From Immigration To Integration
The Canadian Jewish Experience:
A Millennium Edition
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From Immigration To IntegrationThe Canadian Jewish Experience:
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Morton Weinfeld
An examination of the role of education in Jewish life is crucial to understanding the Canadian Jewish experience and, specifically, Jewish survival. Jews are called the People of the Book, and for good reason. They were the first group to advocate and achieve universal male literacy, a requisite to being able to read the Bible and to pray. (The Scots, under the influence of John Knox, followed suit.) The study of Torah is considered the highest calling for Jews, who are commanded to ponder its teachings “day and night.” The practical foundation upon which the study of Torah rests is a system of Jewish education. And Jewish education today is not only religious; it includes the study of Hebrew, Jewish history, and Jewish literature and philosophy.
No other Canadian ethnic group has an educational system as extensively developed, as multidimensional, as do Jews. Most of the one-morning-a-week “Saturday“ schools for ethnic minorities have catered to immigrant families, and their enrolments decline dramatically after the initial immigrant generation. Ethnocultural education also takes place in special heritage or multicultural programs in public schools, sparing ethnic groups from footing the bill.1 Jews also benefit from these programs and, for some parents, they are an acceptable alternative to Jewish day schools. But these programs are, for the most part, minimal. In Quebec, for example, the Jewish program available through the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal offers just two hours of Jewish studies a week with a smattering of Hebrew, along with some study of Jewish history and traditions.
Even the religious aspects of Jewish education set Jews apart. Religious education does not loom large as a subject for analysts of religion in Canada. Reginald Bibby’s 1993 study, Unknown Gods: The Ongoing Story of Religion in Canada, has no chapter on religious education, and just five brief references to Sunday schools. Bibby’s national surveys show that the proportion of Canadians with school-age children who were exposing them to religious instruction, such as Sunday school, declined from only 35 per cent in 1975 to 28 per cent in 1990 - a decline of 36 per cent for Catholics and 23 per cent for Protestants.2
Some non-Jewish ethnic and/or religious schools are all-day private schools, with similarities to Jewish day schools. Schools catering to First Nations students, with a significant Aboriginal curriculum, have also been set up. In 1998 Ontario had over six hundred private schools, over two thirds with some kind of religious affiliation. These included thirty-five Jewish schools, seventeen Islamic schools, twenty-eight First Nations’ schools, and almost one hundred Amish or Mennonite schools.3 There might well have been more such schools in Ontario had the province been willing to extend funding to these non-Catholic institutions, as is done in other Canadian provinces.4 Such a situation is indeed paradoxical, given the high value Canadians set on multicultural diversity, as well as anachronistic given the advances in human-rights protection that have been made through the twentieth century.
Jews became known as the “People of the Book“ because of the profound emphasis in Jewish tradition on both learning and teaching the Torah. For Jews, providing Jewish education is a familial and a communal obligation; there is no choice in the matter. The Torah stresses the responsibility of individual parents to provide their children with a Jewish education. The biblical commandment veshinantem le’vanecho instructs Jews - fathers - to teach their (male) children the basics of the Torah, and these words are included in the key Jewish prayer, the shema. Over the centuries, however, parental teaching and private tutors gave way to formal schools.
Jewish education faces a dual paradox. First, the vast majority of non-Orthodox Canadian Jews, and thus the vast majority of Canadian Jews, are only barely literate as Jews. To say that Jews value education is not to say that they value Jewish education - at least not to the same degree. The irony is that Jewish achievement at the level of secular education is formidable, extending into graduate and post-graduate work. But when it comes to an understanding of Jewish civilization in all its dimensions, Jews just scratch the surface. If Jews are the people of the book, for too many, that book is not the Torah. And when most Jewish children do study Torah, it is at the most superficial level.
The second paradox is that the central function of Jewish education today is not education, in the sense of imparting knowledge. Its major task is creating and nurturing the Jewish identity of students. What the home, neighbourhood, and synagogue did in the past now falls to Jewish schools. It is doubtful that Jewish schools can maximize both the creation of Jewish identity and the transmission of Jewish knowledge. But they try. They have no choice.
