Specialization in Life and in Education

Somehow, with all the conveniences of modern technology, life doesn't seem more convenient. We feel pulled in ever-more directions, with ever-more responsibilities, obligations, concerns and interests. While these pulls can often be destructive, they offer an almost unlimited array of opportunities as well. Do you like guitar? Today you can teach yourself to play any instrument using YouTube or a number of apps on your phone. Interested in botany, or knitting, or Israel advocacy, or basically anything else you can possibly imagine? There's a website, email list, podcast and Facebook group dedicated to exactly your interest. An almost unlimited number of Torah shiurim and resources span every possible skill level on topics from Tanach to Talmud to Tefillah and every sub-topic in-between. It's all really interesting.

In the worst-case scenario, we ignore this potpourri of possibilities, perhaps perplexed by their scale and breadth. Rather than diving head-first into something, we escape from it all to the safety of the also unlimited spectrum of time-wasting options at our fingertips. Surely that is an trap into which we all fall from time to time. But we also engage in the positives as well, learning a new subject, studying this or that; trying a new class or a hobby. We find ourselves dabbling – a bit of this, something of that, without really specializing in any one area or interest. Today, the world presents with an infinite array of options ready for the taking, making each of us dabblers in everything, but masters of none.

In his commentary on Gemara Berachot, Rav Kook writes that while a little knowledge in many areas represents one possible path, it is certainly not ideal. The Gemara in Berachot (39b) in the context of making Berachot on bread, mentions an interesting fact about how Rav Ami and Rav Asi chose which bread to use for their Seudat Shabbat.

רב אמי ורב אסי כי הוה מתרמי להו ריפתא דערובא מברכין עליה המוציא לחם מן הארץ אמרי הואיל ואתעביד ביה מצוה חדא נעביד ביה מצוה אחריתי (ברכות לט ע"ב)

"Rav Ami and Rav Asi, when the opportunity to use the bread of the eiruv in the Shabbat meal would present itself, they would recite: "Who brings forth bread from the earth" over it. They said in explanation: Since one mitzvah was performed with it, we will perform another mitzvah with it."

Rav Kook (Ein Ayah Berachot vol. 2 p. 12) sees in this passage an important message about specialization. He writes that in our pursuits throughout life we can choose one of two general paths: Completion through Quantity (sheleimut b’kamut) and Completion through Quality (sheleimut b’eichut).

השלימות בכמות היא שירבה נמצאים מושלמים אע"פ שבכ"א לא יהי' כ"א השלמה מועטת...והאיכות היא שישתדל שמי שראוי מהנמצאים לקבל השלימות ישלימהו כפי האפשרי ברב יתרון, ומהשלמה של אחד בתכלית המעלה ימשך טוב לרבים.

“Completion through quantity Is that a person will increase his areas of completeness even though in each area he will only realize a small measure of completion…[Completion through] quality refers to the effort to focus on the most worthy of attributes to strive for completion – in that area he will achieve fulfillment to the greatest possible degree…”

In other words, we can strive to improve a small amount in many different areas or we can ignore most areas of study and choose to focus our efforts and energies on one specific area or endeavor, striving to be the very best we can be in that one discipline. Which then is better: quantity or quality? Should I strive to be a “jack of all trades” or a “master of one”? To Rav Kook, the answer is clear: Quality over quantity.

והוא כלל גדול ג"כ בכל חכמה ומלאכה, כי שלימות העולם בכללו תבא מריבוי בקיאים כ"א במקצע מיוחד בתכלית המעלה, ולא ממי שסופג הכל רק בדרך שיטחי, כי ההשלמה האיכותית גדולה היא בערכה על ההשלמה הכמותית.

"This is also a great rule in all areas of wisdom and work; the completion of the entire world will come from a growing number of experts who have achieved the greatest possible excellence in their specific fields, and not from one who absorbs everything in a superficial manner. For completeness in quality is greater in value than completeness in quantity."

Rav Kook views this matter from an educational perspective as well, noting that educators should focus their efforts specifically on students capable of reaching great heights.

וזוהי הדרך המשובחת שכוננו חכמינו ז"ל להעמיד תלמידים הרבה ולהגדיל תורה בחוג המוסגלים לקבלה ולא לפזר כוחינו בין בתי כנסיות של עמי הארץ. וכן בכללו ישראל, להרבות עצמה בתורה ויראת ד', ולא לנוד להאיר עמי הארץ וגוים רבים באור ד' בדרך מועט שיכולין לקבל. כי מריבוי האור שיזרח בשלמים הגמורים יאיר אור גדול ג"כ על שאינם שלמים, אבל בהשתדלות לפזר הכוחות על הרבה נושאים, וכ"א לא יהי' שלם בתכלית, לא יבא לעולם אל מטרה נכונה.

"[Completeness of Quality] is the praised path established by the Sages who said to 'Establish many students' (Avot 1:1) and exalt the Torah among those who are capable of receiving it, and not to disperse our energies among the synagogues and simple people…for the greatness of the light that spreads from individuals that are whole and complete will shine on those that are less complete. On the other hand, the effort to disperse our energies in many areas so that we achieve wholeness in any one area will not bring us to the correct goal. "

Rav Kook's comments must carry great weight as we evaluate our own choices and priorities in life. Are we specialists in a single area, focusing our light and energy to become experts who can shine the greatest possible focused light? Or do we dabble, dispersing ourselves in different directions, but failing to create much light at all?

In education, society has clearly chosen to reject Rav Kook's priorities. In our community, we don't focus only on the diamonds who can achieve greatness. Instead we strive to reach each and every child. The Chareidi community makes a different choice, gearing its educational system specifically towards those who can thrive and achieve greatness. Each system has benefits, but also brings great costs as well. It is incumbent upon our community to at least wonder what costs we pay for rejecting Rav Kook's position by choosing a different educational path.

Raising Religious Zionist Children: A Question of Education

So much of what takes place in the Jewish world revolves around education – or the lack thereof. The recent controversy surrounding the "Hilltop Youth" is to me, first and foremost, an education issue. Somehow, teachers, rabbis and educators failed to reach these young people before they abandoned home and school for the "freedom" of the hilltop. At the same time, the growing alienation between Israel and America also relates to education and a failure to properly communicate critical values through both parenting, but also our educational system.

Nowhere does education play a more significant role in the Torah than in the story of the exile and subsequent redemption from Egypt. God tells Moshe explicitly that education must play an essential role in the process of the Redemption and the formation of the Jewish Nation. God tells Moshe that He has hardened Par'oh's heart,

וּלְמַעַן תְּסַפֵּר בְּאָזְנֵי בִנְךָ וּבֶן-בִּנְךָ, אֵת אֲשֶׁר הִתְעַלַּלְתִּי בְּמִצְרַיִם, וְאֶת-אֹתֹתַי, אֲשֶׁר-שַׂמְתִּי בָם; וִידַעְתֶּם, כִּי-אֲנִי ה'. (שמות י', ב')

So that you will tell in the ears of your son and your grandson what I have wrought upon Egypt, and My signs which I have placed upon them; so that you may know that I am the LORD.' (Shemot 10:2)

We are also commanded to teach our children about the story of the Exodus on the night of Pesach – the ultimate educational experience.

But what happens when education is missing? What happens when parents and teachers don't provide the education that our children need and deserve? To answer this question, I share a novel answer to a classic question from the beginning of Sefer Shemot.

At the outset of Shemot, we learn that a new ruler arose to lead Egypt, אשר לא ידע את יוסף – "who did not know Yosef." (Shemot 1:8) This raises the obvious question: How could it be possible for a ruler to arise over Egypt who had never heard of the man who single-handedly saved not only their country, but the entire region from starvation? Rashi suggests that, "he made himself as if he did not know Yosef" – meaning that, like so many world leaders that followed throughout history, Par'oh chose to ignore the past in his desire to persecute the Jews. Yet, that's not the simple meaning of the words. Rabbi Yosef Bechor Shor explains simply that he neither "recognized him, nor knew of him." This of course only begs the question: How is this possible?

