Why Does the Jewish Week not Support Day Schools?

First, a disclaimer. This is not a post about the tuition crisis that is going on. There are plenty of blogs and comments and whatever that are devoted to that, and they tend to generate mostly heat and almost no light. Rather, this post is about institutional support for Yeshiva Day Schools, particularly in the media. The New York Jewish Week has a rather long article this week entitled "Teaneck Parents Eyeing Public (School) Option", which focuses on some of the various non-Yeshiva options that parents in Bergen County, NJ are exploring to help alleviate the awesome financial burden of paying for day school for multiple children. For those who are not aware, a Hebrew-language charter school has been approved in neighboring Englewood, NJ, and this article discusses both that option as well as the general option of sending children to public school, along with various ideas for after-school Talmud Torah programs to help compensate for the loss of a Jewish education. Late me state very clearly that I have nothing but sympathy for parents who are at the point of making these decisions, and I truly believe that most of them, in a perfect world, do want their children to be in Yeshivot but simply find the finances impossible. That said, I am bothered by the fact that the article slants towards the charter school/public school option, while giving no real reason while a Yeshiva education would be preferable (all things being equal).

A few noteworthy points:

1) The article begins by talking about Yitzi Flynn, and claiming that he "transferred his 10-year-old son from the Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey to Teaneck’s Thomas Jefferson Middle School this fall." However, much much later on we find out that that shift had nothing to do with finances and everything to do with the educational needs of his child. Seems like a bit of a bait-and-switch to me.

2) In commenting on communal efforts to stem the crisis, the article first quotes "Mira" as saying "People are not planning properly; most are in denial. And the communal leadership across the board, no one is getting up and saying ‘This is not sustainable.'" While the next paragraph mentions groups such as the OU, YU, and JEFG that are all working on solving this very problem, and in fact are saying "this is not sustainable", the article only mentions what they have done and are working on towards the end, and follows the initial mention by saying that many parents see their efforts as "too little, too late." I ask - would it be better if they did nothing at all? As this is an article, and not an opinion piece, shouldn't Julie Weiner (the writer) have done her homework into the work of these organizations in this regard?

3) In discussing the after school Talmud Torah option, the article claims "While some question how much Judaic material an after-school program can cover, pointing to the failure of Talmud Torah programs in generations past, the Rosens are hopeful." I ask - "some" question? There have been actual studies done about the effectiveness of Talmud Torah programs, and they are not pretty. Ask the Conservative and Reform movements how successful Hebrew school has been for them! Granted, we are now dealing with a more observant and perhaps committed parent body, but there are nevertheless many issues with Talmud Torah programs that will still exist. Should Weiner have at least made mention of them? Or is her goal to note that this is just a matter of opinion and thus anyone could wind up being correct?

4) Weiner then notes that Yeshiva education is no guarantee of a child's ultimate religiosity, allowing a quote from one family that they have family members who went to Yeshiva and are apparently not so religious. While anecdotal evidence certainly exists in all directions, again there have been studies done that have found that a Yeshiva education is one of the most important factors that contribute to lifelong religious observance and involvement. But, again, Weiner makes no mention of this. Her agenda is clearly not to promote Yeshiva Day Schools.

5) I have no idea what to do with this quote: "Vidaver noted that day school is itself a relatively new phenomenon, “a movement of the past two generations.” - Some people would call that progress. Two generations ago, Julie Weiner, as a woman, might not have been given her current job - should we roll that back as well since it is only two generations old?

So here is my question - what is the role of a Jewish newspaper? I am sure that they would defend themselves with some high-minded statement about simply reporting the facts or speaking for all segments of the community or something like that. I think that is rubbish. We all know that even news articles can serve effectively as opinion pieces, and this article (written by someone who is not Orthodox) seems to do exactly that. I would hope that a Jewish newspaper would cover a sensitive issue such as this with the appropriate amount of sensitivity to both sides of the issue, not by promoting the side of the issue that they perhaps support (which is interesting to me, as the editor of the paper is Orthodox and sent his own children to Orthodox schools) while giving short shrift, if that much, to the other side. Day schools and community organizations need everyone's help if they are going to figure out solutions to this problem - the Jewish Week is helping stir up antagonism to that cause.