In Canada, Jewish education is available to boys and girls in a variety of formats: day schools sponsored by various denominations, including yeshivot (high schools offering intensive religious studies) for the very Orthodox, with separate options for the “modern Orthodox”; afternoon and Sunday schools that are usually sponsored by congregations, but also by communities; and private tutors. In recent years, day schools have become popular. As well, more attention is being paid to the “informal” sector of Jewish education. This includes Jewish summer camps and trips to Israel, both of which are heavily subsidized by North American Jewish communities. Each of these experiences can have a profound impact on Jewish identity.
Jewish education is widespread among Canadian Jews. In Toronto in 1990 an estimated 90 per cent of Jewish children had at one time or another received some form of Jewish education, and 58 per cent were enrolled at that time. Eighty-six per cent of parents of pre-school children expect them to receive some form of Jewish education. A 1996 survey of Montreal Jewry found that 73 per cent of adults (82 per cent of those under thirty-five) had received some Jewish education, down from 81 per cent in 1991. These figures are far higher than the national Canadian figures for Christian education cited above.5
Moreover, much of this Jewish education in Canada is focused on all-day schools, unlike Christian Sunday schools. For example, over half of Jewish Montrealers say their children have received a Jewish elementary day-school education, while 28 per cent attended a Jewish high school. The drop in day-school education after elementary school, and after bar or bat mitzvah, is common; what is surprising is that the retention rate is so high. About 61 per cent of Montreal parents said their school-age children are currently attending a Jewish day school. Levels in Toronto would be slightly less. These high day-school enrolments in Quebec are helped by tuitions that are more affordable, due to partial government funding.
The level of formal Jewish education of Canadian Jewish children today is, on the whole, much greater than that of their Canadian-born parents or grandparents, whose education consisted mainly of tutors, or Sunday schools, or a few years of afternoon schools. Day schools were far less popular. This flies in the face of the assimilationist paradigm that emphasizes a generational dilution of Jewish commitments and knowledge. The gains have been most pronounced for women. The disappearance of the huge gender gaps in formal Jewish schooling is the most striking feature of post-war North American Jewish education.
The Jewish education system in Canada is both extensive and intensive. Canada’s first Talmud Torah was started in Montreal in 1896. Toronto’s first Talmud Torah was founded in 1907, and grew into the multi-branch Associated Hebrew Schools. A more Orthodox school, the Eitz Chaim, was founded in Toronto in 1915. During World War I, Montreal’s Yiddish Peretz School and the bilingual Yiddish and Hebrew Jewish People’s School were founded; they have since merged. In both Toronto and Montreal, there are many educational options. Both cities have a number of ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic schools, strictly segregated by gender, and yeshivot for the older male students. Other day schools span the spectrum from modern Orthodox to Conservative to more liberal.6
Montreal boasts nineteen Jewish elementary day schools, including multi-branch schools, that are affiliated with the Bronfman Jewish Education Centre (BJEC), formerly the Jewish Education Council.7 There are, moreover, fourteen high schools, as well as nine post-high school rabbinical schools, which are ultra-Orthodox. The variety includes Sephardic/francophone as well as Ashkenazi/anglophone distinctions. As of the 1999-2000 school year, a total of 6,955 students were registered in Montreal day schools. In the five-year period from 1995 to 2000, there was a 14.9 per cent increase in registration for haredi (ultra-Orthodox) schools, while other mainstream sectors, both English and French, experienced declines, 3.9 per cent in the former case and 9.8 per cent in the latter. Figures tracking registration at the grade-one entry level indicated that although the overall decrease for the five year period was 5.5 per cent, the decrease in French mainstream registration was 36.8 per cent, a trend that merits close monitoring.8
In Toronto, there is a complete range of Jewish schools. The Board of Jewish Education (BJE) of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto provides services to more than 17,000 elementary, high school, and supplementary students in the Greater Toronto area. There are twenty-seven day schools in Toronto, including multi-branch schools, of which about half are affiliated with the BJE, and more than forty supplementary schools. There are also thirteen Jewish high-school options in Toronto, though with a definite tilt towards traditional or Orthodox orientations.9 The Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto (CHAT), with two branches as of the year 2000, is a mainstream co-educational community school run on traditional lines, while the eleven other options at the high-school level are either modern Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox, with students educated separately according to gender. There is nothing like the Bialik High School in Montreal, with its historic Yiddishist cultural orientation. However, at the elementary level, Toronto boasts many choices in addition to the diverse range of Orthodox schools. The Leo Baeck Day School, for example, is affiliated with the Reform Movement, while the United Synagogue Day School (USDS) is affiliated with the Conservative. The Bialik Hebrew Day School maintains its emphasis on teaching Yiddish, together with English, French, and Hebrew, and inclines towards the principles of the Labour Zionist movement, while the Toronto Heschel School is based on the philosophy of Abraham Joshua Heschel. There are also a number of ultra-Orthodox post-high school opportunities for religious studies in Toronto.
