Standing in the entryway to the building housing the Yeshiva Rambam School in southern Brooklyn, Maureen Campbell was every bit the New York City principal — tough, fast-talking and exceedingly patient.
“Now this is very important. The Rambam Yeshiva will be that way,” she said, waving one arm toward a stairway leading to the second floor. Then she turned around to face the large doors opening to the first-floor hallway. “My kids will go through here,” she said, smiling. “See, that’s the separation of church and state.”
Starting on August 24, Campbell, 49, will be fulfilling the tricky role of principal of New York City’s first Hebrew-language charter school. It is a project already fraught with controversy for the boundaries it pushes. Many organizations, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Anti-Defamation League, will be watching closely to make sure the school does not become — as its detractors fear — a cover for promoting Jewish identity with public funds. The fact that the school will be housed in the squat, red-brick Zvi Dov Roth Academy, a building that hosts a synagogue in addition to the yeshiva, only adds to the provocative quality of the project.
In the battles that are sure to come, Campbell, who grew up in Manhattan’s Harlem area, the child of Jamaican immigrants, might be the best weapon in staunching the apprehension — a point not lost on critics of the school.
“It’s clearly an effort to defuse criticism,” Marc Stern, who is an expert on religion-state issues at the American Jewish Congress and is also the AJCongress’s acting co-executive director, said of the school’s choice of Campbell. “By picking someone who doesn’t know Hebrew, has no intrinsic reason to teach Judaism, has no specific agenda, they can more easily neutralize opposition.”
Stern said he does not believe that a Hebrew-language charter school inherently poses a challenge to the constitutionally mandated divide between religion and state. But he also said the school would be a fluid enough environment where it would be impossible to distinguish exactly what element might be used “as a means of furthering Judaism.”
Campbell was recruited by the school’s initiators, a group headed by philanthropist Michael Steinhardt’s daughter, Sara Berman. Steinhardt has pledged half a million dollars to the school’s yearly budget. (Another quarter million is being provided by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation). Charter schools are privately run initiatives that make use of public funds.
Berman, a one-time features editor at this newspaper and parenting columnist for the now-defunct New York Sun, conceived of the school and applied for the charter. She insisted that Campbell was chosen because she was the most qualified candidate for the job. “We really just kept our eyes focused on getting the best principal,” she said.
Berman added that Campbell’s answer as to how she would handle being challenged on church-state divide questions was, “I would want your guidance on that.” Berman characterized this deference as a positive attribute.
Stern was not the only person dubious that Campbell was chosen for her credentials alone. Michael Meyers, head of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, said that when he first lodged complaints about the school, he was reassured by its organizers that a principal had already been selected and that he “shouldn’t worry, because the principal will be black.” But this, he said, “doesn’t change anything for me, not at all.” His concerns about the school — that it is using public funds for a project that will be ethnically divisive — still remain.
The choice of principals has been a big issue for similar projects in the past, most infamously the Khalil Gibran International Academy, an English-Arabic public school in Brooklyn. In 2007, the school’s original principal, Debbie Almontaser, a Muslim of Yemeni descent, courted controversy when she defended the wearing of a T-shirt with the slogan “Intifada NYC.” The ensuing public debate led, Almontaser claims, to her eventual resignation. The first Hebrew-language charter school in the country, Ben Gamla Charter School, in Hollywood, Fla., was also subjected to intense scrutiny when it opened two years ago. Its principal was an Orthodox rabbi.
Campbell has been a teacher and administrator in the New York City public school system since 1985, and was most recently deputy superintendent of the Mount Vernon City School District in Westchester. She has an impressive and eclectic background. Her father, George Campbell, was a renowned Jamaican poet, and her mother, Odilia Campbell, was for 25 years the staff pianist for the Dance Theater of Harlem. Campbell attended Vassar, spent a semester studying at Oxford, and began her education career after graduating from Columbia University’s Teachers College.
On a recent tour of the school, Campbell spoke with excitement about the Hebrew language — which she insists she is going to learn. “I’ll tell you something wonderful,” she said. “All the meals, breakfast and lunch, will be entirely in Hebrew.”
