Learning and Community: Jewish Supplementary Schools in the Twenty-First Century

Conclusion

Conclusion Our portraits of ten schools have introduced readers to a range of programs differing in size, geographic setting, and affiliation. All have strengths; some more than others. Each suggests that, under the proper conditions, supplementary schools are able to give children positive Jewish experiences , teach them a modicum of Hebrew and other Judaic skills, stimulate them to reflect on religious and ethical questions from a Jewish perspective , and foster attachment to Israel and the Jewish people. What, then, are those conditions? What can we extract from these portraits about the key traits of effective schools? Building a Jewish Community within the School The best schools intentionally develop a community among their students , staff and parents. They begin with the assumption that learning cannot be separated from context, and that to a large extent the school’s most important message is embedded in the culture and relationships it fosters. Hence, they devote much time to building a community that attends to the needs of individual children; embraces them in an environment where their classmates become their good, often their best, friends; and connects them to the larger congregational body, if the school is housed in a synagogue, or to another Jewish sub-community if it is not. No less importantly, the community fostered by the school not only is warm and hospitable, but also establishes norms explicitly identified as distinctly Jewish. Although denominational orientation affects what these norms are, good schools across the spectrum focus particularly on the interpersonal, teaching young people through example and open discussion how to treat one another . Put in a more traditional Jewish idiom, they stress mitzvot bein adam leh ˙ avero—i.e., proper behavior toward others. We have seen examples of this approach in virtually every school included in this study. At the Chabad Hebrew School, the director and staff members not only strive to be attuned to each child, but also work to re347 Job Name: 560670 PDF Page: txt_560670.p365.pdf denisek inforce learning with rewards and compliments. When the rabbi of Beit Knesset Hazon assumed his position, he announced to the staff that, “If your kids know the alef-bet before everyone’s name in the class, everyone gets an F. Don’t even open the book the first class.” The school head explains : “We work hard to help faculty understand that it’s not all about the content. The content is important, but the community building is also really critically important. . . . If we’re going to have a feeling of warmth and welcoming and family, we have to dedicate some serious time to helping kids know each other.” Education at the Reconstructionist congregation is deliberately designed to extend beyond the classroom. The synagogue ’s leaders want children in the religious school to have a Jewish “neighborhood” experience that no longer exists in the place where they actually live. The operative word here is Jewish community. For the education to have an impact on the identity of young people, the setting must reinforce uniquely Jewish dimensions. At Tikvah Synagogue School, such community is built by engaging members and children actively in prayer. As one parent put it: “On a week-to-week basis, it really feels like a community. Just on a regular, ongoing basis the people really want to be [there], not just to drop the kids off for Sunday school. It’s really being there, and the parents being partners.” Kehilla builds Jewish community by emphasizing kavod. Both in its approach to human interactions and its vocabulary for teaching proper behavior , the school conveys what it stands for—and the basis of its commitments . As we have seen, one class devoted three weeks to creating a class brit, or covenant. The teacher explained what they did: The first week we talked about the three different kinds of kavod (respect ): kavod le’atzmi (respect for oneself), kavod le’ah ˙ erim (respect for others), and kavod la-sviva (respect for the environment). We took these categories and tried to decide what was important to the students . We did this in various ways. For example, we had everyone write down on a sheet some of the rules and boundaries. We also used a text from the Rambam as a springboard. It took a while to figure exactly how to phrase [our brit], to see that it was rooted in a text. By attending to traditional Jewish texts, the school highlighted what is distinctively Jewish in its approach. High school programs particularly can...