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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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‘Jews are welcome, Zionists are not’: Is a Zionist ban at a restaurant legal?

Sap Sua, a Vietnamese restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, was one of Emily Lanigan’s favorite restaurants. She even celebrated her 44th birthday there in June. So Lanigan was stunned when the restaurant posted this since-deleted message on Instagram in September: “Jews are welcome, Zionists are not.”

Lanigan, a former synagogue president, identifies as a Zionist, which she defines as the Jewish right of self-determination. Was she really no longer welcome at the place where she had received a complimentary dessert just months before?

She wondered if the restaurant had a different definition of Zionism, she said, and thought maybe reaching out and offering to have an in-person discussion could clear things up.

“Being a Zionist does not mean I do not also believe in the freedom and autonomy of Palestinians,” Lanigan said she commented on Instagram. “You and I are not so far apart.”

But Sap Sua’s owner, Anthony “Ni” Nguyen, doubled down: “As you clearly saw, the full statement was ‘Jews are welcome. Zionists are not.’ Jews are a protected class, and all Jews are welcome,” Nguyen wrote in messages to Lanigan reviewed by the Forward. “Zionism is a political ideology, like Nazism.”

Nguyen’s response to Lanigan implied the law was on his side. He could ban “Zionists,” it seemed, so long as he let in Jews who shared his views about Israel.

Legally speaking, Nguyen was partially correct. Neither federal civil rights law nor Colorado law prohibits businesses from refusing service based on customers’ political beliefs — meaning turning someone away based solely on their political support for Israel could be allowed.

But the line gets murkier when “Zionist” is used as a stand-in for Jewish or Israeli identity, which can violate laws prohibiting discrimination based on religion or national origin.

The distinction matters not only for Sap Sua, as spaces from coffee shops to book festivals to concert venues make disavowing Israel a condition of entry or participation. The troubling practice raises a thorny question: How should the law distinguish between excluding someone because of their political beliefs and excluding them because of who they are?

The right to exclude?

Sap Sua was not the first business to declare itself off-limits to Zionists with no legal consequences. In Utah, after a bar called Weathered Waves declared “no Zionists allowed” in 2024, the attorney general found no evidence of legal wrongdoing. (Weathered Waves later closed over a dispute with its landlord.)

But that doesn’t mean “Zionist” bans are always legal. According to Richard Katskee, a professor of law at Duke University with expertise in public accommodation law, the legality depends on how the ban is enforced.

Does the business ask only Jewish or Israeli customers to disclose their views? Does it make assumptions about the politics of customers wearing kippahs? If Jewish customers are being singled out, Katskee said, that would make a finding of illegal discrimination more likely.

Omer Wiczyk, senior counsel at the Brandeis Center, told the Forward that two cases he’s currently litigating cross that line. At a coffee shop in Oakland, California, a customer wearing a Star of David baseball cap was asked on video if he was a Zionist and told to leave. At an eyebrow salon in Northern Virginia, a customer was kicked out after disclosing she was Israeli-American.

Businesses “cannot turn a customer’s identity into objectionable politics, and then invoke that to justify their exclusion,” Wiczyk told the Forward. “Being Israeli is not a political issue. Being a Jew is not a political issue. It’s who you are.”

But if a business required every customer, regardless of their identity, to affirm a particular political position on Israel before receiving service, that could be legal, Katskee said — though enforcing such a policy fairly would inevitably prove difficult in practice.

“It might be legal, like putting up a sign saying ‘Republicans only’ or ‘Democrats only,’” Katskee said.

Jenin Younes, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, argues that businesses have some latitude to refuse service based on customers’ politics. The ADC is currently making that case on behalf of Poetica Coffee, which is fighting a Department of Justice investigation into its decision to publicly bar Rep. Dan Goldman over his support for Israel.

In Goldman’s case, Younes said, his public profile and easily searchable voting record help support the idea that the coffee shop targeted him for his political views.

“It’s harder to make the argument that ‘No, this was really about just not letting Jewish people in’ — because he’s a public figure,” Younes said. “He’s said what he thinks on these issues.”