The Challenge of "Unteaching"

Every year around this time, I teach my students the laws of Purim. Inevitably, someone tells me that the mitzva of mishloach manot is fulfilled by providing two foods that require two different brachot rishonot. When asked where they learned this law, the students either do not know or credit their teachers in the younger grades.


Examples of such misinformation abound. My son in kindergarten actually objected to a book about tashlich that showed people throwing bread into the water (the teacher found me and asked if she should stop using the book - I politely referred her to her immediate supervisor); Countless people believe that we do not eat giraffe because we do not know where to shecht them (a myth debunked here); and don't get me started on when we take three steps back and forward at the beginning of Shemoneh Esrei (correct answer: before saying ה' שפתי תפתח - there is no connection between the number of steps and the number of words in that pasuk).


So how do these and countless other misconceptions come to be? Let me point out that some of these myths are fairly widespread, and thus there are teachers at higher levels of education who predictably reteach, or perhaps unteach, our students on these points (one high school teacher friend actually complained to me that I was taking away his fun by taking care of the unteaching before my students reached his class. Tough on him.).

The simple answer is that these misconceptions are taught in the early years of a child's education. And here I come to a bit of a minefield, so let me begin with the qualifiers. As a veteran Middle School teacher, I am constantly in awe of the work done by teachers in the younger grades, and more in awe as the kids get younger. I have the option of coming into class moderately prepared and putting material out for my students' consumption. I can have my students do a writing assignment to chew up half of a period. I can give tests or essays or projects or anyone of a million other things which take a middling amount of effort to compose and even less effort to execute (although a decent amount of effort to mark). Teachers of early childhood and the early grades are hands-on all the time. They have to constantly be reacting to the changing moods of their young charges, and they cannot simply give an assignment and hope for the best - they have to be always vigilantly looking out for myriads of nuances and eventualities until the last child goes home at the end of the day.

Those teachers are also charged with another awesome responsibility. They are the first teachers of halacha that children have. While they may not say that they are teaching halacha (they use more age-appropriate terms such as "teaching Pesach"), that is, in fact, what they are doing when they prepare children for each holiday with a collection of elaborate and colorful projects, songs, and worksheets.

And here is where things get tricky, and let me reiterate that I am in no way intending to offend. It is expected that someone hired as a Rebbe has spent a certain amount of time learning in a formal setting and has a certain level of comfort, familiarity, and facility with the standard volumes of halacha. While we would forgive a Middle School Rebbe who cannot cite every teshuva of the Chida, we want him to at least have reviewed the Mishna Berura before teaching halacha to his students.

To my knowledge, there is no such requirement or expectation of first grade teachers (to pick a grade at random). It is certainly far more important that they be experts of pedagogy and child psychology than of Shas and poskim. For many of them, their knowledge of halacha may be more mimetic than text-based (see Dr. Haym Soloveitchik's classic article for more on this topic). However, the fact remains that they are the first ones to introduce a wide variety of halachot to our children, and the fact is as well that it is very difficult to unteach ideas learned at a young age. We are often unduly influenced by our first impressions, and it can be a struggle to convince a child that what he or she has learned in the past is simply not so.

There is a further issue, and that is one of basic middot and respect. If I teach my students something contrary to what they learned in 3rd or 4th grade, ineveitably someone asks, "Does that mean that Mrs. So-and-so was wrong?" The correct answer to that question is often "yes", and yet simply giving that as an answer can be fraught with dangers, from leading students to doubt that which they have been taught, to leading them to look askance at the fine individuals who taught them in previous years.

So what is a teacher to do? On one level, one can appeal to the authority of the sources. Rather than say "I am right and your other teachers were all wrong", make use of original texts in class and inform students that there may be other opinions, but you have not seen them quoted in the classical sources. While this effectively is the same as saying that what they learned in the past was incorrect, it does so while encouraging a healthy sense of respect for tradition and authority, rather than focusing on the errors made by others (and thus encouraging a sense of lack of respect for tradition and authority).

