What Are We Waiting For?

Last month, six of our community’s supplementary school principals took a special field trip to the Criterion Theatre in downtown New Haven for a screening and discussion of filmmaker Davis Guggenheim’s (An Inconvenient Truth) new film Waiting for Superman.  The film chronicles some of the failures of the American public education system by detailing how it inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth.  . The film’s title comes from Harlem activist and educator Geoffrey Canada explaining the moment when he found out that Superman was not real. “One of the saddest days of my life was when my mother told me ‘Superman’ did not exist… She thought I was crying because it’s like Santa Claus is not real. I was crying because no one was coming with enough power to save us.” For Canada, Superman represented the hope that he could be saved from the poverty and struggles of his young life in the South Bronx. If there was no Superman, what hope did he have? 

Unfortunately, Canada’s experience is far from unique, and certainly not limited to the mean streets of underprivileged neighborhoods. While I cannot speak for all of our community’s schools and education programs, we must recognize that there is no savior coming to change the declining enrollment rates in the Jewish education system. For example as the leader of MAKOM, it’s clear to me that we cannot continue to wait for Superman to save a program that, despite its high quality and student satisfaction rating, at one point boasted three times the participants. Neither can we expect the magic bullet of improved marketing and outreach to provide a dramatic turnaround. Not even a new crop of interesting classes and dynamic teachers have rescued us from the intellectual and cultural dangers staring us in the face.   

In my view, the only way to ‘save’ MAKOM and perhaps to ‘rescue’ Jewish education from the slow death of ever-decreasing enrollment and relevance is to institute radical, systemic change. One of the keys to reinventing Jewish education in 21^st Century America is to become centers of educational Research and Development focused on engaging people in creating new alternatives to traditional programs. Today’s students can only be meaningfully engaged in Jewish learning if it is presented in the same form and language they use every day, and if it is media savvy. Experience, that greatest of all teachers, must be a bigger player in our educational process. Success will come in the brave new world of post-modernity as we learn to teach and learn at the same time, in multiple venues, at multiple times, and in multiple ways, such as trips, the arts, and films. 

MAKOM and the CJLL have already begun this process by creating two new programs for teens. Madrichim Institute engages teen teacher’s aides from our religious school a unique once a month education seminar.  Chaver, a new joint initiative between CJLL, Jewish Family Service, the Towers, and the Yale New Haven Hospital Chaplaincy,  is engaging teens through the Jewish values of respecting the elderly and visiting the sick. (The Women of Vision Society of the Jewish Foundation also provides funding for this program).

It’s a good start. But we need to extend these ideas further and partner with and encourage other organizations to conduct their own R&D. The goal is for individuals and institutions to be willing to explore next-gen educational opportunities with an entrepreneurial spirit. Our common goal is to enhance participation in Jewish learning for all.  It is time for us to develop new strategies to engage learners of all ages.  We cannot afford to wait for Superman. Instead, let’s discover new ways to promote Jewish living through Jewish learning.