Q: I want my child to grow up with Jewish values. What should parents look for when choosing a Jewish school for their children?

Rav David: According to the latest statistics in America, the future of next genereration depends on how much Jewish education they get and practice. For example, if they have 12 years of Jewish education, kids are almost guaranteed to marry Jewish with a intermarriage rate of less than 3%. With 8 years of Jewish education, the rate of assimilation is still very low with 90% percent keeping their Jewish identity. If they do not get a proper Jewish eduction it is very difficult to predict how well they will keep their identity. If you would like to send your child to Jewish school you have to understand that we have several types of Jewish educational institutions in America.

The first type I call ‘minimalist’, meaning that they do not care about the practice of Judaism. They give you minimum information and are aligned with the Reform movement. They emphazize the learning of hebrew as a language, just like one would learn Russian or Spanish, but when they don’t have the proper Jewish values rooted in Torah. This undoubtedly affects them personally . When the school does not care about basic things like Shabbat and Kashrut, the Jewish family structure, nothing of substance is given to the child, especially when the parents send the child to this school to be religiously comfortable and not have a more religious child than the parents themselves. But the outcome is that you have paid a lot of money, especially when these schools are usually the most expensive, with no return on your money in terms of spirituality and a viable Jewish education.

The second type of Jewish education is a kind of traditional education but without the effort of training the child as a practicing Jew. They also express ideas that are against our beliefs about the source of the Torah, injecting into the child’s mind an opinion denying the validity of the exodus of Egypt. The child starts asking “Why should I follow anything else in the 21st century that were written by men 4,000 years?”. We Iranians always believed in Hashem and His Torah with an unwavering emunah. It is also obvious that this kind of education is not that effective either.

And the 3rd kind of educaiton is more rooted in our Torah belief system. Emphasis in placed both on learning Torah laws and values as well as applying them accordingly. However, just sending your kids to this school does not guarantee a proper outcome, When you ask what kind of Jewish school you want to send your child, you must also take into account the Jewish enviroment that the child will experience at home. The enviroment at home must be in sync with the one at school, or else the education can back fire resulting in either animosity with the parents or the religion, and unfortunatly it sometimes leads to a hatred for Judaism.