The bursting of the day school bubble?
Over at Commentary, Jack Wertheimer discusses the “High Cost of Jewish Living”, a perennial staple of punditry up there with “the death of Broadway,” “where are the single Jewish men?” and “network television’s flawed Olympics coverage.” (See here, here and here.)
Read it closely, and you’ll see it’s really about the “high cost of Jewish day school education”:
Adding things up, an actively engaged Jewish family that keeps kosher and sends its three school-age children to the most intensive Jewish educational institutions can expect to spend somewhere between $50,000 and $110,000 a year at minimum just to live a Jewish life.
[You only get to that enormous minimum if you throw in day schools for three kids. Using Wertheimer's figures, you can join a synagogue (say, $2,000, which is high), belong to a JCC ($1,500 or so), and send those same kids to a month of Jewish summer camp (at $800 a week), and the bill would come to under $20,000 a year. That's not chump change, and you can probably even double the figure factoring in kosher food, tzedakah, Hebrew or youth group activity fees, an Israel trip or another month of camp, but is that considerably more than non-Jewish or non-affiliated middle-income families spend on church donations, voluntary associations, club memberships, restaurant meals, and summer camps in a year?]
There’s an unaddressed subtext to Wertheimer’s piece: day schooling at what price?
Wertheimer mostly blames Jewish communal organizations for not doing enough to address the affordability of Jewish day school education. Wertheimer calls on communal institutions to treat “”intensive Jewish education as the birthright of every young person who wishes to study in a day school, attend a residential Jewish summer camp, or spend significant time studying in Israel.” And he calls on non-Orthodox institutions to adopt the Orthodox model:
Orthodox Jews regard Jewish education as a communal enterprise for which all are responsible, whether or not their own children are attending.
(An irony of Wertheimer’s piece is that, in discussing Jewish poverty in the United States, he is speaking in large part about fervently Orthodox Jews who destitute themselves to raise and and send to private schools their many kids despite widespread communal support. He doesn’t talk about the rash of ugly headlines about the misleading and sometimes illegal lengths to which some yeshiva heads will go to fund their institutions. Nor does he talk about the quality of the education at some haredi yeshivot, which may be one way they keep down costs. Since his argument is framed only in terms of Jewish “continuity,” it’s not clear anyhow how important Wertheimer regards quality in the first place.)
Wertheimer challenges the church-and-state orthodoxy that stands in the way of public funding schemes for private schooling. And he has particular scorn for Jewish support of non-sectarian causes that comes, presumably, at the expense of support for intensive Jewish education: “Why, then,” he asks, “ the incessant barrage of exhortations to do more for the world, even as Jewish needs go unmet?”
Wertheimer has some interesting ideas, like a Jewish “Teach for America” to raise the visibility of intensive Jewish education. But since we are really talkling about day school education here, it’s vital to ask whether an alternative educational system, in a country in which K-12 education is already provided for free, is or was ever a viable economic model for a voluntary Jewish community — and one with such an enormous historical and emotional debt to the public education system? In the past 20 years, Jewish communal institutions came to the almost unanimous conclusion that day schools were not only the best way to raise Jews, but they all but ignored the alternatives. Meanwhile, only a minority ever agreed to adopt this model for their own kids, at great financial sacrifice except for the most affluent families.
As a result, we have a consensus on how to educate our kids that was highly promoted by communal leaders, sold to middle income families, and was sustainable only when the economy was flying high. Day schools are the subprime mortgages of Jewish life.
As a day school parent, it’s in my best interest to agree that communal insitutions should make tuition assistance a priority (although I am not convinced that every dollar that goes to hunger relief from the American Jewish World Service is one less dollar that should or would be going to the Silow-Carrolls). I am glad for the sake of my readers that my own employer, UJC MetroWest, has spearheaded a $50 million campaign to support the three area day schools.
But if we are talking about getting “descendants of Jews” to “identify actively with Jewish collective activity,” it’s not enough to focus on lowering the costs of its most expensive tool (and the one that demands the most intensive commitment on the part of Jewish families). We have to think about educational alternatives that can engage those families who wouldn’t send a kid to Jewish day school no matter the cost, and at the same time wonder whether the day school model will ever be affordable, on the personal or communal level.
