Thou Shalt Organize

I have never been to the General Assembly, not to the organization of about one-hundred and fifty nation-states that is a key component of the United Nations, and not to the General Assembly that is the itinerant annual mega-conference for about one-hundred and fifty Jewish Federations. For a time in the 1960s, I was indirectly involved in the first of these GAs when I served on a voluntary basis as the representative of the American Civil Liberties Union which had non-governmental status at the UN in connection with efforts to promote the genocide and other human rights treaties.

Our GA is sponsored by the Jewish Federations of North America which is the new name for what had been called United Jewish Communities, which in turn was the replacement name for the Council of Jewish Federations. As I wrote when UJC came into usage, religious Jews have the custom of changing the name of a gravely ill person in the hope that this will stave off the Angel of Death and what the Federations were doing seemed to be a similar exercise. Alas, our communal patient has continued to deteriorate and it is doubtful that meaningful benefits will result from the latest name change, except perhaps for the sign-makers.

What may make a difference is the arrival of Jerry Silverman as chief executive. He is talented and creative and did wonders at the Foundation for Jewish Camping as he convinced major donors that camping is a high philanthropic priority, this for an activity that with a straight face defines as “non-profit” camps that may charge $8,000 or more per child for the summer.

Irrespective of Mr. Silverman’s impact, a key question is whether we need an umbrella agency for the Federation network. A more basic question is whether we need the Federation system as it has developed over the past century. Of course, the most fundamental question of all is whether we need all of our organizations. We have, by far, far many more organizations than any American ethnic group, including those that are far larger than we are. If we cannot figure out how to commit organicide, can we at least figure out how to stop constantly adding to the number? Excluding schools, shuls and actual services, the aggregate cost of our organizational infrastructure is beyond enormous.

The short answer to these questions is that we need our organizations. They are our comforters, our security blankets. It is as if we have an Eleventh Commandment – and for some secular Jews it may be the First – declaring, “Thou Shalt Organize.” This is a fundamental tenet of our civil religion and, as a matter of faith, it is not to be questioned. In the 1950s, we commissioned Robert McIver, the eminent sociologist, to examine our communal life and in his report, now long forgotten, he said that we had too many organizations and recommended consolidation. Nowadays, even as our organizational ranks have swelled, we question no longer. We are true believers.

If there is any functionality to our fetish with organizations it is that the arrangement provides numerous connecting points to Jewish life, including Israel, for a great number of Jews who otherwise might be distant from our community. This is not an unimportant consideration, yet it can only carry us so far. One cost of the arrangement is that it elevates service to the organization as a form of voluntarism over service to individuals and the community.

There is much evidence that younger Jews, by which I mean persons below the age of forty, pay little attention to the organizations that have served as magnets for their grandparents and parents. The Federation concept is in its second century and it is not necessary to catalogue the communal, societal, technological, behavioral and attitudinal changes that have made for most of us, excluding the Orthodox, the world of our fathers not the world that we are part of.

If the Jewish Federations of North America is here to stay, the challenge facing Jerry Silverman is to bring about significant changes so that its General Assembly is not merely, in the trite formulation employed last week by Gary Rosenblatt, considered by many as “the premier Jewish communal event on the calendar” and “a kind of parliament of the organized Jewish community.” Attendance at the GA is primarily the outcome of the attendees overwhelmingly being on the communal dole.

To go forward, it is necessary to return to the past. At the recent GA, day school education was, at most, a secondary topic of concern. Forty years ago, as Gary Rosenblatt noted, Yitz Greenberg led a demonstration at the plenary session demanding greater funding for day school education. Day school education may no longer be controversial but that is because in the mindset of Jewish Federations of North America, it is too inconsequential an activity to merit controversy.

All told, our organizational life is saddled with too much complacency, too much of a willingness to reward the company men and women who toe the line, dutifully attending this or that meaningless event without daring to explore new territory or new ideas. That is why for more the relatively small number of American Jews who make a meaningful difference in Jewish life, our General Assembly is not a significant event on the communal calendar. For them, our General Assembly merits no more than scant attention. This attitude resembles in a way the attitude that many American Jews have about the other General Assembly that is located adjacent to the East River in Manhattan.