It is also possible to work to prevent incorrect teaching. As my own children have come home over the years with the occasional erroneous information, I have relayed that fact to our school's Lower School Assistant Principal, who has taken the opportunity to work with the teachers going forward to correct any such mistakes. Rather than be a self-righteous parent calling up a successful teacher and saying "I know better", this allows the error to be corrected in a respectful fashion, as the AP generally either has or can create contexts wherein he learns with or reviews specific material with the teachers, and thus can come around to discussing the point of contention. We all make mistakes in our teaching, and most teachers are themselves students at heart and thus are open to hear how they can learn more and how they can then share that learning with their students.

I will end on a positive note. A vast majority of what our students are learning is correct, and the errors that I am focusing on are probably minor details that will not make a major difference in one's performance of mitzvot (it does not really matter why we do not shecht giraffes - the fact is that we are not shechting them one way or the other). As I said above, I am in awe of the work done by teachers of young children, and in particular of the teachers of my own children. May they continue their labors of love for many more years to come.

Color War in School - Why?

That is the question that we hear every year from a few people - isn't color war something done in camp? Isn't school for learning, not playing? And, of course, we never had this when I went to school, so it is not necessary and is a waste of time and resources.

I will admit that at one time early in my career, I was not fully on board with the idea of taking three days away from learning for a series of games and artistic presentations. And, since I did not have color war when I went to school, it went against my own pre-conceived notion of what was appropriate for school and what was not.

However, as I have become more seasoned as an educator, and as I have been intensely involved in the preparations for color war for several years, I have become pretty well convinced that this is not only a good use of time and resources, but that, in fact, this is fully consistent with what a school exists to do.

Let's look into this. Why do people send their children to school, and why do they send them specifically to a Yeshiva day school? There are many possible answers. If it is because they are legally obligated to send them to school, then obviously they are wasting their money paying for Yeshiva. If it is so that their children can learn both Torah as well as general studies in a Jewish environment, then I can understand why color war sounds like a waste of time. After all, despite all of our efforts to put some degree of content into color war (theme material, Tanach-based scavenger hunts, trivia competitions, and so on and so on), the fact is that most kids do not learn all that much during the days of color war, and thus formal learning does effectively grind to a halt during this time.

However, I would suggest that there is an additional layer of education that people want for their children when they send them to a Yeshiva day school. Obviously they want them to know how to read Hebrew and to learn Chumash. But more than that, they want them to come out of the school with a positive feeling, not only about themselves but about Judaism as well. This is a major challenge facing educators, and it is one that I will write more about in a different post. But it is a challenge that explains what is important about color war.

The answer is more than simply "If the kids are having fun in a Jewish context, then they will enjoy being Jewish." Frankly, I do not think that that is true. Kids are fairly savvy, and they are able to distinguish between Judaism being enjoyable and appealing to them and fun that happens to take place in a Jewish environment. To the extent that the former is true, the kids are likely to develop positive opinions of Judaism and Jewish practice; to the extent that the latter is true, they will likely develop meaningful friendships with their classmates, without necessarily developing deep feelings about Judaism per se.

[Obviously, there are many issues that influence a child's outlook and approach to Judaism, and the school is not the only one. I am working with the conceit that the school does play a significant role for many of its students. Of course, the particular home and community situations are crucial as well.]

Back to color war. In a well-designed and well-run color war (and I like to believe that we do it well in my school), children who do not necessarily shine in the classroom are given multiple opportunities to display their talents and take part in something that appeals to them. Our color wars have multiple opportunities for children with artistic talent, musical talent, technological talent, athletic talent, and even for those with academic talent. Students are placed into new groupings which cross grade lines, class lines, and hometown lines, and therefore have to develop or make use of social skills that often go ignored. While some activities are focused on an individual performance, most require some degree of teamwork, and the general sense of team spirit and camraderie that is the sine qua non of color war tends to be infectious (that's why we have one silent lunch each time - team spirit can get very loud).