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JustASC is written by Andrew Silow-Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of the 
March 4th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
“Day schools are the subprime mortgages of Jewish life.”
Well said!!!
March 4th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Excellent piece. There is one part you left unsaid, in the radical change of communally pushing for Jewish Day schools we’ve lost other options. I have the choice to give my child 2-6h of Jewish education per week at a synagogue school for $1-2K per year or 20h/week at a day school for $20-30K per year.
The organized Jewish community has given up the middle ground of cost and hours of education. There are exceptions, but where did the 4 day per week after-public school program go? Where is the organized system of getting after school individual or small group tutors into people’s homes? Where are the curricula to facilitate such programs across the nation? Day schools have their place, but day schools above all else has cost the community greatly to educate only a fraction of Jewish children.
March 6th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
I am partially a day school product (before moving to Israel for grades 6-10) and currently a 2x day school parent. That should immunize me from charges I don’t care.
Why is it that the conversation (and the primary purpose behind day schools) is about “getting “descendants of Jews” to ‘identify actively with Jewish collective activity’”? Is that what the Jewish communal effort is all about? Isn’t that identification (ie the internalization of Jewish identity as a primary component of one’s individual identity) one that must originate from within each individual/family and augmented by quality, accessible and affordable programming (the province of the Jewish community)?
It is time for the organized Jewish community to abandon the concept that what we are all about is fighting intermarriage, countering assimilation and preserving Jewish identity. Terms like continuity and survival and fear-mongering about Jewish existence should similarly be discarded as the primary (or substantial) motivators of Jewish life.
What we should be about is creating a network of Jewish programs and services that are meaningful, relevant, accessible, affordable and high quality.
The goal? I don’t know that it’s raising a generation of Jews who feel Jewish or creating a generation of Jews committed to study, ritual and helping others. Not that I am against that.
Maybe the goals are individually driven and it’s up to us, acting together as a community, to join forces to meet the demands of the marketplace. And equally important, it is up to each and every individual to take responsibility for their own Jewish journey and not rely on others to create it, implement it and fund it (this is not to say all financial assistance is bad. But that’s another discussion).
Maybe our goal is to create, or facilitate and sustain the creation of a Jewish community that acts in pursuit of however it defines and expresses its Jewish identity(ies).
We live in an age of unparalleled if not virtually limitless personal choice, including the choice to be Jewish and how that piece of identity finds its expression on an individual and communal basis. Individual choice can mean loss of institutional control. And while that is unsettling to institutions, it’s also irreversible.
Similarly, when institutions controlled, they also had the power of the communal purse, and this has led to a period of entitlement, as Jewish life seems increasingly subsidized (mostly as an incentive to participate and not because of financial need). But along with individual choice comes individual responsibility. You don’t just get the free trip or the subsidized school. You can’t get the free trip as a birth right unless you also accept (and act consistent with this acceptance) that with that right comes a responsibility. Not a responsibility defined by Jewish institutions, but one that is self-initiated from the neshama, defined by each person: How much of my identity is grounded in being Jewish? Do I want a Jewish journey and what does that mean to me? Am I part of the Jewish people and a Jewish community, and how does that translate into my action, participation, philanthropy?
March 7th, 2010 at 7:09 am
If it really was important for all Jews to get a Jewish education, there would be more money going for affordable education for more kids than for expensive education for some.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
I have many friends moving to Israel and one of reasons that pushes them in this direction is cost of Jewish education. In Israel every child is equal in opportunity to have Jewish schooling. Israel gives choice of secular day school(hiloni) or modern orthodox (dati leumi) public school. The secular schools still teach jewish history and bible classes. I attended a secular public school for 4th grade and we studied book of Joshua that year and history of Jews. I was in religious public school in 5th grade in israel and they had same classes but more emphasis on prayer/more bible classes. I am dreading cost of Jewish day school in America and am contemplating aliyah since I know the odds of getting a good scholarship are slim and the frustration of not being able to give your kid a proper Jewish education which is entirely free in israel makes me think the future of Jewish day schools in America is falling apart.