Throwing Stones at Goldstone

Richard Goldstone and his already infamous report eat at our kishkes. We call him names, presumably all fitting, and give his document no quarter. We believe that the report proves that Israel was right not to cooperate with the biased investigation that he led and Israel and Jews everywhere are right to denounce the biased document that has been issued.

This does not end the matter. Goldstone remains active, although apparently clueless as to why we are so agitated, and he is eager to respond to criticism and determined to see that the severe charges against Israel continue to be in the public eye. In this he is abetted and comforted by the Arab states and the nations across the globe that have made Israel-bashing an element of their foreign policy. Israel advocates mistakenly believe that condemning the report will make it go away.

We scored a victory, albeit of the famous variety, in getting the House of Representatives to declare in a solemn resolution that the report is “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.” The text includes thirty-two “whereas” clauses, not one of which expresses sorrow over civilian deaths, an omission that may be justified on grounds of pertinence but surely not on public relations grounds. Interestingly, thirty-six members of the House – they aren’t the thirty-six righteous – voted against and about five dozen more did not vote.

Whatever the vote or the text, Goldstone isn’t going away and he isn’t cowed. No sooner was the ink dry on the resolution than he fired off a letter correcting “factual errors.” Throwing stones at Goldstone may make us feel better by showing once more that we care intensely about Israel. It will not change any reality.

Historians will consider whether it was wise or right for Israel to go into Gaza and whether the apparent severity of the campaign was justified by the results. What is past is beyond change, as is the question of whether Israel should have cooperated or interacted with the Goldstone commission. What remains in the public arena is the issue of Israeli and Jewish response to the report. Treating it like the plague will not accomplish very much.

A response is in order and there is plenty to challenge. Moshe Halbertal, the noted Israeli philosopher who teaches at Hebrew University and from time to time at major U.S. universities, has a terrific piece in the current The New Republic in which he effectively cuts the feet out from under many of the report’s sharpest findings against Israel, showing how they are at once prejudiced and foolish in their glaring failure to consider the combat situations under which Israel operated. Halbertal concludes, “The Goldstone Report as a whole is a terrible document. It is biased and unfair. It offers no help in sorting out the real issues.”

Yet, in the final paragraph Halbertal writes, “It is important that Israel respond to the U.N. report by clarifying the principles that it operated upon in Gaza, thus exposing the limits and the prejudices of the report. A mere denunciation of the report will not suffice. Israel must establish an independent investigation into the concrete allegations that the report makes.”

This isn’t the path likely to be taken by Prime Minister Netenyahu and his government or by ardent Israel advocates on these shores and elsewhere in the Diaspora. It is comforting to condemn Goldstone, the U.N. and other Israel critics and we who care deeply about Israel regard it as a sign of weakness to offer detailed rebuttals.

Apart from the strategy not working, including among a good number of younger Jews who have already distanced themselves from Israel, the problem is that almost certainly Israel has been investigating certain of the report’s specific allegations and it did not need any prompting to do so. This is what democracies do (or should do) after hostilities, if only because it is necessary to learn from mistakes and also to determine whether there were violations of the code of military practice. War inevitably brings a multitude of horrors, including those arising from faulty intelligence, faulty armaments, friendly fire, confusion during battle, psychological breakdowns and much else. Post-conflict investigation is routine and this has been true of Israel’s wars; doubtlessly, Gaza is no exception.

For all of its bizarreness and failure to consider context, the report’s major recommendation amounts to the request that the countries or entities that are the target of accusations undertake independent investigations. There is understandably a strong temptation to defy this recommendation on the ground that to investigate now would give legitimacy to Goldstone and his colleagues. This is wrong. Halbertal writes, “It was a mistake on Israel’s part not to participate in the inquiry,” and while he adds that “After reading the report, I am more sympathetic to Israel’s reluctance,” it is clear that he believes participation would have been the better course. It would be a mistake for Israel not to launch an independent investigation.

