“A Lifetim e of Learning” - Partnership for Excellence in Jewish ...

It is 2,500 years since the first event and1,900 since the second. So too, as long asJews live, we will remember Auschwitz andTreblinka, Bergen Belsen and Sobibor. Butthere is a Jewish way of remembering. Forevery tragedy there is the promise of redemption.Every nightmare is succeeded byhope. We were never paralysed by our past,because we lived toward the future. That iswhy the Jewish response to catastrophewas to have children and build schools andcreate a Jewish future. The children of theyeshiva and Hasidic communities are theirHolocaust memorials, made not of stonebut of new life.These three moments are seminal to an understandingof Jewish history. At each ofthem, the Jewish people confronted its ownmortality. In none was the response thateventually proved successful by any meansthe obvious one. Who in his right mindwould have suggested that the answer tothe Babylonian conquest, the might ofRome, or the Holocaust lay in schools,teachers, and houses of study? Yet Judaism’sgreat visionaries, the architects ofits survival, said just that. Alternativeswere tried. They failed. The ten tribes ofthe Northern kingdom disappeared. So didthe Sadducees and Essenes.In each case the survivors were ostensiblythe weakest group. The southern kingdomof Judah was small in comparison to thekingdom of the north. The Pharisees werepoorer and less powerful than the Sadducees.After the Shoah, the Hasidic andyeshiva communities were a fragment oftheir former glory. But in each caseZechariah’s prophetic maxim proved true.Jewish continuity happens “not by mightnor by power but by My spirit.”In our time, those diaspora communities that have failed to place Jewish education at the centreof their lives are disappearing too.Recent Research FindingsThus far the test of history. What of currentresearch? Can we quantify the impact ofJewish education on Jewish identity? Theanswer is that we can.The 1990 National Jewish Population Surveyin the United States is the most comprehensivestudy of a diaspora communityundertaken in recent years. Its results arestill being analysed. But in March 1993 thefirst findings emerged of the effect of educationon Jewish commitment, using thesurvey data. The study, by Sylvia BarackFishman and Alice Goldstein, divided educationalexperience into four categories: [1]no Jewish education, [2] minimal education(less than three years of Jewish school orup to five of Sunday-only classes), [3] moderateeducation (three to five years of supplementaryor day school, or six years ofSunday-only classes) and [4] substantialeducation (six or more years of supplementaryor day school).Its findings were these. In the 25-44 yearoldage group, those who had substantialJewish education were between six and tentimes more likely to observe Jewish ritualthan those whose Jewish education wasminimal or non-existent. They were nearlythree times more likely to belong to a Jewishorganization, three times more likely tobe members of a synagogue and twenty percent more likely to contribute to Jewishcauses. They have more Jewish friends, aremore opposed to intermarriage and are significantlyless likely to marry out. Of thosewith no Jewish education, only three out often are in-married. Of those with substantialJewish education, the figure is eight outof ten. The authors conclude:The 1990 NJPS data show us the strongcorrelation of Jewish education and enhancedJewish identification. The mere factof having received some Jewish educationin childhood has little impact on Jewish attitudesand behaviours during the adultyears. However, extensive Jewish educationis definitively associated with higher measuresof adult Jewish identification. Its impactis demonstrated in almost every areaof public and private life.Here then is further confirmation of thethesis that the fate of the Jews in the diasporawas, is, and predictably will be, determinedby their approach to education. Thisproposition has been subjected to twotests, one involving critical moments inJewish history, the other using the latestand best available research. Together theyshow that Jewry’s triumphs are triumphsof education. Our renewal depends oneducation. Our traditional strength, ourgreatest gift, our highest value is education.Professor Daniel Elazar, in his encyclopaedicsurvey of world Jewry, People andPolity, draws the simple conclusion:The history of the Jews has been ahistory of communities built aroundschools. They are the key institutionsbecause they convey learning. Greekcivilization survived for five hundredyears after the Roman conquest of theGreek city-states, because the Greeks,like the Jews, had developed academiesand they could live around those academies.When the academies failed, Greekcivilization disappeared. The Jewishpeople has never allowed its academiesto fail. That is the secret of our collectiveimmortality.P A G E 16 • C O N T I N U I T Y M A G A Z I N E