Focus on Issues: Exporting Zionist Education; Plan to Address Unmet Needs

In the battle for Jewish continuity, American Jews have ammunition to turn to in Israel.

It is an educational institution designed to serve world Jewry — and North American Jews pour tens of millions of dollars a year into it.

But despite its potential, the work of the Joint Authority for Jewish Zionist Education does not make its way into most classrooms in the United States.

Jewish educators in the United States say they would welcome additional educational resources — always a budgetary strain — as they struggle to determine the best way to develop Jewish identity among young people and ensure a Jewish future.

But they say the authority’s offerings often are not relevant or appropriate for North American culture.

“The potential contribution is great, the actual contribution is minimal,” Rabbi Daniel Freelander, national program director of the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said in New York.

He said the movement cooperates with the authority on the curriculum for its summer programs in Israel for about 1,200 youth.

But “there is virtually no impact on synagogue schools, where 95 percent of our kids” are educated, he said. The UAHC has about 850 member congregations.

Materials are not widely used because synagogues “don’t know about them,” he said.

The question is how the authority can be revamped to play a meaningful role in Jewish and Zionist education around the world.

That puzzle gripped members of the authority board earlier this month following the annual assembly of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Their response has been to develop a restructuring plan that could have a major impact on the way educational services are delivered in the future.

A semi-autonomous body with ties to the World Zionist Organization and its partner, the Jewish Agency, the Joint Authority offers a host of educational services to Diaspora communities worldwide.

Funded largely by money raised in the joint campaigns of the United Jewish Appeal and local federations, the authority:

runs Israel Experience programs for youths and young adults;

sends emissaries to camps and communities to teach Hebrew and Zionism;

trains Jewish studies and Hebrew teachers;

provides learning materials on Zionism and Hebrew to Hebrew schools and youth groups; and

provides study material on Judaism, which is used primarily by Orthodox yeshivas.

But the authority has come under fire from Diaspora educators and fund raisers, especially in North America, for being overly politicized, inefficiently organized and unresponsive to the needs of individual communities.

“Our curriculum needs a strong Israel component, some of which has to be done with Israelis,” said Rabbi Robert Abramson, director of the department of education at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

But the relationship with the authority “works best” and produces useful material “when we’re engaged in joint development” of projects, he said, echoing the view of many educators here.

“When the group sits in Israel and develops material they think we need, it’s less useful.”

Although the authority was designed to be a vital link to Diaspora communities, the actual use and usefulness of its services vary widely from one locale to another and its services are viewed as uneven.

The Reform and Conservative movements in the United States, for instance, rely on the authority for its resources on Hebrew and Zionist education, but not on Judaism, because the latter is approached from an Orthodox vantage point, educators say.

The consensus among most of the Diaspora leaders and their Israeli counterparts in the Jewish Agency is that reform is imperative, including a new emphasis on religious pluralism in education.

Many details of the restructuring plan, which is part of a broader consolidation of the Jewish Agency and the WZO, still need to be worked out before the next Jewish Agency Board of Governors meeting in the fall.

But the plan, scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, 1998, would give decision- making powers to the agency, which until now has had very little say in the way the authority is run.

It would transform into a single department of the Jewish Agency the three departments of the authority now run by three separate department heads: the Orthodox-run Torah Education Department, which provides religious instruction used primarily by Orthodox institutions; the Jewish Education and Culture Department, which serves non-Orthodox institutions; and the Department of Youth and Hechalutz, which works with youth movements and other institutions seeking informal education.

David Harmon, the authority’s director general, hailed the internal reforms as long overdue.

“The authority’s structure has been very bifurcated,” he said. “It didn’t allow us to deal with a country’s entire education system” with a “comprehensive plan,” but instead led to the duplication of services by the different departments, he added.

Above all, the structural reforms will go far to assuage long-held concerns that the authority be more accountable to the agency and to Diaspora Jews, who fund its $43 million annual budget.

Another $27 million comes to the authority annually from fees paid by program participants, such as those on Israel Experience programs.

Many of the Jewish Agency board delegates say the authority has not been attuned to the different needs of the communities it serves, and expressed the hope that the restructuring plan would address that problem.

“What those in the authority don’t understand is that the United States isn’t like any other country,” Alvin Schiff, chairman of the authority’s American advisory council, said following the meetings in Jerusalem.

In the past, Schiff said, “a lot of material was prepared in Israel, with a big investment of funds, and it ended up just sitting on the shelf because it didn’t meet our needs.”

He cited as an example a videotape about Ethiopian Jews sent by the authority in the Diaspora a few years ago.

“There was one program, one set of teaching materials for everyone, no tailoring for different age groups or streams of education,” he said.

“I don’t know of a single American school that uses it. It was done without our input, and it should never have been made.”

In New York, Eliot Spack, the executive director of CAJE, the national, multidenominational Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education, agreed that the authority has to change to be meaningful in North America.

Spack, also on the advisory council, spoke highly of the authority’s emissaries, or shlichim, that come to staff Israel program centers or youth movements.

But when asked what sort of impact the authority has here overall on Jewish education, he answered, “very little.”

“The prime beneficiaries are the Orthodox day schools, which have a very close relationship to the Torah Education Department,” he said.

In contrast, the authority is of tremendous value to Mark Charendoff, director of Jewish educational services at the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America.

Calling the Joint Authority “one of our most important partners in education,” he said it was particularly helpful in training 2,500 professional staff in seminars in Israel over the last seven years.

He said the authority also sends more than 200 shlichim to 90 camps across the United States and Canada to “breathe the Hebrew language and Israeli culture” into camp life.

For her part, Shoshana Cardin, chair of the United Israel Appeal, believes that the restructuring will emphasize the “Zionist” part of “Jewish Zionist” education, although not at the expense of religious studies.

Some religious delegates expressed concern that religious education would suffer when the Torah Education Department is dissolved, but most said they would support the restructuring if it is done right.

“I think anything that unites us and brings about cooperation in Jewish Zionist education is a good thing,” said Rabbi Shmuel Sirat, the Orthodox chairman of the Conference of European Rabbis.

However, Sirat warned that religious education must not get short shrift in the reshuffling, and suggested that an adviser on religious Zionist issues be appointed to the authority.

“It would be a pity if religious education and Zionist education are on two separate tracks, without real contact, said Sirat, who is French. “One can learn from the other.”