By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University, came to Seattle to speak at the Bikur Cholim-Machzikay Hadath 120th anniversary celebration on March 6. The next day he spoke to a small group of Seattle Hebrew Academy supporters, and to JTNews about the state of Jewish education.
JTNews: Where is Jewish education today, and where is it heading?
Richard Joel: I think it’s the same question as, “Where’s the Jewish future?” because without Jewish education there’s no Jewish future. We’re the people of the book, we’re not the people of the text message. There are two issues that will ensure Jewish survival: One is text and the other is context. An ignorant tribal Jewishness doesn’t transmit. It’s not going to go from one generation to another. If there’s not content and experience, it’s not going to happen. That means you need community, you need a sense of mission.
Often Jews are called people of history and people of destiny — you need to know the history and you need to have a sense of destiny. There’s just no way that happens without some profound and serious education and Jewish life experience.
Regardless of what our delivery mechanisms are you have to start with a sense of peoplehood and a sense of purpose, with a young family saying, “This is something my children have to know and experience.” Clearly, I believe that a day school experience of whatever flavor should be a non-negotiable. It’s far from a non-negotiable. I don’t think there’s an alternative to a serious day-school education that’s of quality that’s also in the context of a communal education — that means youth groups and camp and resplendent Jewish preschool and Israel experience and the like.
There’s a harder question of saying, “If it’s not going to be in the cards that students go to day school, what do we do?”
The supplemental education has always been and continues to be a challenge. I certainly think it’s better than nothing. I think the challenge that should really be very important on the communal agenda is to figure out how to make that work, because the old system where you go to school, and then you spend three hours at the end of the day while you’re friends are playing baseball, it’s hard to find the successful models of that. I suspect that the only way to make it work, [is] a combination of formal and experiential education involving family retreats and enriching the camping experience.
JT: I’ve seen you address there being a crisis in day schools. How do we pay for the education?
I can tell you that if we don’t pay for it, we will profoundly pay for it. We talk at Yeshiva University in the work we are doing with our graduate school of education, we talk about issues of sustainability and how to make sure you can deliver the product of education in as quality and efficient and effective a way as you can, while at the same time making sure that the best and the brightest go into the teaching profession, because we need that.
The issue is, how does the Jewish community decide what matters? In other words, the financial crisis should not be, “Boy, we lived for a couple decades believing that as middle-class people we could have an upper class lifestyle, and we’ve seen that there’s a new normal.” The sentence that succeeds that should not be, “Therefore I don’t want to pay for Jewish education.” The next question should be, “Let me look at the expenses of our life, let’s see what’s negotiable and non-negotiable. Let’s see how in all these areas we can be as cost-effective as we can.” The primal scream of tuition is terrible. I think it’s a short-sighted, terrible mistake that we shouldn’t give into.
JT: In looking at the other side of this issue, as a university present training so many students to be teachers, you’re in many ways giving them a life where they’re not going to be paid very well. How do you get around that?
If you look at Teach for America, or our Jewish Teach for America — that’s our Legacy Heritage Fellowships — we have a moment in time where all young people are really looking at a world where they feel anonymous and where they want to matter. The best and the brightest want to matter. That doesn’t mean they can’t matter in hedge funds if they want to do that. That doesn’t mean they can’t matter in business or in the professions.
There’s also a time now where people want to matter in helping professions and in education, and I think that’s glorious that the best want that. But we also have to be honest with them and say, “You know what? This is not a path to wealth.”
I’d also tell you that the challenge of the community, as we deal with issues of sustainability, is that we do have to run as lean and mean a business as we can. We do have to decide what are the essentials of education. We can’t just be profligate and say that there’s every possible course in every possible field that I want my day school or university to offer. And once we do that, we have to have a conversation as a community and say, “What we are saying to these educators is we offer you the opportunity for a life of meaning where you’ll be respected in your community and you’ll be paid well enough that you get to live. That you’ll be able to have your home and educate your kids.”