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THOUGHTS ON THE PAST,PRESENT AND FUTUREAlvin I. SchiffPublished online: 23 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Alvin I. Schiff (1993) THOUGHTS ON THE PAST,PRESENT AND FUTURE, Journal of Jewish Education, 60:2, 45-47, DOI:10.1080/0021624930600212

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EPILOGUEALVIN I. SCHIFF

THOUGHTS ON THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

The American Jewish education enterpriseduring the first 60 years can be characterizedmost appropriately as a portrait of high moun-tains and deep valleys.Jewish education has always occupied aunique position in Jewish life. ThroughoutJewish history, Jews were expected to be life-long students of the Torah. Jewish learning inthe home, in the school, and in the commu-nity was the very plasma of Jewish life. It wasthe soul of a people, and the guarantor ofcontinuity. In Talmudic times, it was prohib-ited to live in a city without a Jewish teacher.Nothing save matters of life and death wasimportant enough to postpone the learning ofTorah. Torah study was deemed so crucial forthe survival of the Jewish people that one ofthe causes enumerated in the Talmud for thedestruction of Jerusalem was the neglect ofthe education of children. No other peoplehas placed such emphasis on educating itsyoung.Indeed, in the twentieth century in NorthAmerica, there have been many inspiring Jew-ish leaders-lay, rabbinic and professional whoexhibited the traditional Jewish fervor for To-rah learning. It is largely because of theirefforts that Jewish education during the lastsix decades is marked by many positive,meaningful accomplishments.Chief among these is the development of theJewish day school against a backdrop of apa-thy and even antagonism by the majority ofAmerican Jews and Jewish leaders, includingmany Jewish educators wedded to the idea ofthe public school. The growth of the dayschool from 3,000 students in fifteen schoolsin 1930 to 180,000 pupils in over 600 schoolsin 1992 — is no less than phenomenal.

Dr. Alvin I. Schiff is Distinguished Professor ofEducation, Yeshiva University; and Chairman,American Advisory Council, Joint Authority forJewish Zionist Education

The development of the central agency forJewish education, based upon the philosophyof unity in diversity — has been a boon toJewish education. In the forefront of in-ser-vice programming for teachers and princi-pals, the central agencies have beenresponsible largely for the introduction of newinstructional technologies in our schools andfor the establishment of teacher center pro-grams catering to the needs of the variety ofeducational personnel in the disparate Jewishcommunities.The establishment of the National Board ofLicense for the Jewish Schools in 1939 isclearly the result of forward-looking Jewishcommunal educators who realized the need tostandardize and upgrade the professional prac-tices of teachers and supervisors and to im-prove the conditions of teaching and learningin Jewish schools.The growth of the Talmud Torah in the nine-teen twenties and thirties to replace the hederand siddur peddler system that had taken rootat the beginning of the century, was a criticaldevelopment in Jewish education. Its succes-sor institution — the congregational schoolflourished for some three decades until 1970.In 1962, the peak year of Jewish school en-rollment in North America, thee were $40,000children enrolled in these schools. This phe-nomenon, too, must be recorded as an aspectof Jewish educational growth.The ideological commissions for Jewish edu-cation have played an important role in thedevelopment of Jewish education as theyhelped their constituent schools and person-nel during the changes that have taken placeon the American Jewish educational scene.Likewise, both the profit and not-for-profitpublication efforts must be singled out fortheir innovative teaching and learning materi-als, some of which have become the basis fornew curricular thrusts in supplementary edu-cation.

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46 JEWISH EDUCATION

The founding of the Conference of Alterna-tives in Jewish Education in 1976, initially asan anti-establishment organization, is the mostdramatic development in Jewish educationduring the last two decades. This innovativeformat (now the Conference for the Advance-ment of Jewish Education), among otherthings, has attracted each summer, as many as3,000 Jewish educators for a week of sharingand learning in an exciting, creative environ-ment. Jewish educational camping and infor-mal Jewish educational programming inJewish Community Centers must be viewedas significant Jewish educational develop-ments as they address the Jewish needs ofthousands of children and youth in informalsettings. And, more than that, the Israel expe-rience, particularly the year of study in Israel,is a major force in developing and reinforcingJewish identity.Despite these accomplishments, Jewish edu-cation has been beset by its own unique set ofdifficulties. Jewish education became an im-portant problem in American Jewish life fromthe moment Jews were transplanted to theNorth American continent. The task in thefirst third of the twentieth century was monu-mental — relating the Jewish school to thedevelopment of American Judaism and to thelarger American society. But the resourcesavailable were never equal to the task.From the start, the open, free, unconditionalAmerican setting threatened the developmentof Jewish education. In the first instance, theincreasing diffusion of Jewish intellectualsamong the various arts and sciences, and nu-merous academic and professional concerns,deprived Jewish education of the needed cadreof quality Jewish educators.Secondly, the theory and practice of volun-teerism in American Jewish life deprived theJewish educational enterprise of a secure baseof ongoing support. Although various indi-vidual leaders, the American/Jewish commu-nity recognized the value of Jewish schooling,local Jewish communities, for the most part,did not assume adequate responsibility fortheir respective educational programs.As a result of these two conditions — thetransposition of intellectual and cultural in-

