Alexandria, Babylon, Spain. Is America next? |
We are losing our children. At best, to indifference. At worst, to the ranks of movements that actively seek to delegitimize and dismantle the Jewish State. “As a Jew” Jews, tokenized Jews, deployed as fig leaves in service of antisemitic ideologies; what feels like a bitter and particularly loathsome betrayal.
But it’s not entirely their fault.
In his state of world Jewry address last May Dan Senor said: “It is remarkable to see the lengths to which some Jews will go to keep their children Jewish, short of practicing Judaism.” That sentence has stayed with me. Jewish continuity: This has been the central question driving Jewish education and Israel programing for the past 3 decades at least. I should know, I spent almost 20 years of my career in the thick of it. Yet, the majority of Jewish kids in the United States and Canada receive minimal Jewish education if any at all. According to the 2020 Pew Research Jewish Identity and Belief: 95% of Orthodox children, 22% of Conservative children, but only 7-8% of Reform children are enrolled in Jewish Day Schools. The vast majority of American Jews, 74%, are Reform or unaffiliated.
Jewish days schools can cost between $25,000 to $40,000 a year per child, a luxury only the wealthy can afford. This is a prohibitive cost that restricts comprehensive Jewish........