Across Canada, Jewish schools are offered in a number of areas, in smaller communities as well as in established centres. In Ottawa, for example, there are two elementary schools, one a traditional community school, and the other an Orthodox school, as well as one community high school, and two smaller Orthodox high schools, one for girls and one for boys. There is one elementary school in London, Ontario, while two schools - one community and one Orthodox - serve Hamilton. This relatively small community also has an Orthodox yeshiva high school that provides additional opportunities for post-secondary rabbinical studies. A recent initiative in Ontario is the small new day school in Kitchener. In Winnipeg, there is a community school with three branches, the first offering kindergarten to Grade 4, the second covering Grade 5 to Grade 8, and the third spaning the high school years. All three branches are housed in the Asper Community Centre. There is also an Orthodox Lubavitch elementary school, as well as a more recently established Orthodox school that covers kindergarten and the early grades. The Jewish community in Winnipeg can also take advantage of the bilingual English-Hebrew programs that are offered at two public high schools. In Calgary, the community has two choices for the elementary grades: an Orthodox school and a school affiliated with the Conservative movement. There are two further options in Edmonton: the first is a traditional community elementary school that is classed as a public school within the Edmonton school board as an Alternative Program, and receives provincial funding for the secular part of the curriculum. There is also a private ultra-Orthodox school that covers kindergarten through the high-school grades. Although there are no Jewish secondary schools in Edmonton, there are post-high school opportunities in the Ghermazian Kollel that was established as an additional Canadian option for advanced rabbinical studies. In the Greater Vancouver area there are three elementary schools, as well as a high school that is the only Jewish high school west of Winnipeg. Victoria is presently fundraising to build its own day school to complement its existing pre-school.10
Jewish education is big business. Consider as an example the case of Montreal. In 1998 the estimated total budget for all Jewish day schools affiliated with the Bronfman Jewish Education Council (BJEC) was approximately $42 million dollars. This money came from school fees ($17 million), provincial grants ($18 million), community grants ($2 million), and the balance from other fundraising campaigns. About 40 per cent of students receive some form of tuition assistance.11 Jewish education in Toronto is costly, and the financial burden on the parents is greater. Montreal’s BJEC, and its counterpart in Toronto, the Board of Jewish Education, coordinate communal activities in Jewish education (such as the national Bible contest), and also assist with teacher training, in-service professional development, audio-visual and library services for Jewish teachers and students, lobbying for Jewish education with federations, channelling financial aid to students, and even curricular innovation.