I found a very simple, compelling answer in a commentary on Chumash called “Meir Einei Yesharim” written by Rabbi Meir Schwartzman, who served for many years as a rabbi and dayyan in Winnipeg, Canada. (You can download the full Sefer on Hebrewbooks.org here.) He explains that it is indeed possible that the new king never heard of Joseph. How is this possible? He suggests that a new Pharaoh would never have heard of Joseph because a previous government erased any memory of Joseph’s existence. Rabbi Schwartzman writes,

When a new party succeeds in wrestling the bridle of government from a rival faction...then it removes from their positions all of those officials that were appointed from the previous government and it appoints only those officials who it trusts to fulfill its demands, and all the laws that were enacted by the previous ministers and legislators are annulled...and even the textbooks in the schools are switched...so that the students do not learn the story of the greatness of this hero or that warrior…
When Marshall [Jozef] Pidulski was exiled from the Polish government (1923-1926), his adversaries removed his picture from the official schoolbooks... and when Hitler arose at the helm of Germany, they revised and printed new school books and encyclopedias... so that in an instant someone who had been a hero and redeemer was transformed into a rebel against his people and country - a liar and a traitor... those who could not be tainted were totally erased from the historical record, as if they had never been born...
This, I believe, is what happened in Egypt. Even though a new king arose over Egypt, nonetheless he did not know of Joseph and had never even heard of him, for the enemies of Pharaoh who ruled when Joseph was young later took control of the government into their hands...and the entire story of Joseph’s greatness and how he saved the nation from famine, all of which was undoubtedly found in the national record... all of this was hidden or intentionally destroyed.

According to Rav Schwartzman, Par'oh never heard of Yosef because a previous government erased him from Egyptian history. How could Egyptian children know about a man if they were never taught? By that very same token, is it really that surprising to see Arabs refuse to acknowledge Israel's right to exist when Jewish history has been erased from their school curriculum?

Here in Israel, Religious Zionist parents assume that our children will not only assimilate our passion for the Land, but that they will also acquire our love for the State – the government and the rule of law – with all of its warts. Yet, the "Hilltop Youth" are teaching us that while we might be channeling our religious fervor to our kids, for some of them, we are failing to communicate the values of democracy, equality and freedom for all crucial to civil society.

By that very same token, while we might believe strongly in the importance of Eretz Yisrael, I am beginning to think that we don’t teach that passion properly, in a source-based manner, especially in the Diaspora where Zionism and Religious Zionism are often not properly emphasized or valued. I remember a number of conversations with parents who sent their children to non-Zionist yeshivot, and then expressed surprise and disappointment when those children returned home with values that did not include a love for the Jewish State. I would often caution parents: "Don’t send your children to a school and expect them not to absorb the school's ideology." It seems so simple and obvious. And yet, so many parents make this very mistake.

In the end, it boils down to education. If it's important enough, we teach it to our children, with love, patience and clarity. If not, we should not be surprised when we recognize that they lack the passion and love for Israel that we hold so dear.

Technology and Education: A Site Visit at Amit Amichai Rechovot

On a visit to Amit Amichai Rechovot

I’ve been struggling with the issue of cellphones in my classes at Orot.
Last semester, we the college invited a speaker who spoke out our collective addiction to cellphones. Even more impressive than the truly
frightening statistics and stories he told, was the total command he had over an auditorium of 450 students, and his absolute refusal to allow anyone in the room to take out a cellphone. If someone took one out, he stopped his talk, and waited until the person put the phone away.
I was blown away, and convinced that I needed to do the same thing in my classes. And, when the second semester began, I started each class by asking the students to put away their phones in their bags, telling them two things: (1) It’s a distraction for me (which it really is – try talking to someone who’s staring at their phone) and (2) “If you’re there (on the phone) you’re not here. That’s just a fact. You can’t be on the phone and focusing on the class. For a while, I really stuck to it, and I must say that educationally, it was productive. The students were certainly annoyed, but the classes were better – more productive and focused.
But, as the semester has progressed, I’ve backed off – not because I don’t think that the cellphones are a distraction, but because I simply don’t have the energy to fight with them anymore. I would have hoped that students entering my classes would know to put away their phones. Wishful thinking. Each class I have to remind them – over and over – to please put away the phones until the end of class. And then there’s the laptop issue: a number of students bring laptops, and it’s painfully obvious that they’re not only taking notes. How do you distinguish between cellphones and laptops? Why should there be any difference between them?
As part of my work at Orot, I serve as an administrator for the M.Ed. (Masters) program for Educational Administration at Orot’s Rechovot Campus. Today we’re at a site visit at Amit Amichai High School (for boys) in Rechovot. The Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshivat Amit, Rav Avi Rokeach, explained that three years ago the school made a strategic decision to invest in technology. They recognized that the students’ lives were intimately involved in technology – not just as tools, but in the way that the kids think today. If we were able to translate the materials that they learned – Gemara, Chumash, mathematics, etc –using the technological language of the students today – then they could dramatically improve the educational experience of the school. Every student and teacher received a tablet, and they invested in putting all of their materials on the tablets, so that the kids would be ready to learn in their way.
Three months into the project, they recognized that the experiment wasn’t working. Despite the incredible investment in technology, they realized that the tools – the technology – wasn’t the answer. It wasn’t that the tech wasn’t working. It really was. But the investment didn’t really create the change that the school was looking for. It was the same school, the same students, the same learning.
We took a tour of the school, and saw a number of classes in which the students were working in groups; they had projects in English, mathematics, science; many of the classes of course have frontal learning. In each class, students were working with laptops, their phones, etc. There was a lot of learning taking place, but also a lot of email, facebook and Whatsapp as well. We asked about how the teachers prevent students from using the laptops to play. The teacher said that he doesn’t make them learn or stop them from playing. Rather, he gives the both the freedom and independence to make the right choice, and not waste their time in class (and have to do the work at home).
Is tech the answer in education? Not the answer – but it’s certainly part of our students’ lives. How to use that technology, or limit its ability to distract – represents a challenge that educators struggle with on a constant and continuous basis. These aren’t new questions, but as technology grows even more integral to our lives, the questions grow more pressing.
At Amit Amichai, the school went through a long process trying to figure out what the end goals of the school should be. In a nutshell, the Rosh Yeshiva explained that they want to make “educated people” – with all that this involves: knowledge, intelligence, fear of Heaven, love of learning – all the tools that you could possibly want a student to have. That being said, how do you do this? What, in the end, is the best way to achieve that goal? If you had a chip that you could buy which you could implant in a student and this would produce the most desirable outcome – would you use it? The school also asked another question: Why, if our educational goals are so broad, do we spend so much time in our schools simply transmitting information: history, English, science, Chumash – whatever?
Rather, he explained that they decided that the most important investment that they would need to make is in the teachers. While a student could spend at most six years in the school, a teacher could theoretically spend twenty years or more in the school, and have the greatest possible influence on the students. Believing that the teachers would be the best possible agents to drive their own development, they created a committee for “Investigation and Development” in order to move the process forward. The committee would investigate what’s going on in the school and develop new processes to transform the school and move it towards the school’s desired goals.
Clearly, it’s a work in progress. But the students spend a great deal of time working on individual projects. They receive tasks in classes, and work in pairs or in small groups, to achieve those tasks. Clearly, the school is “different” – far less frontal teaching, far more individual learning. Does the school produce graduates that are substantially different than other schools? That’s a question that will have important implications for education in the future.

Because it's a Chillul Hashem, Does that Mean that They Shouldn't Do It?

While I've known about this program for years, the Forward recently ran a scathing expose (and a pretty one-sided one, at that) about the Michigan Jewish Institute, a Chabad run "college" from Michigan whose students rarely go on to four-year schools, and more often than not just use the school as a funnel for Pell Grants in order to allow them to attend seminary or yeshiva in Israel.
From what I know at this point, the program is perfectly legal. MJI is accredited by an accepted agency, and they accept transfer credits that can be used towards a degree. Also, MJI isn't the first educational institution with a very low success rate whose students get Federal money.
But it also stinks. For its troubles, MJI takes a hefty percentage of the Pell Grant money (as tuition for "courses" taken overseas - i.e. Israel), leaving it with a tidy profit. And the entire enterprise smells like a clever way to let yeshiva kids get government money for Torah learning while enriching Chabad of Michigan in the process. Moreover, I believe that the program itself only reinforces negative stereotype about Jews and Torah, and leaves the impression that when push comes to shove, the holy dollar trumps morals and ethics.
Does that then mean that MJI shouldn't have the program? After all, the program is legal. What's the difference between the Pell Grants MJI's students apply for (and receive), and the thousands of dollars that U.S. citizens receive in negative income tax here in Israel? That's legal too, (although Americans in Israel be warned: the IRS is auditing like crazy! I'm in the process, and it's no picnic.)  although one can be certain that the purpose of the tax rebates were to encourage economic development in the United States, and not in Israel. When the Washington Post runs a piece about the millions of dollars that Americans in Israel receive in tax refunds, and the closet industry that has sprung up in which native Israelis travel to America to get their kids naturalized for the sole purpose of receiving the tax rebate, that too will be a big chillul Hashem, even though it's legal.

