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February 5, 1999/19 Shevat 5759, Vol. 51, No. 19
The Jewish future is being decided around the kitchen table
JONATHAN S. TOBIN
Jewish Exponent
Just last week I heard about a friend who was having problems. The woman, who lives in another state, had recently lost her job.
With all of her money problems, her greatest worry wasn't how to pay for a vacation or the other conveniences many of us take for granted. Instead, she is desperately searching for a way to pay for her two children's tuition to a Jewish day school. One of her two youngsters is already on a partial scholarship, but the total bill still amounts to somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 per year. Given their financial situation, that number might well be out of the family's reach.
The school the children attend, like virtually all day schools in the country, is doing its best to help, but there is a limited amount of scholarship money available. Much of it goes to people in even more desperate straits than my friend.
Though it is the school's official policy that no child will be turned away for lack of money, in practice, it doesn't always work out that way. Many families are too proud to ask for help. Others are deterred by the scholarship process, which can be humiliating. And if the school determines that the parents are able to pay a sum that the family thinks it cannot afford, what then?
Don't blame the schools. The tuition fees they must charge are staggering, but a 1997 study by the pro-Jewish-education Avi Chai Fund showed that at most day schools, tuition covers only approximately half of the school's total expenditures.
That means little dramas like the one being played out by my two friends are going on all over the country. Real decisions about the Jewish future are being made around the kitchen tables of Jewish families that must decide what sacrifices to make to enable their children to get a Jewish education.
Jewish education - and day schools in particular - is recognized as our best investment in the future. But, at current levels of giving, communal fund-raising organizations simply don't have the funds to create a Jewish-education "safety net" that will prevent families like my friends from falling through the cracks.
Though education is supposed to be a prime Jewish value, getting a Jewish education still isn't considered that important by many of us. In spite of lip service that has been paid to the day school movement recently, the resistance to them remains considerable. Many still cling to the idea that public schools are the savior of American democracy and so are uneasy about promoting a sectarian Jewish education system.
Fortunately, I think the tide is turning with creative new solutions. In Boston, a group of major philanthropists has formed a sort-of Jewish education superfund that is building new day schools where none existed before. In Seattle, a private Jewish foundation funded a "cap" on day-school tuition, lowering costs per family to $3,000 from $7,000 and thereby boosting enrollment at one day high school by 20 percent. In Chicago, an endowment plan has been organized to boost funding for a non-denominational coalition of day schools.
These are encouraging signs, but I still worry when I hear community professionals lamenting that not enough money is available to help day schools and that most major givers are reluctant to dedicate their philanthropic efforts toward day-school scholarships.
How long will we wait before we are prepared to say that this isn't just one family's problem, to be decided around a kitchen table, but a Jewish communal responsibility?
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
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