This commitment to Jewish education, and day-school education in particular, is certainly not limited to the major centres of Toronto and Montreal. In Calgary where there are only about 7,000 Jews and two day schools, a survey based on a sample derived from various Jewish communal lists - thus excluding assimilated Jews - found that 71 per cent claimed their children did or will attend a Jewish day school!12
These levels of participation in day-school education in Canada is much higher than those found on the American scene, as reported in the 1990 National Jewish Population Study. Among American Jews who claimed to be Jewish by religion, 78 per cent of the men and 62 per cent of the women had received some Jewish education. As in Canada, younger Jews have more extensive Jewish education, a result of recent increases in day-school enrolments. But Jewish education is not as central in the United States, and of the Jewish children who were enrolled in American Jewish schools, including supplementary schools, only 27 per cent were in day schools. Part of these American and Canadian differences can be traced back to the constitutional context in the two countries regarding church and state. The Canadian tradition of public support for religious education is a key factor in making religious schooling popular and - except for the case of Ontario - affordable. In contrast, American Jews have largely embraced the mythic image of the public school as the avenue of economic mobility and Americanization.13
American Jews, at least as represented by official organizations, have been fierce supporters of the separation of church and state. They regularly oppose any curricular or extracurricular intrusion of religious symbolism in the public schools or on school grounds. No nativity scenes, no hanukkiyot, and of course, no government funding. Many immigrant Jewish children actually made their way up the occupational ladder through the public schools, and many American Jews entered the white-collar ranks first as teachers and then as administrators. Canada never developed an American mythology regarding the egalitarian nature of the public-school system, and does not have the same constitutional separation of church and state.
Parents and the formal Jewish community have a blind faith that Jewish education will lead to stronger Jewish identification. Are they right? For some time the field of Jewish education has been dominated by the “vaccination“ approach. Jewish education is the vaccine, and assimilation and intermarriage are the disease. So the case for Jewish education is made in terms of strengthening Jewish identity and, thereby, survival. In terms of tradition, this instrumental model is an odd way to understand Jewish education. For most of Jewish history, Jewish identity was a given and there was no danger that it would be lost or diluted. It was nurtured both by a hostile society and a seamless pattern linking family to synagogue to community. Identity had little or nothing to do with education. In traditional Judaic thought the study of Torah was something that adults (males, of course) were to do. The norm among many non-Orthodox Jews in North America, that Jewish education and Torah study would stop after a child’s bar or bat mitzvah, was inconceivable in the pre-modern period.
There are two major effects that Jewish education has on those Jews who have gone through the experience. First is the basic cognitive effect. We have to assume that Jewish education has a positive impact on Judaic knowledge, in the way that studying history leads to knowing more history. But we know very little of what Jewish students really retain from their Jewish education. How good is their Hebrew, what do they know of Jewish history, or the Bible, or Talmud, or Jewish philosophy? There are almost no studies of these long-term cognitive effects. But Jewish education clearly has some benefits. Canadians who were under thirty-five in 1990 - those most likely to have benefited from the increase in Jewish day school attendance - were more able to converse in Hebrew than older Jews.14
The second effect is on Jewish identity. But the link between Jewish education and identity is mysterious. Most Jews know at least one other Jew who can barely distinguish an aleph from a bet, but is still a highly committed Jew. And many Jews know the opposite, the apikoros, a Jew who is learned in Judaica, but remains an unbeliever and disengaged from the Jewish community. There are no guarantees. But, on balance, Jewish education does strengthen Jewish identity.
There is actually a third possible effect of Jewish education that is often omitted from discussions of the topic. How does Jewish education affect the type of human being Jews become? We are not certain that students with more Jewish education are more compassionate, tolerant, honest, or law-abiding. We would like to think that Jews with a deeper Jewish education, with more exposure to Tanach (the Hebrew Bible) would also be better human beings, have more menschlechkeit (decency).
The main thing social scientists have studied is the net impact of Jewish education on the various attitudes and behaviours associated with living a Jewish life. The anecdotal, folklore wisdom of North American Jewry emphasizes the counterproductive impact of Jewish education. Jews can tell horror stories about some aspect of their Jewish schooling, and about how Jewish school turned them off Judaism. And recent research suggests there is something there. In their recent qualitative study of “moderately affiliated” American Jews, Steven Cohen and Arnold Eisen concluded that “Hebrew school was consistently named, even by high-end respondents, as a negative feature of their childhood experience of Judaism.”15 The overview by Glickman cited above also reported a Toronto study in which some students disparaged their Jewish schooling. The “good news” stream relies on the findings of numerous quantitative scientific research studies, usually with much larger samples. These studies find that there does seem to be an impact of Jewish education on positive Jewish outcomes. More Jewish education either causes, or reinforces, Jewish identity.