And all of this is done in a decidedly Jewish context and spirit. The theme material may not be relevant during a 3 point shooting contest, but the various presentations are all based on the Torah/Jewish-based material. As such, every student has the opportunity to sing, paint, act, present, or cheer about Zionism or Jewish heroism or Jewish courage or whatever the theme is. And while the presentations may take place on the final day of color war, the preparation takes place over all of the days, and tends to involve every single child. Such moments leave a deep and lasting impression on children.

So that is color war - a chance for students to shine in ways that they do not normally shine in school; an opportunity to break down social barriers and form a community; and a moment in time when students put true passion and excitement into talking about (and cheering about) something decidedly Jewish. And so to answer the question posed by the headline of this post: "Color War in School - Why?" I would say simply "Why not"?

You are all individuals!

I got up to give the dvar Torah in davening the other day and began by describing the following scene (one of my favorites):



How was this relevant to anything? I explained to my 7th and 8th grade students that davening is a completely unnatural experience, and it in fact goes against everything that we do all day long. For an entire day, student have adults tell them that they are unique in some way or another. More and more, educators are learning the value of seeing beyond test scores and providing an ever-widening range of assessment, differentiated experiences, and extra- and co-curricular activities designed to allow each student the maximum number of opportunities to display and develop his or her talents and interests.

And then we bring them in to davening. Davening - where everyone says the same words, and sits and stands and bows and take steps forwards and backwards in the same way at the same time. Where the singing is imposed and everyone sings together with no voice standing out. How does this fit in with the messages that we impart to our students all day long, and given this fact, how can we blame them for not looking forward to davening?

The easy approach is to say that part of Judaism is the need to be a part of the collective. As much as we celebrate diversity of character, and as much as we would like everyone to develop their own talents, it is still important for everyone to have moments where they abandon their individuality in order to melt into the greater whole. Tefilla is the model for this - while each person has the right to add something to his or her own private Shemoneh Esrei, the fact is that tefilla, when done with a minyan, is a minyan-centric activity, with a uniform pace and any other changes being down on a communal level.

However, this is a lesson that is not easy for teenagers, and certainly not modern teenagers, to digest easily. And thus, there are two ways to go. One way is to say tough luck. Some lessons are not so easily learned, but they have to be learned because they are important. There is no question that there is some truth to this position. However, perhaps we can examine the other approach. Perhaps there is another way to explain tefilla to kids, or perhaps there is more that we can do to appeal to our students while still maintaining the integrity of tefilla. I will muse more about this in future posts - what do you think?

Teaching Tefilla - Not Just Davening Together

Tefilla in school is hard. For many teachers, it may be the worst part of their day. Trying to make it through a 30-40 minute (or more) Shacharit with students who perhaps do not know what they are doing and who likely are not enjoying the experience can be an experience appropriate for one of the deeper levels of hell. Add in the little games that go on (going to the bathroom, getting a tissue, furtive messages telegraphed across the room or over the mechitza, notes for tests hidden in siddurim, etc etc etc), plus the fact that the teachers are trying to balance their stewardship of the minyan with their own davening, and you have all of the ingredients for an educational disaster.


This year, we have been using some of our professional development time with our teachers to talk about and to work on tefilla. While we are trying to do many things at once in this context, the most significant message that I have pressed with our faculty is to think about tefilla as if it were an academic subject. Even though there are no grades or tests (and I do not advocate instituting them), we have to approach tefilla the same way that we would approach any other class.


Begin with the end in mind. This time-honored curriculum-planning principle, often associated with the Understanding by Design model, should be the first step in approaching tefilla as a subject. What are we trying to accomplish by davening with the students. Our school runs through 8th grade. Do we expect all of our graduates to be master daveners? Is that realistic? Do we at least expect them to know their way around the frequently-used sections of the siddur? Do we expect them to know when to sit, stand, and bow (what I call the calisthenics of davening)? The list of questions that can be asked here is endless - and the fact that the questions are even being asked is the most important step of all. We are not simply davening-with-the-kids-in-the-morning-because-that-is-what-we-do. Rather, we have clear goals, or at least working goals, and we are trying to achieve them.