A Society of Schnorrers - Tzedakah Part 2

Second in a series. (Part one here)

A moment ago, I heard a soft knock on the door - literally. You can pretty much tell who's at the door by the way that they knock. I opened the door to find two yeshiva bachurim collecting money for their yeshiva (one which I've never heard of and actually don't even remember the name of anymore). They had a sheepish look on their face - the one that says that they'd rather be anywhere else but asking me for money - and yet there they were, telling me that they're from "Yeshivat something something in Yerushalayim", collecting for a fund for "kollel families and needy students."
I smiled, and calmly explained to them that I prefer to focus my donations on the local yeshivot that we have here in the area. It's not a copout. I actually did write a check to a local yeshiva this week.
I'm sure this experience is not unique to me. If you're reading this blog, there's a strong chance that you've heard the same knock on your door, multiple times, to find young men standing there asking for money for their yeshivot. I'm not even sure how this custom developed, but it seems to have grown exponentially in recent years, with yeshivot sending their students out during the weeks before and after Purim collecting.
On one hand, yeshivot need money. They can't survive without donations, and running a yeshiva is really expensive. But this new phenomenon, of bachurim collecting for the yeshiva, bothers me for a very simple reason: we're training an entire generation of schnorrers.
Yesterday in shul, not one but two people asked for money at the end of davening. The first was a young man who said that he came from a large family (of 13 children), and that the family simply could not provide sufficient funds for his upcoming wedding. So he came collecting. I wondered: if he had an upcoming wedding and needed to pay for expenses to build his home, who gave him the right to sit in yeshiva and ask me to pay for his household? Why didn't he first assume that he should go out, get a job, do his best, and then ask me for help with his shortfall (which I would have been more open to)?
By sending our students out collecting for their yeshivot (and by extension, for themselves), we're training them to ask other people for money. We're giving them a head start on overcoming what should be a natural aversion to asking other people for help. We're teaching them that the best way to support yourself is to ask someone else to pay your way. And while these boys might very well be learning a lot of Torah in their yeshiva, this might be the most practical aspect of their education.
In the third brachah of Bircat Hamazon, we ask God for the following:

ונא אל תצריכינו, ה' אלקינו, לא לידי מתנת בשר ודם, ולא לידי הלואתם, כי אם לידך המלאה הפתוחה הקדושה והרחוה, שלא נבוש ולא נכלם לעולם ועד.

And please do not make us require, Hashem our God, neither the gifts of the hands of flesh and blood (other people), nor their loans; rather [supply us with the bounty of] Your full, open, holy, benevolent Hand - so that we never feel neither shamed nor debased.

Where is the obvious sense of shame and debasement that's so basic to human nature that it's part of the birkat hamazon?
I guess with enough practice you can get used to anything.

Teaching to Technology: Good for the Students?

We live in a culture infatuated with technology. Last week, it seemed that more people cared about Steve Jobs' launch of the iPad than President Obama's State of the Union address. Truth be told, the iPad is certainly more exciting and garners more interest, but therein lies the problem: do people really think that a new tablet computer is more important than the future of the United States moving forward? Or is it just more entertaining and interesting?
I ask this after reading an article in which Israel's Minister of Education declared that,

The school system is not keeping up with breakthroughs in technology, Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Tuesday.He argued that schools must adopt new teaching practices for the 21st century. “Nowadays, graduates of the school system live in a completely different world than the one we grew up in,” Sa’ar said, adding that we must make sure to teach them “21st-century skills.”

He then called for more money for Israel's education system, which is of course legitimate and in my mind correct. (What do you cut? Not sure - but that's not Saar's problem.) But the infatuation with technology makes me wonder: what do we want our children learning in school? How does he want technology to enter the classroom? In the frenzy to digitize our classrooms, maybe we need to take a step back and ask: Are the computers really teaching our children anything? An example:
My son (seventh grade) was assigned a project on England. In the "old days", I would have had to write a report, which would include a trip to the library, reading old encyclopedias, a book or two, some magazine microfiche. (Remember scrolling through old newspapers in the library? Ah, those were the days!) But at some point, I'd have to combine those three sources together into a coherent "report" while avoiding blatant plagiarism. Wasn't easy. Took a little bit of thinking, learning research skills, some organizational work, and a tad of effort in the writing. Boy, I hated those reports. My son's project was to put together a Power Point presentation. I must say, he's an absolute whiz at Power Point. It was a great-looking presentation. He knows Power Point better than I do. But he spent far more time with the "look and feel" of the report - getting the transitions right, downloading pictures, inserting the music for the English National anthem - than he did researching or writing. I'm not blaming him at all. He completed the assignment. But did he learn anything about organizing his thoughts, researching (now reduced to a Google search), thinking or organizing? Or was he so distracted by the "bells and whistles" that he learned a lot about Power Point, but little about England, and almost no greater thinking skills at all? The article continues,

Gila Ben-Hor, general secretary of the Center for Educational technology, called on the state to implement educational reform policies to prepare pupils for the changing demands wrought by advances in technology, and to ensure that they can compete with students from elsewhere in the developed world.
Ben-Hor presented figures from a poll compiled by the Center for Educational Technology in January 2010 that found 52% of Israeli students think that schools are not preparing them for the future, and that 82% would prefer a curriculum in which they are required to carry a laptop to class in lieu of textbooks. Students also said that schools should provide laptops to all teachers and students, with wireless Internet access and completely digital classrooms.

Really? What, pray tell, do we think these students will be doing with their laptops in the classroom? Researching mathematical formulas? Writing term papers? Or will they be doing what most college students do during lectures: surf the web, IM their friends, and check Facebook. From what I've seen thus far, it seems to me that school tech serves more as a distraction than a boon to learning.
Yes, we have reached the 21st Century. The iPad might be an amazing device. But Israel won't have the educated population it need to create the next iPad unless it leaves the iPads out of the classroom and the students learn in the best possible way: by teaching critical thinking skills, developing intellectual curiosity, and forcing our children to learn core material instead of exciting digital bells and whistles.
And the ideal way to do that is still by sticking to books.

Israel Media Phobia, and Some "Untruths" About the Gap Year

We all know the Israel-media phobia. When you tell a coworker that you're taking your vacation in Israel, they give you a wide-eyed stare, wondering if you've lost your mind. "You're going there? But it's so violent and dangerous."
There's really nothing to say, because you can't argue with what they've seen on CNN. How do you explain that, thank God, life in Israel is great: calm, serene - secure, sure - but nothing like what it seems like on TV.
Now it seems like the Gap Year in Israel will soon suffer from the same Israel-media phobia.

Poor post high-school year in Israel. It can't seem to catch a break. First a series of articles published by ATID on the nature of the education in many of these schools and the employment challenges faced by those who teach in them. At least those articles rang true, and raised real issues.
But now the Jewish Week has published an expose revealing the terrible truths of life for "many of our youth" during the gap year. Sadly, the article violates so many of the rules of responsible journalism that it's difficult to know where to start.

Jerusalem — It’s 2 a.m. in Israel’s holiest city. Do you know where your children are?
Probably not, if your kids are learning in one of the dozens of yearlong post-high school yeshiva or seminary programs in Israel, an increasingly frequent rite of passage in many Orthodox communities in the diaspora.
While some Israel-based “gap year” programs have strict guidelines about where their students can go during their free time, as well as curfews, others give their 17- to 20-year-old charges free rein to hang out wherever they please, even if it’s in Jerusalem’s bar district way past midnight.
“If my parents knew where I was right now, they wouldn’t have sent me to Israel,” a very drunk 17-year-old yeshiva student confides during a night out with his school buddies at “Crack Square,” a well-known downtown hangout for thousands of young Jerusalemites in search of a good time.
The teen, who says his father is “a very Orthodox” American rabbi, explains that his parents sent him to a mainstream Orthodox yeshiva “to get me back on the derech,” the Hebrew term for path. He spent part of the previous year in the States “drunk and high a lot.”
The rabbi’s son comes to Crack Square — a picturesque plaza on bustling Jaffa Road leading to a warren-like series of alleyways with dozens of bars — “a few nights a week,” where, he says, he throws back “six or seven drinks” a night.

