Published: 11 January 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
It’s interesting to see the intense responses to something which is really not front-page news. For many years Moriah has asked prospective parents for an Orthodox ketubah (marriage contract) when applying to the school.
I respect the school’s insistence that it has a right to decide who can attend, according to their clearly defined ethos as a modern Orthodox school. The broader question is this: if the school is receiving community money via the JCA and government money, can it still be entitled to be so restrictive. I will leave others to debate this point as I don’t think this is the salient question.
The chief question is why do so many non-Orthodox Jews choose to send their kids to an Orthodox school? When we moved to Sydney we toured the local schools, public and Jewish alike. We were quite overwhelmed with what seemed like excellent choices all around. Although Moriah’s results and facilities exceeded any of the other schools we were considering in the area, we decided not to send our kids there.
We felt that it would be very confusing for our kids to be forced to follow the Orthodox ethos of the school when we had chosen to practice Judaism differently in our home. We were concerned that our daughter would be forced to attend daily prayer services where she could not be valued and counted as part of a minyan, or where the kids would be taught that Orthodoxy is the only “real” way of practicing their Judaism.
The broader question is this: if the school is receiving community money via the JCA and government money, can it still be entitled to be so restrictive.
Instead, we were attracted to the ethos of Emanuel, which contrary to popular perception, is not a Reform school but rather, a pluralist Jewish school. This distinction is important as it welcomes all Jews whether they are intermarried, non-denominational, Reform, Orthodox or Conservative. The school believes that there is more than one way for a person to practice their Judaism whether through their synagogue attendance, their efforts to create a better world, their tzedakah or visits to asylum seekers in detention, to name just a few avenues.
While ironically our family’s more Orthodox practices of keeping kosher and attending synagogue place us at odds with most of the Emanuel school and parent body, we still feel more aligned with the ethos of what the school teaches our children about being Jewish.
What I find difficult to understand is why do so many families, who are not Orthodox in their practice, send their kids to an Orthodox day school. I don’t know the official details of how many self-define as Orthodox at the school but based on my knowledge of the kids and parents, I can claim with confidence that in terms of actual practice, it is a minority.
If you look at the way the parents and students dress, how many don’t drive on Shabbat, how many go to the mikveh regularly, how many keep kosher, how many pray on a daily basis, etc, it’s clear that the vast majority don’t live by standard Orthodox practices. And while I don’t think these things should be the measure of how you judge someone’s Jewishness, the insistence on Orthodoxy demands adherence to these practices.
If Moriah insisted that all its students lived according to Orthodox halacha (Jewish law), the school would struggle to find enough applicants to fill its places. Yet somehow converts are held to a higher standard.
If Moriah insisted that all its students lived according to Orthodox halacha (Jewish law), the school would struggle to find enough applicants to fill its places. Yet somehow converts are held to a higher standard.
When kids learn one thing at school and practice something completely different at home its leads to dissonance in their Jewish identity. It can also impact other parts of their identity. How does a gay or transgender child feel growing up in an environment that only models homogeneous heterosexual couples as a family unit and does not tolerate their choices?
I would argue that this mixed messaging is also confusing for Jewish kids who attend Christian schools, much more common in my generation of schooling. Parents who came through this system have largely realised that asking your kids to be proud of their Jewish identity while surrounded by their peers and teachers espousing practices that are antithetical to Jewish beliefs can be rather bewildering and isolating.
One of the reasons parents send their kids to Jewish schools is to ensure Jewish continuity. Ultimately that’s what this ruckus is all about. Moriah wants to ensure that all the kids at their school are halachically Jewish so that if they end up marrying their peers, they are “kosher” marriages that continue Jewish tradition.
The irony is that as the state-funded rabbinate in Israel becomes increasingly ultra-Orthodox even respected Orthodox Australian rabbis like Rabbi Ralph Genende are blacklisted by the religious courts responsible for marriage and divorce in Israel. This means that couples married under their pulpit or converts under their tutelage are not automatically considered Orthodox and able to marry in Israel. If Israelis want their marriage to be recognised by the state, they have to do it through the Orthodox system or get married abroad.
Unlike selecting a school, this insistence on Orthodoxy impacts the much wider general population.
