JustASC

Dr. Howard Rosenblatt, head of school at Solomon Schechter Day School of Raritan Valley, sent this letter to school parents about the proposed Hebrew-Language charter school for E. Brunswick:

SSDSRV and HaTikvah Charter School

[T]he state department of education approved the opening of a charter school in East Brunswick whose mission is to teach Hebrew and Israeli culture. The school projects opening in September with an enrollment of 108 in K-2 and will grow until it is K-5 with 240 students.

We do not envision the charter school to be competitive with SSDSRV. The program we offer cannot be duplicated by them. In addition to excellence in general studies, as attested by the Blue Ribbon designation we received just this week, Solomon Schechter Day School of Raritan Valley offers a significant foundation in religious studies: the Bible, rabbinic literature, Jewish holidays and Hebrew language and culture. We see all of Jewish studies ineluctably reflecting Jewish religious principles — something that is not legally permissible in a charter school.

The charter school is limited to East Brunswick residents, with minimal opportunities for others to attend. SSDSRV draws students from not only East Brunswick, but Highland Park, Princeton, Edison, Metuchen and many more communities. For these latter students, the charter school is not an option.

Our greatest advantage is the opportunity to integrate Jewish studies with general studies as we do in so many interdisciplinary courses and experiences. This is so important in helping our students to find meaning, something highlighted in this High Holiday season.

We see SSDSRV as the primary address for the best possible school in general studies, Jewish studies and religious values in the area. Our faculty, administration, staff and board are committed to continuing to expand the quality of our school for our entire central New Jersey Jewish community.

The part about the charter school being “limited to East Brunswick residents” needs unpacking.  Here’s the relevant New Jersey Statute:

18A:36A-8. Enrollment preference

8. a. Preference for enrollment in a charter school shall be given to students who reside in the school district in which the charter school is located. If there are more applications to enroll in the charter school than there are spaces available, the charter school shall select students to attend using a random selection process.

18. d. If available space permits, a charter school may enroll non-resident students. The terms and condition of the enrollment shall be outlined in the school’s charter and approved by the commissioner.

NJ’s recently approved Hebrew charter school, Hatikvah International Academy Charter School, shares the news with its supporters:

Open Letter

Dear East Brunswick Community Member,

We are proud and honored to announce that the application for the Hatikvah International Academy Charter School, teaching Hebrew language and culture using the model of the International Baccalaureate curriculum, has been approved by the State of New Jersey Department of Education.

We realize that some people considered this a formidable task, but thanks to the incredible assistance of our community members, Hatikvah’s charter has been approved.

We respect and appreciate that there are people in our community who may have concerns about the opening of a charter school and the impact it will have on their school. However, from talking to people across the community, we realize there is a significant need for our school and that all of the schools in East Brunswick have a vital role to play in providing the children of our community with a best-in-class education. We would love to work closely with all schools as Hatikvah prepares to open its doors.

It is our greatest hope that Hatikvah will add to the legacy of academic excellence in East Brunswick, and bring the study of Hebrew language and culture to children from across the full range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds in our diverse community. Furthermore, we hope it will inspire other communities in our state to see the value in this kind of education and pursue a similar mission in their own community.

 Sincerely,

 Hatikvah International Academy Charter School

“Their school” in this case undoubtedly means the Solomon Schechter Day School of Raritan Valley in E. Brunswick. Some parents there are concerned it will drain students from the SSDS — indeed, other Shechter parents signed the petition in favor of the charter school.

The American Jewish Committee has released its annual survey of American Jewish opinion, and at least one Orthodox leader is crowing about this:

When asked whether Israel, in the framework of a permanent peace with the Palestinians, should be willing to compromise on the status of Jerusalem as a united city under Israeli jurisdiction, 37 percent are in favor, and 58 percent opposed. In 2007, 36 percent answered yes and 58 percent no.

That would suggest that a majority thinks there is no compromising on Jerusalem, but what does it mean to be “a united city under Israeli jurisdiction”? 

