PERSPECTIVE/ Where is out Children

...I had not known how deeply Jewish I was...

...But in schools and summer educational programs, they all too often encounter a refusal to talk about the problem of faith, or they are given an answer so primitive as to be meaningless — an answer so primitive as to be blasphemous...

...Whether they are right or wrong is irrelevant, in any case...

...But if there are grounds for hope, there is more reason for gloom...

...From the way Israel is discussed in religious schools — or in adult meetings, as far as that goes — one would never know that Israelis disagree with one another, indeed, wage intense debates over domestic social policies as well as foreign policy...

...Our children can be indifferent, for they live in what they perceive to be an open society...

...for them, Israel has always existed, and they do not automatically feel the mystery and awe at Israel's existence that overwhelms those of us who lived through the years of struggle and doubt...

...It is not an exaggeration to say that Jewish education tends to alienate and repel many — perhaps most — of the students who come within its reach...

...What are the questions they need answered...

...It is much easier, of course, to say what should not be done in Jewish education than to suggest what should be done...

...It takes thought and imagination to help acculturated youngsters identify with Israel, too...

...One of the best ways to discover the real — as opposed to the stated — goals of any educational system is to analyze what examiners and examinations try to examine...

...We were sorry afterwards that we had succeeded...

...As Rabbi Irving Greenberg has suggested, after Auschwitz we can speak only com...

...And that is what is happening...

...For all of them live in an environment radically different from anything we have experienced in Jewish life since the Hellenistic period...

...With all the Bible stories they are taught, with all the Chumash they study, they don't really know that Abraham and Jacob and Moses challenged God, let alone Levi Yitz-chak of Berditchev or the Kotzker Rebbe...

...it takes the genius of an Elie Wiesel, or the compelling imagery of a television documentary, for children really to understand what the Holocaust is about, and how it relates to them...

...That question is quite different from the one my generation asked in our youth...

...We cannot educate children in a vacuum" is the most familiar litany of Jewish education...

...I am talking about parochialism in the narrowest sense — a denigration of other religions, and of other branches of Judaism as well...

...As our third son said...

...Schools in particular, but summer programs, too, tend to teach the most primitive kind of Jewish theology...

...What must be understood — what so few parents or teachers seem able to understand — is that for this generation of American children, the Holocaust is as much ancient history as is the Destruction of the Temple...

...They also were told, over and over again, how difficult it would be to "do Jewish" — how much trouble kashrut would be, how stringent the rules for Shabbat would be, and so on and on and on...

...When young people choose to be Jewish, they tend to take their Judaism far more seriously than did — or do — the members of my generation, for whom being Jewish is a reflex, not a deliberate choice...

...The nature of the curriculum is suggested by this question from a national standardized examination for Jewish religious school students: "Do you observe Shabbat because you enjoy it, or because it is a commandment...

...The second message that predisposes youngsters to answer that question, "Why should I be Jewish...

...This reorientation is essential, moreover, not just for youngsters who come from unobservant, uninterested, apathetic Jewish homes...

...But the generation I am talking about was born after the state of Israel was created...

...Note the way the question is formulated: not how do we develop Jewish identity, not how do we develop commitment, certainly not how do we develop shomrei Shabbat or kashrut observers...

...The plain and painful fact is that a large proportion of students arrive at religious schools — Sunday schools, afternoon religious schools, Talmud Torahs, summer programs, and even some day schools — without any commitment to Jewish identity or Jewish practice, without any experience of Jewish observance and practice, without any self-awareness as Jews...

...it would require a transformation in the way in which we conceive of both ends and means in Jewish education...

...In teaching students about Israel, in short, Jewish schools tend to ignore the students' emotions while patronizing their minds...

...for many of us, at least, it is hard, if not impossible, to believe as our parents and grandparents believed...

...the atmosphere was punitive and humorless, as well as rigid and authoritarian...

...And by "Jewish education,"' I mean camps, trips, and other summer educational programs, as well Charles E Silberman is the author of CRISIS IN BLACK AND WHITE and CRISIS IN THE CLASSROOM He is currently at work on a study of the American system of justice as Sunday schools, afternoon religious schools, Talmud Torahs, and day schools...

...What kinds of messages do students receive from religious education...

...Judaism involves authority...

...After years of lobbying, for example, my wife and I finally managed to get a course on the Holocaust included in the curriculum of the religious school our younger sons were attending...

...A third message that comes through from the informal curriculum, even more than from the formal, is one of parochialism — a parochialism, moreover, that involves a meanness of spirit...

...Classrooms tend to be grim, harsh, and unpleasant...

...Identification with Israel and commitment to it will not be built by the vulgar or simplistic way in which Israel is often discussed...

...The new kinds of serious Jewish lifestyles emerging on college campuses and among men and women in their twenties offer grounds for hope that American Jewish life may be revitalized...

...we are just beginning to see, and feel, the consequences for Jews and for Judaism of living in an open, pluralistic society...

