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Hebrew school enrollment across US down by nearly half since 2006, report says
(JTA) — Living in Brooklyn, surrounded by synagogues and Jewish schools, Rachel Weinstein White and her husband hoped to find a place where their children could receive a Jewish education for a few hours each week.
But they knew they didn’t want to enroll at a traditional Hebrew school associated with a local synagogue. For one thing, White wasn’t interested at the time in participating in prayer services, the main offering of most congregations. Plus, her husband is Black and not Jewish, and they were not sure how well he or their children would be welcomed.
So about eight years ago, she started her own program together with a few families, setting up a cooperative and hiring a teacher in an early version of the “learning pods” that would become a pandemic fad.
“It was just this incredible, magical year,” White said. “So many people started hearing about our little class and asked to join that it became necessary to create a second class. … It just kind of grew organically from there.”
Today the school, Fig Tree, enrolls about 350 children across three locations and plans are underway to expand further. In hour-long classes on Sundays and weekday afternoons, children learn about Jewish holidays and history, engage in art and creative play, explore their local Jewish communities and learn basic Hebrew, in a program that culminates in a b’nai mitzvah year. It overlaps significantly with traditional Hebrew schools, but outside the usual setting — a synagogue classroom — that has become a cultural shorthand among American Jews for rote, uninspiring Jewish education.
That dynamic may be why Fig Tree is an outlier in a stark trend revealed in a new report: Enrollment in supplemental Jewish schools — those that students attend in addition to regular schooling in public or secular private schools — is down by nearly half over the last 15 years.
Even as the estimated number of Jewish children in the United States rose by 17% between 2000 and 2020, enrollment in Hebrew schools fell by at least 45% between 2006 and 2020, according to the report by the Jewish Education Project, a nonprofit that promotes educational innovation and supports Jewish educators in a wide array of settings.
The report identifies pockets of growth, mostly in the small number of programs like Fig Tree that operate outside of or adjacent to synagogues, and in schools operated by the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement. But overall, according to the report, just 141,000 children attend supplemental Jewish schools in the United States and Canada, down from more than 230,000 in 2006 and 280,000 in 1987.
Some of the decline in Hebrew school enrollment is countered by increasing enrollment in Jewish day schools, where students study Jewish topics for at least part of every day. The number of U.S. children attending Jewish day schools has risen by roughly the same amount, 90,000, that Hebrew school enrollment has fallen since 2006, according to the report, though a significant portion of the increase stems from population growth in Orthodox communities, where the vast majority of students attend day schools.
Miriam Heller Stern, a professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion who was tapped to help design the study, said the results suggest that, as with many aspects of religious life today, Hebrew school enrollment cannot be counted on as an act of obligation or tradition.
“There’s this idea that parents send their kids to Hebrew school because they went to Hebrew school and that’s a rite of passage in North America, but that may be a myth,” she said. “People don’t want to push their kids to have to do the same thing they did, necessarily, anymore.”
The report speculates about what has fueled the enrollment decline — from demographic changes to shifts in how American Jews think about countering antisemitism to increased access to Jewish learning online — and also about what has allowed some schools to thrive. It notes that all of the supplemental schools that responded to its census said their schools help children feel connected to the Jewish people.
“We believe that many factors have led to the decline in enrollment of students in supplemental schools in the last decade,” said David Bryfman, the Jewish Education Project’s CEO. “However, it’s also a myth that all supplemental schools don’t work.”
The group is planning a series of online sessions with some of the dozens of researchers and practitioners involved in the report, with one goal the sharing of success stories identified by the survey. Of the six identified in the report, a common theme is urging experiential, community-based learning. Some of the promising models explicitly position themselves as infusing Jewish content into child care, filling a pressing need for American families.
Still, it may be hard to counter the demographic realities of contemporary American Jews: Just a third of U.S. Jews in a 2020 survey said someone in their household was a member of a synagogue. That was the case even for the majority of non-Orthodox Jews who said they identified with a particular denomination, a marker of traditional engagement.