I think we can all agree that this is not a good thing. But by using this element to introduce the piece, the author gives the impression - clearly intentionally, that this phenomenon appears across the spectrum of religious communities. Not true. It's quite clear that many yeshivish children come to Israel - or are deliberately sent here by their parents - to send them away from the house. Maybe they'll turn around in yeshiva. There are a number of chareidi yeshivot dedicated specifically to dealing with these types of children.
But the article then proceeds to discuss not chareidi yeshivot - but Modern Orthodox ones, specifically mentioning Sha'alvim, Hakotel, Kerem B'yavneh and others. How many modern Orthodox yeshivot in Israel are there for students with drug-related problems? I can't think of any.
The article then proceeds to list some of the challenges that young people may face during their gap year.

While only a small percentage of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 yeshiva and seminary (“Torani”) students spending their gap year before college in Israel frequent places like Crack Square on a regular basis, up to a third of them will face some type of potentially serious problem during their time abroad, according to the experts who counsel them.

First of all, what is that small percentage? Why doesn't the author tell us what it is? Does she know? If not, that's terrible reporting. And if she does know and doesn't tell us, it's because she's trying to make her article seem worse than it really is. Also terrible journalism.
Let's run the numbers. A third of a third of somewhere between two and three thousand - let's say 2,700 (to make the math easy) - which comes out to about three hundred kids. What are they struggling with?

Caryn Green, the director of Crossroads, a Jerusalem organization that assists troubled English-speaking youth, estimates that at any given time a significant percentage of yeshiva and seminary students are dealing with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, overwhelming religiosity (commonly referred to as “flipping out),” a crisis of religious faith or substance abuse.

I'm certainly not flippant about the problems that kids face during their year after high school. I consider eating disorders, depression (clinical) and substance abuse serious problem that require direct and immediate intervention. But what post high school student doesn't experience anxiety - especially when they're at a difficult crossroad in life, aware that the choices they make during this year can greatly influence the rest of their lives? Also, while parents - or the Jewish Week - might consider "overwhelming religiosity" a "problem", the kids who do flip out certainly don't feel that way. And what better place to deal with a crisis of religious faith than in the framework of a yeshiva or seminary dedicated to learning about faith?
First of all, I find the wholesale lumping of these issues - the clinical and the common - terribly unfair. Secondly, how many of these problems stem from the Israel programs, and how many of them existed before Israel? Sure, a good number of young women develop or arrive in Israel with eating disorders. But how many of them stemmed from home, imagery in Western society, or any number of other factors completely unrelated to the year in Israel?
Finally, the most damning aspect of the article is the conclusion: the year in Israel is a dangerous experience that must be reigned in.

“It’s the elephant in the room nobody’s talking about,” Poleyeff said bluntly. “It’s an uncomfortable issue that can involve the police. There have been drug busts.”

Please. Every school administrator at every school talks about and deals with these issues, for simple business reasons. Every school lives year to year. A bad autumn, with a simple incident (that every student knows about) leads instantaneously to a bad reputation that will harm next year's recruiting.
In that atmosphere, there's no better place for young Orthodox students to spend their year after high school. Does anyone seriously think that our kids would be better off skipping their year in Israel and spending the year in an American university? And what about the high schools themselves? Drinking problems? Parties? Pre-prom events? These don't happen at schools in Israel, but they do happen in many of the high schools from which they recruit.
Do I think that there are no problems with the Israel experience, and that there are no yeshiva students struggling with serious issues? Hardly.
But to write a suggestive article implying a danger that's just not there, using examples out of context to paint a pictures that's simply inaccurate hurts the very population the article claims to want to protect: the children who stay home out of fear due to Israel-media phobia, as a result of the puffed up imagery of irresponsible reporting.

The One Year Programs in Israel

ATID just released two anonymously written articles that address challenges inherent to the current one-year yeshiva and Seminary programs. For someone passionate about Jewish education and Torah learning (and also teaches here in Israel, and taught in the U.S.), I find the issues raised in them compelling and important.
You can find the articles here.

Sex-Ed in Jewish Schools

The New York Times featured this article about Rabbi Haskel Lookstein's ongoing sex-ed class at Ramaz that he calls, "Sex with the Rabbi". (Thanks to Hirhurim for pointing it out.)
While some might like to criticize, I applaud Rabbi Lookstein, although I'm not sure why the class merits a piece in the NYT. I also wonder whether the class would be better taught in a separate setting. Still, this class and others of its kind are a critical component for children growing up today.
During my last year in Detroit, I taught halachah to a small group of tenth grade boys once a week. After a couple of months of Hilchot Shabbat, I decided to study hilchot Issurei Bi'ah (forbidden sexual relationships) of the Rambam, specifically chapter 21, which deals with many of the issues young people struggle with as they grow: sexuality, prohibited behavior, marriage, objectification of women - it's all in there, really. (Needless to say, the change of subject addressed the lagging attendance issues.)
What emerged was clearly a necessary class: these kids have seen everything - or at least they think that they have. What they have not seen is a healthy sexual relationship - and that's because you're not supposed to see one. It's supposed to be private. But what they have seen - and I don't care how frum you are and what school you send your kids to - is the objectification of women, the value of sex as an act, not as a covenant, the expectation that every woman have a certain body size and type. The list goes on and on. And still schools cower from fear that they might "corrupt" the kids. The kids are already corrupted. What they need is a sense of balance that a Torah perspective on sexuality can give them.
So if your school has a class like this, thank your lucky stars. And if it doesn't, it should.

"What Did You Learn about the Parshah?"

A parent in my community recently sent out an email to the community listserve, complaining about many shortcomings he perceives in the local school. Among his complaints he noted that,

But we were tired of kids coming home every friday without knowing anything about the parsha

Truth be told, I don't agree with what he wrote about the school. We've had great experiences with our children at that school. But what bothers me here is how many if not most parents evaluate much of their children's religious education: through the d'var Torah they expect on the weekly parshah.
Schools spend very little time teaching Parshat Hashavua, for good reason. It's not in the curriculum. The weekly parshah has very little to do with the study of chumash, navi, halachah, or gemara. It doesn't build skills nor good study habits, and were schools to simply relate the information contained in the parshah, the children wouldn't really have something "good" to say. Sure, it's part of the Jewish cycle and an important part of the davening on Shabbat (notwithstanding the personal obligation to review the parshah each week), but it just doesn't fit into the framework of most schools. And yet, come Friday night parents around the world ask their children the question: what did you learn about the parshah this week? They act as if they spend all that money on their kids' education simply to hear a good vort after their chicken soup, knowing full well that the parshah really doesn't fit into the curriculum. Teachers know this, so they make sure to give the kids a good "vort" to repeat at the table, creating a ridiculous kind of circle: parents want to hear a dvar Torah at the table, so schools spend precious learning time giving children relatively meaningless divrei Torah for them to repeat, sacrificing important learning time in the process.
School isn't for my children to learn a good vort on the parshah. I want them to spend their time studying, working, reading, and focusing on skills. Moreover, our children aren't performers, and they don't really know how to give a d'var Torah. (How many parents do?) And yet, we judge their schools based on whether they come home with a parshah sheet to read at the table.
Our kids are not teachers. Instead of expecting them to teach us Torah, shouldn't we be the ones teaching them at the Shabbat table? And instead of asking our children what they learned about the parshah, why not ask them to take out their chumash and share what they're learning in their real chumash class - even if it's not this week's parshah? Our children will have something intelligent to share, and that's the best and only way to find out what they're really learning in school.

The Elephant in the Room 2: More Comments on College Campus Life

A commenter on the Jewish Star website responded to my article about attending college in America. I'll take his comments piece by piece and respond.

Attending a Jewish university may well have been the perfect decision for a Rabbi wishing to live in Israel.

First of all, let's set the record straight: When I attended college, I had no rabbinic aspirations whatsoever. I was actually interested in engineering, and figured that I would enroll in a joint program with Columbia University in that discipline. After attending YU, I changed my mind (I really didn't want to stop my Torah learning completely), and switched to Computer Science (in which I got my bachelors degree). When I finished college, I still wanted to continue learning (and had already enrolled in Semichah.) I still thought that I would end up working in the computer science field, and felt that a Ba'al Habayit with semichah can often influence communities in ways that even a rabbi cannot. (For that I can give credit to my father.) Only during semichah was I bitten by the rabbi "bug" and decided to enter the professional rabbinate. So none of my personal decisions to attend YU or study for semichah were related to a career decision. Rather, they emanated from a desire to continue my Torah education first and foremost, while I furthered my secular education.

However, for those of us who wish to build our lives and careers as Modern Orthodox Jews in America, or for that matter, anywhere else in the world, there can be no question that attending the best university that we are capable of opens doors and provides competitive advantage. Doing so at night or by commuting to school every day closes some of the most valuable doors that help transform children into adults – those related to social networking or extracurricular activities.