True, an investigation probably will result in some nasty revelations regarding, I believe, limited wrongful behavior. The greater likelihood by far will be a better understanding of the conditions under which Israel’s military operated as Hamas obliterated the distinction between soldiers and civilians, constantly using the latter as human shields for its terrorist activities. There are no guarantees and there is an element of risk. Yet, this is a risk that needs to be taken.

Right About Birthright

Birthright Israel was born a decade ago as an act of near desperation. Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman recognized that the bad statistics and news about American Jewish identity and commitment were real and that all the expensive press agentry and programming of our establishment would bring scant improvement. They grasped at the straw of a free brief trip to Israel not because they thought that it would be a miracle worker but because they believed that it had the prospect to do some good and there was no equally good idea on the horizon. They found partners in the Israel government and the Jewish Agency which feared that Judaic abandonment by American Jews would be severely detrimental to the Jewish State.

When asked at the time by the American Jewish Congress to assess Birthright’s prospects, I wrote an article for its monthly magazine suggesting that if the initiative was not oversold, it likely would bring about meaningful benefits.

Ten years later, it is clear that Birthright was a good idea whose time had come. It is, in the term used by the people at Brandeis who have just issued a major report, not a “panacea.” The crisis of identity among American young Jews remains real and in many respects the situation is worse than it was in 1999. Our losses continue and ultimately this will be recognized, yet it is also the case that Birthright has in a meaningful way connected many young Jews with vital elements of their heritage.

The Birthright research was conducted at Brandeis’ Cohen Center which has emerged as the premier institute for the study of American Jewish demography. In earlier studies, Cohen had given Birthright high marks and this was challenged on several grounds, mainly whether the experience was translated into meaningful attitudinal and behavioral change. The new report is exquisite as it seeks to steer readers through technical exercises. This is a painstaking and honest effort to study a complex subject and the authors of the report carefully detail the limitations of the research conducted so far on Birthright.

The report was discussed at length last week in Gary Rosenblatt’s excellent article and there is no need to retrace the story, except to take mild issue with the heading, “Birthright Study Offers Mixed Bag of Results.” The findings are, in the aggregate, positive.

Not that they cannot be questioned. For all of the care taken by Len Saxe and his brilliant team to get it right, Jewish demography remains imprecise, witness the constant and substantial disagreements over how many American Jews there are, as well as what they believe and how they behave. Witness, as well, the sharp debate over intermarriage. If I can borrow from Roger Maris breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record, perhaps an asterisk should be appended to our quantitative studies declaring that this is what we come up with the methodology that has been employed.

Our population studies rely on what is referred to as weighting, meaning that the responses given by participants in the research are not treated equally, with some being given more weight and some less. This process inevitably relies heavily on what the researchers already believe to be the case, so that to an extent what the new research finds is the confirmation of assumptions that are being made, as well as previous research.

What has received the greatest attention, including the Wall Street Journal which messed up regarding the Orthodox, is the statistic that Birthrighters are significantly more likely to marry Jews than young adults of similar background in the control group who applied for the trip but were not selected. This finding is tentative because the early Birthright cohorts were more Jewishly involved than the more recent groups and also because relatively few in the control group have married. More will be learned about marital choice and other behaviors down the road as the plan is to continue to track the earlier groups and to engage in additional research on the later cohorts.

Although the intermarriage finding is presented as a positive, as it should be, curiously, in other research the Brandeis folks are suggesting that marrying out does not result in a reduced commitment to Israel, nor is it a Jewish demographic time bomb.

Whatever the impact of Birthright on intermarriage, intermarriage is having, perhaps inevitably, a large impact on Birthright. As has been reported, the program is now making a deliberate effort to attract the offspring of intermarried parents. Beyond this, except for the Orthodox, American Jewry has been enormously affected by assimilatory forces, the decisive trend being away from religious involvement toward secular activities and attitudes. Birthright is not exempt. There are indications that unlike the early years, the ten-day program is veering away from activities that focus significantly on religious dimensions toward those that are more secular and that as a consequence of this change, a number of trip providers are being pushed out. The point was made to me during the summer while I was in Israel by the head of an organization that for more than two decades has done effective outreach.