The waning of synagogue affiliation is borne out in the Jewish Education Project’s report, which found that more than 700 supplemental schools shuttered between 2006 and 2020 — most outright, though as many as 200 have survived in a new form after merging.
Temple Solel, a small Reform congregation in Fort Mill, South Carolina, shut down its Hebrew school in recent years. The volunteer-run program had up to eight students at a time, according to Russ Cobe, a lay leader.
“We sort of hit a point where we weren’t able to sustain it,” Cobe said. “We only had a couple of people teaching and students from a wide range of ages and they wouldn’t show up every week. Also, our wheelhouse seems to be retirement age and above. We don’t have a lot of young families.”
Hebrew school mergers offer one possible approach to countering the enrollment decline. Two synagogues, one Reform and one Conservative, located half a mile apart in Oak Park, Michigan, established a joint school about seven years ago and called it Yachad, which means “together” in Hebrew.
“One day a week we meet at the Conservative congregation and one day a week we meet at the Reform congregation, so we are keeping our kids involved in both,” said Gail Greenberg, Yachad’s director. “My goal is to make it at the highest common denominator. For example, all of our food is kosher so anyone who wants to eat here can.”
The arrangement appears to be working. Last year, about 90 students were enrolled, and this year, enrollment is at 128, including 26 new kindergarteners, with even larger numbers expected in the future.
Another set of programs has grown dramatically in recent years: those affiliated with the Chabad movement, which tend to operate even when small and cost less than synagogue programs. Since 2006, the study says Chabad’s market share in terms of enrollment has grown from 4% to 10%, and in terms of the number of schools from 13% to 21%.
Those figures might represent an undercount, according to Zalman Loewenthal, director of CKids, the Chabad network of children’s programs. While the study says there are some 300 Chabad programs in the United States, Loewenthal said he is aware of at least 500 and perhaps as many as 600 — a number driven up in the last decade amid a push by Chabad to launch more Hebrew schools. His count is based on the number of customers purchasing the curriculum offered by his organization, which is also new in the last decade and in his view has contributed to improved quality among Chabad Hebrew schools.
In general, non-traditional approaches to Jewish education may be attractive at a time when American families have packed schedules and competing needs, according to Stern.
“People want to be able to have bite-sized pieces just like you sign up for a six-weeks art class, they might want a six-weeks Jewish class,” she said. “In this atmosphere, some communities are finding ways to be more modular and more flexible, and meet people’s needs in different ways.”
Stern also said, referring to six programs highlighted in the study as success stories, that the future calls for programs to offer an “immersive” experience, meaning that children become part of a community.
“They are getting something beyond just knowledge,” Stern said. “They’re also getting connection and belonging, which provides the foundation for something bigger in their lives.”
Stern said she thought the report pointed to gaps in the way American Jewish communities allocate their resources.
“Supplementary education really was abandoned as a communal priority,” she said. “Individual communities had to find ways to fund it on their own. And I think that is part of why we’re seeing a decline.”
Bryfman said he’s optimistic, both about the power of supplemental schools and the potential for them to generate new support from Jewish donors.
The Jewish Education Project had sought outside funding to pay for its study and failed, he said. But now that the numbers are clear, he is beginning to see interest from philanthropies.
“I don’t want to count the dollars before they’re granted,” Bryfman said. “But the study is already beginning to have the desired effect of bringing more resources to the field.”
Fig Tree isn’t set up to benefit in a possible future of increased charitable investments in Jewish education. That’s because the school is set up as a business — an expression of confidence in its growth and to insulate itself from the vagaries of philanthropy.
“It’s a very unusual model for the Jewish education and I would argue a self-sustaining one,” White said. “We don’t have to rely on fundraising… and we’re not beholden to some of the other requirements that a nonprofit would necessitate, which allows us to be nimble.”
