Pew Centre result on Jewish education grossly skewed

Errol Horwitz, Cape Town

According to the study the least educated Jewish population is in South Africa where only 29 per cent have higher education compared to three per cent of the total population. 

What the study does not take into account is the fact that the total population mostly comprise millions of the poor, who are shackled to a hugely inferior government school educational system.  

The comparison is grossly unfair in light of Jewish community commitment and support to its Jewish population in providing good education through its private schools. If anything, one would have expected an increase far above a paltry 29 per cent. 

The low rate, according to the study, is also attributable to the growth of the Orthodox Jewish population in South Africa and elsewhere. Higher education for this segment of the population is apparently a non-starter.

Imagine the extraordinary contributions to Jewish achievement if Orthodox observant young men were free to pursue secular studies in partnership with religious studies. At best a fanciful notion in the scheme of things.

Many of us will recall the almost religious fervour our elders exuded in prioritising education above all else. It was a singular mission, and for the most part, willingly implemented by the next generation. 

This approach was consistent with the value of education strongly embedded in Jewish culture. The value of education was immortalised in the old joke: Q: When does a Jewish foetus become viable? A: when it graduates from medical school. 

Does the lower rate of higher education among South Africa’s Jewish population mean the loss of intellectual appetite for education as a value? 

For centuries Jews have been known as “People of the Book”. Not the remaining 71 per cent of South Africa’s Jewish population who appear to have dispensed with the need for higher education. 

South Africa’s Jewish population is not immune from obsessing with social media such as Twitter which has eviscerated literacy skills – a pervasive counterculture that flies in the face of education’s role in Jewish culture.  

Instant gratification from electronic media has replaced the very idea of intellectual struggle.  Simply look around Jewish homes today that seem to have no books – an intimation of the failure to appreciate what was to be learned from centuries of Jewish learning – the crucible of how we Jews came to value education in the first place. 

It is now sadly lacking among a significant percentage of South Africa’s Jewish population unparalleled in earlier generations. 

South African Jews must value education more, for its own sake, and for the sake of continuing momentous Jewish intellectual contributions to mankind.