To the Editor:
If the Reform movement truly wants to make an impact at the grass-roots level, it should provide active and meaningful support to Reform day schools. While the movement supports Reform camps, it hardly embraces Reform day schools, which some say drains membership from already struggling congregations. Day school families are leaders in all aspects of Jewish communal life, including temples). Our kids have a greater sense of their Jewish "self" than their non-day school peers, live the values of tikkun olam and grow up to become leaders in their communities.
The Reform movement should not see day schools as "competition" but as avenues for leadership, intergenerational engagement and true partners in instilling progressive "Reform" values in the next generation of American Jews. The embrace of and support for Reform Jewish day schools would truly be "progressive" for the Reform movement.
Josef Blumenfeld
Boston, Mass.
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