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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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Jewish moderate Julie Menin claims victory as next City Council speaker
(JTA) — Julie Menin, a Jewish New York City Councilwoman in Manhattan, declared victory on Wednesday in the race for council speaker, positioning herself as a potential moderating influence on Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s progressive agenda.
The election does not officially happen until January, but Menin, a moderate Democrat who represents neighborhoods including the Upper East Side, announced that she had gained the support of a “super majority” of 36 votes out of the council’s 51 members.
“I am honored and humbled by the trust and faith that my colleagues have put in me to lead the City Council as a force of action for New York families,” Menin said in a statement on Wednesday.
If elected, Menin would be the first Jewish speaker in the City Council’s history.
The council serves as a separate branch from the mayoral office and is responsible for passing laws and controlling key aspects of the city’s budget, this year set at $116 billion. A supportive speaker is seen as essential to carrying out a mayor’s agenda.
Menin secured support from many moderate Democrats and Republicans. Her opponent, Brooklyn’s Crystal Hudson, has been backed by the council’s progressive bloc and is widely seen as more aligned with Mamdani, who takes office Jan. 1.
Menin, whose grandmother and mother survived the Holocaust before immigrating to New York City, has frequently advocated for Holocaust education and efforts to combat antisemitism as a councilwoman.
She has also made pro-Israel advocacy a part of her public image, marching in the Israel Day Parade in May to advocate for the release of the hostages and going on a solidarity trip to Israel to visit Kibbutz Kfar Aza in February 2024. (Mamdani has said he would not visit Israel or attend the Israel Day Parade as mayor.)
While Mamdani has frequently reiterated his commitments to protecting Jewish New Yorkers, his record of support for the boycott Israel movement and past anti-Israel rhetoric stoked fears in some Jewish New Yorkers during his campaign, including in Menin’s district, which supported his opponent.
Last week, after pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated against an Israeli immigration event at the Park East Synagogue, which is located in Menin’s district, Mamdani said that he believed “sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.” In contrast, Menin said that the protest was “not acceptable” in a post on X.
“Congregants must have the right to worship freely and to enter and exit their house of worship without impediment,” Menin wrote. “Protests must have reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions.”
But while Menin has been seen as a potential moderating force on Mamdani, she has also cast herself as willing to collaborate with the incoming mayor.
“With this broad five-borough coalition, we stand ready to partner with mayor-elect Mamdani’s administration and deliver on a shared agenda that makes New York more affordable through universal childcare, lowers rent and healthcare costs, and ensures that families across the city can do more than just get by,” Menin said in a statement.
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Jewish leaders must work with educators to battle antisemitism — not demonize us
To the editors:
A conversation about education and antisemitism was held at last week’s Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly that did not significantly feature educator voices. That’s truly unfortunate. As an educator, union leader, deeply committed Jew and the wife of a rabbi, I can attest that this issue is always on my mind.
I was troubled by the attacks on teachers’ unions that marked the JFNA gathering, with some leaders attacking unions like the National Education Association. I lead another teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers, and though we weren’t mentioned, we all face similar issues.
I see and engage with young Jews all the time. Many are members of my union — young, idealistic teachers who want to make a difference in the classroom, and who know that public education is the key to a more equal and just United States. Many teach in the public schools precisely because of their Jewish values. But they, like many Americans and many American Jews, are alienated from Israel because of the actions of the Israeli government.
We can’t ignore the anti-democratic actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the settler violence in the West Bank or the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We need to honestly confront these issues head-on, just as we simultaneously demand that Jewish voices are not silenced and Jewish students and teachers feel safe.
The American public education system has deeply benefited our extraordinary American Jewish community. Today’s families deserve the same stellar education, one that offers economic opportunity and social advancement. To treat teachers as the enemy, rather than allies to work with, puts that goal at risk. By demonizing teachers’ unions rather than engaging with us, Jewish organizational leadership is supporting those who seek to undermine public education.
And we are eager to work toward these shared goals. My union spends significant time educating teachers about antisemitism. We have a national partnership with the Jewish Council on Public Affairs through which we pair union locals with local Jewish leaders across the country with the aim of bettering understanding and cooperation.
Our New York City local, the UFT, has partnered with the city’s Department of Education to promote a new curriculum called “Hidden Voices,” about prominent Jews through the decades. And while leaders at JFNA suggested that teachers’ unions are contributing to poor education about Israel, the AFT proudly partners with Israeli organizations, including the Jewish/Arab Hand in Hand Schools network. We host Israeli NGOs and trade unionists at our conventions and in special meetings with our leadership.
Instead of continuing to point fingers and gloss over the reality that we face in today’s truly complex world, we need to create partnerships and include everyone who seeks Jewish safety.
To combat the many threats that face the Jewish community, inside of schools and beyond them, we need to show partnership and promise — not division.
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More than 25% of Israelis want to leave the country. How did we get here?
Amid this brutal cycle of war, trauma and sacrifice, more than 25% of Israelis are now considering leaving Israel behind.