It is not surprising that when adults were asked to think back to their (mainly supplementary) Jewish schooling, they might not have fond memories. Sunday school or afternoon school took up time away from socializing or other extra-curricular activities. And, no doubt, they found many teachers, and the subject matter, boring. So those negative feelings, or recollections, are real. But the quantitative studies tap a different experience. They ask not if it was fun, but if it had a positive effect years later. It may be that there is a subconscious nature to the impact of Jewish education that adults may not even realize. For many Jews, their Jewish education was like having to eat spinach. So both the qualitative anecdotes and the quantitative findings are correct. In the past few decades, however, Jewish parents have faced a new problem: like all middle-class parents, they have become more reluctant to force their children to do things that they do not enjoy. Children in the past had less say on such issues.
The quantitative research tries to disentangle the effect of Jewish education from that of family background. Children who get more Jewish education are usually raised in families that are more Jewish. What seems to be an effect of Jewish education may really be the impact of the family. But even this approach is not foolproof. Families who opt for Jewish education may differ, may be more Jewish, in some other hard-to-measure ways. So what seems to be an effect of Jewish education may, in fact, be the result of a more Jewishly committed family that chooses more Jewish education for their children. This type of self-selection can never be fully “controlled” in any experimental study or statistical exercise.
An early American study concluded that a minimum threshold of three thousand hours of Jewish education was required to have an impact. The three thousand hours could be obtained from any combination of day or supplementary schools, although Jewish schooling seemed to have a greater impact on adult religiosity than alternative experiences like attending a Jewish summer camp. More recently, the analytical conclusion of several American studies, likely applicable to Canada as well, is that day school attendance leads to lower rates of mixed marriage and higher Jewish communal participation. In his study of the link between Jewish education and mixed marriage, researcher Bruce Phillips has added a level of complexity to these findings. He found that in the United States, much of the impact of day schools likely stems from the effect of being an immigrant or a child of immigrants. He further concluded that it is the duration of a Jewish education, notably past the age of thirteen, that is more important than the intensity or the type of Jewish education in determining the future probability of mixed marriage. If Phillips is right, a good afternoon-school experience lasting into high school can be as effective as a day-school experience that ends at thirteen.16
Canada has not yet produced the same extent of research on the impact of Jewish education. One preliminary study in Montreal compared recent Jewish graduates from four Jewish and five non-Jewish high schools, in terms of subsequent observance. On every measure, from ritual observance to intermarriage to attachment to Israel, those who attended Jewish high schools scored higher. But the study could not definitively control the variables inherent in the Jewish family backgrounds of the students.17
It is thus unclear what makes Jewish education effective in reaching its goals. In terms of Jewish identity, it may well be the interaction with other Jewish youngsters - playing sports, dating - that is decisive, not the Judaic curriculum. And there is no doubt that there have been routes to Jewish identity outside formal Jewish education.
The formalized setting of the Jewish day schools has become more popular among those who are not Orthodox over the past two or three decades. Part of the reason is that these schools appear to be good schools. They seem to prepare students well in secular subjects and for future success in university. For a long time, day schools were stigmatized as being academically inferior, associated with images of ultra-Orthodox Jews uninterested in university studies. While that view has changed, there are still some Jews who remain unconvinced. They fear that a time-consuming Jewish education, particularly combined with the study of a second language such as Hebrew, might lead to a weaker mastery of English and other subjects.