I strongly disagree with the assertion that you need to hang out in the college dorm in order to make the proper social bonds to succeed in your career and "get ahead." I just don't think it's true. Sure, if you're a member of "Skull and Bones" at Yale, that might get you a head-start on your presidential run, but do you really need to live on campus to write for the school paper, or participate in the economics society? Is it really necessary in order to get the "good job"?
Let's say that you learned at the Milwaukee yeshiva and attended the University of Wisconsin (which some yeshiva students have done). When you get to the interview, do you think that they're going to ask you about your favorite football tailgate party? The Wisconsin degree is strong enough on its own. Finally, most "good jobs" demand a graduate school degree. In grad school, no one lives on campus. Many students work and attend school, and even if they don't, they most often find housing near but not "on" campus. Those grad school connections are just fine to get into the most prestigious law firms. And to get into graduate school, you don't really need to have had a campus experience. Plenty of good yeshiva students (men and women) have gained admission to the most - the most - elite graduate schools in America with a BTL or a YU degree.
But his (rather weak) point raises a different question: let's assume that his incorrect assertion is actually correct, and that spending the four years on campus actually did open the doors to the inner sanctum of professional success. Would it be worth it? Would the benefits of those doors opening outweigh the spiritual challenges and dangers inherent in college campus life? I don't think so.

And YU is not the best of both worlds; it barely ranks in the Top 50 colleges, and Stern provides a worse education for women than that.

Hey, don't get me wrong, but top 50 is pretty good, if you ask me. A great number of liberal arts colleges would love to get into the top 50. More important is one of the main reasons that YU actually ranks so high: its students have very strong academic records, and consistently gain admission to the best graduate schools. In fact, I would argue that YU's placing in the rankings speak volumes about its success: YU could never compete with the course offerings and facilities of numerous colleges across the country. That's a function of the dual-curriculum, location, and many other factors. And yet, it still ranks in the top 50 every year. That's not bad.

One might ask why a competitive advantage is so necessary. The answer is the reason that we are MODERN Orthodox Jews – we want to live successfully in this world while observing Halachah, and, we’d like to provide funding for organizations such as the one for which Rabbi Spolter works.

Now he's starting to sound a little silly. You need to not only attend college in Penn, but live on campus so that you can get into the "good" businesses to make enough money to support Orot. Actually, I like that last part. We'd love to accept any donations you can send our way. But if you're looking to build a wildly successful business that will generate money to give to my workplace, maybe going to college isn't the best idea. The most successful businessman, in my experience, are not college graduates per se, but entrepreneurs who struck out on their own with passion, an idea, and a ridiculous amount of guts. Look at the Forbes 400 list: Bill Gates (dropout), Lawrence Ellison (dropped out of University of Chicago), the Waltons. The wealthiest members of my shul either made their money from a business they started, or inherited it from someone who did. (See the entire Walton/Walmart family). Perhaps one could argue that we put too much emphasis on going to college and working for someone else. What the Jewish community needs badly are precisely what we don't have enough of: gutsy, passionate business people with exciting ideas who are willing to take crazy enough risks to make it really big. And living on campus has no positive influence on those kinds of jobs. None at all.

Living as a Modern Orthodox Jews is complicated – we are often caught in a balancing act between what feels like two worlds. If we wish to teach our children to live as Modern Orthodox Jews in America (and not simply sitting in Kollel), we must teach them to be comfortable and strong in their beliefs. Where better for a test run than at college, where the stakes are low and they are surrounded by their peers? Rather than having to awkwardly explain to a boss and coworkers that you cannot order the shrimp on the menu, you could have already perfected your lines, explanation of Kashrut, and comfort during college.

Of course Modern Orthodoxy requires balance, trying to live between two worlds. But that doesn't mean immersing yourself in the center of hedonism and debauchery (the college campus) and expecting yourself to emerge unaffected. Campus life - the drinking, partying and sex, is one of the primary motivating elements driving many students' choices when picking a school. How then could a religious parent just shrug it off? "The stakes are low" in college? Sorry, but at that point in life, when students are young, prone to experimentation, and are in the process of forming their identity, the stakes are not low: they're at their highest. Instead of "perfecting their lines", too many Orthodox kids are accepting that drink, eating the shrimp, and abandoning Orthodoxy.

Rabbi Spolter’s article reeks of a slippery slope that ends in isolation. Yes, there is a chance that by crossing the street, one can get hit by a car, but the solution is not to live as hermits. Rather, we should teach our children to look both ways, decide when to walk and when to wait, and tread thoughtfully as strong individuals.

Like it or not, Judaism believes in a large degree of isolation. What are the laws of kashrut - especially the numerous rabbinic laws like pat akum, yayin nochri, gevinat akum and the like, if not blatant attempts to establish a line of separation between Jew and non-Jew? The eruv ensures that we live in our own communities; we send our children to private schools not just for the Jewish studies, but also to shield them from the influences of wider society. Of course we protect ourselves and our children. Not to do so would spell suicide for our way of life and the values we hold dear.
And yet, I agree that there must be a balance. College does have a great deal to offer in terms of the disciplines in academia, learning to develop a deeper mode of thought, and even just learning the skills of a needed trade. I have never advocated not studying in college. I went to one myself. What I reject is the need for our children to live at that college, to soak up the "college experience", and expose themselves to the negative spiritual influences so detrimental to their spiritual growth and identity.
That's not a slippery slope. It's falling off the deep end.

The Elephant in the Room: Some Troubling Truths

Your son is ecstatic. He just received a letter granting him admission to the summer program of his dreams; five weeks at the highly prestigious summer science learning program in Maine where he'll study with noted experts in physics and chemistry, areas of particular interest to him. You've been encouraging him to expand his horizons; taking him to scientific competitions and lectures for years, so you find his enthusiasm encouraging.
What about kashrut? Shabbat? Sure, it might be challenging for him to deal with religious observance over the summer. But that's what real life is about, isn't it? But then your rabbi (or blogger) confronts you with a troubling statistic: 25 percent of all Orthodox attendees to the summer program drop their Orthodoxy. Despite your skepticism, the rabbi/blogger shows you the surveys and it's true: one-quarter of all Orthodox camp participants abandon Orthodox practice.
Would you encourage your son to go? It's my blog so I can say it: I wouldn't. After spending so much time, effort, blood, sweat, tears and money on conveying the importance of Jewish life to my children, how could I risk it all on one summer - no matter how enriching it may be?
If you haven't realized it by now, I'm not writing about a summer program. No, I'm writing about attending secular college.
I'm reading a fascinating symposium published in a special issue of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah's Meorot Journal about Modern Orthodox education. In an important symposium, Rabbi Todd Berman writes about preparing students to thrive in non-Orthodox environments, specifically secular colleges. His essay focuses on important ways to mitigate the effects of the pressures to abandon religious life on campus, like:
1. Sending educators from high schools to visit kids on campus
2. Helping students form critical social bonds within the Orthodox groups on campus
3. Offering valuable courses both in high school and in Israel to help prepare them for college life
All of these represent good ways to help our kids retain their connection to Orthodoxy on the college campus. And yet, I wonder. Rabbi Berman himself states the numbing numbers:

"one-quarter of the students who come to college as Orthodox Jews…changed their denominational identity while at college," (Avi Chai Foundation, “Particularism in the University: Realities and Opportunities for Jewish Life on Campus,” Report, Jan. 2006)

That's right. One quarter. If twenty students graduated this past June from your local yeshiva high school and headed off to campus, five of them won't consider themselves Orthodox in four years - after a full twelve years of intensive Orthodox education. What causes this drop off? It's not the intellectual pressures, by and large. No, it's the social environment.

The campus culture, while ostensibly "celebrating pluralism," often lacks tolerance for what is seen as xenophobic tribalism. Orthodox students are sometimes made to feel odd for maintaining religious observance at the expense of partaking fully in the smorgasbord of cultural delicacies offered. However, both of these issues, while not insignificant, pale in comparison to the social pressures and realities of campus life. As one junior put it, "it is hard to be 'shomer negi`ah' when a girl sits down on your lap during orientation." From the promiscuous parties sponsored by the university to the open support of binge drinking, to the small things like the experience of living in an openly coed dormitory, students are made to feel, as one student told me, odd for not being sexually and socially active. A former student once remarked that just as the State of Israel lowered the red line on the Kinneret Sea, pretending that the water level had not yet declined to the danger zone, so do students redraw their own red lines, or even worse, forget why they were there in the first place. It is quite difficult to describe the tsunami of social-sexual pressure crashing down on the religiously oriented student. These social pressures, and not the academic or even the cultural, are the most difficult to withstand.

