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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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Ohio GOP gubernatorial nominee appeared at church whose pastor called modern Judaism ‘fake’
Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, campaigned twice at a church whose pastor compared COVID-era restrictions to Nazi Germany and whose members took part in a protest outside the home of a Jewish state lawmaker who described it as an antisemitic act of intimidation.
Ramaswamy, 41, is running against Amy Acton, a Jewish Democrat who faced antisemitic attacks and Nazi comparisons while serving as Ohio’s health director during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Republican candidate most recently appeared on May 21 for a campaign event at Liberty Valley Church in Northfield, which describes itself as a “Bible-Believing Non Denominational Patriotic Church,” for a discussion about “The Future of Religious Liberty.” Ramaswamy appeared alongside the church’s pastor, the Rev. Jeff Tauring, who has preached there for more than two decades, according to the church’s website.
The church drew attention in 2021 after several members showed up outside the home of Casey Weinstein, a Democratic state representative who is Jewish, during protests over the coronavirus restrictions. Weinstein described it as a “show of force” intended to intimidate him and said the explicitly Christian messages — including a “kneel before the cross” banner and a call to “make Casey Weinstein be better” — directed at the home of a Jewish lawmaker made the demonstration antisemitic
Tauring, in an interview with the Cleveland Jewish News at the time, denied that the demonstration was antisemitic or intended to intimidate Weinstein, saying his church supported Jews and Israel. But he added that it was an obligation of his congregation to speak out, likening the vaccine mandates and other government health policies to the policies of the Nazi regime that preceded the Holocaust. “We feel like if somebody would have stood up for the Jews earlier, and it should have been the church, if they would have done that earlier,” he said, “I’m not sure if the catastrophe would have happened.”
Earlier this year during a sermon, Tauring described the modern practice of Judaism as “fake” and called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a ”wicked person” because “he doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ and he should.”
At the Ramaswamy event in May, Josh Mandel, a Jewish ally of the pastor who campaigned on “Judeo-Christian values” during his failed Senate bid against JD Vance in 2022, told the audience that Ramaswamy would govern according to the values practiced inside the church.
“I know Vivek. He’s not just going to campaign in churches once he’s governor; he’s going to keep coming back,” Mandel said, according to a recording of the event obtained by the Forward. “And he’s going to govern based on what is worshiped right here in this church.”
Ramaswamy also appeared at the church last December.
In an interview on Wednesday at the campaign’s request, Mandel said he organized the event at the church and described the pastor and Ramaswamy as great friends of the Jewish people.
He wasn’t familiar with the pastor’s past remarks and didn’t address them when the Forward shared them.
Mandel shared a clip of Ramaswamy answering a question at the event about antisemitism, in which he called it a “cancer” in society and said it must be confronted on both the left and by “some people who claim to be on the right.”
“I think that a society that turns towards blaming a successful group of people in our country and in many other cultures in our history is a society that actually is allergic to success,” Ramaswamy said at the town hall. “And a society that is allergic to success, a real victim of that is not just the Jewish people — who are the recipients of that hatred. The real victim is the entire society itself, because it is a cancer that will eat that nation from within.”
Ramaswamy’s complicated record with Jewish voters
Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who has never served in public office, has had his own complicated relationship with Jewish voters and has taken controversial positions on Israel.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Ramaswamy broke with much of the Republican field by proposing that the United States eventually phase out its annual $3.8 million military assistance to Israel after the current agreement expired in 2028. He later softened that position, telling the Forward that aid should end only when Israel was strong and secure enough that it no longer needed American assistance.
Aligned with the “America First” worldview, Ramaswamy developed close relationships with figures like Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who has promoted antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories, associated with white nationalists, and called for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army. Ramaswamy was reportedly on a shortlist to become secretary of state in Donald Trump’s second administration, supported by Donald Trump Jr., tech billionaire Elon Musk and Carlson.
