ARTICLES

Jewish Parochials

Why They're Booming

By Robert Kumpel

In the October 1999 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Peter Beinart discusses the surge in Jewish Day Schools. "Since the early 1960s the number of children attending supplementary schools has fallen by half, to about 270,000. And the number in full-time Jewish schools--the kind that many Jewish leaders once scorned as self-segregating--has more than tripled, to about 200,000.

Jan Landau, principal of the San Carlos campus of the San Diego Jewish Academy, taught at the academy for five years and her two youngest children attend. "For me as a parent, I looked for a strong Judaic environment.... What really affected me the most is when I got married in 1973. My husband's parents were survivors of the Holocaust. I'm from Detroit -- when we moved here in 1976,and I met all of his parents' friends who had the numbers on their arms, it really hit me. (Landau and her husband moved to San Diego in 1976 because they thought there was more for their children here, and they wanted to have the support of grandparents and extended family--her husband's.)

"My parents were definitely Americanized. My father worked on Friday nights as a shoe store manager. I met my husband's family and I saw the Shabbat dinners that they had and their community of friends and what these people had been through. I felt an obligation as a Jew that my children would know who they were, and the Jewish religion would not be melted in and be lost.

"My niece is being raised as a non-Jew. So, for every Jewish family that that happens to, the Jewish religion, which is a minority as it is, is threatened with extinction. I feel that we owe it to the six million Jews who lost their lives simply for being Jewish -- we owe it to them that this religion never dies."

When pressed whether her Judaism was just cultural survival, Landau is clear: "It's a part of me. I believe in all the tenets of my faith."

Larry Acheatel, 49, executive director of the San Diego Jewish Academy, explains the growth in enrollment at Jewish schools. "We have immigrants from Mexico, South Africa, Canada, what have you ... and in many of those countries, the norm is middle class and up (families) to have children in private schools and for Jewish families in Jewish day schools. Then we have, obviously, a segment of our population, I would say are North American families, and of those that isn't the norm for the Jewish community".

"The norm has been to enroll children for religious education in supplemental schools. That would be going to school after the traditional public school day, two, three days a week, for religious instruction and Hebrew. That is changing quite a bit.

"There's a concern of Jewish continuity, of intermarriage, of assimilation into the American mainstream to such a degree that many young people no longer affiliate or have strong knowledge of Jewish heritage. There's also disaffection with public schools because of increased class sizes ... a concern regarding academic quality.

"I started [as director] July one --I don't have numbers, but I know right now we're at about 525 to 530 students and ten years ago, the academy was around three hundred or less. Originally, we started out as K-5, it merged with a Jewish middle school, it became a K-8 -- some years they had a ninth grade.

The San Carlos campus is only a K-5 facility, and will serve as a feeder school to the new high school. A permanent junior high/high school campus is being built in the Carmel Valley area, scheduled to open in the fall of 2000.

San Carlos principal Landau sees another problem with supplemental schools: "The kids who are coming after school, it's like 'Agh! I want soccer, I want baseball, I have to go after school and go to Torah school for two hours!' It's grueling to make that a part of your day at the end of your school day.

"My two older children started off in the public school at Benchley-Weinberger. We moved here when one of my children was going into fifth and one into third [grade] at Jewish day school. I felt it was important for them to learn about themselves and what it meant to be Jewish. People expect it of you when you're out in the community. I've had my son, going to the rec center for basketball games, and they'll say to him, 'You had a Bar Mitzvah! You must be rich!' That's an anti-semitic comment."

Serving a large area, the academy has no restrictions on the type of Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative or Reform) that its families observe. Keeping kosher is the norm on campus, but Landau thinks most parents are more relaxed at home. "One of the basic tenets is you honor your parents. So if in your parents home they say 'We're eating a ham sandwich,' you do."

The San Diego Jewish Academy has what Achateal's calls, a dress code/quasi uniform. "There are t-shirts and sweatshirts that say 'SDJA' on them and they're blue and white. The kids wear either blue or khaki pants--a certain type of shorts--that kind of thing. It's not a strict uniform around one design--it's more around colors."

Although the best known, the San Diego Jewish Academy is not the only Jewish Day School in San Diego. There is also the Chabad Hebrew Academy in Scripps ranch, Beth Israel in Banker's Hill, and Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School in Clairemont. The San Diego Jewish Academy is listed as a Conservative Jewish school, Chabad is Orthodox/Hassidic, Soille is Orthodox, and Beth Israel is Reform.

Reuven Green, 50, works as a fundraiser for the Chabad House at San Diego State University and grew up in San Diego. Green: "When I was a kid growing up in San Diego, there was no full-time Jewish school at all, there were only supplemental schools."

Rabbi Moishe Leider runs the Chabad Jewish Center in University City. "Most of the kids in my community go to the various day schools. The Orthodox schools, in any case, the Chabad School and Soille -- the kids have a full double program -- half a day Hebrew studies and half a day secular studies ... from eight until three thirty in the afternoon. And they're forced to really buckle-down, do a lot of homework and accomplish the same that the public schools accomplish in half the time. They do consistently percentage-wise much better than the public schools at science fairs, in terms of CTBS scores, in terms of overall performance."

Leider agrees with Landau that many parents have given up on the supplemental schools at the end of the day. "The kids are tired by the end of the day. They go for further study at the end of the day and the kids realize it's not going to make any difference on their academic scores." He also says that parent complaints about the supplemental schools are common. "They complain that the kids aren't learning anything, the teachers aren't teaching very well, and their kids hate coming.

Dr. Cecile Jordan, executive director of the Agency for Jewish Education of San Diego County, however, has been keeping statistics for 14 years.

There are currently 1090 students enrolled in all of San Diego's Jewish day schools. "Our day school population has grown every year. This is the first year we've seen any kind of a decline. There were 630 (enrolled) in 1985-86. We've grown consistently."

"We have five day schools now. There's the new Torah Academy that just opened with a ninth and tenth grade."

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