DR IVOR BLUMENTHAL

OPINION

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In the view of this leading rabbinical scholar, there was no place for a Jewish child anywhere other than in a schooling institution reflective of our community, our value system, our religious ethos and our practices.

The implication was that he wanted to see Jewish children pulled out of the public schooling system, and that cheder and other services offered at those schools, be discontinued.

My contrary view was that there’s a place in society for Jewish children to be schooled in the public sector and in the secular environment.

Not all Jewish learners should automatically have to find themselves in Jewish day schools and sometimes children from our community thrive in a more varied, less religious, secular environment where there is more of a different balance of sporting, academic and cultural matters.  

Must be economically sustainable

I always considered this argument to have been more about numbers and money and far less about the interests of the community and the future of these children and their families.

My opinion remains that to continue as viable businesses, many of our Jewish day schools need a critical mass of full fee-paying learners. We have so many of these schools operating in Johannesburg that there is no way, in my view that they are economically sustainable.

So, instead of recognising the financial plight many Jewish families find themselves in, those families were given little option: Withdraw the support services to non-Jewish schools; starve those children of Jewish community, identity and religious and social insight and activities unless in Jewish day schools and parents would have no choice but to look to those schools for the education of their children. They would find the money, even if the pursuit took them into unmanageable debt.

I have found these attempts at social engineering interesting in that while these schools have opened their registrations up to full fee-paying families, little has been done to effect the integration of children from these families into these Jewish day schools.

Instead, especially in those, which are extremely religious, parents and their children are tolerated for their fees. However, these parents who are really outsiders, cannot expect to have a say in the running of the school and certainly cannot expect their child to be welcomed socially into the inner sanctum of these community networks.

Narrow-minded leaders made us worse off

Today, some 15 years later where that rabbi seemingly managed to have his way and where very few Jewish children are enrolled outside of our ghetto, I honestly cannot believe that we are any better off as a community than when decades ago there was a fairer and more equitable distribution of Jewish children between the public and private schooling sector, let alone between the Jewish day schools versus the “others”.

I believe in fact that due to this insular strategy adopted by a handful of outspoken but very narrow-minded leaders, we are worse off today as a Jewish community.

Our children are, I believe, less integrated. They understand the greater community less. They are naïve to anything other than those values which we represent as the Jewish community.

For their part, the secular community understands, appreciates and respects far less these people called “Jews”, than it ever has before. There is basically far less contact between Jews and people from other religions.

Stereotypes and fundamental misconceptions abound more today than in the last half century. The world has moved away in South Africa from the Jewish community.

They are disinterested in our assertion of our Jewish identity. They are far more open to the advocacy of anti-Jew and ant-Israel protagonists, spearheaded by the BDS movement in this country and around the world, than they are in the Zionist cause. This reality has been brought about partially by ourselves and our insular strategy which has backfired.

What makes matters worse, however, is far more serious in my opinion. The motives, noble as they possibly may have been, in protesting for Jewish children to be moved exclusively into the Jewish schooling system, were exceptionally misdirected.

The hope that through this action, Jewish observance would be strengthened among the traditionally secular and irreverent Jew, has proved unfulfilled. The hope that through this action assimilation would be curbed, proved unfounded in that social and even familial assimilation is on the increase in this country and not on the decrease.

Excellent Jewish day schools dumbed-down 

Our Jewish day schools suffer in part from what appears to be group dependence on the lowest common denominator, very often at a level of representing very little of meaning and impact to anyone. 

There is very little that is aspirational towards Jewish religious observance or practices. It may be argued that there appears at times to be diffused responsibility in the pursuit of excellence, often even in religious learning, a higher secular content academically than ever before and far less sustained Zionistic zeal than is conducive to a proud and vibrant community such as ours.  

What this strategy has in fact done in the active, strong and generally excellent Jewish day schools, is dumb-down the pro-Jewish culture and sometimes even the averages and transform those schools into institutions trying to be everything to everyone and in so doing standing for nothing – not even Jewish identity.

What solutions are available to us as a community? Firstly I believe we need to rationalise the number of shtetl schools which are popping up and proliferating within our suburbs. This is simply unaffordable. It is a strategy which leads to donor fatigue, splits our society and achieves very little except to stroke egos.

Secondly, we need to work as a community with that handful of public schools which are receptive to partnerships which allow for the reintroduction of cheders and activities facilitated by Jewish youth organisations and are prepared to respect our Jewish calendar.

Then we need to advocate to families in our community that they have a choice, which includes these public schools. We need to actively convince parents that we embrace diversity and do not seek automatant conformity. This requires a massive culture shift.

To do any of this takes political courage. We need, as the Jewish community, to ask ourselves whether we have such courage in what has become a personality-driven autocracy.

• Dr Blumenthal is the former CEO of Services Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA). and is currently a business consultant and radio host on Radio Today.
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