She waved to two Orthodox women passing by the school and asked about their families. And on a quick walk through classrooms that are still being remodeled, she maneuvered around the exposed wires and construction workers wielding jackhammers, to breathlessly point out all the small details of the new school. Spotting a stack of blue and white tiles that soon would cover the floors of the classrooms, she said, “See, we’re trying to integrate Israeli colors into the aesthetic of the school.”
As for whether she felt worried about the line between religion and state that critics said the school was toeing: “It’s actually not a thin line,” she said. “It is a line that is very clear. The church and state separation in New York is very clear. You can teach a culture and a language without encouraging the observance of a religion.”
She also had an answer for how to teach Hebrew in a way that would keep it secular: “In teaching a second language, the process of learning about the country and the culture is natural. There’s a natural link to the history of world Jewish communities and the Israeli culture as a culture and the Hebrew language as a language spoken around the world by various peoples.”
The lead contact between the school and the Steinhardt philanthropies is David Gedzelman, a Reform movement rabbi who is the executive vice president of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life. He appeared to be in touch with Campbell multiple times a day, helping her organize all the details of the school.
Referring to the new principal’s distance from the Jewish community, Gedzelman said: “The benefit associated with [Campbell’s] background is an unintended consequence that is positive. It wasn’t our intention.”
Gedzelman also described the selection process as being carried out in an entirely nondiscriminatory manner. He said the final stages of the process included a woman with a background in Jewish education.
There is sure to be even more skepticism about the school, now that the ethnic makeup of its first incoming class of 150 first graders and kindergarteners is being made public. The school’s charter spoke of expecting the student body to “reflect the population of the target community,” which is 47% black, 13% Asian, 12% Hispanic and only 27% white. But according to statistics provided by the school, 61% of its students are white, and of those, an overwhelming number speak Russian or Hebrew as a first language at home and have parents who were born in the former Soviet Union or in Israel.
These numbers suggest that the school is a big draw for the large population of Russian Jews who live in the local school district, which includes Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach. Predominantly secular but self-identified as Jewish, the Russian immigrants could see in the Hebrew Language Academy a free avenue for encouraging Jewish continuity.
When the New York State Board of Regents, the body charged with approving charter schools, voted last January to grant the Hebrew Language Academy a charter, the one dissenting vote came from Saul Cohen, a regent since 1993 with a long career in academia. His concern was that the school, appealing mostly to Jewish parents, would end up discriminating against the surrounding area’s minority population.
Told that the Hebrew Language Academy had chosen a principal who has Jamaican roots, and a student body that is 40% non-white, Cohen was still not convinced.
“If their objective is Jewish continuity, in some ways it makes it worse,” Cohen said. “Now they have to bring in students for whom the issue of Jewish continuity is peripheral in order to create something for those few for whom it does matter.”
The charge that the school will create an ethnically white enclave in an otherwise multiracial district is challenged vigorously by the school’s defenders. They claim that the Hebrew Language Academy actually will be the most diverse primary school in the district. School District 22 is otherwise extremely segregated, school supporters argue, pointing to two primary schools within a few miles from each other, P.S. 195 and P.S. 194, which have student bodies that are 93% and 8% white, respectively.
Contact Gal Beckerman at beckerman@forward.com
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Principal Maureen Campbell has a terrific background. ...Seems that the planners should have decided at the outset to locate the school in an even more minority-popluated area and to put in place far more proactive outreach efforts to parents of Black and Hispanic students well in advance.
The school, the choice of a non Hebrew speaking Principal are in my opinion ridiculous. What is the purpose of this school and others like it. Jewish and Muslim schools cannot simply separate religion from what is taught. I find it insulting that the Principal knows nothing about Jewish culture, religion, and probably Israel, as if a knowledgeable Jew would somehow pollute the "multicultural" nature of a NYC school. So why have a school of this type in the first place? I doubt that this choice was the "best" that could have been made. It was a typical PC decision. Just another way the City wastes money on pipe dream educational schemes.