These concerns seem to be misplaced. A Montreal longitudinal evaluation of Jewish day-school students involved in trilingual education - English, French, and Hebrew - found their academic achievements in English and secular studies were in no way impaired.18 Perhaps the ability to survive a more demanding multilingual curriculum, with both secular and Judaic studies, equips Jewish students in Darwinian fashion for subsequent success. It is also possible that students going to private schools are more academically inclined. Jewish day schools, like Catholic schools, draw a self-selected sample of students from families that value education and are able to spend more, or are prepared to go into debt, for a private school.
Another reason for the increase in the popularity of day schools is that they are the new incubators of future Jews. More and more Jewish parents who are not very observant have been sending their children to Jewish day schools. Many see them as providing a better alternative to public schools, with a “steady” peer group, less sex and drugs - which may not necessarily be the case - and as a way to prevent intermarriage. Many parents want these schools to inculcate Judaism in a way that they are unwilling or unable to do. Other parents choose a Jewish school because they want their children to be educated in a Jewish environment.
There are three reasons why Jewish parents who might otherwise be interested do not opt for Jewish day schools for their children. One is the financial burden, which penalizes working-class and middle-class parents. While financial aid is often available, many Jews still feel stigmatized in asking for it. Tuition costs for the various elementary and high-school options range from about $4,000 in Montreal to over $12,000 in Toronto.
A second reason is also pragmatic: Jewishness is important, but not that important. A Jewish day school is seen by some as too segregated and containing too much Jewish education, with the attendant risks of making their children too narrow, and, perhaps, ill-prepared to function in a non-Jewish world. A 1996 survey of Montreal Jews asked parents to explain why they were not sending their children to Jewish day schools. The most common reason (53 per cent) was that they wanted them to socialize in a wider milieu.19
In Montreal and Toronto, as well as in other Canadian cities, there are elite private schools with growing numbers of Jewish children. In earlier periods these schools had a distinct aura of antisemitism, and were also unaffordable for many Jews. Now that some Jewish parents can afford them, their children are more or less welcome, and there is a critical mass of Jewish students in many of them to ease the cultural transition for newcomers.
A third reason is that a Jewish day school education is too demanding for some students, with its often longer day and a dual English-Hebrew curriculum. In Montreal, the triple curriculum of French-English-Hebrew studies results in even greater demands. In one school system, Yiddish adds a fourth language. The additional pressure can make the curriculum demanding for even the above-average student.
In the old country, Jewish education traditionally took place in cheders - small schools for elementary-age male children - and in yeshivot - academies of higher learning aimed at teenage children, with a curriculum that is comprised mainly of the study of Talmud. The pedagogy was not progressive, and the education was far from child-centred.
But Jewish education has not remained static. There has been change in content as well as in form. By the end of the nineteenth century, the influence of the Haskalah, or Enlightenment, extended the traditional curriculum in the Talmud Torah network of schools to include elements of Jewish history, as well as Hebrew language and literature. In addition, a network of secular Yiddishist schools was also established in eastern Europe and transplanted to North America. From those early days, Jewish education has witnessed a transformation. Consider the current use of modern technology to facilitate and enhance the Judaic studies portion of the curriculum with special computer programs aimed at the study of the Bible or Talmud. Judaic studies can be easily accessed on the Internet and CD-ROMs as well.
Modern Jewish day schools (excluding those that are ultra-Orthodox) seek to accomplish a dual task. They must provide their students with both a first-rate secular education and a meaningful Jewish education. The former is instrumental in terms of getting a job and earning a living; the latter is a form of enrichment or values education. This sets many parents and Jewish educators at loggerheads. For many parents, particularly the non-Orthodox, the secular education is as important as the Jewish. They want top computer programs, as well as sports, art, and all the main curricular subjects. But most Jewish educators are tenacious in their defence of the priority of the Jewish studies portion of the curriculum. One solution - that is increasingly popular to bridge the gap between the secular and Judaic aspects of the curriculum - is to integrate the two streams where possible, in areas such as literature or history. Thus, while students are learning about the French Revolution and Napoleon in general history, in Jewish history they might be studying the impact of such events and personalities on Jewish life in western Europe.