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Northwestern University Demands Dismissal of CAIR Lawsuit Targeting Antisemitism Prevention
People walk on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US, April 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Vincent Alban
Northwestern University on Wednesday submitted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit, filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which aims to cancel an antisemitism prevention course.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CAIR — an organization that has been scrutinized by US authorities over alleged ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — sued Northwestern University over the matter last month, arguing that the course in question violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and that it serves as a “pretense” for censoring “expressions of Palestinian identity, culture, and advocacy for self-determination.”
In its filing, Northwestern University argued that CAIR’s claims are political, not legal, and preclude adjudication in a court of law.
“Plaintiffs fail to allege facts showing intentional race, ethnicity, or national origin discrimination,” a copy of the motion obtained by The Algemeiner said. “Plaintiff’s allegations, even accepted as true, describe ideological disagreement, not actionable discrimination.”
Filed on behalf of the Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine (GW4P) group, the suit arrived in federal dockets with a request for a temporary restraining order to halt the course, which the university mandated as a prerequisite for fall registration, and the rescission of disciplinary measures imposed on nine students who refused to complete it.
The suit primarily takes aim at Northwestern’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and its application to the training course, which, at its conclusion, calls on students to pledge not to be antisemitic.
Used by governments and other entities across the world, the IHRA definition describes antisemitism as a “certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere.
Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
“Plaintiff, GW4P lacks standing to sue,” Northwestern argued in Wednesday’s motion. “The complaint does not allege facts establishing organizational or associational standing, and the allegations center on ideological alignment rather than protected characteristics.”
Several lawsuits have challenged universities’ quelling riotous anti-Zionist activity on other grounds, such as Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) unsuccessful lawsuit against Columbia University last year, but none have argued that allowing antisemitism to thrive is inclusive of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian identities and that fighting it is discriminatory.
However, CAIR argued that the IHRA definition is anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian, discriminating against both cultures while being hostile to CAIR’s vision of Palestinian self-determination.
“Northwestern requires students to complete a training course elaborating on that definition and requires them to attest that they to abide by conduct policies that incorporate that discriminatory definition,” CAIR’s complaint said. “The training course and attestations discriminate against Arab students whose racial and national origin identities are fundamentally incompatible with this definition.”
This is the latest CAIR activity in a long line of initiatives that have prompted a storm of controversy, as previously reported by The Algemeiner. In September, for example, US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) exposed materials which CAIR distributes in its local activism — notably its “American Jews and Political Power” course — to spread its beliefs. Some of it attempts to revise the history of Sharia law, which severely restricts the rights of women and is opposed to other core features of liberal societies.
Additionally, since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CAIR’s chapter in Philadelphia has lobbied the state government to enact anti-Israel policies and accused Gov. Josh Shapiro of ignoring the plight of Palestinians. In a 2023 speech following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land.”
CAIR has extensive links to jihadist groups which suppress freedom and promote hate, according to some experts.
“CAIR itself has a long history of terrorist ties in particular to the Muslim Brotherhood, illustrated by the fact that in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terrorism financing trial, CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator, and evidence showed direct financial interactions between CAIR and the now-defunct Hamas-linked charity,” Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Algemeiner last month. “This tactic of trying to turn antisemitism on its head in order to deflect from the nefarious activities of groups who have actual ties to terrorism is part of a larger strategy we see employed by Palestinian groups on campus such as the SJP. All of the above validates why the State Department is considering designating CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in August that the United States was actively working to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, a key ideological backer of Hamas that has been linked to CAIR, as a foreign terrorist organization.
On Sunday, US President Donald Trump told Just the News that an official designation is forthcoming, a comment confirmed by the White House the following day.
Last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the state-level designation of the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as terrorist organizations.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Former Hamas Hostages Visit Rebbe’s Ohel, Grave of Chabad Leader, in New York
Four former Hamas hostages visited the Rebbe’s Ohel on Nov. 22, 2025. Photo: Provided
Four freed Israeli hostages visited the Rebbe’s Ohel, the resting place of Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in Queens, New York, on Saturday night together with their families.