The Brandeis report acknowledges that “future analyses of subsequent cohorts, which were larger and had a higher proportion of applicants with intermarried parents, will allow for a more robust analysis of this phenomenon.” The authors suggest, however, that because recent cohorts “included larger proportions of less engaged participants than those examined in the present study, it is possible that future research will show an even larger impact.” This may turn out to be wishful thinking.

Much will depend on the effectiveness of follow-up programming for Birthright participants, a subject not covered in the report. For now, there is much to celebrate in Birthright’s achievements.

RJJ Newsletter - November 2009

In the recent period, I raised funds for two causes, apart from my RJJ fundraising. The results are telling. In the first situation, I played a key role assisting the family of a chassidic rabbi who died suddenly in his forties, leaving a wife and ten children, the youngest just months old. I placed an ad in the Jewish Press and the readers were asked to send contributions to my home. The second effort was on behalf of Beth Jacob of Borough Park, a school with more than 2,000 girls that was far behind in payroll. I wrote an article for Hamodia, a newspaper that is widely read in much of the Orthodox community, and, here too, asked that contributions be sent to my home.

The first campaign brought in a torrent of donations, at least ten-thousand dollars a week for many weeks, until I left for Israel in mid-July. The Beth Jacob effort brought in less than a trickle, this for a huge school that has achieved so much and is caring about students from poor homes or with special needs. The message was clear: In tzeddakah allocations, by a huge margin chesed has priority over chinuch. That which tugs at our heartstrings merits support. That which does not is not deserving of assistance.

In an important way, this is understandable. In much of what we do we are guided by our emotions and that which packs an emotional punch has a far greater capacity to loosen the purse-strings than that which does not. We are, in this respect, quite a bit like the secular Jews whose charity is devoted primarily to Federation causes. We used to criticize Federations for neglecting Torah education. Perhaps we should look in the mirror.

I make no apology for helping the chassidic family in need. However, I feel somewhat uncomfortable about this effort in view of the meager response to the Beth Jacob appeal. More than a half-century ago, I heard directly from the great Rosh Yeshiva of Lakewood that in allocating tzeddakah, two-thirds of what is given should go towards the support of chinuch because Torah education is both essential to our survival as a people and the foundation for the chesed that we do. Years later, I listened to the tape of a shiur given by Rav Soloveitchik in which he said much the same thing and the lesson was also taught to me by my beloved Rav, Rabbi Yisroel Perkowski.

In the post-Holocaust years when we were led by outstanding people of great scholarship and great personal qualities, invariably that is the message that was given as they worked to create a vibrant Torah community on these shores. They certainly cared about Jews in need and yet we did not receive from them a stream of letters beseeching our support for chesed causes. Their fundraising almost exclusively centered around support for yeshivas and Beth Jacobs, whether here or in Israel.

In the article on the Borough Park Beth Jacob, I quoted from a letter written by the Chazon Ish in 1947, a period of great deprivation in what was still Palestine. He pleaded for support for the Beth Jacob school, writing that because all species were created in both male and female form, Torah education could not exist unless it, too, encompassed both genders.

There is a neglected chesed dimension when we neglect our schools in allocating tzeddakah. At a typical yeshiva or Beth Jacob, probably about eighty percent of the budget goes toward payroll. The teachers in our schools are nearly all underpaid, at times severely, and many of them are not paid on time. These are people with family responsibilities. When we do not assist schools that are struggling to meet their obligations, one unhappy by-product is the harm caused to families and staff who cannot meet their own obligations.

Even in the best of times, our chinuch institutions face an uphill financial road. As the economy nosedived during the past year, inevitably these institutions bore an inordinate part of the burden as contributions declined severely and as more parents said that they needed financial assistance. The bad news is everywhere, with schools that have been chronically late in payroll becoming later still. A number of day schools are reporting that children have been transferred to public school because they are tuition-free.