Over the years Jewish schools have come to emphasize the “informal” curriculum as seriously as the formal elements described above. Since these schools are expected to socialize children into Jewish adulthood, their informal, experiential dimensions become more important. As already suggested, simply having an all-Jewish peer group may be as important for subsequent Jewish identity as anything learned in the formal curriculum. For students in Jewish schools, plays, Holocaust memorials, sports meets, field trips, and dances all get drafted into the cause. High-school dating patterns set the stage for future probabilities of marrying inside or outside the fold. If they do anything, Jewish day schools facilitate Jewish dating.20
Throughout North America, Jewish education has emerged as a Jewish communal responsibility. Jewish communities have taken to proclaiming in heroic fashion that no child will be denied a Jewish day-school education because of inability to pay. In every large Jewish community there is a board or council of Jewish education that seeks to provide common services to all manner of schools. The emergence of Jewish education, especially day schools, as perhaps the key - and most costly - element of a Canadian Jewish public agenda poses interesting problems of school independence versus communal control. Traditionally, Jewish schools zealously guard their autonomy, and resist any interference in their decisions by their boards, parents, or administrators. But as costs have risen, and more schools seek assistance from the organized community, the question arises as to what influence the community at large can or should have on educational matters.
The growing concern for Jewish unity offers the best example. Is there is a larger Jewish communal interest in education that could be imposed on specific non-mainstream schools?21 Or, to put it another way, should financial and other support from the mainstream of the Jewish community be linked to a “unified” approach rather than the current autonomy in religious and philosophical matters? Imagine a “Jewish” school that promoted the transformation of Israel into a democratic secular state under Palestinian control. Ironically, such a school might well fall under either extreme left-wing or certain ultra-Orthodox auspices. Or imagine a school dedicated to promoting Jewish assimilation or mixed marriage. The sparks would fly.
As we enter the new millennium, it is time to think about Jewish education and its links to Jewish community in the same way as we analyze public schools and their links to the broader society that supports them. Educational reformers have long debated whether public schools can or should change society, or whether they should simply reflect existing arrangements. Jewish educators must wrestle with the same questions. If there is a problem of Jewish identity or Jewish unity, can it be solved using the Jewish school system?
The politics of Jewish education also have an external dimension. The education of Jewish children has been an item on the public policy agenda in Canada for generations, particularly in Quebec. There, Jewish parents and teachers were admitted into Protestant schools after much struggle and debate, and the religious character of those schools declined over time.22 In 1970 private Jewish day schools in Quebec received recognition as Associated Schools in the public interest and were thus entitled to receive government grants for the secular portion of their school funding, as is the case with schools serving other religious and ethnic minorities. These grants have continued, as long as these schools continue to meet minimal government requirements regarding the hours of French instruction. There is no uniform pattern across Canada in the funding of Jewish day schools, with each province favouring a different funding formula. In Ontario, however, Jewish day schools - like all other non-Catholic denominational schools - have been completely shut out of any such arrangements.
Jewish education is a growth area, and there is currently a shortage of teachers, administrators, and principals. In the past, Israelis comprised a large percentage of the Jewish teachers and administrators in Canada. Some came on special limited term contracts; others were immigrants. Other Jewish educators were Holocaust survivors. Some of these teachers may have lacked familiarity with their Canadian-born students, but they were also pioneers and visionaries before their time. The more recent trend has been towards training and recruiting Canadian Jews through special training programs for Judaic-studies teachers that are available at both McGill University in Montreal and York University in Toronto.
The range of Jewish education extends beyond the parameters of the elementary and high-school systems, and runs throughout the religious spectrum. Jewish nurseries, play groups, and daycare centres are now common in practically every Jewish community, and cater to every Jewish orientation. A similar explosion has taken place at the post-secondary level and beyond. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men are able to continue studying, even after they get married, in a kollel (an institute of advanced rabbinic study). For the more secular, the university campus has become an increasingly important venue for Jewish education. The growth of Jewish studies courses, chairs, programs, and departments has augmented what is available from formal Jewish schools. Bible, Jewish history, rabbinics, Jewish philosophy, and Hebrew and Yiddish language and literature are the traditional core of university Jewish Studies.
