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Correspondence

Feb. 1976

Letter from Ruth Szymkowicz about Jewish Programming on College Campuses (1976)

Jewish Education
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Any discussion of Jewish education in the coming decade stands to benefit much from Dean Henchey's cogent analysis of the general educational scene. Because Jews do not live in a vacuum, or even – in the open, democratic, and pluralistic society of North America – in hermetically sealed enclaves, what he has to say about the contours of society as they are beginning to emerge for the 1980s must clearly enrich any analyses and prescriptions that we may offer for Jewish education in particular. However, because of the peculiar nature of our community and our concerns, our focus must simultaneously be somewhat narrower and somewhat broader. It must be narrower, because as a minority (irrespective of the degree of our creativity) we are bound to operate within the social parameters, communal structures, and cultural paradigms which our whole society sets for us. Perhaps it would be more courageous to speak of rejecting these structures and paradigms and reaching out boldly for something radically different. But realistically, that will not happen, certainly not when one considers how intimately and intricately North American Jewry is tied in with the mainstream of Western civilization and, even more, with the cutting edge of its most progressive elements. The best we can do — and this must never be denigrated — is to seek out creatively those nooks and crannies within these structures which we consider more amenable to Jewish development, more accessible to Jewish aspiration, and more compatible with Jewish values and principles. It is here that collective innovation is possible for us. Our focus must be broader because our educational concerns embrace not only the transmission of knowledge — of the cognitive and abstract elements of culture per se — but the whole gamut of Torah, which is as broad as life itself. For the Jewish educator, character and religious conduct and morality are not merely the consequences of education, but the very substance and stuff of educat…
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Letter to Jakob Michael about the Need for Religious Education in Kiryat Shmuel (1973)

Dear Mr. Michael: I want to take this opportunity to thank you for the spirit in which you responded to my request to cable Mayor Teddy Kolek, and for the cable itself. The problem has developed into a cause celebre, and since I talked with you I have seen photos and articles in the Israeli press about it. Actually, I am in a way acquainted with the problem first-hand. During the semi-Sabbatical I spent in Jerusalem, we lived in the neighborhood in which the religious parents are now seeking a Mamlakhti-Dati school. My own children had to walk long distances to get to school and back. Despite Jerusalem's generally good bus system, there were no connections between Rehavia and the major religious schools closest to us. And the area the children had to traverse was one that was chocked with traffic during the very times the children had to walk to school. Anyone acquainted with Israeli drivers knows what that means! It is obvious, from all that I have read about the situation and from my personal contacts, that religious education is not favored by the authorities who are themselves not committed to it -- and Kolek belongs in this group. (In the latest issue of Panim-el-Panim, the editor, who has long been antagonistic to the Mizrachi, had a major editorial complaining about the discrimination against religious education in Israel, and the current problem with this school was the major case in point.) Two of the people who are in the forefront of the struggle to get a religious school in the area are Naomi and Ben Zion Hochstien. They are American Olim, highly cultured, genuine Zionists, non-political, and people of moderate disposition. He is a businessman, she is a lawyer. I have known them and admired them for years. I enclose the letter I just received from them (please return it after you have read it). As you will see, it is unfortunate that your cable was not able to change the situation, and even more regretful that the Mapai people are able to use the small-…
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Letter to Jewish Studies Committee with Recommendations for Strengthening Jewish Education (1974)

I have found a certain number of glaring deficiencies in the training and background of Yeshiva High School students who have made their way to my Jewish philosophy classes in the course of the past decade and a half. The following very brief recommendations for standards are based upon this experience: (1) Students should have a rudimentary knowledge of the outline of Jewish history, i.e., the sequence of periods, and the knowledge of some of the great names attached to each.**Pirkei Avot.** I find that fairly ignorant laymen who had the most elementary Jewish education in Europe are familiar with *Avot*. Our own students, however, who are initiated into some of the profoundest complexities of Talmudic reasoning, haven't the faintest knowledge of what *Pirkei Avot* is all about. I would make the knowledge of *Avot* a prerequisite for high school graduation.**Bible (Chumash).** Chumash is taught in a very spotty fashion in our own high schools. Apparently, there is a feeling by certain members of the high school faculty that teaching Chumash is beneath their intellectual station (an attitude which, apparently, Moses did not share). Graduation requirements should list specific portions of the Chumash that a student must know thoroughly, including a limited number of famous passages from Rashi.**English.** I suppose this complaint is just another cry in the wilderness, but I am distressed at the incredibly poor training of so many students in the simplest elements of English composition. Probably this is part of the spirit of the times, but I do think the high schools ought to emphasize English writing—clarity, punctuation, grammar, vocabulary—a great deal more than they do.
Jewish Education