Aj Committee Calls for Improving Jewish Education, Some Aid to Parochial Schools

The American Jewish Committee called today for the improvement and strengthening of Jewish education which “with all its family and communal implications, is indisputably basic to Jewish continuity in the United States.” The resolution on education, adopted at the closing session of the AJ Committee’s national executive council’s annual meeting here, followed an earlier proposal by the organization’s executive vice president, Bertram A. Gold, that it soften somewhat its stand against state aid to parochial schools. Mr. Gold said the AJ Committee, long opposed to the weakening of barriers between church and state, might consider backing “public support of at least the non-religious portions of parochial day school education.” He said that such compromises, like support for open enrollment, might have to be made by American Jews to keep them from “turning away from society” and taking a “simplistic world view.”

The education resolution stated that the AJ Committee “has long recognized responsibility to provide services helpful in furthering Jewish identity and continuity and strengthening Jewish communal life.” It said that objective “is becoming increasingly urgent in the light of the challenges that today confront the established ideologies and programs of the Jewish community.” Other resolutions adopted by the executive council condemned Jewish youth within the New Left “who allow their non-Zionist or anti-Zionist views to be exploited as a vehicle for anti-Semitism and hostility toward Israel” and praised the Nixon administration for its efforts to prevent an upset of the Mideast military balance by Soviet-Egyptian truce violations. AJ Committee activities in pursuit of the goal of improved Jewish education were enumerated by Maynard I. Wishner, chairman of its Jewish communal affairs committee. Among them were its colloquium for Jewish education sponsored jointly with Brandeis University; participation in special studies, workshops and experiments relating to Jewish education; cooperation with the American Association for Jewish Education and other like groups and the dissemination of new findings, ideas and materials to help Jewish organizations, lay leaders and professionals to understand Jewish educational programs.

Statistics circulated at the executive council meeting showed that about 350,000 children in America receive some form of Jewish education in 2,727 known Jewish schools of all types but this figure represents only one-third of Jewish school-age children. The largest percentage of children, 69.8 percent, receiving Jewish education are in the eight-12 age group; no more than seven percent pursue Jewish education after bar or bat mitzvah age. The statistics noted a decline in supplementary Jewish religious schools and a sharp increase in Jewish all-day schools in which more than 50,000 Jewish children are enrolled in the New York area alone. The AJ Committee reported that most competent observers believe that “Jewish education has been handicapped by functioning within tightly defined denominational settings, preventing broader and experimental approaches, at a time when ideological differences along denominational lines have diminished in meaning, especially among the youth.”