The stunning results of this survey, conducted in April 2025 and published on Sunday by the Israeli Democracy Institute, reveal an existential fissure in the country. Israelis are losing faith in their nation’s future, and they don’t believe they can get it back.
It’s a shocking turnaround, after narratives of Israeli society’s exemplary resilience and social cohesion sprang up in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre. And while this survey predates major events like the Israel-Iran war and the ceasefire and hostage deal, its findings align with other concerning trends.
“Tens of thousands of Israelis have chosen to leave Israel in the past two years,” Gilad Kariv, chairperson of the Knesset’s Research and Information Center, said at a Knesset meeting in October. “This is not a wave of emigration; it’s a tsunami of Israelis choosing to leave the country.”
Since the beginning of 2022, 125,000 more people have emigrated from Israel than have immigrated to it. The number of official requests to terminate residency in 2024 was more than double the total requests made between 2015 and 2021.
It’s not just because war is difficult. It’s because the last few years have posed a fundamental challenge to Israel’s promise to global Jewry — and Israel is failing.
Israel has never been an easy country to live in. Residing there means facing economic hardship, a constant threat of violence, existential dread and insufferable bureaucracy. What drew immigrants in and kept citizens around was their shared commitment to the Jewish state’s ultimate vision: a renewed Jewish homeland serving its inhabitants, built on “freedom, justice and peace.”
That sense of shared purpose was crucial to Israel’s founding. “The State of Israel and the Jewish people share a common destiny,” David Ben-Gurion, the country’s founding prime minister, wrote in a 1954 letter. “This state cannot exist without the Jewish people, and the Jewish people cannot exist without the state.”
As Anita Shapira explains in her 2015 book Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel, Ben-Gurion recognized the need to keep all Jews invested and connected to the state of Israel — and the danger of severing that connection.
But in recent years, Israel’s leaders have failed to nurture that investment and connection. What distinguishes this period from the conflict-ridden years around the 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars is how out of sync a vast number of today’s Israelis are with their own state and government.
And the IDI’s survey reveals just how far the country has strayed from Ben-Gurion’s vision.
Those more likely to leave are less religious and more liberal — a demographic politically isolated in a country steered by a power-hungry and extremist right-wing government. While the Oct. 7 attack and the first months of war pulled many Israelis toward new or deeper religious commitment, the grueling conflict, which dragged on for months without a clear endgame, also pushed others further and further away.
Just before the United States-brokered ceasefire went into effect on Oct. 5, the Institute for National Security Studies reported that 72% of Israelis were dissatisfied with the government’s handling of the war, while more than 40% thought the country was worse off since Oct. 7. More than half believed another Oct. 7 could happen again.
But this fundamental mistrust of the country’s leadership took hold well before Oct. 7. It goes back to 2022, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought far-right extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich into the Israeli political mainstream. Then, his government’s widely reviled plans for a judicial overhaul in 2023 brought fears of Israeli authoritarianism into reality.
The Oct. 7 attack could have been a wake-up call that Israel desperately needed to reverse this course. Instead, within a year’s time, it became clear that Netanyahu was still guided by his own interests — prolonging the war, sabotaging hostage deals and turning Israel into an international pariah.
Israel’s economy has also suffered from this turbulence. The tech sector has seen investment decline and talent flee, while the cost of living has worsened.
Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, warned me of the consequences of all these trends during a podcast interview in August 2024.
“My deepest fear is for a mass emigration of young secular Israelis, those Israelis who are the backbone of the next generation of startup nation, of Israel as an economic success story,” he told me. “I’m terrified of that, and I see this government ultimately as a threat to the Israeli success story.”
It is understandable why much of the Israeli electorate feels disillusioned, unsafe, nihilistic and betrayed. And those feelings ought to be a cause for major concern.
Jewish tradition repeatedly warns that civil fragmentation can lead to a break between Jews and the land of Israel. The Talmud explains that senseless hatred and a breakdown of trust between Jews have historically led to ruptures between our people and our homeland. This is precisely what organizations like The Fourth Quarter — a grassroots movement seeking to build consensus among Israelis through dialogue — seek to repair. We cannot know if it will be enough.
What we do know is that Israel — both its citizens and its leaders — must respond to those who feel abandoned by the country that promised to be a Jewish homeland for all.
If we want Israelis to remain committed to their country, the government must make good-faith efforts to show they still have a home here.
That means, first, political reform. There must be real political accountability with independent probes into Oct. 7 — not the internal probe the government currently plans — long-overdue elections, and a fresh focus on creating economic stability backed by strategic foreign policy. Above all, there must be restored democratic norms, and a shelving of authoritarian plans.
Unfortunately, Netanyahu and his government seem uninterested in repairing what they have broken. The Jewish state will not crumble overnight if Netanyahu and his ilk remain indifferent to these needs. But the country’s morale will weaken. And everything that has kept it strong and surviving — its defenses, its international supporters, its belief in its own mission — will do the same. The educated, the entrepreneurial and the young will leave, and they will not look back.
Israelis need something to believe in. Without that, they will flee a country unrecognizable to them.
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