Sacred inheritance: Why Jewish day school matters more than ever
Those of a certain age who grew up in the New York metropolitan area will remember a radio commercial with this ditty: “School bells ring and children sing/It’s back to Robert Hall again/Mother knows for better clothes/It’s back to Robert Hall again.”
And with that tune coming over the airwaves, we knew school would begin in a month’s time.
When my eldest daughter, Alisa, was ready to begin kindergarten in August 1979, my wife and I had the same conversation countless American Jewish parents have had: Where should we send her to school? Like many others, I assumed public school was the default and had registered Alisa at West Orange’s Pleasantdale School, around the corner from our home.
But Alisa had a different idea. After dinner one night she asked, “Where am I going to kindergarten?” When I told her she was going to the Pleasantdale school, with the quiet but determined confidence she was already known for, she announced, “No, I’m not. I’m going to a Jewish school with my friend Becky,” and she walked out of the room. Two days later we were taking a tour of a yeshiva.
And so began a journey not just for Alisa, but for our entire family, parents and siblings.
We enrolled her at the Hebrew Youth Academy of Essex County (now the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy), and in doing so, stumbled into what would become one of the most enduring pillars of our family life. We didn’t fully realize it then, but that choice gave our daughter more than an education — it gave her a deep connection to her people, her heritage and her Creator. And it gave us, her parents, a renewed sense of what it means to raise children in the Jewish tradition.
Today, in an era of growing assimilation, increasing antisemitism and societal confusion (as a concerned mother once said to me, “My children are more interested in saving whales than Jews.”) the need for strong, traditional Jewish education has never been greater.
The Talmud teaches us, “A father is obligated to teach his son Torah” (Kiddushin 29a). In modern times, Jewish day schools and yeshivot have become critical partners in fulfilling that mitzvah not only for their sons but their daughters too. They don’t replace the home — they reinforce it. They provide what Rabbi Dr. Wallace Greene, the principal of Hebrew Youth Academy when Alisa was enrolled, now family friend and a lifelong advocate for Jewish education, called “the spiritual and intellectual infrastructure that a Jewish child needs to thrive in a secular world.”
Dr. Greene has often warned of the risks when Jewish education is left to chance. “We are one generation away from losing our people,” he has said, echoing the famous line from Yehuda Halevi that “Israel is a nation only by virtue of its Torah.”
We have seen this borne out in hard numbers. The Pew Research Center’s 2020 study of American Jews found that only 28 percent of non-Orthodox Jews under age 50 feel very attached to Israel. By contrast, students who attend Jewish day schools — even if only through eighth grade — show significantly higher rates of Jewish identity, synagogue affiliation, and lifelong connection to Israel. The impact is measurable and lasting.
Jewish childred immersed in Torah study isn’t just learning ancient texts — they are being formed. They come to see themselves as part of a chain stretching from Abraham to Sinai to today. They understand that Judaism is not just a religion of holidays or Holocaust remembrance, but a living, breathing covenant that demands responsibility, integrity and devotion.
For Alisa, that identity took root early. Her passion for Israel and for Jewish causes didn’t arise in college — it was cultivated in classrooms where Hebrew was spoken, Tanach and Talmud were discussed seriously, and Jewish ethics were taught as a way of life. Her education helped shape the young woman who, at 20, traveled to Israel to deepen her learning, and who ultimately became a victim of a terrorist attack because she believed so deeply in her right to live freely as a Jew in the Jewish homeland.
Jewish education, in this sense, is not just about knowledge. It is about spiritual survival. It is a defense against a world that often tells our children that Jewish particularism is inconvenient, that Jewish values are outdated or that Israel has no moral right to exist.
Critics of day school education often raise the issue of cost — and it’s a real one. Tuition is expensive, and for many families it can feel out of reach. But if we believe Jewish continuity matters, we must find ways to prioritize it. Dr. Greene has long advocated for community investment in Jewish education, calling it a communal obligation, not a private luxury. “We cannot afford to lose another generation to Jewish ignorance,” he has said.
Some communities have answered the call. Scholarship funds, communal subsidies and creative tuition models have made Jewish education more accessible than ever. But we need more — more commitment, more philanthropy and more public advocacy.
Jewish day school education must be seen the way Catholic parochial education is seen in that community — not as optional, but as essential.
The rise in antisemitic incidents on college campuses and in public schools should be a wake-up call. If we want our children to stand up proudly as Jews, they need the inner resources that come from deep, immersive Jewish learning. Hebrew school once a week isn’t enough. A bar or bat mitzvah ceremony isn’t enough. We need full-time institutions of Jewish learning that shape our children’s minds and souls from the earliest age.
As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, zt”l, so eloquently put it, “To defend a country you need an army. But to defend a civilization you need schools.” We are not merely trying to survive—we are trying to transmit a 3,000-year-old civilization to the next generation.
The Jewish family is protected not only by walls or synagogues, but by values passed from parent to child, reinforced in school and lived out in community. That is the power of yeshiva and day school education.
Alisa knew that instinctively. At age 4, she insisted she was going to yeshiva. Her life was tragically cut short, but her example—and her education—lives on. Her 16 nieces and nephews are now walking in her footsteps, attending yeshivot and Jewish colleges in the metro New York area and religious public schools in Israel.
So, to every parent wondering whether day school is worth the cost, the drive, the time: The answer is yes. Not only for your child—but for the future of the Jewish people.
Stephen Flatow of West Orange is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian- sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror” and is the president of the Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi.
comments