c. 1998 Religion News Service
WALTHAM, Mass. _ After nine years at a Conservative Jewish day school, Jesse Holzer was apprehensive about the diversity he would face at a high school that does not espouse or enforce any single vision of Jewish observance.
But after four months at the nondenominational New Jewish High School of Greater Boston, the 15-year-old sophomore is happy to report his fears were unwarranted.”I was worried people would be radical and deny everything I learned my whole life,”Holzer said.”But it isn’t so.” New Jewish High School _ which opened in this Boston suburb in September 1997 with 49 students and expects to more than double its enrollment next year _ is one of a growing number of Jewish high schools committed to Jewish pluralism.
Their growth comes at a time when relations between the faith’s major denominations are increasingly problematic. As such, they are bucking the trend toward greater division between Judaism’s traditional Orthodox and more liberal Conservative, Reform and Reconstructiont movements.
The prime irritant is the effort by non-Orthodox groups to end the Orthodox hegemony over religious life in Israel. “The majority of (Jewish high schools) are still in denominational settings, but the cutting edge is transdenominational,”said Rabbi Irving Greenberg, president of the Jewish Life Network, a New York-based group dedicated to promoting Jewish education and pluralism.”These kinds of schools are a refreshing change.” While the total number of nondenominational high schools remains low _ one educator estimated there are only about eight in the entire nation _ three of them opened in the past year alone, and at least half-a-dozen more are in the planning stages.
In addition to the Boston-area school, nondenominational high schools opened in September in Minneapolis and Atlanta, while a grade school in Irvine,Calif., will be expanding into a high school next year, according to Yossi Prager, executive director of the Avi Chai Foundation, another group promoting Jewish education.
In addition, pluralistic high schools are being planned in Cleveland, Phoenix, Detroit, Seattle, Cincinnati and Las Vegas, Nev.
The largest nondenominational high schools _ generally called”community”schools _ that existed before the current wave are in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia.
Of the country’s 150 Jewish high schools, the vast majority are affiliated with the Orthodox movement, with nondenominational schools being the second-largest category.
A handful of high schools are affiliated with the Conservative movement, while the Reform movement runs no all-day high schools, Prager said.
Nationwide, an increasing number of Jewish parents are turning to Jewish day schools to educate their children, spurred on by a general surge of interest in religion and spirituality, concern over intermarriage and other assimilation issues, the success of existing Jewish schools and dissatisfaction with public schools.
The new community high schools generally encourage students to make their own decisions about religious observance. While some older community schools also actively push pluralism, few go as far as the newer ones.
At the New Atlanta Jewish Community High School, which opened in September with 19 students, the first rule of thumb is”not to violate someone’s inviolable norm,”said school administrator Richard Hanson.
Enacting this policy means, for instance, all food at the school is kosher _ meaning food conforming to Jewish dietary laws _ so any Jew can eat, even though Reform Jews generally do not restrict themselves to kosher food. The school also holds two different morning prayer groups to accommodate its students varied levels of Jewish religious observance.
The Boston school holds three prayer services: Orthodox, where males and females sit separately and only males lead services; traditional egalitarian, which is liturgically similar to an Orthodox service, but males and females sit together and anyone can lead; and”liberal”egalitarian service, where students and teachers create a service incorporating nontraditional elements.
Both the Atlanta and Boston schools also do not require male students to wear skull caps _ a requirement at most Jewish schools, both community and denominational.
The 7-year-old Milken Community High School in Los Angeles has an even more open approach to religious observance, emphasizing individual choice and”the great joy that everyone has a position,”according to Bruce Powell, the school’s president.
Milken _ the country’s largest community high school with 570 students _ holds morning services only once a week. And on that day, there are 12 services, each with its own style.
But none of the services is Orthodox, because the Milken school draws all but two of its students from the Conservative and Reform communities. The school’s primary sponsor is a Reform synagogue, although it takes a nondenominational approach to Jewish education.”If we have a dogma, the dogma really is that there is no dogma at all,Powell said.”We emphasize education. In order to be a good liberal Jew, you need to know more than an Orthodox Jew does, because you need to know enough to choose.” In contrast, 15 percent of the 49 students at Boston’s New Jewish High School are Orthodox, despite the presence of three Orthodox high schools in the Boston area. The remainder of the school is 40 percent Conservative and 20 percent Reform, while 5 percent affiliate with other groups.
The school is housed in space leased from Brandeis University, rather than a synagogue, and has no denominational ties of any kind. “This is a grand experiment,”said Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, the school’s headmaster, who is Orthodox.”If we can have the growth we now expect and sustain innovation, thoughtful dialogue and the attention to a cutting-edge approach to education, it can have national and even international consequences.” Other Jewish educators agree.”We really look to Rabbi Lehmann as a beacon to the rest of us in the dark,”said Deborah Harris, co-chair of a committee planning a nondenominational Jewish high school in Phoenix.”I really hope in the American Jewish community that that kind of school will really become a model.” The school is slated to open for the 2000-2001 school year and will be the first Jewish high school in Phoenix.
By all accounts, designing a pluralistic high school school can be a tortuous affair in today’s highly fragmented American Jewish community.
Leaders of new community schools speak of board meetings where the discussion invariably turns to heated debates on broad themes of Jewish values and law, as the schools attempt to create an inclusive approach to everything from the definition of who is Jewish to what level of observance is required by students on school grounds. “Some in the Orthodox community call us Conservative and some in the Conservative community call us Orthodox,”said Max Donath, vice president of the board of Akiva Jewish Academy, a pluralistic high school that opened this fall in Minneapolis with six students.”So, who are we?” The Minneapolis school, like those in Boston and Atlanta, focuses on textual study rather than a particular form of religious practice and”avoids judgmental ways of teaching,”Donath said.
However, staying non-judgmental brings with it the danger of lowered standards.”If we cater to the lowest common denominator, we may dilute the program to the point there isn’t substance,”Donath said, adding he wants Akiva Jewish Academy to remain a”religious”and not a”cultural”institution.
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But Avi Chai’s Prager said Judaism is essentially about practice, and because of that it may prove difficult for community schools to instill in children a commitment to religious observance.”When you always have to present options, it’s always a challenge,”Prager said.”Ultimately, Judaism is not about text study.” Lehmann said there is always a danger of pluralism becoming an end in itself _ an”ideology without a content”_ a situation the Boston school hopes to avoid with its emphasis on individual practice.
The school allows each student to choose their own prayer book rather than requiring a uniform text within each prayer group. Confusion is kept to a minimum by only reciting prayers common to all the texts in use.
Lehmann also hopes to introduce an individual practice plan by which students and their parents would meet with teachers and administrators to discuss each student’s plan for religious observance and development.
The Jewish Life Network’s Greenberg said that successful nondenominational schools must differentiate between pluralism and relativism. The former encompasses genuine respect for various modes of observance and theology, while the latter tries to eradicate or explain away differences.”It has to offer multiple committed models,”Greenberg said. Students must see examples of what it means to live a committed Jewish life under the customs of each of the denominations, he added.”Eventually, I think they will offer models of cooperation,”Greenberg said of the community high schools.
DEA END KRESS