Since Israel’s birth, the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem have spread inexorably and unilaterally, happily encompassing the holy sites barred to Jews under Jordanian rule and new neighborhoods in Western Jerusalem, and more problemmatically surrounding Arab villages and neighborhoods (I’m sorry — neighborhoods with a predominant Arab population) where few Jews dare or care to visit, and whose residents did not accept Israeli citizenship and essentially no longer have a choice. (And then there are the large Jewish neighborhoods built over the Green Line — large settlements like Maale Adumim that even doves presume will be part of Israel in a two-state solution). See this map, provided by The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise*:

 I suspect that many of those who support a “united Jerusalem” under “Israeli jurisdiction” (that would include me) would accept a redrawing of the map that retains the Old City under Israeli rule, keeps all of the larger Jewish neighborhoods either created or solidified since 1967, but cedes the Arab villages and neighborhoods to a Palestinian Authority, with some sort of access agreement to the Old City’s Muslim quarter and Muslim sites. That would only make de jure what is alredy de facto: With the exception of incursions by settlers and the occasional new neighborhood approved by the government, Israelis already live in  a divided city, Jewish and Arab.

The AJC poll would be more useful if it had a followup question: In the framework of a permanent peace with the Palestinians, would you support a division of the Jerusalem municipality that reflects the city’s demographic and geopolitical realities while respecting Israel’s desire for a united city under its jurisdiction? 

* Curiously, the map was drawn by the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, but I assume that the unquestionably pro-Israel AICE considers it accurate, or they wouldn’t have reproduced it on their site.

The Forward has an interesting Jew vs. Jew tale: An Orthodox congregation in Brooklyn  is facing eviction by its host yeshiva in favor of the Michael Steinhardt-backed Hebrew-language charter school, which is required by law to be a non-religious institution:

Machzikei Torah is being pushed out by the yeshiva to make room for a new, more reliably paying tenant: the Hebrew Language Academy.

Despite having opened only weeks ago, the Hebrew Language Academy is already being closely watched as one of the country’s first representatives of the much-buzzed-about push to establish publicly funded Hebrew charter schools. But the academy’s residence in a building occupied by a yeshiva, paired with its Hebrew-language focus, has posed some hurdles, given the requirement that it adhere to the separation between religion and state….

The initiators of the Hebrew Language Academy — including Sara Berman, Steinhardt’s daughter — have said that they overcame worries about placing the school in a yeshiva when they were provided with other examples of charter schools that rent space from religious institutions. They have pointed to Brooklyn’s Hellenic Classical Charter School, which is housed in a Greek Orthodox church.

JTA remembers Bill Safire. Here’s a column I wrote in Jan. 2005 when he dropped his bi-weekly column:

A few months back, I wrote that op-ed columnists have emerged as the new Jewish leaders, and that just as there are Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Jews, there are Safire, Brooks, Friedman, and Rich Jews.

I didn’t know at the time that Safire planned to retire on Jan. 24, and that, in the opinion pages of The New York Times at least, an important segment of the Jewish population would no longer be represented.

I’ll miss Safire for the same reason that I do what I do: I’m a pluralist. I have my opinions, and they’re usually the opposite of Safire’s. But I always felt a good newspaper is like a strong Jewish community: We have our factions, but that shouldn’t keep us from talking with and learning from one another. Even when I disagree with you, you might have something to teach me, even if the lesson only leads me to sharpen my arguments against you. (more…)

So Jon Stewart didn’t observe Yom Kippur, or if he did it didn’t put any crimps in his putting together last night’s show. But did he have to welcome his audience with a “Happy Yom Kippur”? And then joke about eating a “Baconnaise and lobster omelet with a side of Jesus toast” that morning, before explaining that “I’m what you call Reform”?

The show aired Monday evening, after the holiday was over, and he could have gotten away without mentioning it. Stewart has no obligation to “represent” the Jews — but he incorporates enough of his Jewish identity into his act that he might show a little more deference to his roots on this, the one day of the year that even gentiles know to be a pretty big Jewish deal. If he wasn;t going to pull a Sanday Koufax, then at least he could have gone with a ”don’t ask don’t tell” policy — it would have been the mentshy thing to do.

Instead, he insults Reform Jews (who are obligated to fast) and well, just disappoints the rest of us.

I know, I know — I’m Mr. Pluralism. But it’s stuff like this that turns me into Rabbi Kvetch. (And in my defense, I like when comic strips have a Christmas theme on Dec. 25, and get all sad when they don’t. I’m talking to you, Ferd’nand and Andy Capp.)