The outlook for the rest of the still young school year is not promising. At RJJ, there has been a stunning decline in contributions since April, with the drop amounting to about fifty percent in the crucial period from early September through the Yomim Tovim.

There is no quick fix, not for us or other schools. What is needed is a change in attitude that results in greater communal and individual support of Torah education. As experience amply teaches, attitudinal change is never a quick or easy process. The effort to bring about change is largely the responsibility of Roshei Yeshiva and other religious leaders. Without their advocacy and effort, there is no prospect for improvement. For too long they have inadvertently encouraged the notion that chesed trumps chinuch in tzeddakah, as is evident from the fundraising they do on behalf of chesed causes. They do not see fundraising for basic Torah education as part of their core responsibilities, except, of course, for the yeshivas in which they are directly involved. In this key respect, they depart from the lesson taught by the great Rosh Yeshiva of Lakewood. More unfortunately, over the years they have given credence to the view that the funding of our schools is primarily a parental and not a communal responsibility.

I have challenged this attitude for more than two decades, not because I believe that parents can shirk their obligation to pay a fair amount, but because I know that the
economics of Orthodox life result in a large number of families that do not have the means to pay full tuition and, often, anything close to full tuition. There are, admittedly, tuition cheats who know how to play the system. There are far more families that act fairly.

The Rabbinical Board of Torah Umesorah recently issued a strong statement calling for support of yeshivas and Beth Jacobs. This is a welcome development, yet it is only a beginning and, at that, no more than a modest beginning. There needs to be intensive follow-up with additional statements and with Roshei Yeshiva and Rabbis using public forums to convey the message that there is an obligation to provide support for the Torah institutions in the communities where we live.

This is a formidable task and, admittedly, even the most forceful advocacy may not alter wrongful attitudes that are embedded in the mindset of too many Orthodox Jews who for understandable, but not acceptable, reasons have welcomed the news that they need not support basic Torah education.

A collateral need is the downsizing of what I have referred to as Jewish Education, Inc., the large number of projects that devour significant philanthropic funding to yeshivas and day schools while managing to avoid the reality that Torah education occurs in schools and classrooms and not in offices or projects or trips to Israel to “train” principals and teachers, nor in any of the many activities that result in our relatively well-fed educational entrepreneurs being even better fed.

This is another point that I have underscored for years, alas with little success. Jewish Education, Inc. is flourishing in our organizational life. Even as it flourishes, our schools are more behind in payroll. The still worse news is that there are schools that no longer exist, witness what is happening in kiruv and immigrant schools where enrollment now is about half of what it was not long ago.

The news in the yeshiva and day school world since September has been frightening and there is more bad news on the horizon. An item in this Newsletter describes another such development. There is certain to be lots of pain in the coming period. We cannot do much about the overall economy which affects the situation of many schools and many parents. What we can do, at long last, is to prepare the groundwork for a better day when the economy does improve. If our leaders understand that leadership of the religious Jewish community entails the responsibility to constantly work for Torah chinuch at all levels, there is the prospect that some of us will get the message.

The Panderers Breakfast

Back in the 1980s, there was Michael Milken’s Predators Ball, an event that came to symbolize junk bond excess. Mr. Milken was then and later a man of significant charitable deeds who stepped over boundaries and was treated harshly as a consequence.

The sights are lower in Borough Park where I live and yet, here too, there is excess, including the pandering to public officials who, in fact, do little that is good for the neighborhood and, at least occasionally, cause some harm. It is now election time and that means having the Panderers Breakfast sponsored by the local Jewish Community Council.

There are good people involved in the council’s work and I am certain that many who were at the breakfast deserve praise. The list of notables was headed by Mayor Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, both shown in newspaper photos wearing full-size yarmulkes, with the current incumbent at City Hall looking more uncomfortable than his predecessor. I am not sure whether it was the skull cap or the man sitting next to him.