Even Goldman himself said that the coffee shop incident did not warrant a civil rights investigation because of his status as a public figure.

Younes argues that the same principle applies to situations unrelated to Israel and Zionism.

In 2018, for example, the owner of a Virginia restaurant kicked out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders citing the Trump administration’s “inhumane and unethical” policies. The restaurant faced social backlash, but no legal consequences.

And last year, a Martha’s Vineyard farmers’ market stand refused to sell lawyer Alan Dershowitz pierogi, citing his legal defense of Jeffrey Epstein and other men accused of sexual assault. Dershowitz threatened legal action, but it appears he never actually filed suit.

“In my opinion, businesses should have the right to exclude people whose views it doesn’t like,” Younes said. “And by the way, I would apply this in the other context: If there’s a pro-Israel coffee shop owner and they wanted to say, ‘We don’t want anyone wearing a pro-Palestine pin in here,’ I think they have that right.”

The law’s limits

Whether businesses have the legal right to exclude certain customers is a different question than whether they should.

Such bans can end up holding ordinary Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government — with the misguided idea that denying them a meal or a cup of coffee will somehow advance the Palestinian cause.

And since “Zionist” means different things to different people, using the label as a litmus test will almost inevitably lead to erroneous assumptions about peoples’ views.

In cases where the law is not a remedy, the free market may be. Businesses that turn away “Zionists” must be so committed to their beliefs that they are willing to refuse a paying customer, risking boycotts and reputational damage.

At the same time, some businesses may believe the publicity will draw in new clientele. Karimi Brows, which turned away the Israeli-American customer, boasted that it gained 40,000 TikTok followers in the month after the incident.

For its part, Sap Sua appeared to backtrack amid intense public pressure, posting to Instagram that it would welcome “every guest who walks through our doors.” (Sap Sua did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.)

But for Lanigan, the damage was done.

“It was one of my favorite restaurants,” Lanigan told the Forward. “But I will never set foot in that place again.”

The post ‘Jews are welcome, Zionists are not’: Is a Zionist ban at a restaurant legal? appeared first on The Forward.

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Explainer: Gadi Eisenkot’s four conditions for forming Israel’s next government

(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israeli President Isaac Herzog tasked Gadi Eisenkot on Sunday with forming Israel’s next government, giving him up to six weeks to assemble a coalition with a total of 61 seats out of 120 in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

If he fails to do so, then the president can give another Knesset member the opportunity; most likely this will be incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For his part, Netanyahu, has urged Eisenkot to join him in an emergency national unity government that will keep Israel strong against ongoing threats.

Eisenkot has responded that the “national emergency government” he will form will comprise the “four Zionist parties” of the change bloc – his own Yashar Party, B’Yachad headed by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu Party and the Democrats under Yair Golan.

He also said he would welcome “parties and Knesset members who support Yashar’s four principles” to join the coalition.

At the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Sunday, Eisenkot said he would be sending out formal invitations as soon as possible “to every Knesset faction, calling on all their members, both as parties and as individuals, to take part in forming the government and bringing it to its swearing-in.

“The rule is simple,” he added. “If you are prepared to sign on to the four principles I have set out, you are potential partners in a national emergency government under my leadership.”

Throughout his campaign, and particularly since the Oct. 27 election, Eisenkot has emphasized these four principles as the basis for forming the next government. But what are they exactly? And who, out of the other 11 parties, will be able to accept them and join his coalition?

1) Recognition of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Eisenkot wants to define his coalition as a government that is committed to Israel’s Jewish national identity and to democracy, not simply an alliance united by opposition to Netanyahu.

Any party wanting to join must accept Israel’s identity as the national home of the Jewish people first. The requirement has historically been contentious for Israel’s two Arab parties, who represent 19 Knesset members.

Parties must also accept the country’s democratic institutions, which uphold equality and rights for all citizens and prioritize the rule of law.

This means parties, such as the far-right and the ultra-Orthodox, that, as members of the outgoing government, have been pushing to overhaul the country’s judiciary – a key institution in Israel’s system of democratic checks and balances – might think twice about joining.