terests away from Judaism by a large major-ity of Jews on the one hand, and the lack ofreal organized community support on theother — Jewish education was left to therather meager resources and designs of indi-vidual Jews and small groups of concernedleaders. And so here we are, in the turbulentcritical 1990's, faced with ever growing prob-lems in Jewish education — problems whichare not really the making of the Jewish educa-tional establishment.In viewing Jewish life in North Americaagainst the backdrop of rapid social change inthe larger environment, one is struck by theunresponsiveness of a significant segment ofJewish communal leadership towards ad-equate support of Jewish schooling. The un-derlying reason for this condition, in largemeasure, is that the leadership of the Jewishcommunity has not felt a sense of urgencyabout the failures and problems in this area. Ithas not felt about its Jewishly "disadvantaged"children, as many leaders in our general soci-ety (including Jews) have felt about the needfor more effective education for the disadvan-taged minorities.There is a direct relationship betweenAmerica's prosperity and its educationalgrowth. While the U.S. is a consumer-ori-ented society, education, since 1957, has beenconsidered not as a consumer product but asan investment in the future. By contrast, theJewish community, with the exception of asmall group of avid advocates, views Jewisheducation almost entirely as a consumer ser-vice. To its credit, Federation leadership hasbecome increasingly aware of the need formassive support for Jewish education on thelocal scene. Such support, to be sure, meanseither a major recording of Federation priori-ties or the uncovering of large new resourcesfor the funding of Jewish schooling — or both.On another level, the Jewish community hasrevealed a lack of understanding by its lead-ers of the state of Jewish education — itsstrengths and weaknesses — and the factorscontributing to whatever successes and fail-ures may be its lot.As we face the future, the Jewish communityis confronted with the almost impossible task

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THOUGHTS ON THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 47

of motivating significant numbers of estab-lished Jewish intellectuals and academics andgeneral educators to join the Jewish educa-tional enterprise. Less imposing but a monu-mental task as well is encouraging youngtalented people to enter the field. To achievethese objectives will require, among others,sufficient funding and the willingness to re-construct the major Jewish educational in-strumentality — the Jewish supplementaryschool — which has declined precipitouslyduring the last three decades and which des-perately needs an infusion of new talent andnew approaches.

Another challenge that requires additional fi-nancial support results from success. Neededis the reinforcement of American Jewry's ef-fective formal Jewish educational instrument— the Jewish all-day school. Without suffi-cient resources, the phenomenal growth ofthe day school will be stymied and its abilityto maintain quality programming and to at-tract talented individuals for instructional andsupervisory roles will be diminished greatly.Three additional challenges require specialattention as we prepare to enter the 21st cen-

tury. One of the unfortunate results of theacculturation-deculturation syndrome plagu-ing American Jews has been the changingnature of the Jewish family. Clearly, a majortask of the Jewish community is to makeJewish families Jewish. Without the re-Judaizing of the Jewish home our efforts toimprove Jewish education for the young willbe to no avail.One of the major ways to change Jewishidentity and secure Jewish continuity is theunder-utilized informal Jewish education ex-perience, particularly Jewish educationalcamping and Israel-based programs. Thischallenge, which underscores the need forand value of the confluence of the affectiveand cognitive domains, must be addressedwith urgency.Finally, the college campus which is "home"to 90% of Jewish teenagers has become theAchilles heel of Jewish life. New approaches,supplanting those currently being used, mustbe developed if the Jewish community hopesto counter effectively the rising rates of as-similation and intermarriage resulting largelyfrom campus life.

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