There was ample reason for the Mayor to be ill at ease. He has an admirable record in dealing with racial and ethnic relations, something that certainly cannot be said about Mr. Giuliani. A person who played a key role at the event told me the next day that in his speech, the man who is expected to run for governor next year came close to entering what for him is the familiar territory of racism. Is it too much to ask or hope that Mr. Giuliani take his trash talk elsewhere? By using an Orthodox Jewish forum to deliver his toxic message, he is associating the Orthodox with racism and once more befouling racial and ethnic relations.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler was at the breakfast because astounding as it may seem, Manhattan’s ultra-liberal West Side is linked in one congressional district with Borough Park. This is another Albany map-making atrocity. I would protest more strongly were it not for a New York Times editorial the other day that pointed to even more grotesque districts.

Mr. Nadler’s election is assured and he wasn’t there as a candidate. He was one of the honorees, for distinguished public service or some other cliché-ridden pseudo-tribute. The services he has provided to Borough Park are, at most, trivial and a mystery. He certainly was not recognized for his position on gay marriage or social issues generally. I fault not Mr. Nadler for taking positions he sincerely believes in. The hypocrisy is in the council honoring a man whose views on important public issues are entirely antithetical to what the council espouses. What was on display was extreme sycophancy.

Although there is little evidence to support the notion, it could be that the congressman was being honored for his assistance in securing federal grants. If that is the case, it is he who was pandering and, to boot, being two-faced.

I recently discussed the debate regarding faith-based initiatives, the question being whether religious groups can seek only their own when filling top positions at programs that receive governmental support. As a practical matter, it is not possible to deny funding to such groups without causing severe harm to programs and activities that are crucial to many millions of needy Americans. As an example, should Catholic social service agencies be barred from selecting only Catholics to run their programs, the harm to society would be enormous. Unfortunately, many in the Jewish community see it otherwise, another illustration of hypocrisy as Federations are selective and yet exempt from the scrutiny of our purists.

In this debate, Jerrold Nadler is an extremist. Earlier this month he was one of only five congressmen who sent a tough letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking “that positive steps be taken to ensure that all programs receiving federal dollars are barred from discriminating with these funds,” with discrimination meaning that they cannot prefer their own in hiring. Otherwise, they asserted, religious liberty and civil rights will be endangered.

The folks at the Borough Park Council are certainly unaware of this letter, not that it would make a difference because there is a tendency among the Orthodox to pander to public officials. Smart as he is, Mr. Nadler understands that the letter he signed and other positions he takes are meant for one crowd and not for his putative constituents in Borough Park. In short, there is a nifty pas de deux of pandering and hypocrisy.

What is most at work on the Orthodox side goes beyond the ordinary pandering that is a familiar aspect of political life. The Orthodox who gravitate toward political involvement relish in being in what they regard as exalted company, meaning office holders and seekers, irrespective of the views of those whose company they seek. There is in this a groupie mentality, a form of behavior that is below conventional pandering. The reward is emotional, which helps to explain why it scarcely matters what the politicians stand for.

This would not matter much if what government does did not matter. Governmental actions are important. Over the extended period since the Holocaust, politicians have known how to play the Orthodox, at least those who are identified as fervent. All that is needed are visits to their Rebbis and Rabbis, the yarmulke on the head, meaningless talk and then it isn’t relevant whether those who are paying tribute are being harmed by the positions being taken by the venerated public officials.

There are 230,000 children in day schools and yeshivas in the U.S., from four-year olds through the twelfth grade. The figure would be higher by at least 20,000 if younger children and post-high school students enrolled in these institutions were included. The operating budgets for these schools probably exceed two-billion dollars annually, with capital expenditures amounting to tens of millions of dollars more. Objective research conducted over the past twenty years shows conclusively that by a wide margin, day school education as an independent factor or variable contributes more to Jewish commitment and continuity into adulthood than any other communal activity.

I recently completed a third census of U.S. day schools. Like its 1998-99 and 2003-04 predecessors, this research was sponsored by the Avi Chai Foundation whose philanthropy in North America has resulted in significant benefits to the day school world. The research reports grade by grade enrollment, as well as other vital information, for the more than 800 U.S. day schools and it adds to our understanding of contemporary Jewish life. It is doubtlessly my subjective engagement in this painstaking project that triggers my failure to understand how not even a tiny mention of the census has made it into this newspaper. Once more I am bothered and bewildered by what passes for American Jewish journalism. I am left with the task of reporting on my own report.