Why does the slant on this article seem so anti-Jewish?
Lenny--
The slant on the article IS anti-Jewish, because it appears in a very secular newspaper. The seculars ALWAYS act ashamed when reminded that they are G-d's Chosen People, and supposed to live by Torah. When they must choose between Obama or Torah/Israel---they choose Obama.
Now, as for the non-Jewish Jewish school...this is a BAD WAY TO GO. If Jews want to have a REAL JEWISH SCHOOL---choose one. Do not choose a Jewish-Style school, led by liberal seculars.
Note who the seculars chose to run a JEWISH-STYLE SCHOOL....a Black Woman. GIVE ME A BREAK!!
All this school will do is OPEN THE DOOR WIDER to allow evil muslim schools to grow, and good people to be hurt by these same muslims. Jewish-STYLE schools will wither, but the POISONOUS WEEDS OF islam WILL CONTINUE TO FILL THE FIELD.
A (PUBLIC) CHARTER SCHOOL THAT HAS AS ITS ACADEMIC MISSION, A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (IN THIS CASE HEBREW), SHOULD HAVE MOST OF ITS PROFESSIONALS, BUT MOST ESPECIALLY ITS PRINCIPAL, - BE AT LEAST, CONVERSANT IN THAT LANGUAGE.! THE ISSUE IS DEFINITELY NOT THE ETHNIC NOR RACIAL BACKGROUND OF THE PRINCIPAL, BECAUSE S/HE COULD HAVE STUDIED THE LANGUAGE IN PREPARATION FOR OTHER SCHOLARLY PURSUITS SUCH AS ARCHAEOLOGY OR ETHNOGRAPHY, ETC. SOME HAVE PERSONAL RELIGIOUS REASONS FOR STUDYING HEBREW AS WELL AS OTHER LANGUAGES. SOME LOVE LANGUAGE STUDY FOR ITS OWN SAKE. I AM A PRODUCT OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM AND MY CHILDREN ARE AS WELL. NOW RETIRED FROM TEACHING SPECIAL EDUCATION, I LIKE THE IDEA OF ADDING HEBREW TO THE CURRICULUM, ALONG WITH THE OTHER USUAL FOREIGN LANGUAGES. I DO NOT SEE WHY IT HAS TO BE A CHARTER SCHOOL IN ORDER TO OFFER HEBREW, ESPECIALLY IN THIS SEGREGATED FASHION. IN LIGHT OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS, WE PROBABLY OUGHT TO HAVE JEWISH CHILDREN LEARNING ARABIC AS WELL AND ETHNIC ARABIC CHILDREN LEARNING HEBREW AND YIDDISH ALSO, WHILE WE'RE SO INCLINED. AND WHY NOT OFFER MORE FOREIGN LANGUAGES ALL AROUND OUR GREAT CITY. OUR MAYOR MAY BE WILLING TO HELP PAY FOR IT IN THE INTEREST OF WORLD PEACE...
The children that will be attending this school would probably not be going to to Yeshiva or Heb school.Therefore i think it's a good idea.As far as the Principal not being Jewish her qualifications seem great,Vassar,Oxford and Columbia what else could you want.Remember this isn't a Yeshiva it's a Charter school
In the spirit of treating all religions, and lack of religion, equally, why not house the school in a church or mosque, rather than in a yeshiva? The fact that a yeshiva building was commissioned belies the unspoken agenda of its founders. We secular people are fed up with the religious groups constantly trying to extract their pork (pun intended) from the public sector.
The experiment of providing "Jewish Style" tax-paid schools is very dangerous.
The dangers are NOT from the clever use of this technique by good Jewish and good Christian schools, families and students. These religions have a generally good, decent and honorable history. Where we run HUGE risks and HUGE dangers is when muslims start to use this to fund their HATE-FILLED and TERRORIST-SUPPORTING "schools." To even treat islam the same way that we treat GENUINE religions is dangerous.
Would it be OK to fund and support NAZI-Schools or Communist-Schools? What good interest and public interest is served by training children in the dangers of islam? For Jews and Christians to go down this path will only serve to benefit the GREATEST enemy of both honorable religions---islam.