...This is compounded by the failure (perhaps the inability) to confront the Holocaust, to confront the unanswered — for many of us, the unanswerable — challenge to faith that the Holocaust provides...

...The judgment is harsh and sweeping, I know, and ignores the hard work and serious thought on the part of many Jewish educators, as well as the occasional successes they enjoy...

...their experience persuades them that they do have a choice...

...Late on the eve of their departure, they were still being told what they could not do in cities they would not get to for another four or five weeks...

...That "right" answer gives a very clear message to young people: Enjoyment and the observance of mitzvot are opposites: one must choose between them...

...The right answer, I take it, is "because it is a commandment...

...Charles E. Silberman "Something must be terribly wrong," my youngest son observed not too long ago, "when kids who were enthusiastic about beginning kindergarten or first grade hate Judaism as well as religious school by the time they're in fifth or sixth grade...

...They do this partly through their formal curriculum, but largely and far more significantly through what sociologists of education call the "hidden," or the "invisible," curriculum: the unconscious clues, values, attitudes that emerge from the ways in which adults behave, from the ways in which they deal with students and with one another, and from the nature of the student culture that forms as a result...

...of moments of faith — moments of faith that we hope will sustain us during our long periods of doubt...

...American society has been transformed since World War II...

...But recognition of this enormous watering down of Jewish life in America has not been accompanied by any comparable change in educational goals or practice...

...It is time to stop complaining about this lack of parental commitment and to begin asking what it is that a Jewish school or summer program can do — what it is that it should try to do — if a large proportion of the youngsters it deals with do in fact live in a Jewish vacuum, and so arrive without the commitment that previously had been taken for granted...

...that is the starting point for education...

...To be sure, we need to be realistic about what Jewish education can accomplish...

...quite the contrary...

...There is a distinction — a critically important distinction, I submit — between authority and authoritarianism...

...It is not that this change has been ignored...

...But it is entirely fair and reasonable to expect that Jewish education will not make matters worse — that schools and summer programs will not become a major force in the de-Judaizing of the next generation...

...Youngsters with whom I have met are amazed to learn that questioning God — indeed challenging God — is not only acceptable but encouraged in our tradition so long as one remains inside k'lal Yisrael...

...Describing the extraordinary impact of those weeks of waiting before the war began, while the Arab armies were mobilizing, even Rabbi Heschcl wrote...

...I can predict what the final exam is going to be like...

...It is not an exaggeration to characterize Jewish education as a "disaster area" in American Jewish life...

...For this is the first generation in history, at least the first generation since the Hellenistic period, that feels it has a choice — the first generation that feels it can choose whether to be Jewish or not, and can, therefore, ask,- "Why should I be Jewish...

...I insist that answers will not emerge — cannot emerge — until we learn to ask the right questions, chief among them: Where are our children now...

...Because of that assumption, Jewish education has been essentially skill-oriented...

...The question our children ask — the question they are bound to ask at some point, if they have not already asked it — is a question that has not been asked for 2,300 years, if indeed it has ever been asked at all...

...Its purpose traditionally has been to provide skills and information: to teach youngsters to read Hebrew, to translate Chumash and Rashi, and to impart information about Jewish history, Jewish holidays and observances, and in recent years, about Israel...

...I am not talking about particularism...

...One message is of rigid, unbending authoritarianism...

...The mix of purposes and the relative emphasis varies, of course, from denomination to denomination, but the emphasis on mastery of skills and memorization of facts obtains across the board...

...Youngsters know that faith is a problem...

...After the Holocaust, it is difficult to speak of faith in the old sense...

...they feel that it is a problem...

...And this was the atmosphere of the entire summer...

...it does not, at least in my understanding of it, involve authoritarianism...

...Why the failure...

...But most of the Jewish schools I have observed are highly authoritarian —in the way classrooms are organized, in the way teachers respond to questions, in the ways in which they talk to kids, and in the kinds of questions they encourage and discourage...

...on page 12 after hearing the teacher describe the course...

...The answer, it seems to me, is that educators — like everyone else in Jewish life — fail to take account of the radically different environment in which Jewish life is being lived in this country — an environment radically different in kind, not just in degree, from anything that has preceded it for the last 2,300 years or so...

...To take a student from where he is to where he is going, the teacher must know where he is...

...This appears to be true of summer programs as well...

...What is their America about...

...When I asked one of my sons to describe a summer trip...

...which was a very different question from "Why should we be Jewish...

...the curriculum hardly suggests the ways in which Jewish observance can enrich life...

...On the contrary, religious schools continue to operate on an assumption that was valid in an earlier time: that students arrive with a commitment to Judaism, or, if not a full commitment, at least with a considerable degree of self-awareness (or self-consciousness) as Jews...

...Last, there is the message of intellectual sterility that emerges...

...I confess that I have no answers...

...It is only in the last 20 or 30 years, therefore, that we have really begun to feel the effects of the emancipation of the 18th and 19th centuries...