Over the past decade, enrollment has grown by nearly 25%, an astonishing growth rate. Most, but not all, of the increase is attributable to high Orthodox fertility, primarily in the yeshiva-world and chassidic sectors which constitute more than 55% of all enrollment. Since 1998, yeshiva-world enrollment has risen by 34%, so that there are now 64,000 students in these schools, while chassidic enrollment in the same period has gone up by 56% to a total of 61,000 students. In another ten years, the prospect is for chassidic enrollment of 100,000 or higher.

All told, five of every six dayschoolers are in Orthodox schools, a distribution that has increased gradually over the years. This trend is certain to continue because of fertility and also because of financial considerations, including the severe downturn from which the country has not yet recovered and the growing sense of marginally-involved parents that day school education is too costly. Already we are seeing parents opting out of day school.

Modern Orthodox schools continue to grow and now have 30,000 students, an increase of 10% in the decade, which is impressive in view of the meaningful number of young modern Orthodox families that in recent years have made aliyah. However, centrist Orthodox schools have lost students, in large measure I believe because of the contraction of Orthodox life in a number of communities away from New York.

An unsettling detail emerging from the census is the pronounced decline of immigrant and other schools with an outreach orientation. Some of this has to do with immigration patterns; yet another factor is the declining commitment to these schools in the Orthodox community. This development is offset to an extent by the rapid expansion of the Chabad school network, with 73 schools in the latest census, up from 44 ten years ago. Nearly all of the newer schools have an outreach mission and while many are small, even tiny, there is now within Chabad a strong determination to focus on day schools, a commitment that was absent until near the end of the Rebbe’s life.

Due to the strong showing of Community or trans-denominational schools, there has been a 2,000-student increase in non-Orthodox school enrollment since 1998. The Reform movement no longer focuses much on day schools, while the Solomon Schechter or Conservative schools mirror increasingly the infirm condition of this movement. These schools have lost one-fourth of their enrollment in the past decade and the bad news keeps on coming.

Forty percent of day schools enroll fewer than one-hundred students. Many of these institutions constantly struggle to get by, both financially and educationally. Several small schools that operated last year have closed since June and there are others that are on what can be fairly called the endangered list. Here, too, the state of the economy inevitably has an impact.

While there are day schools in forty states and the District of Columbia, New York and New Jersey are dominant, with 70% of all enrollment or more than 160,000 students. One astonishing statistic is provided by Lakewood, NJ, which has experienced a tripling in enrollment in ten years, from about 5,000 students to 15,000. Younger yeshiva-world families are opting to remain in Lakewood because of the religious ambiance and also the far lower cost of housing.

The New York-New Jersey day school story is a blessing that comes with a cost. Before the economic crisis hit, many schools in this area were behind in meeting their payroll and their situation has worsened over the past year, in some schools precariously. In August, Beth Jacob of Boro Park, a school with more than 2,000 girls, announced that it was deeply in debt and might not be able to open. It did open but there have been many layoffs and the debt remains. The sharp enrollment increases in chassidic and yeshiva-world schools will be translated into greater financial pressure. There is no communal planning, including among the Orthodox, to deal with what is already on the horizon.

Another cost is, as noted, the shrinkage of Orthodox life in many places away from New York. One interesting census statistic shows that outside of these two states, the 70,000 day school students are nearly equally divided between Orthodox and non-Orthodox schools, with the latter having 47% of the total.

What is certain is that the next five years will be a crucial period in day school education. Hopefully there will be a follow-up census.

Being Noble About Nobel

While the Nobel Prize to Barack Obama was off the charts as a surprise and probably not a favor to the President, the reaction of our ever-agitated right wing was perfectly predictable. From the moment that he took office he has been mocked and demonized by the far right, led by Rupert Murdoch’s troupe of Foxtrotters and the irrepressible Rush Limbaugh who demonstrates the truth that there are vulgarities that are far worse than four letter words.