We often overlook this reality by telling ourselves that sooner or later our children will have to confront "real life." I'm sorry, but the college campus does not represent "real life. "In "real life", women don't sit down on men's laps. In a normal workplace, that would constitute an inappropriate sexual advance which would be addressed immediately. Binge drinking might happen after work hours, but no one forces you to join your coworkers at the bar. In "real life" you can choose your roommates and the values you wish to maintain in your home. Can you do that on campus? In "real life" Orthodox people have the ability to avoid many of these challenging situations - something they cannot do on the college campus, where the parties take place on your floor - and probably right in your room.
Still, we satisfy ourselves with platitudes: "no solution works for every student". "Yeshiva University isn't the answer for everyone". Of course that's true. But we then use those platitudes to justify sending our children to terribly dangerous spiritual situations. There's a world of difference between "perfect" - or a zero percent drop-off rate, and "exponentially better than twenty percent". Rabbi Berman writes,

Without a doubt, Yeshiva University remains for many a safe haven; yet more and more yeshiva high school graduates are bound for secular campuses.

I have a simple question: If a "save haven" exists, why do parents send "more and more" of their children to "unsafe" environments? In trying to offer solutions to a glaring problem, we're avoiding the elephant in the room, and failing to state the obvious: Secular residential college - any secular residential college - presents a serious and even mortal danger to our childrens' well-being. It's just not worth the risk.
Sadly, while many in Jewish education agree with me, no Modern Orthodox educator or administrator can actually say this. Parents would never tolerate an educator who, in their minds, discouraged his or her students from attending college (which they would not be doing; they would only be discouraging them from attending a residential college. Plenty of yeshiva students - both male and female - attend numerous secular colleges during the afternoons and evenings and seem to thrive both educationally and spiritually). Educators do not tell the truth for fear of losing their positions. Even Rabbi Berman seems to play this game.

It is incumbent upon the community to empower our students to succeed in the college environment. We can achieve this goal if we keep several issues in mind: the positive social networks in place in high school or Israeli yeshiva should be maintained through developing programs for our alumni, refocusing our expenditures of energy on what is happening on the campus, promoting key social networks in college, and being realistic about what we expect to accomplish.

Which is it? Can we achieve this goal of empowering our students to succeed in the college environment? What then does it mean for us to be "realistic about what we expect to accomplish"? What's a realistic drop-off rate for Orthodoxy? Fifteen percent? Ten percent?
It's time for Jewish educators to start speaking the truth: We cannot "achieve this goal." The college campus promotes values antithetical to Orthodox Jewish life. Those are simply the facts, and we permit ourselves to pretend otherwise at the expense of our children's spiritual well-being.
So I'll say it: Please do not send your child to a secular, residential college - even one with a strong Hillel and Orthodox community on campus. It's not worth the risk, and certainly not the benefits. The options truly abound. He or she can attend YU, or Lander - or even college in Israel; he can live at home or study in a yeshiva and attend college at night, and still gain admittance the most exclusive graduate schools in the world. Many, many Jewish kids have and continue to do just that.
And while the numbers aren't perfect, the vast majority of them still consider themselves Orthodox today.

Competition in Education Part 3: The Ethiopians in Petach Tikveh

The is the third post in an ongoing series on the effects of competition on Jewish education. The other two articles are:
Part 1: The New Program for Hesder Yeshivot
Part 2: The Hesder Yeshiva Recruiting Mess

Every year as September 1st rolls around, the Israeli press searches for a story to highlight the beginning of the school year. This year they didn't need to look very hard. The story jumped into their laps. It had a bit of racism, politics, and even an anti-religious streak. In essence, it was a perfect story for today's modern media. And they ran with it.
Here's what happened. When Ethiopians make aliyah they undergo conversion - לחומרא - "as a stringency." They do this because of the great debate about their Jewish lineage and the impossibility of ascertaining their Jewishness with any degree of certainly. In the process of conversion, they must commit to following the strictures of the Torah and sending their children to an Orthodox school - which the vast majority of them do. Here's where things get dicy.
This year, a group of Ethiopians from Petach Tikvah wanted to send their children to three "private" schools in that city. The schools, while agreeing to accept some of the children, did not agree to accept them all, insisting that the children did not meet their educational and religious requirements.
The Israeli public went, in a word, nuts. No less than the Prime Minister of Israel called this an example of "racism" and a kind of "terrorism" (a little much if you ask me). This act, in their words, violated a sacred trust of the Israeli public to accept immigrants from anywhere and integrate them into mainstream society. Under the red-hot lights of media scrutiny, the government threatened to withhold funding and actually shut down the three schools if they continued to refuse to accept these students. They finally reached a "compromise" where the schools basically caved. I would have caved too if someone threatened to shut down my school.
But what really happened here? After all, these are Religious Zionist Schools that have in the past educated many Ethiopian students, and did accept a good number of them for this year. Why, all of the sudden, did they make a stink, and find themselves in an impossible media storm that they could not anticipate?
The problem, as it turns out, has less to do with Ethiopians than the larger educational system. And unless things change fundamentally, the story about these Ethiopian students is just a harbinger of things to come.
Contrary to popular perception (outside of Israel), not all schools in Israel are "public" schools. There are huge systems of "private" schools that receive government funding. These "private" schools get a whopping 75% of their budget from the public system. Why does the government allow separate school systems to exists that cost it so much money? It probably has something to do with money. Someone a while back came to the government, cash-strapped as it always is and said, "I want to open a school for gifted students. If you let me open my own school, it will only cost you 75% of what it would normally cost you per student. The rest will come from the parents' pockets." Seeing a way to save a boatload of money, the government signed on.
But now the monster that the Israeli Department of Education created has come back to bite the system. What has emerged is a system of "haves" and "have-nots", where the public system must compete with private schools for students. The private schools are, of course, far more selective, and by definition cater to students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. And the difference in price is small enough that if a parent can afford it, he or she will pay the tuition to send her child to the "private" school.
This has led to a two-tiered system of schooling, with ever-increasing pressure on the private schools to consistently differentiate themselves from the public schools, and on the public system to maintain a level of excellence after being drained of its best students.
I feel this strain quite personally, even in Yad Binyamin, even in my own children's elementary schools. We send our kids to Breuer - a בית ספר ממלכתי דתי תורני - "a "Public Religious Torani school." It's not a regular public school. It's not even a religious public school. It's a Torani school, with extra hours and emphasis on religious instruction. (A parent in America only dreams of having the government provide this type of education.) But here in Yad Binyamin, for some parents it's not good enough. A local yeshiva with roots in Gush Katif moved to Yad Binyamin after the disengagement, and has been growing slowly ever since, transforming itself into not just a yeshiva, but an entire school system. Torat Chayim now boasts the main yeshiva, a women's Midrashah, a girls' elementary school, a boys' elementary school, a film school, a school for "Jewish counseling" and also girls' and boys' high schools. At one point, the system was really for students learning in the yeshiva and their children. But no longer. Parents from the yishuv with no real connection to the yeshiva who are looking for "more" - a greater focus on Torah learning and values, more hours of Torah instruction - have begun sending their children to Torat Chayim, as is their right. But this has created a subtle sort of pressure on other parents who "should" be sending their children to the "better" school, and even more importantly, has begun to empty Breuer of the more advanced children and even more observant children who would have otherwise rounded out the school's population. This eventually may force parents looking for a more advanced Judaic curriculum, or just friends who are passionate about their Judaism, to remove their children from the public school, as the public option lacks a critical mass of students necessary for a positive group dynamic.
What's happening in Yad Binyamin has happened across Israel. Public schools - even religious ones (Mamadim Datiim) find themselves emptied of their best students, left to try and do their best without the strongest parts of the population, who would have been their advanced students, role models and greatest products.
At the same time, the private schools have begun to compete with one another to attract these very same students. In a city like Petach Tikveh with a very large religious population, the competition is fierce, and can often focus on which school is "frummest". So the schools impose restrictions, some sensible (like what type of internet service you have in your home) and some silly (rabbis must have beards) to one-up their competition.
Into this context entered the Ethiopian children.
The Ethiopians by and large do not excel academically; they lag behind in their Hebrew language ability, and many do not rigorously follow the strictures of the Torah. A large enough group in a single school will undoubtedly band together, creating a separate stream within the context of the school. So these three "private" schools, while they agreed to take a limited number of children, were not willing to take such a substantial number that it would alter the focus and nature of the school.
They were wrong, but were in the end simply reacting to market forces. After all, if they get a name as a magnet for Ethiopian children, then parents will stop sending their children to these elite private schools.
And in the world of competitive education in which we live, that's a fate that must be avoided at almost any cost. No matter which immigrant gets hurt.

