How Jewish Education Can Make Things Better

Masha Merkulova raises important questions about American Jewish education. Her observation that too many institutions teach Judaism either as rigorous religious obligation or as progressive values — both disconnected from collective identity — points to something real.

We share her diagnosis and her conviction that Jewish education must center on who we are as a people. Where we differ is in the role of advocacy and defense. Training students to defend Jewish identity has value, but it cannot be the foundation. The goal should be empowering learners to answer for themselves: Is being part of the Jewish people a life worth living? Is this identity something that gives my life meaning and purpose, when I can choose to be whoever I want?

In free and open societies where anything is an option, Jewish education must empower learners to create knowledge that informs their decision about where they seek meaning and purpose. It’s our obligation to give them the tools to make Jewishly informed decisions about the life they will lead. This will empower those inclined toward advocacy — but also those temperamentally disinclined to confront antisemites.

Masha correctly identifies institutions that teach Mishnah and Gemara but skip Jewish history, and others that reduce Judaism to tikkun olam without deeper grounding. Both share a common error — they treat Judaism primarily as a religion, whether traditionally observant or progressively values-based.

But we don’t just have a religion. We’re a nation with a religion. An Am with continuous existence in and connection to a specific land. A collective with a shared language spanning thousands of years that endures today.

When Jewish education — even excellent religious education —  focuses on teaching “Jewish” primarily as religion, students miss the most fundamental aspect of who we are as a people with a land, language, and culture they can call their own. They can master texts without understanding that those texts belong to their people. They can embrace values without recognizing those values emerged from their people’s saga.

This is why, as Masha notes, even graduates of elite Jewish schools sometimes emerge as leaders of anti-Israel movements. They learned Jewish content but never internalized that they belong to Am Yisrael — with all that entails: collective history, ancestral claims, ongoing national existence, shared fate and destiny and loyalty to one’s people even when arguing their policies must improve morally.

If we want students to freely embrace their Jewish identity, they need knowledge and experience of what that actually means. We believe Jewish education can be a force for impact and change, but current approaches often fall short by overemphasizing Judaism as merely a religion. We offer a framework that addresses this weakness by focusing on three dimensions that make Jews a people: our land (Israel), language (Hebrew), and culture (Judaism).

Land (Israel): To know who you are, you must know where you’re from. Jews have roots millennia deep in the Land of Israel. This isn’t about politics — it’s about our origins. This can’t wait for Birthright or one Israel unit. Israel — its history, geography, stories — must be integrated throughout Jewish education. When students understand the land, they understand the people. They understand themselves.

Language (Hebrew): Belonging requires rhythm, cadence — something that feels like “ours.” Hebrew isn’t a foreign language; it’s our language. Even without fluency, cultivating ownership over Hebrew transforms how students experience Jewish belonging. If Hebrew is positioned as foreign, it won’t take root. But when students understand these letters, these words carry the spirit of our people — everything changes. Imagine: A Jew sees a Hebrew word and feels warmth flood their chest. My people are here. That recognition — that’s what we’re cultivating. Not necessarily fluency, but Jewish agency (pun intended!).

Culture (Judaism): Being Jewish isn’t just observing religion in some form. It’s being part of Am Yisrael — a nation, a people, a collective. We have our folkways, distinct ways of doing things that evolved across time and place. Jews do Judaism. Jews do Jewish. And we’ve always done it in particularly Jewish ways — diverse, evolving but unmistakably ours. We don’t mean culture in a secular sense or one that removes the Divine. Jewish education must empower students in the ways Jews are Jewish: values, texts, holidays, food, music, art — all taught not as abstract traditions, but as our people’s ways, connected to collective belonging.

Jewish education is an integrated process of empowering learners to find meaning in their choices and informing their decisions Jewishly — helping them understand why being and belonging to the Jewish people is a meaningful life to live. You cannot train people to defend something they don’t viscerally belong to. This is what public schools aim for in cultivating democratic identity through Social Studies curricula. We can apply a similar vision to Jewish education. Emphasizing land, language and culture offers one framework for building thick Jewish identity.

Students who’ve explored what Jewish collective identity means — learned the history, connected to the land, engaged with the language, experienced the culture — and freely chosen this identity as meaningful will develop their own reasons to advocate however feels right. Some will become activists. Others will build communities, dedicate themselves to Israel or a life of Torah or express connection through scholarship, art or raising Jewish families. All strengthen the Jewish people. But none can be imposed — they must emerge from genuine, informed choice.

For those who answer yes — in whatever form that takes — we’ll have built something enduring. Not just defenders, but young Jews who choose their Jewish identity as a source of meaning and purpose even when they have the freedom to be whoever they want to be.

Dr. Benji Davis is a product of Southern California Jewish education — from Pressman Academy and Milken Community School to Camp Ramah in California. He now serves as Assistant Professor at Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and, in the summer, as Head of Israel Education at Camp Yavneh.

Rabbi Michael Unterberg has been teaching Zionism in Israel gap year programs for over a decade. He previously served as the Jewish History Department Chair at Fuchs Mizrachi School in Cleveland, Ohio.

Rabbi Alan Goldman has been teaching Zionism for 25 years in Israel gap year programs. He is a PhD candidate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Gratz College.