Think this one through, before we are so eager to support all schools like this? The death cult of islam should be MORE SUPERVISED anfd MORE CONTROLLED than we even do today. If we want to reduce terrorism, we must keep enemy muslims out, and expel enemy muslims, as well---just as we had done with Nazis and Communists----both groups being LESS DANGEROUS than muslims.
The bottom line is that the charter school concept is legal; hence, the new Hebrew language school in NYC was born. It would be logical to assume that more schools of this kind will continue to be founded throughout the years. Now that the Hebrew charter school idea is a fact, it would be only fitting to wish its students and staff the very best of luck. Surely, the student body of the charter school will be mostly children who would have otherwise gone to public school. There, in the public school, they probably would have studied Spanish/French. In the charter school, the emphasis will be on Hebrew literacy. This is only good news. It's hard to understand how Jews could oppose such a positive development.
Many questions: 1. will the children have time outs to daven?
2. who will be the teachers? yes we know the principal is a non-jew -what about the teachers, the lunch ladies, the janitors - all who come in contact with the jewish child
3. for any birthday parties or celebrations will the nonjew touch the grape juice?
4. this is weird - in applying for a school of the deaf - the leader was asked to be deaf; would not a school of the blind be lead by a blind leader - oh how funny that this school has a blind leader not versed in torah. is this a job for a woman, let alone a non jewish woman - to lead the jewish youths?
5. who funds kosher meals - trying buying kosher chicken and compare prices with the nonjew food. seems out of balance - kosher food more expensive but who will fund it?
6. is this an all boys school? keep the girls with girls and the boys with boys to fight the yetza hara. t
Our real-estate taxes just went up big time so Bloomberg can throw more bones to his favorite community. French or Spanish are useful languages in a professional life, Hebrew is useful only for a handful (not all) jews. Why are our tax-dollars funding this type of nonsense?
Lots of folks won't want to send their children to this school, which they therefore will choose not to do.
Others, who see the school as relevant, will choose to do so. Given the Jewish context, for them, that's a good thing. For everyone else (who isn't doing so), it's not your business. I think presenting a Jewish choice, that can be publicly funded in the non-religious context, is why it's a good thing.
As a former member of the American Jewish Congress (AJC) Governing Council, who resigned (for one reason) because AJC opposed the Florida school, I decry knee-jerk, self centered opinions that one person or group imposes on others. This school is not religious, so shut up about boys and girls being in the same classroom/grape juice/etc. If a parent protests, they can send their kid elsewhere.
As I advised Marc Stern, and others, let the FL parents have the school they want -- and if their next door Moslem neighbors want one also, so be it. However, no hate speech (a real possibility at BOTH schools)would be allowed, and the community would actively monitor compliance at the school.
I have other ideas, and just love everything that Michael Steinhardt has done and tried to do. He's the best (Edgar Bronfman being a close second), even though he doesn't believe in God or G-d.
Mark Werfel ajcwerfel@yahoo.com
ADDED:
Others in AJC leadership positions termed as racist my thought that Jewish children were smarter than those generally attending public school.
My point then being that the environment at the Jewish charter school could academically be more rigorous -- probably safer in many ways as well.
I termed that thought as realistic, and fully valid/representative of my experience.
Your view? (send a note -- with a vote -- to ajcwerfel@yahoo.com)
To the commenter Hymie:
This is the most racist thing I ever read today. Basically most of my life since I live in New York. Muslims are the greatest enemy? Of whom? Sad to say the greatest enemy in this case is you. What this school has to do anything with muslims? This school has nothing to do with religion. This is one of the reasons I send my child there. Hebrew language does not equal religion. This is a good school from 8-4 pm and the principal is one of the nicest person I have ever met. She doesn't need to know Hebrew, she is not a teacher, she is the principal. If you are so hateful towards anybody as we can all see it from your post, why don't you go live in Israel? Over there you can bash muslims all the time and sadly most people there would agree with you! If you are on the way, include ethiopian jews also, you must hate them too. You are pathetic.