. Having her be exposed to really the whole range of Jewish observance and identification is important to me.” Lisa Kleinman, another parent at Hannah Senesh, said the school teaches her and her children that Judaism is a wide range of practices and beliefs, and that no one holds the secret to the one right way to be a Jew. “No denomination is monolithic; there will always be dissonance and a gap in some way,” said Kleinman. “Rather than confusion, or being watered down, it’s more about being joyfully engaged.” In the heartland, Miriam Kaseff, a public school teacher in Overland Park, Kan., feels similarly, even though her children’s Jewish community day school is the only game in town. “It’s amazing that we are a relatively small community but [we can] get behind one place and try to make it work,” said Kaseff. “You know for Jews that’s not easy.” Kaseff’s principal, Haas, agreed that ultimately, creating a shared Jewish community that embraces all people is more important than insulating in denominational boxes. “Adults have problems with different denominations, but kids don’t,” he said. “They’re much more open on that level and can relate to being Jewish. My kids who are Orthodox will stay Orthodox, but will have a greater understanding of others. And Lord knows, we need understanding.” n The first article in the “Pluralistic Education” series, on Oct. 17, reported on the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, N.C., the country’s only non-Orthodox Jewish boarding school. |
 
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