Some forty campuses offer Jewish studies courses.23 McGill University has the only department of Jewish studies, while both York University and the University of Toronto offer major interdisciplinary Jewish studies programs. York and Concordia University have established Chairs of Canadian Jewish Studies, funded partly by grants from the government of Canada, and both universities have graduate programs.
Scholars of Jewish studies have often been critical of the community, while the Jewish religious “establishment” has not always been comfortable with the teaching of religious Jewish subjects in a university environment. The first academic breaks with Jewish communal solidarity and a religious perspective took place in the nineteenth century. A scientific, non-theological Jewish studies emerged in Germany as Wissenschaft des Judentums, or the science of Judaism. This new field challenged the conventions of traditional Jewish learning. Texts were studied as literary or historical documents, not as the word of God. In the modern period, most rabbis of the major denominations have made their peace, more or less, with the academic approach to Jewish studies, with its emphasis on objectivity and critical inquiry.
Jewish schools and universities are not the only arenas of Jewish education. Other agencies have embraced Jewish family education and adult education. Family education refers to experiential or learning activities that engage the entire family. Such programs are often based in synagogues, centred around holiday celebrations, and involve families learning together. Adult education has long been a feature of Jewish life. Among the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox, it is part of a long tradition in which Jews find time for a shiur (Torah lesson) at a local yeshiva or beis midrash (house of learning). As mentioned, ultra-Orthodox Jewish males pursue advanced Talmudic studies at a kollel on either a full-time or part-time basis. Synagogues across the religious spectrum offer lectures, courses, or study groups on various topics, as do a variety of alternative adult institutions as well.
One of the more original innovations in adult Jewish education is the daf yomi (daily page). It takes seven and a half years to read the entire Talmud, at the rate of one page a day. All over the world groups of Jewish men (there are some women) have undertaken to try and do just that, studying the very same page of Talmud on any given day. For those who cannot make it to a class, there are other options. “Dial a daf” offers a complete taped shiur on the phone, a service also available on the Internet. There are other telephone options, most of which have been pioneered by the Hasidic Lubavitch movement. One number gives access to a range of “Torah on line” subjects for those who only have a few minutes to spare.
These activities should surprise no one. Traditionally, Jewish learning was the daily obligation and duty of every Jewish man, though it is mainly among the Orthodox that this admonition has been heeded. In The Vanishing American Jew, Alan Dershowitz concludes that an newly energized commitment to a liberal, accessible Jewish education for adults holds the key to meaningful Jewish survival. He writes: “There must be classes, discussion groups, study groups, lectures, videotapes, computer programs, books, book clubs, newsletters, and other mechanisms of Jewish learning.” The challenge is how to lead marginal adult Jews to “the neglected wonders of Jewish learning.”24 Some claim a renaissance is underway. Certainly, opportunities for Jewish education - for both men and women - have burgeoned across Canada. My own perspective is somewhat different. Higher levels of adult Jewish study will likely be a consequence as much as a cause of Jewish continuity and a strengthened Jewish identity.
Jewish education is unquestionably the foundation for Jewish continuity in Canada. From a historical perspective, it helped Jewish immigrants retain ties to their ancestral traditions and thus strengthened their ethnic identity. In the contemporary context, the educational process continues to strengthen and enrich this identity. Most ethnic and religious groups in Canada have made efforts at socializing and teaching their children according to the tenets of their heritage. But none have come close to the quality and range of the Jewish educational system. There is an inherent irony here: as Jewish education increases its profile, its success is measured less by educational criteria and more by its ability to inculcate and foster Jewish identity. While the record may be impressive in a comparative sense, there remains far more that can be achieved. As the new century brings with it new challenges for the Canadian Jewish community, the field of education will remain a fundamental priority.