Hebrew charters — a welcome addition

Hearing the panicked responses from day school advocates around the country to the notion of Hebrew charter schools puts me in mind of watching a zoning board hearing where, in their zeal to stop virtually any new project before it starts, neighbors stop up their ears lest they hear of potential benefits.

I am a day school advocate. But more than that, like other day school advocates, I am a Jewish education advocate. I suggest we avoid the trap of institutional protectionism, and instead watch out for opportunities to achieve our larger goal: a revival of Jewish education in the United States.

Non-Orthodox day schools have a glorious, if short, history. While only a handful of schools enrolled a small pioneer population in the 1950s, by the year 2000 well over 35,000 students attended nearly 160 Schechter (Conservative), Pardes (Reform) and Ravsak (community) schools in the United States. Studies have documented the success of these schools’ graduates in college and their continued commitment to living a Jewish life. These students spent 30 to 40 percent of their time in school learning Hebrew and Jewish studies. They absorbed Bible and rabbinical tradition. They engaged in prayer, sang Jewish songs and acquired synagogue skills, not to mention Hebrew language and a commitment to tikkun olam and to Israel. Of the Jewish educational options available to young people, including camps, religious schools and Birthright, day school graduates are the best-equipped and most likely to live Jewish lives as adults.

It is, indeed, a shame that not every Jewish child can or will receive a Jewish day school education. The majority will not. Because that is categorically true, we should both seek and welcome creative ideas that could bring Jewish education to the otherwise Jewishly unschooled.

The objections to Hebrew charters fall into four categories: competition with day schools for students; competition with day schools for funds; church-state issues; and the lack of Jewish content in Hebrew charter schools.

There are plenty of Jewish kids out there to compete for, as the Jewish population who would never consider day schools must outweigh those who would by several orders of magnitude. At the most, many of these kids would attend afternoon religious school once or twice a week for a few years. Many will attend nothing. Yes, poorly placed Hebrew charter schools could draw a few students from existing Jewish day schools, and yes, it is therefore Jewishly unscrupulous, indeed immoral, for Hebrew charters to open within proximity of existing day schools, as has happened in Miami. But putting those few instances aside, why would it be bad if children who would have learned little or no Hebrew became Hebrew-speakers instead? 

Competition for funds is, on the surface, a serious concern. But, with his open hostility to Judaism as a religion, we cannot expect Michael Steinhardt, the mastermind and funder of the Hebrew Charter School Center, to go beyond the day school projects he already supports by providing significant new funding for day schools, nearly all of which view themselves as carrying at least partly a religious mission. To be sure, Hebrew charter schools will initiate fundraising that could compete with day schools at a time of compelling financial need, and therefore coordination and cooperation will be called for, but competition among worthy organizations for funding is a constant in the nonprofit world.

Hebrew charter schools will have no choice but to steer clear of religious instruction in order to pass muster in the courts, so the church-state question is a self-answering problem. On the other hand, let us be honest and admit that what many champions of charter schools really want is to enhance Jewish identity by using public funds. One does wonder if at some point the courts or Congress will pull the plug.

Which brings us to the most important objection. Is learning Hebrew and Hebrew culture enough? Most parents who send their kids to day or religious schools want their children introduced to religious education, to the synagogue and to Jewish values, all of which would, for constitutional reasons, need to be separated from charter schools as meticulously as milk from meat. But perhaps that opens new possibilities. After all, religious schools try, in at best four hours a week, to give kids a smattering of Hebrew, Bible, prayer and all the rest. Hebrew is always the stumbling block because language learning takes lots of time.  Imagine the potential if children started afternoon religious school in third or fourth grade already knowing more Hebrew than a typical bar/bat mitzvah child?  Think of the rich educational possibilities for what the religious school could then accomplish in those four precious hours.

Will Hebrew charter schools work? It is way too soon to tell. We do know that charter schools do not outperform typical public schools, as has been evidenced by recent studies. We know that starting up a school and maintaining it is a monumental undertaking fraught with danger.

But we need as many options as possible to attract the vast pool of Jewishly undereducated kids. Hebrew charter schools may offer a worthwhile, though only partial, answer to the question of how to draw more children into Jewish education.

Jewish day schools, with their surprisingly wide array of religious orientations, high levels of available financial aid and traditions of educational excellence, will continue to be the ticket for parents who want their children to grow up within their community, to learn the value of caring for other Jews, to develop ease with Jewish religious life, to develop spiritually and to have all of that integrated with a high standard of general academic learning.

But if Hebrew charters attract a different segment of the population, one that might otherwise give their kids a next-to-nothing Jewish education, it seems to me that, on balance, the experiment can only be for the good.

Rabbi Laurence Scheindlin is headmaster at Sinai Akiba Academy, a K-8 Jewish day school in Los Angeles.