Competition in Education Part 2: The Recruiting Mess

In this post, I noted how the opening of a new four-year Hesder program was simply an attempt by the Hesder Yeshivot to compete with and take students from post-High school mechinah programs.
This weekend's Mekor Rishon featured an article titled "High School Seniors Feel Like Kids in a Candy Store." Not a good sign if you're trying to run and recruit for a serious yeshiva. (I have scanned the article, as Mekor Rishon does not allow for linking. Click on the article to see it in full size.)
Last week, approximately fifty representatives from high schools, Hesder yeshivot and other educational institutions gathered to try and find some way to help high school seniors make good decisions about where they'll plan on studying during the following year. Currently, there are 59 Hesder yeshivot, 15 Mechinot, 16 Yeshivot Gevohot (that are not connected to army service), and numerous other post-high school programs and other army/educational tracks. A high school administrator put it this way: there are about 180 school days during the year. If 100 yeshivot want to send a representative to the school, on the first day, the kids are willing to listen. On the tenth day, they're already heard it. By the twentieth day, they're falling asleep. Even more troubling is the damage that this causes to the standing of the Roshei Yeshivot, who find themselves pandering to students hoping to attract them to their yeshiva. How can a student truly respect a Rosh Yeshiva who needs to almost be that student to attend? Moreover, how is a student supposed to decide what yeshiva to attend? How can these yeshivot possibly differentiate themselves? Are there really 59 different and unique Hesder yeshivot?

According to the article, it has gotten so bad that one yeshiva actually offered potential students a jeep-tour to entice them to come visit the yeshiva - which doesn't really surprise me. At the end of the day, a yeshiva is a place to learn full-time, with hopefully good teachers who will be positive role-models and good educators. They can't all be that different. So how else are they supposed to attract students?
The group of educators did decide to hold a fair where all the yeshivot will set up booths and present their yeshiva to potential students. Which is fine, I guess. But I doubt that many of the students will leave the fair with any better sense of where they want to study than they did before the fair.
On a practical level, the high schools need to start giving formal Yeshiva guidance - very much like college and yeshiva guidance in America. They need to act as filters for the schools, so that they can at least give their students a sense of direction.
At the same time, there need to be fewer yeshivot. Does Israel really need 59 Hesder yeshivot? Would it be better for there to be 30, with each yeshiva having double the students? (In 1990 there were 15 Hesder yeshivot, 25 in 1995, 44 in 1999, and now 59. That's a pretty staggering growth rate. A little too staggering.)
Rabbis open yeshivot because they want to move up in the world. They've taught for a certain number of years, and now they want their own place. So they open a yeshiva, put out a shingle, and try and attract students.
And, as I've written before and will continue to write about in future posts, what attracts high school seniors is almost never the best education. High school seniors care about a lot of things, but not always which yeshiva will work them the hardest, be the most challenging, and make them the best person they can be.
Sometimes, all a high school senior really wants is a jeep ride. And with competition the way it is now (and not changing anytime soon), if anything, the future holds more recruiting jeep rides, and not less.

Parents or Peers? Who Plays a Greater Role?

Who would you think has greater influence on teens as they develop religiously: their parents or their peers? Most people would say that peers have the greatest influence on religious choices. Not true, says a noted Israeli educator.
In a recently published study by Dr. Shraga Fisherman of the Orot College of Education (full disclosure: I work at Orot, and know Dr. Fisherman. ) addressed the issue of religious influence on children.
In the end, parents have the greatest influence on their children's spiritual choices. In his survey of teenager boys he found that children in grade seven very much value their parents' wishes. As the kids got older, that level of importance declined, reaching a low at eleventh grade. But then, as the teens got even older, they once again gave greater weight to their parents' values, and by age twenty valued their parents' opinions almost as much as they had in seventh grade.
What did he take away from this survey? Dr. Fisherman concluded,

ולכן חשוב לא להתייאש ולהמשיך ולתת את הדעת על חינוך לזהות דתית גם בשלהי גיל ההתבגרות

Therefore, it's important not to give up, and to continue to express [parental] opinions in order to educate towards religious identity, even during the teenage years.

I have heard so many parents tell me that they're afraid of coming down too hard and driving their children away. This study carries great importance because it tells us that no matter what we do or say, our children naturally gravitate away from us during the middle high school years. As they search for a sense of inner guidance, they feel a need to rebel on some level, and find their own spiritual path. But they're still listening. And while during the difficult years of high school they may not always do what we say, they do want to know how we feel. So when they grow a little older and more self-confident, they have solid guidance on a direction to turn.
While our children may recoil from our opinions, it's probably what they most need - and even want to hear. If so, the worst thing parents can do is not say anything at all.

Competition in Education Part 1: The New Program at Hesder Yeshivot

Last month, the newspapers in Israel took note of a seemingly minor decision made by the heads of the Hesder yeshivot in Israel, to open a new four-year program that will now be available to Hesder students. Seems reasonable, and not really that big a deal. But the decision reflects a troubling trend in Jewish education that does not bode well for our children.
Regular soldiers serve three years mandatory service in the IDF. Hesder is the term for a type of yeshiva that allows Israeli men to combine Torah study with their military service. Hesder typically lasts five years, comprised to two years of Torah study, followed by two years of army service and then another year of learning. Mechinah (or mechinot) are preparatory schools, but most often refer to one year academies that many students attend to emotionally and spiritually prepare themselves for army service. Following the year in mechinah, men serve a regular army stint of three years.

While I would like to believe that Hesder yeshivot have decided to offer a shorter program to serve, as Rav Druckman said, the "many young men who do not have what it takes to be scholars, but who still want a very religious framework," the cynic in me sees things quite differently. Oh yes, in the Hebrew press (see page six on that link if you want to read the article) things sound just a little different.

מסלול זה נותן מענה לצורך שהיה קיים בנוף של גיוס בני ישיבות. בעקבות פתיחתו, אוכלוסייה שלמה של תלמידים שנרתעו בעבר מאורך המסלול או מתקופת הלימוד המשמעותית בישיבה, יוכלו להשתלב במסלול הסדר חדש שמותאם לצרכיהם", אומר מנכ"ל איגוד ישיבות ההסדר, איתן עוזרי

"This track answers a need that existed in the landscape of the draft of Yeshiva students; an entire population of students who were afraid in the past of the length of the program and the intensive period of study in the Yeshiva. Now they will be able to participate in a Hesder track that's appropriate to their needs," said the head of the Organization of Hesder Yeshivot, Eitan Ozeri.

What could be bad about more students learning in yeshivot? Sounds like a great thing, right? Let's read on.

עוד התברר בדיון כי בנוסף לכ 50- הישיבות החברות באיגוד, ממתינות שתי ישיבות הסדר נוספות לאישורו של משרד הביטחון, ועוד כ 10- ישיבות חדשות לאישורו של האיגוד. באיגוד אומרים כי ריבוי הישיבות החדשות שנפתחות מצביע על מגמה של הצטרפות אוכלוסיות חדשות לישיבות ההסדר, בעיקר בוגרי תיכונים דתיים. "עבור אותם מצטרפים חדשים שבעבר לא פנו לישיבות, מתאים גם המסלול החדש, בו שנות הלימוד בישיבה קצרות יותר".

It was also revealed during the discussion that in addition to the almost fifty yeshivot Hesder in the Iggud, two other yeshivot are waiting for approval of the Defense Department, and ten more [are waiting] for the approval of the Iggud. In the Iggud they say that the large number of new yeshivot opening indicates a trend of entire new populations joining the Hesder yeshivot - mainly graduates of religious yeshivot. "For these new students who in the past did not turn to the yeshivot this new track is appropriate - in which the number of years in the yeshiva are less."

