American Zionists Urged to Intensify Efforts for Jewish Education

A series of resolutions urging the intensification of efforts on the part of chapters and regions of the Zionist Organization of America to aid in the establishment of new Jewish day schools and to exercise influence on local federations and welfare funds to financially support such schools, was adopted today at the closing session of a ZOA-sponsored two-day National Conference on Jewish Education.

The conference also recommended vigorous measures by the ZOA to encourage the integration of Jewish education with progressive summer camping. At the same time it urged that a new system of adult education be devised and be placed under the supervision of a special board of adult education.

Other resolutions adopted voiced the hope that the Bar Mitzvah ceremony would mark “not the end, but the beginning and an incentive for a fuller Jewish education in a Hebrew weekend or whole day secondary school.” The conference called upon the leadership of all regions and districts to inform and direct parents to encourage enrollment of children for Hebrew courses open in grammar schools and in high schools.

The resolutions were adopted following a basic address by Max Bressler, ZOA president, calling for an overhaul of the Jewish education system in this country. Mr. Bressler termed assimilation as “the greatest peril to Jewish survival” and charged the American Jewish community with failure “to provide the much needed first line of defense” against this threat. He cited figures of Hebrew school attendance in support of this charge.

Mr. Bressler pointed out that the American Jewish community “is beginning somewhat belatedly to realize that without Jewish education there can be no Jewish creative living in America nor a full partnership with the State of Israel. This realization,” he said, “is reflected in the mounting Jewish school registration. If today we have more than 550,000 Jewish children attending Jewish schools in the United States, it is because, I believe, Jewish parents no longer wish to remain, Jewishly speaking, childless and heirless.”

50 PERCENT OF YOUNG JEWS IN U.S. DO NOT KNOW THE HEBREW ALPHABET

However, the ZOA leader also stressed that more than 50 percent of young Jews do not know the Hebrew alphabet and that “their Jewishness is only identified as that of accident of their birth.” Asserting that “of the remaining 50 percent, more than half attend Sunday schools only,” the speaker maintained that inadequate and too short instruction at Sunday school is “a travesty of Jewish education, for it purports to transmit a great and rich Jewish heritage to our children under conditions that make such transmission absolutely impossible.”

Describing congregational schools, as better than Sunday schools, Mr. Bressler said that even these schools, meeting twice or three times a week are “still not good enough to produce Jewish leaders with a Jewish knowledge and an abiding deep interest in Jewish life.” He urged the creation of networks of all-day Jewish schools where, he said, “our children can imbibe Jewish learning alongside with their secular education.” He added that “by blending the two cultures, the student learns to be a complete integrated American Jew.”

Mr. Bressler urged the establishment of a ZOA Foundation for Hebrew education, the proceeds for this foundation to be used for assisting in the opening of ZOA Day schools; to grant scholarships for study in these schools as well as scholarships to young men and women for study in schools of higher learning in Israel; to grant fellowships to scholars in Israel who would come to the U.S. for a year or two of teaching in our Hebrew schools and other purposes in furtherance of adult Hebrew education.