From: janiceg@marvin.Eng.Sun.COM (Janice Gelb)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Hebrew school (was Re: O-C-R debate)
Date: 29 Jul 1992 17:20:07 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Distribution: world
Reply-To: janiceg@marvin.Eng.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: marvin

In article 7095@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu, friedenb@egr.msu.edu ( Gedaliah Friedenberg ) writes:
<<In article <1992Jul23.192739.22976@umbc3.umbc.edu<
<<shimoff@umbc4.umbc.edu (Eliot Shimoff) writes:
<<
<<<The same argument might be made against afternoon Hebrew schools.
<<<If the only form of J. education was yeshivot, then most J. kids
<<<would attend, and get solid J. educations.  But now (in the US), 
<<<J. parents can meet their "responsibilities" by sending their kids
<<<for a few hours a week -- and most J. kids get very little.
<<

Is anyone here taking into account that parents who may not be that 
observant in the home are still trying to give their kids a Jewish 
identity?  Would you rather the parents gave the kids no Jewish 
education at all?  In many communities, there are enough resources 
to manage an afternoon school but not enough for a full-time day 
school.

<In article <1992Jul28.131108.4663@cbnewsl.cb.att.com< saal@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (samuel.saal) writes:
<<
<<There exist two problems (at least) with afternoon school:
<<
<<1) Kids going to them look to public school friends who do more fun
<<things after school, are jealous, and are thus poorly motivated to
<<learn.
<<

Depends on who their friends are.  In any community with the number of 
Jews that it takes to have an afternoon Hebrew school, many Jewish kids 
will be friends with other Jewish kids who are also going to the afternoon
school.

<<
<<2) Because most get little more than Hebrew school as a Jewish education
<<(and the majority of them end at bar/bat mitzvah), life long memory of
<<Judaism and Jewish education tends to be unsophisticated  and/or
<<childlike.
<

Sixth and seventh grade kids can handle relatively sophisticated 
religious concepts.  And kids who are motivated by good early teaching 
might even stick around through confirmation or longer. 

<
<I think that there has to be a third added to this list.
<<
<Teachers in the afternoon school system are helpless in this
<situation.  If a Jewish boy or girl goes to Sunday school and learns
<about kashrut, but goes home to have eggs and bacon, everything
<learned in Hebrew school goes right out the door.
<

I very much disagree with this statement.  I was raised in a non-
observant home with both parents working on Saturday -- my exposure 
to Jewish practices came through Hebrew school, and later grew through 
the synagogue's Jewish youth movement.  The fact that there was a 
discrepancy with home practice to me just meant that my parents didn't
want to do it, not that it was invalid.  And, BTW, I know of several 
cases where kids challenged their parents after hearing what should 
be done in Hebrew school and the parents became more observant. 

I'm not sure what alternative any of the comments on this subject are
proposing.  Do you think that if a Jewish boy or girl is raised in a
non-Orthodox home, it's better if they don't go to any religious school
at all and thus get no exposure to Judaism.  Yes, we'd all like all
Jewish families to have more Jewish practices in the home, and to
provide all Jewish kids with substantive Jewish education, but that is
not the current situation, and I think that some exposure to Jewish
values and education is better than none.

********************************************************************************
Janice Gelb                  | (415) 336-7075     
janiceg@marvin.eng.sun.com   | "A silly message but mine own" (not Sun's!) 
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish