The beating-heart core of GAJE’s mission is to try to help make Jewish education affordable for those families who seek it for their children. Our advocacy – our very purpose – focuses on affordability. On occasion, however, we have drawn readers’ attention to what GAJE regards as important aspects or developments relating to Jewish education.
This week’s update is such an occasion.
Sholom Eisenstat – an esteemed GTA educator and co-founder of ADRABA, the innovative approach to reaching and teaching Jewish content to young people who cannot or do not attend conventional Jewish school classrooms – sent GAJE an article by David Bryfman, CEO of The Jewish Education Project. Bryman’s article is worth sharing. He states that “among the new realities that we face as a people” after October 7 and its aftermath, “Jewish educators will need to formulate some of the biggest questions that they have been faced with since 1948.”
Bryman, of course, is correct in his assessment of October 7 and its aftermath as a watershed moment in modern Jewish history. We agree with him based upon our own experiences of these past three months and based upon the experiences of our forebears that we have heard from them directly or read about in the pages of history texts.
As an educator’s educator, Bryfman’s observations about the impact of October 7 upon the modern Jewish classroom, demand our attention. GAJE does not, indeed cannot, judge his conclusions, other than to say they warrant widespread assessment by experts in the field. To us, Bryfman’s suggestions commend themselves as self-evident truths. He posed five questions for immediate discussion. (We have truncated the commentary that he added to each question.)
• What is the relationship between the head (cognitive), heart (affective), and hands (behavioural) of Jewish education? Bryfman notes that “recent weeks have revealed that generations of Jews, even if proud of being Jewish, are largely illiterate regarding some of the very basics of Jewish life, history, and Israel.”
• How, when, and why do we teach antisemitism? “Pogroms, blood libels, and Jewish control of the world are 21st-century memes that have resurfaced in ugly ways that cannot be ignored or relegated to the pages of Jewish history. And yet, Jewish education cannot rely on victimhood to establish either Jewish guilt or pride.”
• How do we love both our family and humanity as a whole? Jewish educators must be able to grapple with questions of Jewish tribalism and universalism, with unequivocal dedication to both.
• What time do we dedicate to Israel education? In the limited time all of us have with learners we must make difficult choices about what to teach, based in part on what learners need most, right now. …At certain junctures Jewish educators will need to consider whether Jewish education is about preserving the past or about preparing for the realities of today and tomorrow.
• What does it mean to be a proactive Jewish educator? We must be able to respond to what 21st-century Jews need. Especially now, the answers should not and cannot look the same as when most Jewish educational organizations were first developed.
After posing the questions and pointed commentary, Bryfman urges all stakeholders in the enterprise of delivering Jewish education to begin educational reassessment immediately.
“It has become increasingly evident,” Bryfman says, “that reluctance to engage in these discussions would be a failure with massive consequences – namely the disenfranchisement of generations of Jews who right now arguably need us more than ever.” (Our emphasis)
Wherever the Jewish curriculum lands as a result of October 7, GAJE will ever be devoted to trying to help make it truly affordable.
Bryfman’s article is available at: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-775975
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Shabbat shalom
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
January 12, 2024
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 