Why “More Jewish Education” Keeps Making Things Worse

Calls to invest in Jewish education and pride-building are not misguided. Identity matters. Confidence matters. Knowledge matters. Bret Stephens is right to argue that a Jewish community grounded in pride will always be stronger than one defined solely by fear. But before we rush to expand Jewish schools, camps, and programs as the answer to rising antisemitism, we need to confront a more uncomfortable question: what kind of Jewish education are we actually producing—and to what end?

Education is only a defense when it is done right. Much of mainstream American Jewish education today is not.

Put plainly, the system is inadequate—putting it mildly. Not for lack of effort, but for lack of substance where it matters most. Some Jewish schools invest heavily in Mishnah and Gemara, yet graduate students with only the faintest grasp of Jewish or Israeli history. Others reduce Jewish life almost entirely to tikkun olam, tzedakah, and the occasional hamotzi. In both cases, students emerge earnest but unanchored.

They can analyze a passage of Talmud or recite values slogans, yet struggle to place the Israelites alongside the ancient Greeks in a serious historical framework. Where are the middle-school history classes that teach Jewish civilization with the same rigor, continuity, and legitimacy as Greece or Rome? They are rare—if they exist at all.

This imbalance has consequences. Jewish history becomes fragmented or sentimentalized. Zionism is hedged as “complex” rather than taught as a historical necessity born of exile, statelessness, and repeated failure of minority existence. Jewish peoplehood is softened into culture; sovereignty becomes morally suspect. Education that is uneasy about Jewish history cannot produce Jewish pride.

This detachment has surfaced repeatedly over the past year. At multiple conferences and professional gatherings of Jewish educators, a consistent sentiment has emerged: discomfort with the word Zionism itself; calls to stop “defending Israel” in favor of “holding space”; warnings that clarity is polarizing and certainty dangerous. Everything is framed as nuanced and complicated—as though avoiding moral and historical judgment will somehow lower the temperature.

At one such gathering, a prominent rabbi remarked that he would gladly give up Hebron if it meant no more Jewish soldiers would die. The significance of the statement lies not in Hebron itself, but in what it reveals. Hebron is rarely taught not because it is marginal, but because teaching it would require educators to confront Jewish historical continuity and Jewish claims to nationhood without apology. Instead, students are often offered a sanitized version of Jewish attachment, where the Kotel becomes the singular symbol of meaning, stripped of broader historical context. This is not nuance. It is avoidance.

Which brings us to a question Jewish institutions have avoided for too long: why do leaders of anti-Israel activism so often emerge from within the Jewish educational institutions those movements now challenge? Public reporting shows that this pattern is not isolated. Simone Zimmerman, a founder of IfNotNow, attended Jewish day schools and describes those experiences as formative. Rae Abileh, an early Code Pink leader, is a graduate of BBYO and the Diller Teen Fellows program. Sydney Levy, longtime advocacy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, is a graduate of Jewish school and earned both his BA and MA in Jewish history while living in Jerusalem – a background he has publicly discussed as shaping his politics. JVP has a list  These figures did not come from the margins of Jewish life; they passed through its core institutions—day schools, camps, youth movements, and leadership programs. They frequently invoke Jewish texts, values, and prayer in protests and teach-ins, deploying the tools of Jewish education to legitimize opposition to the Jewish collective itself. By any serious educational standard, this is a failing outcome. And yet it remains completely unexamined, swept under a rug and expected not to be discussed in polite company.

So when we call for “more Jewish education,” we must be honest. More of what? Expanding institutions without re-examining who staffs them and what worldview they transmit guarantees repetition of the same failures. Producing more education that is historically thin and ideologically timid will not yield stronger Jews—it will simply scale weakness.

I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I’ve been warning about this for years: education without training doesn’t make Jews stronger – it leaves them exposed. Teaching identity without teaching how to defend it is not neutral.  It is negligent.  It is educational malpractice. What everyone is seeing for the past 2+ years didn’t come out of nowhere.  It is the result of wishing reality away for far too long.

And yet, there is an alternative model—one that has existed quietly and consistently for more than a decade. It is a single, integrated approach to Jewish education that refuses to separate identity from history, or pride from agency. In this model, advocacy is not an extracurricular activity but a core educational outcome, built into the curriculum from the start on the assumption that knowing who you are is meaningless if you are not prepared to defend it publicly, intelligently, and under pressure. What distinguishes this approach is clarity. It teaches Jewish and Israeli history without euphemism. It draws moral lines where history demands them. And it trains students to engage—to argue, to challenge falsehoods, and to withstand social and intellectual pressure. The goal is not to manufacture activists, but to produce Jews who are neither confused by antizionism nor intimidated by it.

This matters because the supposed choice between education and confronting antisemitism is a false one. Education done right is not an alternative to fighting Jew-hatred; it is what makes that fight possible.

Stephens argues that fighting antisemitism has become a mostly wasted effort. The frustration is understandable. Antisemitism is ancient, adaptive, and relentless. It will not be defeated. But the belief that it can be safely deprioritized—or wished away through inward focus—is a dangerous misreading of history.

Antizionism did not become normalized because it was persuasive. It became normalized because it went insufficiently challenged—especially by Jews who lacked historical clarity themselves. Ignorance created the opening; silence allowed the lie to harden. What followed was inevitable: an industry built on weaponizing Jewish confusion into moral indictment—against Israel, and ultimately against Jews.

Fighting antisemitism is not inspiring work. It is exhausting, repetitive, and often thankless. History doesn’t show that confronting antisemitism makes it disappear. What it does show—over and over again—is that when it’s left unanswered, it moves from being unacceptable to being tolerated, and from being tolerated to being justified, normalized and even celebrated.

Choosing not to fight Jew-hatred vigorously and consistently is not realism—it is surrender.

The choice, then, is not between identity and defense. It is identity with defense. Education must include history, moral clarity, and the skills to confront lies in real time. Pride without truth collapses. Education without conviction misleads. And defense without identity cannot endure.

If we want a different future, we must be willing to examine what already exists, what has failed, and what is quietly working.

Masha Merkulova is the Chief Zionist Officer of Club Z, an unapologetically proud Jewish Zionist space for teens to connect to each other, Jewish history, and Zionism.