Last year, I published an essay on MyJewishLearning.com called “Seize the Day School.” I worried about this essay. “Seize” spelled out, in great detail, my own ambivalences — note the plural — about sending my daughter to Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston. I feared that once the piece was published, her teachers might treat my little girl…differently; that the school moms would stop smiling at me and my wife; that our tuition bill would start growing exponentially.
My fears were unfounded.
In fact, people seemed to like the damned thing. The editor-in-chief of MyJewishLearning.com said that “Seize” “received a more impassioned response than almost all of our other articles.” The people at the school were jazzed, and I heard from a number of day school parents about it. Why? I think they were happy to see someone articulate his own nuanced feelings about Jewish education.
Clearly, there was a lot to say about day school, but only the rare opportunity for people to speak candidly in public. So after the story went live, I teamed up with the Project for Excellence in Jewish Education — you can call them PEJE — to get other people writing essays. The project produced a number of “Seize”-like pieces from a diverse group of authors, who had either attended, or who had kids in, day school.
The results were varied, stylish, thoughtful and honest. To wit: In “Et Tu, Brute?” Michael “Mr. Yiddish” Wex waxes poetic about the immense value of his daughter’s Hebrew education. Joshua Halberstam, philosophy professor and author of the recent novel “A Seat at the Table” compares his severe yeshiva education to his kids’ more liberal day school lives. It’s funny. Interesting. And a little sad.
Have you got a day school story of your own? E-mail us at dayschools@forward.com to share your experience.
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Unlike the Catholic archdiocese system we Jews have as many styles as we have Jewish schools. Our schools should be responsive to the feelings of parents and the needs of children. I taught for many years at a Jewish boarding school called Carmel College, so-called Anglo-Jewry's Eton, down the river from the original. Dr Elizabeth Maxwell, a Catholic involved in interfaith activity, was our guest speaker and she quoted from a range of Gamorrohs in the course of her speech. Unfortunately quite a few of our students in this mainstream Orthodox school did not recognise the word 'Gemorroh' or recognise names like Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik or Rabbi Moshe Feinstein whom she quoted fluently. On the other hand the students in some of our more traditional boys schools know little else in Jewish learning but Gemorroh. One of the major differences between the UK and the USA is that in UK Law parents have a right to educate their children in their own beliefs as long as they comply with the National Curriculum and all relevant laws. This means most of our major mainstream Orthodox Jewish schools are funded by the government and parents pay only for the Jewish Studies teaching.