Correction in today’s Times:

The TV Sports column on Wednesday, about the N.F.L. premiere of the new Cowboys Stadium, misspelled the surname of the Mongol emperor who built a lavish summer capital, Xanadu, which was teasingly likened to the sprawling football stadium built by the Cowboys’ owner, Jerry Jones. The emperor was Kublai Khan, not Kahn.

Gershom Gorenberg reviews a new movie about Jaffa, Ajami, co-directed by Scandar Copti, an Israeli Arab, and Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jew.

The result is extreme realism and equal sympathy for the Palestinian and Jewish characters. On screen, Ajami shows people unable to take control of their lives, doomed to violence. Yet it was created by people who chose to cooperate and bridge the ethnic divide. Without turning into allegory, the film presents the most basic alternatives facing Palestinians and Israelis.

The film, by the way, was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival. Writes Gorenberg:

Though it was not officially part of the latter festival’s City to City spotlight on Tel Aviv, its participation highlights the absurdity of the “Toronto Declaration” protesting the focus on Israeli cinema….

In fact, showcasing Tel Aviv hardly made the Toronto festival a “celebration of occupation,” as the declaration called it. The City to City list included another film about Jaffa’s fault lines. The festival as a whole featured the Israeli-made Lebanon, a new feature on Israel’s disastrous invasion of that country in 1982. And, of course, there was Ajami. This is not the usual meaning of “propaganda.” Rather, it’s a demonstration of how art can raise the most difficult questions in a society. In Ajami, directors Copti and Shani succeeded in showing people trapped in tribal allegiances. I came home moved by their cooperation, by their own ability to break out of the tragedy they had shown.

New Jersey’s Department of Education has approved a proposal for a Hebrew-language charter school in East Brunswick.  (Read the news release.)

According to our story on the school proposal in March, founders of the Hatikvah International Academy Charter School said it would focus on  language-immersion and would be precluded by law from teaching religion.

A department spokesman said at the time that charter schools can “teach about religion, but you can’t teach religion. You can teach about the language and the history, culture, and religious influence on the language in the public schools, but you can’t inculcate religious beliefs.”

Parents in the area worried, meanwhile, about its impact on the Solomon Schechter Day School of Raritan Valley in East Brunswick, a private school that would ostensibly compete for many of the same students. And rabbis and educators said a curriculum “about” the culture from which Hebrew springs would be no substitute for a Jewish education. 

Danna Nezaria of E. Brunswick, who is listed by the DOE as the contact person for the charter school, told us in March, ”We are not trying to start a school to hurt anyone or any institution. We want to enhance the educational options in our community.”

She said the school’s curriculum would reflect the local community and its student body would be made up of a variety of ethnicities and religions.

 According to the Star-Ledger report on the approval, “the proposed school is slated to be located in a vacant building on Cornwall Court that had been home to a New York Sports Club.” In its first year, it will be K-2. According to the report:

Hatikvah, Hebrew for “hope,” will offer “in-depth study of Hebrew and Hebrew culture,” and open in fall 2010 with 108 students from kindergarten through second grade, according to the founders’ application.

Charter schools are independently run but survive on taxpayer funds, provided through the local district on a per pupil basis. Hatikvah would get about $1.3 million a year. Charters are required to offer their services to all students by lottery, must follow state curriculum standards and need state approval to open. 

Boy, do you have to wait a long time to get to the key point of this story in the New York Times:

PARIS — A Bulgarian diplomat, Irina Bokova, was elected Tuesday night as the new director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. She defeated the Egyptian culture minister, Farouk Hosny, by a vote of 31 to 27 in a fifth and final round of voting that has been marred by intense international politics.

A Reuters dispatch, carried on the Times Web site, tells you upfront what the Times delays until paragraph five:

PARIS (Reuters) – Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, who said last year he was ready to burn Israeli books, failed Tuesday to become the next head of the U.N. culture and education body, losing out to a Bulgarian diplomat.

The Times does have a good quote from Elie Wiesel:

Mr. Wiesel, interviewed by telephone on Tuesday night from New York, said: “The vote is great for Unesco. It saved Unesco from moral disaster.”