I’ve had a day to sit with the midterm election results. I’m still angry and disappointed.
I’ve also spent a lot of that time thinking about my grandchildren. They’re growing up in a country where they can hear someone tell them what it means to be Jewish before they’ve had a chance to figure it out for themselves.
I know what we can do about that: We can teach them who they are. And we can insist that the institutions we support put real money behind that work.
Education is the Jewish people’s superpower. There are fewer than 16 million Jews in a world of billions. Think about how our story reached us. Someone sat beside a child and taught them the words. Someone made time for their questions. That child grew up and did it again.
The Torah asks us to teach our children at home and on the road, when we lie down and when we rise up. That responsibility belongs to us now.
I want my grandchildren to know Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rachel and Miriam. I want them to know why Israel is part of our story and how Jewish communities built lives across the Diaspora. I want them to ask why we tell the same story every Passover and why the person leading the Seder makes time for the youngest person at the table to ask questions.
When someone asks them what it means to be Jewish, I want them to have enough knowledge to answer in their own words and enough confidence to ask hard questions of their own.
That kind of education takes time, good teachers and money. A parent can want all of this for a child, and still look at a tuition bill and wonder how to make it work. A family weighing the cost of day school, a synagogue Hebrew program or summer camp deserves more than a speech about the importance of Jewish continuity. They deserve help paying for it. And the teachers who bring those experiences to life deserve the training, materials and support to do their jobs well.
We have a responsibility to teach beyond our own community, too.
A student should have the chance to learn about Jewish life before encountering Jews in a lesson on the Holocaust or a headline about Israel. Teach the history of the Jewish people’s connection to Israel. Teach how Jews lived, worked, argued, created and raised families around the world. Let students hear Jewish music and read Jewish writers. Give teachers the training and classroom materials to teach that history with care.
I’m calling on AIPAC, Jewish Federations and other established institutions to do their part.
Federations are doing too little to help families afford Jewish education. Each Federation should tell donors how much it budgets for that work, how many children it reaches and how many families it turns away for lack of funds.
I want AIPAC to show how it helps people understand the history behind the relationship it advocates. Put those commitments in writing before the next fundraising appeal and report the results a year later.
If leaders are unwilling to make education a priority, it’s time for new leadership.
When someone says, “Jews control the world,” I want my grandchildren to recognize that old lie and know enough about Jewish history to speak for themselves. I want them to know about Jonas Salk and the team that developed a polio vaccine, and about Leonard Bernstein and the collaborators who gave us “West Side Story.” I’m proud of those contributions.
I also want my grandchildren to know the stories of the people whose names they’ll never see in a textbook, including the teachers who kept a classroom open and the grandparents who kept telling the family’s story.
To the leaders who ask for our trust and our donations, show us what you’re doing to help the next generation carry that story forward. The next time you ask a donor to give, be ready to say how many more children will be able to learn because of that gift. Our grandchildren deserve to know their story well enough to tell it themselves. Fund the people and places that will teach it to them.