Next, figure out how we are going to move towards achieving those goals. Here is where things get a bit tricky. A good educator is willing to change things up in class when the current pedagogical approach is not working. Have kids work in groups. Use more technology. Alter the material from what was originally planned. And yet, even if tefilla is a disaster, most schools get no further than perhaps singing a bit more or moving around the students' seats. That's educational thinking? Not at all. If we approach tefilla as a subject, then we might be willing to tinker with some of our more sacred cows. Smaller groups which spend some time discussing davening during davening itself. Spending more time on certain parts while perhaps skipping over others occasionally. A little bit of dancing during Hallel. Obviously, not every suggestion will go over with every crowd, but as many ideas as possible should be put on the table.


But what about OUR davening? So comes the cry from those Rebbeim and teachers who lead the minyanim in their schools, and it is a sincere cry indeed. If my tefilla five days a week is to be in school, I would like it to be as "real" as possible. A nice thought, and I agree with the sentiment that part of the role of a school minyan is to prepare students for the daily minyanim that they will hopefully attend. However, we have to make sure that they leave us with a willingness to still attend minyanim. If that means that we have to daven a little faster, or a little less, or in some way different than we would prefer - that is our chosen lot in life. Plenty of people who would love to take their time davening have no choice but to daven at the 6:30 minyan in their shul that ends at 6:56 because their bus comes at 7:13 - our sacrifice is different, but with hopefully a payoff for our students.


[And yes, every school should have a posek that they consult before making changes that seem to run counter to, or have only a brief familiarity with, halacha. But you will be surprised how much wiggle room there is.]


If you are not yet doing so, I implore you to change your thinking about tefilla - treat it as an educational moment, not just davening. Think about it - some of our students will go into the sciences, some into math; some will continue to learn Gemara for the rest of their lives and others will not; but every single one of them will be davening daily, weekly, or at some consistent point in their lives. That makes tefilla the most important subject we can teach them. Let's do it well.

Boys and Gemara continued

In my last post on this topic I asked if any high school or day school administrator could put forth a sound rationale for why they make Gemara the primary subject in their school day. I would like to ask that in a slightly different way - does any school have clearly stated goals as to what they are trying to accomplish in teaching Gemara?


By goals I do not mean that they write the usual pablum about "developing lifelong learners" or "teaching Gemara skills" or whatever tired and trite phrase gets used on the website of any high school that bothers to even put something together. Those phrases are meaningless insofar as they tell the reader absolutely nothing about what the school is doing. Does any school try to not teach skills or want its students to stop learning after graduation?


Meaningful goals, on the other hand, would present a clear vision as to why the school is teaching Gemara and what it hopes to accomplish by doing so. Those goals would ideally be measurable (whether or not any measures actually exist), and would ideally drive what is going on in the classroom. The current approach seems to be to make broad statements that amount to "we love Gemara" and then let every Rebbe do his own thing. I am not so sure that this is not often the case on the Middle School level as well. How many 7th graders "learn" Tosafot, even though they can barely find the daf or translate the basic words? What well-organized curriculum has the students doing advanced level work before they can manage the simpler levels?


[I will admit that this issue may really be part of a larger issue - the issue of school-to-school disconnect. Certainly in the greater NY/NJ region, where many day schools feed into each high schools, the high schools decide on their own where to start in terms of what they expect the students to know and be able to do, and then, four years later, the Yeshivot in Israel do the same thing. How many boys get to Israel and get told to prepare mekorot for shiur when they are still not sure whether Nedarim is in Nashim or Nezikin? While it may be practical to simply decide what you are going to teach - after all, it is pretty hard to be beholden to the curricula of 5 or 10 or 25 feeder schools - no one is served well by a system that picks an arbitrary starting point regardless of the actual ability level of the students.]

Back to goals. Imagine if we could cobble together at least a rudimentary menu of goals that we would like to achieve in the teaching and learning of Gemara. Working with the understanding that not everyone is going to be a Rosh Yeshiva, but that we nevertheless feel that it is important, for one reason or another, for everyone to receive significant exposure on some level to Gemara, we devise a range of curricular goals and expectations that our schools will work to teach. Within such a framework, we can set minimal expectations, after which point students could opt to spend more time on different approaches or perhaps different areas of learning. Yeshivot in Israel can better choose their clientele - not just the "nice" guys or the "intellectual" guys, but the guys who are at a certain range on the skills and ability spectrum, and then can tailor their program accordingly. Yes, this would mean more skills-based classes and less intensive lomdus at some of the higher levels, but ultimately that would go further in producing students who can actually learn on their own - which, if we are to believe all of those statements about "lifelong learners", is exactly the point.