Segev Kalfon, Matan Angrest, Nimrod Cohen, and Bar Kuperstein prayed at the gravesite and expressed gratitude for their return home as well as the support they received from the Chabad movement during their 738 days in the captivity of Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
As is customary at the Ohel, the freed hostages and their families gave charity, lit candles, and wrote personal notes for blessings that they left by the Rebbe’s mausoleum. They also recited Psalm 100, giving thanks for their return from captivity after being abducted from Israel during the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Until now, our families prayed here for us to come home,” said Angrest, 22. “Today, I came only to say thank you.”
“I was here exactly two years ago and many times throughout the last two difficult years, we went to pray at the Ohel, and every time we would come back strengthened to continue our efforts,” shared Kalfon’s father. “Now, that we were successful, we came to the Rebbe to say thank you and reflect on the power of all the mitzvot that were done in their merit.”
The former hostages also prayed for the return of the remaining captives, all deceased, still held in the Gaza Strip.
Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky hosted the visit on behalf of Chabad World Headquarters, and the evening was arranged by Rabbi Mendy Naftalin in coordination with both Yaron Cohen from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office and Yael Goren-Hezkiya, head of the Government Policy and Foreign Relations Division in the Kidnapped, Missing, and Returnees administration in Israel.
Naftalin noted that the gathering at the Ohel on Saturday night symbolized a full circle moment after two years of praying for the return of the hostages. “Here, we cried, we prayed, and we strengthened each other,” he said. “To be able to return with you all is so moving; we are closing the circle.”
“We are only here because of our forefathers, who gave us this strength to withstand all challenges,” added Rabbi Simon Jacobson, the publisher of The Algemeiner who joined the group on Saturday night. “The Ohel connects us to our roots. You all are living proof of that resilience and eternality of the Jewish people.”
The four ex-hostages were released from captivity in October during the first stage of US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Angrest, an IDF soldier, was kidnapped near the Nahal Oz military base and faced injuries and severe torture during his captivity. His captors agreed to give him Jewish prayer books and tefillin, small leather boxes with straps traditionally wrapped on one’s head and arm at the start of weekday morning prayers.
“I prayed three times a day, morning, afternoon, and night,” he said. “It protected me; it gave me hope.”
Kuperstein was an IDF soldier on leave working as an usher at the Nova music festival when he was kidnapped. During his time in Gaza, his mother lent his tefillin to thousands around the world and urged Jews to wear it in his merit. Bar said he recited the Jewish prayer Shema Yisrael often in captivity and prayed using Hebrew prayers that he had memorized.
Several former Hamas hostages – including Omer Shem Tov, Agam Berger, Sasha Troufanov, Eli Sharabi, Noa Argaman, and Edan Alexander – have visited the Ohel in recent months. In November 2023, 170 relatives of hostages chartered a flight from Israel to New York to pray at the Rebbe’s Ohel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Netanyahu’s wife Sara, and other Israeli public figures also prayed at the Ohel during the Israel-Hamas war.
Trump visited the Ohel last year on the first anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. He was joined by a group that included Alexander’s family members. In a letter marking the anniversary of the Rebbe’s passing, Trump wrote: “When Edan Alexander was returned earlier this year, the entire country felt the power of the Ohel and the Rebbe’s enduring example.”
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Trump Set to Blacklist Muslim Brotherhood as Terror Group, in Move Hailed by Netanyahu
US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect
The White House confirmed on Tuesday that US President Donald Trump plans to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, in a move hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said the Islamist group “endangers stability.”
“TRUMP VOWS TO DESIGNATE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” the White House’s social media account on X posted, above a screenshot of a New York Post headline with the same wording.
TRUMP VOWS TO DESIGNATE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. pic.twitter.com/Zwt61sRRuI
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 24, 2025
The post came after Trump, in an interview with the Just the News outlet published on Sunday, was cited as saying that the “final documents are being drawn” to enact the designation.
