Driving Congregational School Change to Enhance 21st Century Jewish Learning

Abstract

For millions of American Jews, the words “Jewish education” most likely conjure images of days spent in synagogue classrooms decoding Hebrew, reciting prayers, learning holiday customs, and reading about biblical figures. This is the past, but (we hope) not the future of congregational education.1This form of part-time, mostly afterschool and/or weekend Jewish learning has been the most popular single setting for the Jewish education of Jewish children for many decades. More than 2,000 supplementary schools (most, though not all, of which are part of synagogues) are the main source of Jewish education for more than 230,000 Jewish children in North America (Wertheimer, 2008), making them “the largest ‘network' operating in the arena of Jewish education” (Wertheimer, 2009a).2Despite its popularity, supplementary education has long been subject to often biting criticism as ineffectual or worse. In recent years, these critiques have sparked renewed efforts to improve and even transform congregational education. The breadth and scope of these efforts, encompassing hundreds of synagogues and dozens of communities, have made it more urgent that we understand the dynamics of congregational educational change: how it works and how to make it work better. 1For the purposes of this article, a congregational school is a Jewish religious school serving children in grades K-12 and that is directly affiliated with and supported by a temple or synagogue of any denomination (or that is unaffiliated). There are many other names for these afterschool Judaic learning programs (e.g., “Hebrew,” “religious,” or “supplementary” schools). Most recently, the nomenclature “complementary schools” has come to signify the range of settings that offer part-time Jewish education for students in grades K-12. This article focuses specifically on congregational schools. 2This may change as enrollments in all-day Jewish schools approach and may soon exceed those in supplementary programs. See A Census of Jewish Day Schools in the United States, 2008–2009 (Schick, 2009). However, the growth in day schools today is being driven largely by Orthodox and, in many cases, Haredi enrollment. Among the non-Orthodox Jewish population, supplementary schools are likely to remain the predominant form of childhood Jewish education for many years to come.