So, to read between the lines, there are now fifty - and there will soon be sixty Hesder yeshivot dotting the landscape of Israel, in almost every city and town you can imagine. On one hand, it's great. But from a different perspective, it's not so great.
If you're graduating yeshiva high school and deciding what to do next, you would generally decide whether you wanted to spend three years in the army, four years in mechina + army, or five years in Hesder. It would seem to make sense that the more serious you are about your spirituality and your learning, the longer you'd be willing to commit towards Torah study. (Let's also not forget that for truly serious budding scholars, there's a program called Hesder Mercaz, where young men who study for up to ten years then serve about six months in the army.) So we're not dealing with the normal "future Roshei Yeshiva" of the world. Just frum, devoted high school graduates.
If you used to be the kind of student who really didn't think that Hesder was for you - you either didn't want to put in five years or couldn't learn for three full years - you went to a mechinah. But now you have another option. While you're still spending the full four years, now you don't have to do a full army stint, as you can spend two of those years learning. Don't get me wrong, but the option of trading a full year of army service for yeshiva seems enticing indeed.
And it's not just me saying it. The Jerusalem Post article says that,

Rabbi Shlomo Rosenfeld, head of the Shadmot Mechola Yeshiva in the Jordan Valley, said he was still debating whether to offer the four-year option. "There is the danger that guys with intellectual potential will choose an easier path. That would be a shame," he said. Rosenfeld said that over the years, as the number of hesder students has grown, there has been a larger proportion unable to sit and study for long periods. "There are a lot of good guys who are God-fearing and want to be in a religious environment, but who find the curriculum too demanding," he said."These guys will spend a little less time in the study hall and a little more time in the army." However, sources close to the Pre-military Yeshiva Academies, which combine a one-year preparatory course of Torah studies - that is sometimes expanded to two years - with a full three years of military service, voiced concern that the new four-year program might attract students who would otherwise have gone to the Pre-military academies. One source close to the academies said in response, "This new option will breed mediocrity. The guys won't learn properly and they also won't do full army service properly. I don't see the justification for shortening a religious guy's army service if he is not learning Torah seriously."

And there's the rub. How will this new influx of students affect the current atmosphere in the Beit Midrash of the normative Hesder yeshivot? Will the traditional Hesder student continue to spend five years in the yeshiva, when his classmates are finishing after four? After all, let's not forget that these young men put their lives on hold for yeshiva and army. They want to get married, get degrees, and get on with their lives? In five years and ten years, what percentage of the Hesder students will be studying the full five years?
This is just a single example of the watering down of education due to competition. More yeshivot open, causing each to clamor for students. New programs (mechinot) prove a threat to the old way of doing things. Ultimately, what suffers in the long run could very well be the quality of education across the board.
And then no one wins. Certainly not the Jewish people.

Should You Make Aliyah to Save Money?

To save money? Isn't it widely agreed that aliyah and Israel are big money pits, and that the best way to make a million dollars in Israel is to come with two? Not anymore, I guess.
In this Hirhurim post, Gil Student writes about the OU's recent initiative to address the growing tuition crisis. And a crisis it is, with skyrocketing costs and dwindling ranks of those able to pay full freight. The OU has a number of interesting suggestions which I don't want to address. But the discussion in the comments brought up the idea of aliyah as a possible solution to the problem.
A commenter named Eli Parosh writes,

There is, of course, a much more simple solution...
Move to Israel. Tuition and health insurance are much, much cheaper. 170 shekel a month for the top family plan health insurance. 13 shekel for medicines at the pharmacy. My $4,000 tution bill for private school for 4 children is quite funny when compared to its US equivalent and level of learning. In fact, I would venture to say that $30,000 a year here goes further than $200,000 in the U.S. (and that does not even include the ruchnius) Perhaps Hashem is forcing the geulah, and the OU is trying to come up with ways to say a dime with energy efficiency, to prevent it. it looks pretty sad...

This led to the following comment:

I want to add that I think that an Orthodox Jew making Aliyah solely for the purpose of solving the tuition crises is BAD. An Orthodox Jew should make Aliyah for a variety of reasons involving being mekayem mitzvat yishuv haaretz, educating one's children in the most full Jewish Torah environment one can live in today, and many many other reasons. (including solving Shmuly Boteach's lack of readily kosher food and restaurants problem that seems plague American Jewry today according to him....) see Rav Aron Lichtenstein's essay in the recent Orthodox Forum book for a good listing and discussion of the spiritual considerations to take into account.
If solving tuition is the sole raison detre of Aliyah than when the disposable income to tuition costs possibly goes out of whack in Israel people will leave if they haven't absorbed all of the other reasons to live in E"Y.

I really could not disagree more, both practically and ideologically.
From a practical standpoint, making aliyah because of the tuition crisis is really an articulation of values. It means that sending our children to day school is so critical for their well-being, that we're willing to transport ourselves to another country, culture, etc - simply to ensure that they continue to enjoy and benefit from that education. Moreover, for all the challenges and complaints that parents have with schools here, the amazing choice and quality of Jewish education astounds me.
But making aliyah to save money seems like a sound ideological choice as well. A well-known principle in Judaism teaches us that, מתוך שלא לשמה בא לשמה - "out of performance of a commandment not for its own sake, one will come to perform it for its own sake." Put simply, when someone performs a mitzvah for the wrong reason, he will eventually perform that same mitzvah for the right reasons. Of course God would want you to do it for the right reasons. But He'll take what he can get. And if you can't bring yourself to make aliyah out of a Zionistic fervor for the mitzvah of yishuv eretz yisrael, day school tuition will do just fine.
In reality, somehow we've come to think - and allow our children to think as well - that mitzvot have to have meaning and "speak" to us in order to follow them. My wife has discussions all the time with students who tell her that they struggle with some mitzvah or another because they don't "relate" to it, or "get" it. The answer is pretty straightforward: sure, we'd love it if you identified with every mitzvah, and performed each and every one from a position of understanding, love and devotion to God. But that's not realistic. Not every person is going to love every mitzvah. Many are quite hard. They can make life difficult. But that's why we call them mitzvot - commandments. God doesn't ask us to fulfill them if we feel like it and identify with them. He commands us. Our job is to follow His commandments. If we can arrive at the point where we appreciate the beauty of each commandment, all the better. But if not, that in no way absolves us from their observance.
So if you're considering aliyah to save money on your tuition - great! You'll save a boatload of money. Our tuition this past year for three children in grade school and one in nursery was something in the range of 2,000 shekel - $500. (You'll make much less too, but it might just even out in the end.)
But at least you'll be here. And with aliyah, that by far, is the hardest part.

Visiting Poland and other Fun Places

In recent years, it has become fashionable for students to travel during their year in Israel (either before Pesach or at the end of the year) to Poland, to visit some of the more notorious sites of the Holocaust where the Nazis perpetrated their horrible, evil plans. On some level, this is a good thing. After all, shouldn't our children see firsthand the terrible suffering that Jews endured not so long ago? In addition, I feel that programs like "March of the Living" can be very important for unaffiliated or disenfranchised Jewish kids who need something tangible to wake them up and get them involved in Jewish life. If the Holocaust can't do it, then what can?
On the other hand, what about for frum kids? I state at the outset that I have never been on a heritage-type trip, so I have no personal knowledge of these types of experiences.

But I can't help feeling that many of these Holocaust Poland trips fall into the growing list of edu-tainment experiences that have become part of the process of growing up in America. For the kids, it's less about learning and feeling the Holocaust and growing in some way, than having the experience. They relate to Poland as some type of morbid theme park - a great big Death Adventure. Of course it's serious and directled and properly led. But it's about having been there and seen it in person.
This post was prompted by a comment next to a YouTube video of the ending of Sha'alvim's recent trip to Poland. (As an alumnus, I'm on their email list, which sent me the link to the video.) The video is of the kids who, having just returned from Poland meet Yonatan Razel (well-known musician) who sings with them at 4am in the airport. Which is fine. But what got me is the comment on the side of the video.

As R' Hendler שליט"א said on Shobbos, "You Never Know." We were waiting and waiting for that special thing to happen to wrap up our trip in poland, and סוף כל סוף it did. We had the most amazing ku...

Let me understand. You just spent the last few days in Poland traveling from town to town learning about destroyed comunities. You walked through death camps and gas chambers, and the most amazing "special thing" that happened on the trip was the kumzitz that you had in the airport as you returned to Israel? Am I missing something?
These trips also point to the fact that education has begun to focus far more on experience than knowlege or skills. Schools have become academies of fun, first and foremost. How many schools now offer "color war"? Didn't that used to happen only in camp? How many periods a week are students out of class for "special programs?" How many Shabbatonim, ski trips, skill-building and other non-classically educational experiences do our students now have?
We want our children to have good memories, enjoy their time, and of course learn something. But we have come to place more stock in the educational value of "experience" (which can be powerful, but fleeting) than we have in the business of hard work; poring over books and struggling with challenges.
And I'm not sure that our children have become better Jews for it.
I wonder: how many students who went on a trip to Poland attended a Yom Hashoah event the next year?