Published: 3 December 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
I have American friends who do this annually. They get a bonus holiday in Israel, their kids learn decent Hebrew, make friends with Israelis and the routine ticks many of their boxes.
My husband and I sent our kids to one of the local Jewish day schools (JDS) on the assumption that other parents did so for the same reasons. Having lived in Israel for many years, it was important to me that my kids learn Hebrew and have access to a richer Jewish education that I, having attended public school, didn’t have.
I wanted them to have a community with which to share their Judaism and celebrate its richness rather than being in Israel for just a couple of months a year. I soon realised these were not necessarily the priorities for most parents, or the schools themselves.
According to the Gen 17 study, which is considered the primary tracking indicator of Australian Jewry, respondents believe the main advantage of a JDS is to “Strengthen Jewish identity”; while the main disadvantage is the “High cost of fees/too expensive”.
“Strengthen Jewish identity” can be broadly interpreted and I am sure there is significant research on what and how this is achieved. Many parents hope that investing in Jewish education will incentivise graduates to maintain their Jewish identity after they finish school, meet and marry other Jews, and ultimately have Jewish babies.
However, intermarriage rates continue to rise even as attendance at JDS remains robust, with more than 56 per cent of primary-age Jewish kids in NSW attending Jewish schools, according to recent census data. While this may not be as high as the almost 90 per cent in Mexico and 80 per cent in South Africa, it is much higher than most Diaspora countries, particularly the US, where only 12 per cent of Jewish kids attend Jewish schools (of which only six per cent are non-Orthodox).
“Jewish kids no longer get to mix with mainstream multicultural Australia, creating more insularity and the potential inability to mix comfortably with non-Jews later in life, especially at university”.
Having so many children in Jewish institutions has interesting outcomes for the community. Former Melbourne principal and education academic, David Zyngier, says “Jewish kids no longer get to mix with mainstream multicultural Australia (except if they play sport against them), creating more insularity and the potential inability to mix comfortably with non-Jews later in life, especially at university”.
Another downside to sending kids to JDS is that many of them are “Jewed out”. Dr Zyngier says “this has been allied in the research to the clear perception among kids that while attending the mainstream Jewish Day School, learning Hebrew and religious studies, keeping kosher in the canteen, etc, and perhaps praying every day, their parents do the exact opposite. This none-too-subtle message reinforces the message that attendance at the Jewish school is not important to the parents so long as the school ‘delivers’ top academic results.”
Many of the Jewish schools perform exceptionally well in their HSC and VCE rankings, particularly as they are not selective schools. This is certainly a major reason many Jewish families send their kids to JDS.
This decision doesn’t come cheap. Total fees for K-12 at the top Jewish schools vary but start at $250,000 and can go as high as $400,000, not including the extras for uniforms, levies, overseas trips and excursions.
In NSW, a financial helping hand called JBridge has been created by JCA to help make private Jewish education more affordable. It offers an interest-free deferred payment plan. Many of the schools offer financial aid for families in need of financial support.
Many parents cite high fees as a primary impediment to sending their children to Jewish schools. I know families, with multiple kids, paying $100,000+ a year for school fees.
The unspoken message seems to be that in an ideal world, where money is not an issue, all Jewish kids would attend Jewish schools.
While the individual schools educate children to different levels of Jewish literacy, one could argue their real achievement is in the social connections they achieve, for both students and parents.
However, this significant financial investment in Jewish education comes at a cost to the community, in lieu of investing in other things. Andrew Markus, Director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University, questions the “proportion of community resources that gets put into the schools,” particularly in Melbourne, where there are so many diverse schools.
Professor Markus also questions the long-term viability of sustaining so many schools, which are “core” communal institutions, taking into account the rising cost of housing in Jewish areas and people living longer, and so changing the intergenerational transmission of wealth. Currently, about a third of Jewish grandparents help cover school fees.
Nevertheless, there are many parents and generous grandparents who feel there is a justified return in investing so much of their income in their children’s education, even if most of the graduates are not fluent Hebrew speakers or able to discuss a Talmud tractate.
Many parents are looking for outcomes beyond academic results, including being part of the community, and an opportunity to network and mix with “the right crowd”. Some also point to negative factors that propelled them to choose a Jewish education for their kids, such as lack of alternative schools, lack of subject choice, and anti-Semitism.
Ultimately, the community invests in the schools because they see them as a means of achieving Jewish continuity. While the individual schools educate children to different levels of Jewish literacy, one could argue their real achievement is in the social connections they achieve, for both students and parents.
The fact that my kids will have friends from preschool with them at their Year 12 graduation is astonishing to me, as I attended 11 educational institutions over my school and university years. Hopefully, the strong bonds that contribute to their core identity will bind them with not just their classmates, but their broader Jewish community, and this will help anchor their experiences and outlooks as they go out into the big wide world.
Illustration: John Kron
