By Rabbi David Twersky, , Seattle
John Rothschild’s “brilliant” suggestion (Letters, June 26) as to how to partially solve the Jewish Federation’s financial crisis — namely by elimination of funding for Orthodox day schools — represents the classic case of someone who is so open minded that his brains fall out! Mr. Rothschild’s eagerness to brand Jews who remain faithful to the classic traditional definition of a Jew (a child born of a Jewish mother) as discriminators unworthy of community funding is a striking example of the Talmudic insight that one who calls names in actuality is projecting his own shortcomings upon others (kol haposel b’mumo posel).
It is only through generous community support of day school education — both Orthodox and otherwise — that Jewish federations have a long-range hope for continued fiscal viability. Everyone in the Jewish community knows that Orthodoxy blazed the trail of day school education in this country 60 years ago while others were taunting “parochialism” and “it’s un-American.” In recent decades, recognition has come to many in these other groups that without day school education the future of the Jewish people is bleak. Some have been wise enough to copy the Orthodox and begin day schools of their own; others have raised the white flag and welcomed patrilineal descent as a way of “expanding the Jewish people.” It is precisely to avoid the creation of more such “interreligious families” (as Mr. Rothschild euphemistically calls those who marry outside their faith) that all day schools need the support of all Jews.