Ramaswamy, a Hindu who was a member of Shabtai, a Jewish leadership society at Yale founded in 1996 as an alternative to the “secret societies” at the university, also faced criticism from Jewish groups for appearing on a podcast hosted by Albert Faleski, known online as An0maly, who had promoted antisemitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories. Ramaswamy told the Forward at the time that he had not known about the host’s statements before appearing on the show and argued that speaking with someone did not amount to endorsing that person’s views.
Jewish conservatives and Republican officials have spent much of the past year publicly confronting antisemitism within parts of the MAGA movement, particularly the growing influence of Carlson, Nick Fuentes and other online personalities who attack Israel and traffic in antisemitic conspiracy theories. An increasingly vocal faction on the far right has made Christian nationalism and antisemitism central to its politics.
Acton’s experience with antisemitism
The tension is particularly relevant in Ohio, where Ramaswamy is running against a Jewish Democrat who has spoken openly about her faith and has faced antisemitic attacks. If elected, Acton would become Ohio’s first Jewish governor.
While serving as Ohio’s health director during the COVID-19 pandemic, Acton became a target of antisemitic abuse and Nazi comparisons as she enforced the state’s public health restrictions.
Earlier this month, an armed man lunged toward Acton while she was speaking at a campaign event. The suspect, Partick Havas, was charged with assault, disorderly conduct and inducing panic. Authorities did not specify whether they believed the incident was motivated by antisemitism. Ramaswamy’s campaign condemned the episode, calling political violence “completely unacceptable.”
While the state has been governed by a Republican since 2021 and has been leaning GOP in recent elections, recent polls show Acton expanding her lead over Ramaswamy.
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What is flydubai and will it continue to link Israel and the Emirates?
(JTA) — TEL AVIV – The apparent hijacking attempt aboard flydubai Flight 1073 has put a spotlight on the Emirati airline, which has become a main air link connecting Israelis to the rest of the world.
The incident could also test the relationship between Israel and one of the airlines that has come to symbolize the ties forged by the 2020 Abraham Accords, in which the United Arab Emirates was one of a small number of Arab countries that recognized Israel.
Flydubai, a Dubai government-owned airline, began operating in 2009 and launched regular flights to Israel in 2020, shortly after the UAE and Israel established diplomatic relations.
When war broke out in Israel in October 2023, many foreign airlines suspended flights to the country for extended periods. Flydubai and other UAE airlines continued operating flights to and from Israel through much of the conflict, providing an important connection for Israelis seeking to travel abroad at a time when international air service to the country was severely reduced.
The airline has also become an important hub for Israelis traveling beyond the UAE itself. Through Dubai, passengers can connect to destinations across Asia, Africa and other regions. The airline operates dozens of flights between Tel Aviv and Dubai each week.
According to Ben Gurion Airport data for August, flydubai carried roughly 90,000 passengers during the month. Since the beginning of 2026, more than 420,000 passengers have flown with the airline to or from Ben Gurion, accounting for roughly 4% of the airport’s international passenger traffic and placing it third among international airlines operating at the airport by passenger volume.
The incident aboard Flight 1073 could now put that relationship under scrutiny.
Israel’s Transportation Minister Miri Regev has reportedly asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to immediately suspend flydubai flights to Israel until the circumstances of Wednesday’s incident are clarified, according to Israeli news outlet Ynet.
Regev said flydubai had violated the countries’ aviation agreement, which she described as requiring pilots operating flights to Israel to be citizens of countries with which Israel maintains diplomatic relations. Israeli and international media have reported that the co-pilot who instigated the incident was an Omani national.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the UAE Amir Hayek pushed back against calls to suspend the flights, however. In a post on X, Hayek wrote that flydubai and Etihad were the only two airlines in the world that continued flying to Israel “even during the most difficult times,” and argued that the UAE and the airline should be allowed to fully investigate what happened rather than face action based on speculation.
“I trust them,” he wrote.