...But unless it is a course given in a Judaic studies department, they are not likely to discover Rosenzweig or Fackenheim or Borowitz, let along Rav Kook...

...Anyone who doubts that conclusion should look at the standardized tests that have been developed for religious schools...

...we could not be indifferent...

...I grew up as the second generation born in this country, the second generation to go to college...

...his major characterization of it was that "They never asked why...

...Instead of developing or enhancing a commitment to Jewish identification or practice, Jewish schools and summer programs tend to weaken or even undermine that commitment...

...in the negative is one of joylessness...

...As educators remind parents, it is unreasonable to expect schools and summer programs to develop commitment to Judaism when the homes and communities from which the youngsters come are indifferent or hostile to Jewish life...

...When we were rebelling, we asked, "Should we be Jewish...

...Being Jewish was a fact...

...and they never let us ask why...

...And make no mistake about it...

...If the Holocaust itself is taught, moreover, it is often taught in a vulgar and mindless way...

...The goal I have proposed is not as modest as it may seem...

...Not in every school or summer program nor to every student of course — but in enough programs and to enough students to constitute cause for grave concern...

...For our children to feel — or even to understand — our visceral identification with Israel, they need experiences that touch them where they live...

...on page 10 just a problem...

...But whether we accepted our identity or rejected it, we were not indifferent...

...And the more sensitive they are, the more deeply they know and feel it...

...Because of this growing openness, our children ask a question few of us are prepared to answer...

...the question was whether or not to accept that fact...

...The openness of American society provides an opportunity, not cont...

...but we tend to underestimate the options that are open to them...

...I am suggesting what appears to be a much more modest goal: how do we make Judaism attractive to these youngsters — sufficiently attractive to persuade a significant proportion of them that Judaism is something they want to know more about, something they want to explore more fully and deeply in college, and in their adult lives...

...More important, questioning is discouraged, if not actually forbidden...

...Why have so many good intentions and so much hard work yielded such disastrous results...

...Something is terribly wrong — wrong with the practices of Jewish education, and wrong with its purposes...

...Most of us came to that knowledge in 1967...

...The assumption on which Jewish education has been based — that youngsters will arrive with some commitment or at least with some consciousness and awareness — no longer holds...

...For an entire afternoon and evening, exuberant but nervous teen-agers were told over and over again what they would not be permitted to do over the course of the summer, along with the various punishments to be visited on them if they violated the rules...

...Most religious schools, and all too many summer programs, encourage a negative rather than a positive answer to the "why be Jewish" question, for they provide a sterile, forbidding and thoroughly unattractive picture of Judaism and of Jewish life...

...Of course they exaggerate the degree of choice that they have...

...American society is a vastly more open, more hospitable place for our children than it was for us...

...Hence they ask, "Why should I be Jewish...

...and again in 1973...

...To a 12- or 14- or 16-year-old youngster, both events are equally distant in time...

...Indeed, we were tempted to pull Steve out of the program before it began — first because of the peremptory tone of the literature he received, then as a result of an orientation session the day before the program...

...year after year, teachers, principals and rabbis complain bitterly — to parents, and to one another — that it is impossible to develop Jewish identity or Jewish practice among youngsters whose parents are indifferent or hostile...

...And that means asking a new kind of question: In the time that is at our disposal as educators, whether it be a few hours each Sunday, or a few afternoons a week, or every day, or six weeks in the summer, how do we make Judaism attractive to students whose homes do not provide any affirmative view of Judaism, let alone any commitment to it...

...They" were the counselors — two of them principals of large religious schools, one a student in a rabbinical seminary...

...and to our lives and faith, until 1967...

...And I know from my own observations that our son's assessment of the summer was correct...

...The openness that my children meet and find in high school and college, in law school and graduate school, and in practicing their professions, means that they live in a society that is different in kind, not just in degree, from the society in which I grew up...

...For the generation to which my children belong — the second and third generations born in the United States, coming for the most part from homes in which at least one parent, and usually both (and often one or more grandparent) are college graduates — Jewish education tends to be ineffectual at best, and destructive at worst...

...Israel is seen as little more than an object of American Jewish philanthropy, or a place in which to have a second bar mitzvah...

...Where, first and foremost, are they starting from...

...that is an appropriate message...

...Many youngsters do not learn of the wide debates among Jewish theologians until they happen to take a college course in Comparative Religion, and discover Buber and Rubinstein, and, if they are lucky, Heschel...

...The question is: Why should I be Jewish...

...our generation, after all, did not really discover what Tsrael meant to us...

...For all the dedication and commitment that Jewish educators display, however, success is too infrequent and failure too widespread to pretend that things are better than they are, to avoid talking tach-lis for fear of hurting feelings or injuring sensibilities...

...the oldest law of pedagogy...

...it is every bit as necessary for the youngsters who come from committed, practicing Jewish homes...

...It will consist of questions such as, 'How many box cars were there on the third train to Auschwitz?' and 'How many people did each box car contain?' " And that was the way the course was in fact taught...