“It will be done in the strongest and most powerful terms,” he said.
Trump’s comments followed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announcing last week a state-level designation of the Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist organizations.
The interview also came several months after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republican co-sponsors introduced a bill seeking to classify the Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Lawmakers in the US House also reintroduced earlier this year the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, which would direct the State Department to classify both the organization and its affiliates as terrorist entities.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in August that a federal designation was “in the works,” noting that the legal process requires examining each of the Brotherhood’s regional branches individually.
If finalized, the designation would mark a significant shift in US counterterrorism policy, criminalizing support for the Islamist group and potentially triggering sanctions on its global affiliates.
As of this writing, the White House has not yet confirmed the report beyond its social media post.
The Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational movement active in some 70 countries that preaches a vision of society governed by Sharia law, has made recent headlines over allegations of theft and corruption. Several Arab governments, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, have banned the Brotherhood or designated it a terrorist organization. The Hamas terror group has long been affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, drawing both ideological inspiration and even personnel from its ranks.
Counterterrorism experts argue that targeting the Muslim Brotherhood’s sprawling network is an overdue step to combat the roots of Islamist extremism. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), a research center that has long sounded alarms about the Brotherhood, welcomed Trump’s reported commitment to the designation, saying the group has functioned as an “intellectual incubator” for jihadist movements, spreading doctrines that inspire terrorist organizations even if the Brotherhood’s official chapters claim to disavow violence.
Charles Asher Small, ISGAP’s executive director, told The Algemeiner that the Brotherhood has learned to exploit the freedoms of open societies, the values of pluralism, and rights discourse “as instruments to weaken the very system that protects them.”
Trump’s statements on Sunday “reflect a growing recognition of the scale and seriousness” of the threat of the Brotherhood, Small said, and formalizing it as a terrorist designation would mark “an essential first step” to confront the group’s presence in the United States.
But he warned that the designation should not be treated “as an end in itself.” Real progress will require “sustained, evidence-based policy, rigorous scrutiny of affiliated organizations and funding networks, and long-term investment in strengthening democratic resilience against ideological infiltration already underway.”
A report released by ISGAP last week found that Qatar has funneled roughly $20 billion into American schools and universities over five decades as part of a coordinated, 100-year project to embed Muslim Brotherhood ideologies in the US.
The 200-page report, unveiled last week in Washington, DC to members of Congress, chronicles a 50-year effort by Brotherhood-linked groups to embed themselves in American academia, civil society, and government agencies, exposing what ISGAP calls the Brotherhood’s “civilization jihad” strategy, while maintaining an agenda fundamentally at odds with liberal democratic values.
“This is not a conventional political movement. It is a transnational ideological network that has learned to mimic the language of democracy while steadily corroding its foundations,” Small told The Algemeiner.
Dalia Ziada, co-author of the report, also welcomed Trump’s comments but cautioned against complacency.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is not just a Middle Eastern movement but an ideological export that has adapted itself to Western institutions, language, and freedoms in order to hollow them out from within,” Ziada told The Algemeiner. She added that she has “seen how its networks operate, how they marginalize moderate Muslim voices, and how state actors like Qatar amplify this project through money, media, and education.”
A US designation would be “a crucial signal of clarity,” she said, but “it must be followed by rigorous policy, real oversight of affiliated organizations, and sustained investment in protecting democratic culture.”
Netanyahu on Sunday applauded Trump’s decision “to outlaw and designate the Muslim Brotherhood … as a terrorist organization.”
“This is an organization that endangers stability throughout the Middle East and beyond,” he said, noting that Israel has already outlawed part of the movement and is working to “complete this action” soon.
The announcement could complicate matters for the Israeli Arab Ra’am party, which was part of the previous coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid and is aligned with the Southern Islamic Movement — a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate seen as more moderate than its northern counterpart, which was outlawed in 2015. Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas responded to Netanyahu’s comments on Monday, saying that his party is “evaluating the legal situation.”