Section archive - Education & Administration

In the final weeks of 2018, New York’s Orthodox Jewish community went into full-blown panic mode. One Orthodox newspaper in Brooklyn, the Flatbush Jewish Journal, ran the screaming front-page headline “ATTACK ON OUR YESHIVAS!” in red, inch-high letters. The threats and warnings came as state authorities announced long-awaited guidelines that will regulate the curricula of Orthodox yeshivas. They also come as New York State’s ultra-Orthodox community faces a sharp loss of influence in Albany once the new legislature is sworn in. Now, Orthodox leaders are using the state guidelines to rally their community, even as they recognize they must try to mend fences in the capital.

CASJE (Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education), which gets its core funding from The AVI CHAI and the Jim Joseph Foundation is a project which aims to bridge the gap between research and practice in Jewish education. CASJE tries to toil both on the demand and the supply side of Jewish education research. That is, on the supply side it serves as a platform for the production of new, high quality applied research. On the demand side, it tries to help both educators and funders understand, utilize, and (hopefully) demand high quality, applied research. CASJE brings funders and educators together to draw out relevant and pressing problems of practice while in conversation with funders. CASJE then helps facilitate a process of bringing researchers and funders together to address practitioner problems. Through the expert counsel and vast network available via the CASJE board, CASJE is a platform for bringing the best of the general education field to bare on Jewish education.

There is no magic bullet to “solve” the affordability crisis. But since it is our collective responsibility to ensure that we transmit our tradition and values from generation to generation, we must strategize, plan, and attract new investors to the day school system, all with the objective of yielding sustainable day schools and yeshivot for years to come. We cannot simply focus on this year and next year’s budget; we need to play the long game. The long-term sustainability of day schools and yeshivot should be on the communal agenda as a key component of a solution to a core communal challenge. And the best players are playing the endowment game.

This issue of Hayidion offers insights and strategies concerning school advocacy, by which is meant the ways that a school promotes itself, markets itself and speaks about itself. Authors offer insights into what day schools should know about young parents, and the various means to reach them, both online and in person. Other articles consider how schools can take some of their core practices, such as teaching Hebrew and supporting diverse learners, and use them in their promotion. Additionally, the issue looks at ways that day schools can tap into the larger community and its institutions for purposes of advocacy.