School Growth a New Chapter for U.S. Jews

Six-year-old Michael Wagman, blond and impish and bright, loves school. He knows his ABCs, and he’s learning how to read, word by word, the way most American kids do--left to right.

Michael also knows aleph-bet-gimmel, the first three letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And in his first-grade class at the Menorah Community Day School in Redondo Beach he’s learning how to read the Hebrew way--from right to left.

Michael is a trendsetter, among thousands of children who have swollen enrollments across the United States in what are known as Jewish day schools.

Among these schools--which meld the three Rs with the study of Hebrew, the Bible and Judaica--some are even moving from makeshift classrooms to multimillion-dollar campuses, particularly in Southern California.

In Los Angeles County, an estimated 9,000 children are enrolled in Jewish schools, up 50% from six years ago. One Orange County school saw its numbers grow from 190 students last year to 340 this year. Nationwide, 11 new Jewish high schools opened this September.

Just Tuesday, 10 prominent Jewish business leaders and two leading Jewish organizations announced in New York that they were donating $1.5 million apiece--a total of $18 million--to jump-start an effort to raise $36 million for construction of yet additional schools.

So, as the rabbis might ask, nu, why such a rush? Especially among mainstream Jews, long known for their support of public schools and without a strong tradition, as seen among Catholics, of creating their own.

There’s the obvious reason: dissatisfaction with public schools and with private alternatives.

At its core, however, the move to Jewish schooling is tied to perhaps the key issue facing America’s Jews--how to maintain a Jewish identity amid the intoxicating temptations of secular American society. Even something as seemingly benign as a cheeseburger involves Jewish soul-searching, for Jewish tradition does not allow the mixing of milk products and meat.

“For me,” said David Wagman, Michael’s 46-year-old father, “it’s about Jewish identity more than anything else. Identity is inseparable from faith. And if you don’t get the background, it’s very difficult to develop the identity.

“What I want, and hope, for Michael is that he develops that Jewish identity and a sense of resonance--so that when he’s an adult and participates in Judaism, it goes all the way down to his toes.”

Who wouldn’t want such a thing?

Day school critics include those who remain fiercely committed to public education, who doubt that the new Jewish schools can be academically credible, who label some facilities substandard and who see such schools as insular and counterproductive to American life. As well as those who point out that they’re costly--and yet, at the same time, underfunded.

Tuition at Menorah, which has kindergarten through fifth-grade classes, is $7,050 annually. The Milken Community High School of Stephen Wise Temple, in the Sepulveda Pass, costs $13,500 a year.

Educators stress that scholarships and tuition breaks are often available. Indeed, the tuitions the schools collect usually do not cover all the costs, according to a report released last month by the Avi Chai Foundation, a New York-based agency that promotes Jewish education and identity.

In Los Angeles, the combined budgets of the county’s three dozen Jewish schools totaled $68 million in the last academic year, according to the nonprofit Jewish Federation’s education division. Tuition generated only $50 million.

Per capita expenditures in the day schools are “well below” comparable spending at other private schools and about the same as in public schools, according to the study, which surveyed 154 Jewish day schools nationwide.

As a result, the report concluded, “too many Jewish parents [believe] there is a great gap between what the day school offers and what is available in competing schools.”

What the day schools do offer, according to a 1993 Avi Chai study, is “the only type of Jewish education that stands up against the very rapidly growing rate of assimilation.”

The authors of last month’s report, Marvin Schick, the president of four day schools, and Yossi Prager, Avi Chai’s executive director, have since called repeatedly for deeper financial support. “If Jewish day school education was properly funded, then these schools would be growing at an even faster rate,” Prager said.

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The initiative announced Tuesday is spearheaded by former Wall Street investment guru Michael Steinhardt and backed by the likes of Charles and Edgar Bronfman of Seagram fame. Their donations, however, are earmarked not to underwrite tuition costs but fund new schools in communities where there are none or where “access to such a school is limited.”

Jews of all denominations have long sent their children to the local temple for a few hours per week of after-school religious training. But most of the 700 full-day schools nationwide are affiliated with Orthodox Judaism, the denomination that most closely adheres to traditional Jewish laws. Such schools typically revolve around diligent study of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.

But there’s remarkable growth, too, in “modern Orthodox” and even more liberal “community” schools that, at the high school level, feature a heavy load of college preparatory classes--and whose goals go beyond maintaining Jewish identity.

At the Milken School, which runs from seventh through 12th grade, ninth-graders studying history started Tuesday with a current events quiz. On the walls are photos of U.S. presidents and an Israeli flag as well as posters in praise of African American women and Egyptian art.

In 1991, the Milken School attracted 160 students. This year, enrollment has climbed to 570, making it the largest non-Orthodox Jewish high school in the United States, according to Bruce Powell, the school’s president. What’s more, it is due to open a new $32-million, 65,000-square-foot facility in March.

In the hills south of Irvine, enrollment at the Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School climbed to 340 this summer after a 10-acre campus was completed.

Most intriguing to Southern California Jewish educators is the presence of day schools in places such as Irvine and Redondo Beach--away from the Westside and the San Fernando Valley, the longtime strongholds of Jewish life in the Southland.

“People say there are no more miracles,” Powell said. “Nonsense. It’s happening with the birth of our children and with the building of Jewish day schools in places such as Irvine.”

To David Wagman, it’s enough to see his son’s bright eyes:

“When I was in first grade, it was agony. I have such a vivid memory of hating school from day one. But he just loves it.

“And he’s getting an exposure to Judaism that would be very difficult for us to achieve in any other way.”