Published: 3 December 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Recent demographic surveys conducted by the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University found that compared with Sydney, Melbourne exhibits higher levels of religious behaviour and a generally greater intensity in its sense of Jewish belonging and belief.
Though many Jews in Sydney are religious, and a majority exhibit a very strong sense of communal belonging, the intensity of lived Jewish life, in a traditional sense, remains stronger in Melbourne than in Sydney.
While most (84%) strictly Orthodox Jews would feel regret if a family member married out, this compared with half (54%) of Conservative and a quarter (26%) of secular Jews. This is interesting because strictly Orthodox parents generally will send their children to the ultra-Orthodox schools, whereas nominally Orthodox or Traditional, Conservative and Reform parents will be opting for mainstream Jewish day schools, private or public schools
While over half of respondents (54%) have attended a youth movement and half have attended a Jewish day school (51%), this no longer applies to the current generation of school children with shrinking participation across all youth movements and rising enrolments in Jewish day schools and private schools. This has serious ramifications for issues such as Jewish identity, attachment to Israel and Zionism and ability to integrate into multicultural Australia.
In terms of Jewish day schooling, respondents believe that its main advantage is to ‘strengthen Jewish identity’, but attitudes deviate by city. Respondents in Melbourne are far more likely to express a preference for Jewish schooling despite being more likely than Sydney respondents to say the main disadvantage of Jewish schools is ‘high cost of fees’.
Moreover, Sydney respondents are more likely to believe Jewish schools ‘provide a sense of belonging to the Jewish community’ whereas Melbourne respondents are more likely to believe they ‘provide strong Jewish education’.
Sydney respondents are more likely to believe Jewish schools ‘provide a sense of belonging to the Jewish community’ whereas Melbourne respondents are more likely to believe they ‘provide strong Jewish education’.
However, 30% of respondents indicated they have little attachment to the Jewish community. So, based on these responses sending your kids to a Jewish school (apart from Yeshiva and Adass) may actually be having the opposite of the desired effect.
The younger generation are more ‘distant’ from Israel than older generations who went to Zionist Youth Movements: fewer in the younger age groups feel personally responsible for Israel’s continued existence, but only 69% self-identify as Zionist. So perhaps sending them to Jewish schools instead of Zionist Youth Movements is having an opposite effect.
Jewish parents are no different to the rest of middle- and upper-class Australia. Whereas they mostly attended public schools in their youth, they have bought into the “school choice” mantra and the myth that private schools outperform public schools.
Whereas they might have gone to Jewish youth movements and their camps to seek affiliation with Israel and the Jewish community or went to a Sunday school to get a Jewish education, baby boomers no longer want to - or are in a position - to take responsibility for these matters for their children.
So, if they can afford it, they are prepared to pay over $500,00 over 13 years of Jewish education. And on top of these often-unaffordable fees are private tutoring costs, especially in the senior years, to ensure that children get into the “right university” and the “right course” (medicine, law, dentistry) to achieve their potential.
Several unintended and negative consequences may arise from attendance at Jewish day schools. For example, Jewish kids no longer get to mix with mainstream multi-cultural 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.
This is well documented in research and leads to what could be described as a “neo-ghetto” mentality. Already Jewish kids have developed their own unique private Jewish school accent!
Another unintended and negative consequence of being compelled to attend Jewish education five days a week is something called being “Jewed out” - no longer interested in the culture and traditions so important in the preservation of community and continuity.
'Jewed out' has been allied in the research to the perception among kids that while attending the mainstream Jewish day school, learning Hebrew and religious studies and keeping kosher in the canteen, their parents do the exact opposite.
This has been allied in the research to the 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 which is mainly due to the socio-economic advantage of having well educated parents prepared to pay for additional tutoring if and when required.
As the most recent demographic survey revealed, non-Orthodox Jewish schools are only partially meeting their stated objectives.
Parents concerned about Jewish continuity, Jewish tradition and culture should save themselves $500K and start practising what the schools preach at home, send their kids to public schools for free and if necessary pay for tutoring, enrol them in UJEB, take their kids to synagogue regularly and to a Jewish youth movement every week.
They can invest the half a million dollars saved in their child’s tertiary studies. Or better still, spend the money on trips to Israel every year.