2) Acceptance of the values of the Declaration of Independence.

Israel’s Declaration of Independence, proclaimed and signed on May 14, 1948, is a foundational document that has helped shape the country’s constitutional principles, although Israel does not have a single, formal written constitution.

In it, the signatories laid out their vision for Israel, including the historical ties the Jewish people have to the land of Israel and its place as a safe haven for Jews around the world who are in trouble.

For Eisenkot, the emphasis appears to be on one particular section that declares: “The State of Israel will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens, irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; and it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

By embracing the Declaration of Independence, Eisenkot is recognizing the place of Israel’s minority groups, highlighting their “full and equal citizenship.” A point mentioned twice in the declaration.

The declaration also reaffirms that Israel is a country seeking peace, rather than endless conflict, at a time when Netanyahu has recently been criticized over his handling of the country’s wars on multiple fronts.

3) Mandatory service for all — military, national, and civilian, to strengthen the IDF and expand its ranks.

Including this condition for joining the government is a direct message to the ultra-Orthodox parties, at least one of which is considering supporting Eisenkot’s coalition.

United Torah Judaism, which has been aligned closely with Netanyahu’s bloc for at least the past two decades, on Thursday refused to recommend the prime minister as Israel’s next leader. Instead, the party, which holds seven seats, abstained from recommending any candidate.

Both UTJ and the second ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, have resisted efforts that would include ultra-Orthodox young men studying in yeshiva under a universal draft law requiring all eligible Israelis to perform military service.

Previous exemption laws have expired, and Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s blanket exemption of yeshiva students from military service has no legal basis and violates principles of equality before the law.

By including this condition, Eisenkot is telling the ultra-Orthodox – and even the Arab community, most of whose members are also exempt from mandatory military service – that everyone in Israel must do their part, whether through military service or some type of national or community service.

This stipulation could either keep the ultra-Orthodox out of the government, even though Eisenkot’s partners have expressed willingness to allow their participation. Or it could force them to be more flexible on an issue that until now they have appeared unrelenting.

4) Recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organization and commitment to dismantling its military and governing power.

Leaders of the two Arab parties, the Islamist Ra’am Party and the more nationalist Joint List, have refused to make this statement out loud.

Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas, who has repeatedly condemned the Oct. 7 attack, has said he does have a clear position on this but refuses to state it publicly for several reasons ranging from concerns about his personal safety to his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas is also affiliated. He has also questioned why Arab politicians are required to pass loyalty tests that are not applied equally to Jewish politicians.

When President Herzog pressed him on the matter last week, Abbas said: “I have an unequivocal answer, but leave me space to be a bridge. To also influence the other side.” He argued that maintaining channels of communication with Palestinians requires him not to adopt language that would immediately alienate them.

For the Joint List, the continued refusal to call Hamas a terror group appears to reflect the view that Hamas is part of the broader Palestinian political movement. Some of its members argue that labeling it a terrorist organization risks delegitimizing Palestinian political aspirations as a whole.

Members of the 11-member faction have condemned the Oct. 7 massacre, but are unlikely to accept this particular condition because it could be used to justify Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank. Its leaders also want to preserve their credibility among Palestinian voters, many of whom see the conflict through the lens of occupation and Palestinian national rights.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Explainer: Gadi Eisenkot’s four conditions for forming Israel’s next government appeared first on The Forward.

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Photos: Pro-Israel counter-protesters overwhelm anti-Zionist bike rally in Philadelphia, where police arrest 3

Hundreds of pro-Israel counter-protesters gathered around Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square Sunday morning ahead of a bike rally targeting six Jewish-owned restaurants. There were about 300 anti-Zionist protesters and about 200 pro-Israel counterprotesters, police estimated. Rally organizers said the timing — just before the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Nazis attacked Jewish shops and homes — was coincidental.

Three people were arrested Sunday, according to police. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, said a few hours after the crowd had dispersed, “In the midst of blatant antisemitic targeting of Jewish-owned restaurants on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the City of Brotherly Love showed up to support our neighborhood businesses and prove once again that hate has no place in our Commonwealth.”