The episode comes as Flydubai continues to expand its global network. The airline said this month that it was operating an average of 2,200 flights a week and serving more than 125 destinations in 56 countries. Its partnership with the major airline Emirates gives passengers access to a combined network of more than 214 unique destinations in more than 100 countries, with more than 4,600 possible connections through Dubai.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post What is flydubai and will it continue to link Israel and the Emirates? appeared first on The Forward.
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Mayor Mamdani’s antisemitism strategy doesn’t define antisemitism. That’s a good thing.
Halfway through New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s strategy to combat antisemitism is a page labeled “definitions.” Rather than announce which definition of antisemitism the strategy will use, the page explains why the administration won’t be defining the term.
“Despite antisemitism’s persistent presence throughout history, scholars, community members and community leaders do not agree on certain aspects of what antisemitism is,” it reads. “New York City can and will leverage all of the tools at its disposal to combat antisemitism effectively without needing to adopt a definition for this specific form of hate.”
The strategy instead cites three prominent definitions: the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance or IHRA definition, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, and the Nexus Document (in the interest of full disclosure,I am a fellow with the Nexus Task Force, though I was in no way involved in the writing of the definition). The strategy also alludes to other frameworks.
That it does not include a definition will be held up by some as proof that the Mamdani administration doesn’t take antisemitism seriously. In fact, the decision not to select one definition shows that it is focused more on fixing the problem than prematurely picking just one method to solve it.
We do not need a definition to fight hatred. We do not have similar pushes to define, say, racism or sexism or xenophobia. The report itself makes the point that a definition is not “necessary useful” for the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism to do its work. “Every crime that may be bias motivated is investigated by the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force consistent with New York State law and applicable criminal statutes. Likewise, allegations of anti-Jewish discrimination reported to the New York City Commission on Human Rights are assessed under the City’s Human Rights Law.”
Moreover, what people who want one definition often mean is that they want antisemitism defined as including anti-Zionism, or that they want the administration in question to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which the Mamdani administration revoked when he came into office. The IHRA definition contains examples of antisemitism that are mostly about Israel and that include “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” and “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
Critics (including me) have argued that the codification or singular embrace of IHRA threatens to restrict speech around Israel and US foreign policy.
Further, Israeli legal scholars Itamar Mann and Lihi Yona have argued that, in addition to potentially chilling speech about Israel, the push to codify or embrace this one definition is a push for a government-sanctioned understanding of what it is to be Jewish. “It restricts the freedom of Jews to define their own identity, limiting the ways in which Jewish beliefs, thought and activism can be expressed,” they wrote last year. It would be inappropriate for the Mamdani administration, or any government administration, to take it upon itself to decide what it means to be Jewish.
And insisting that our understanding of antisemitism always and only adhere to one definition is like insisting that we always and only use a hammer for home renovation. Sometimes that is useful; sometimes that can result in destroying your house.
There are times that IHRA may be useful in thinking through what is and is not antisemitic. But there may be times that it leads to overuse and political abuse of the term “antisemitism.” A person protesting Israel and not any other country may be applying a double standard; on the other hand, they may be holding Israel to account because they are an American taxpayer and Israel is the top recipient of US aid. By pairing IHRA with other definitions and frameworks, those in office are more, not less, informed and empowered to thoroughly think through how they’re tackling antisemitism.
That isn’t to say there’s nothing to criticize about the Mamdani administration’s strategy. Some might note that it’s heavier on principle than it is on specific policy; others, that it does not mention that, though anti-Zionism and protest of Israel are not inherently antisemitic, both can cross over into antisemitic rhetoric, vandalism, and even violence.
But they don’t need a definition to do any of that. And like the Biden administration’s 2023 national strategy on antisemitism (which also declined to pick one single definition), the Mamdani strategy takes a whole of government approach, stressing that Jews are New Yorkers and allowing them to live as full-fledged members of society safely is everyone’s responsibility, and that it will use the tools at its disposal to do that. You could just have a hammer, but why would you want that when you could also have a screwdriver, a wrench, and your own ingenuity and discernment?
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