But, I hear you cry, how do we teach skills to 18 year olds without boring them to death? Stay tuned for my next post.

Mr. Steven Holtzman ob"m

My plan was to continue my thoughts about Boys and Gemara learning. However, I found out last night that my high school English teacher (9th and 10th grade), Mr. Steven Holtzman, passed away last week and I felt that his memory deserves a few words.

My all-boys high school had Judaic Studies all morning, and thus a number of our General Studies teachers came to us after teaching a full day in the public school system. Mr. Holtzman was one of those teachers, coming in for a couple of periods of Yeshiva high school boys after what I am sure was an exhausting day at Bloomfield High School. At times he would come in late, and the fact that he had health issues meant that on not-so-rare occasion he would be absent. On top of that, we only had General Studies classes four days a week. And, since we were trying to learn literature and grammar and vocabulary and some SAT preparation, there was rarely a sense of continuity to our learning.

And yet... I probably got more from Mr. Holtzman than I did from most of the teachers that I have had at any level of education (I spent 30 years as a student so there have been many, many teachers). If you only count teachers through high school (since after that you can pick your favorites), I would say that he is probably top-10, if not top-5. How can this be so, given what I wrote in the previous paragraph?

As I reflect on Mr. Holtzman now, over twenty years later and now with a decade and a half of my own teaching under my belt, I think that what was most notable about Mr. Holtzman was that he was most interested in having us learn. He was not concerned with his teaching per se, was not concerned with covering material - although both of those were undoubtedly important to him. But paramount in his mind was that we walked out of his class enriched in our knowledge and appreciation of English and, more importantly, enriched as young men and future citizens of the world.

Mr. Holtzman had a unique grading system when it came to essays and papers. We would receive two grades written one on top of the other. The letter grade on top was our grade for content. Below that would be a number grade that reflected our grammar, and which could run way into negative territory. Different infractions carried different point values, and if you ever "broke unity" - i.e. digressed mid-essay - that was 50 points right there. Do it twice in one paper, and you were already at zero before he got to your misspellings and punctuation. I distinctly remember receiving an A+ over negative 255.

But what made this system great was the logic behind it. Only the letter grade counted, because that was the reward for clear and organized thinking, originality of thought, and general hard work. However, the number grade was there to shake us up. Mr. Holtzman knew that even if that grade did not count - even if we knew that it did not count - it would nevertheless give us pause and force us to concentrate more on perfecting our grammar for the next time.

It was in Mr. Holtzman's class that I did my first real analytical paper. To conclude our unit on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, we were charged with writing a paper comparing Shakespeare's analysis of power in this play with the effects of power as borne out in the Watergate affair. It was a brilliant assignment - I distinctly recall reading through several books on Watergate, after which I had to distill both the play and the history into several overarching thematic points (such as abuse of power), and then provide support for each argument. Not bad for a 9th grade assignment - I believe that every level of Bloom's taxonomy was covered in that one.

And, of course, for all of his seemingly gruff demeanor, Mr. Holtzman cared about us. Whether it was spending time predicting our future careers (he felt that I would be a political speechwriter - eerily prescient in terms of my likes, although I have no real stomach for hardcore politics), doing the New York Times crossword puzzle together with him coaxing the answers out of us, relating the origin of his nickname ("Hoagie"), or pizza parties with his ever-present and beloved falafel (I recall a fondness for lots of techina), I would venture a guess that most of his students have many fond memories, and more importantly can point to several key life lessons that were learned in his class.

Two final quotes that we had hanging in the classroom:

"If you aim for the clouds, you will land in the treetops" - encouraging us to aim high, for even if we fail we will be further along than if we had never tried

"If life were fair, I'd have hair" - this one has becoming more and more meaningful to me over the years :)

He will be missed.