Politics is not a gentlemanly activity and all presidents, from George Washington on, have suffered scurrilous attacks. As a rule, there is a first-year honeymoon until the rats come out of their holes. Not for Mr. Obama who has been viciously targeted by the far right from before day one. I do not mean criticism by conservatives, whether of domestic or foreign policies. That’s fair, even necessary, in democracies. The anti-Obama rhetoric includes more than a touch of racism, combined with ample servings of hate, rage and distortion. This is dangerous stuff.

It is disheartening that many Orthodox Jews have joined the right-wing chorus, how many cannot utter the President’s name without virtually spitting out the words. Too many have joined the hate brigade, going beyond the social and ideological commitments that may be rooted in their religious beliefs. There is unbridled contempt for a man who in his brief tenure has advocated moderation on issue after issue.

Judaism is not about politics, not about Democratic or Republican or any party, nor about being conservative or liberal. On some public issues conservatism may seem more faithful to our teachings, while on other issues liberalism may seem more faithful. Strong adherence to ideology is adherence to a false god that enslaves the intellect and emotions. Those of us who embrace the right wing seem to neglect the horrific experience of European Jewry just two generations ago. For that matter, they are oblivious to the agenda of right wing groups in America that includes anti-Semitism as a centerpiece.

We Jews have much to worry and be nervous about, past and present. Severe persecution has mutated us into a people who can see the worst in nearly all that is on the political horizon and it has infused us with a touch of paranoia. This is understandable and, for now, it is also inevitable. Just the same, we need to retain the capacity to be fair and, hopefully, clear-minded.

Our greatest worry these days is about Iran and there are plenty of reasons for Jews to be hyper-anxious. This is no license for unfairness. No one could ever doubt the commitment of George W. Bush to Israel. It remains, however, that in the course of his eight years, the Iranian threat to Israel grew enormously, without any effective countervailing policies. Mr. Bush did not authorize U.S. military action against Iran and he forbade Israel from taking any action. He was unable to mobilize other countries to punish Iran.

This record should be contrasted with Mr. Obama’s brief tenure. There are good reasons to believe that as happened in Lebanon, the new president had an enormous salutary impact on the Iranian election which was stolen by Ahmadinejad. There is a new determination among the major powers to enforce sanctions against Iran. Iranian authorities have yielded to pressure to allow inspection of its nuclear development program and although it remains to be seen how reliable this is, surely the move represents progress. In short, Iran is more isolated than it was a year ago and the key figure in all of this is Barack Obama. Yet, there is much Jewish talk critical of his handling of Iran.

There are grounds to challenge the President’s approach to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, notably his apparently abandoned attitude toward what he and his administration wrongly refer to as settlements. In his desire- it is understandable but I think naïve and doomed to failure- to send a new message to the Muslim world, he has sent the collateral message that Israeli interests can be ignored. In all politics, perception is a major part of the equation.

In recent weeks, there has been a change in attitude and course. A key Jewish leader who was close to the Bush White House tells me that he is greatly pleased by the messages now being sent by Washington. It is obvious that American officials, doubtlessly acting with the full approval of the President, have taken critical steps to scuttle the notorious Goldstone Report. This may be short-lived in view of Islamic pressure, yet the administration’s intent is clear.

To speculate a bit, a beneficial by-product of the Nobel award to Mr. Obama is the possibility that Richard Goldstone was one of the runner-ups. Unfortunately, there is next year and this may afford another opportunity.

In the months and years ahead, the American-Israeli relationship will be frequently tested, at times severely, repeating the pattern for every U.S. administration since the establishment of the Jewish state, with the possible exception of the first, Harry Truman’s. There will be times when we will have good reason not to be happy. We must always remember, as I have tried to underscore over the years, that the president of this country inevitably sees things through a frame of reference that varies to one extent or another from how Israelis and most American Jews look at the same issues. He is the president of the United States, not the prime minister of Israel.

I hope that it is not too much to hope that when we express disagreement with American policy, we can do so without embracing the nastiness and worse of the hate-mongers.