jvalley.org | jewish community news

Jewish Community News

News: February 2006

Interfaith families sending kids to Jewish Day School

Kim Cousens vividly remembers the pre-kindergarten Yavneh party she attended with her 5-year-old daughter Molly last spring. The parents and children gathered with now-first graders for a Shabbat service.

“They were doing Shabbat and passing the loaf of bread around. I wanted to be helpful, so when they handed it to me, I held it,” recalls Cousens. “Then one of the parents told me, ‘just rip a piece off and hand it to the next person.’”

This experience was the first in a steep learning curve for Kim Cousens, who is not Jewish. “I was really worried that I wasn’t going to fit in, or that I would say the wrong thing, or that Molly wouldn’t fit in, or that she would be a couple of steps behind,” says Cousens.

After a few months of school, Cousens continued to experience only warm welcome from families and teachers. Most importantly, Molly was thriving in her nine-child classroom. Eventually, Cousens says, she became brave enough to start asking questions about the Jewish rituals she was observing. “It was a relief to learn that not all the Jewish parents, even those from Israel, knew everything,” Cousens said.

Kim Cousens, her husband Jonathan Peck, and their daughter Molly (and younger daughter Lilly) are one of 15 percent of Yavneh Day School families with one Jewish parent. The other 85 percent have either two Jewish parents, or in some cases, one parent who converted.

While children with just one Jewish parent are welcome at Yavneh Day School, this is not the case at all Jewish day schools. South Peninsula Hebrew Day School says although the school will and has enrolled children with only a Jewish mother, they do not have any children with only a Jewish father. (According to Conservative and Orthodox Judaism, a child must have a Jewish mother, or have been converted, to be recognized as Jewish.) The same goes at Eitz Chaim Academy, an Orthodox day school in San Jose. Like Yavneh, Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School accepts children with only one Jewish parent, whether it be a Jewish father or mother.

With intermarriage rates on the rise, Conservative and community Jewish day schools are working hard to promote the fact that they are open to ALL Jewish families in the community, regardless of the make-up of the family. While this position may be politically sensitive – given that the Reform Movement recognizes patrilineal descent, and the Conservative Movement says that only those with a Jewish mother are Jewish – day school directors say that politics stops at the schoolhouse door.

“Who is a Jew isn’t really a topic in our curriculum,” says Yavneh Head of School Lori Abramson. “Nobody is singled out, nobody is excluded. Everybody who has at least one Jewish parent is welcome.”

Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School professes a similar stance. “We define a child as Jewish if they have one parent as Jewish,” says Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School Director of Admission Audrey Fox. “We encourage our non-Jewish parents to sit in on any Jewish classes or prayer services, and during the admission process we give them the opportunity to speak with families in similar circumstances.”

When asked if accepting children of mixed families is a second choice necessity in the face of the need by day schools to increase enrollment, Yavneh Admissions Director Shelley Leveson says no. “We are here to serve the community we live in,” says Leveson. “Maybe if we were in New York then it would be different, but our community has many interfaith families and Yavneh is here for them.”

Of course the issue of “Who is a Jew” isn’t entirely absent from the Jewish day school. Yavneh, for example, is a Solomon Schechter Jewish day school, part of the Conservative Movement, which recognizes matrilineal descent. Abramson admits that if a family with a non-Jewish mother joins Yavneh, “at some point it is important to have a gentle private discussion with the family about what the ritual implications may be down the line.”

Also, in the later grades, Abramson says, Yavneh does teach the difference between the different movements of Judaism. This however, is done with careful respect to each of the perspectives.

Day schools are not the only Jewish institutions to struggle with the tension over who is a Jew. Despite the commitment to matrilineal descent, the Conservative Movement has dedicated tremendous energy toward reaching out to interfaith families. Recently, the movement changed its position to allow non-Jewish parents onto the bima during b’nei mitzvah ceremonies if the non-Jewish parent speaks in English only. Israel, too, is struggling daily to define who is a Jew.

The issue for Israel is particularly pressing regarding new immigrants, says Rabbi Melanie Aron of Congregation Shir Hadash. “Many of the Russian Jews that are coming there come with complicated backgrounds,” she says. “In the former Soviet Union, records indicated you were Jewish if you had a Jewish father so it was reversed.”

The vast majority of Jewish day school students across the United States – approximately 80 percent – are Orthodox. This is because observant Jewish families largely send their children to day school so that the children can easily keep kosher and remain observant. The other 20 percent of day school students attend a combination of Conservative, Reform and community day schools. It is this 20 percent that is struggling to increase enrollments.

For many non-Orthodox families today, being Jewish is less about observing halacha (Jewish law) and more about doing as much Jewishly as feels comfortable.

Debbie Mendlowitz, who has two children at Yavneh Day School, has no question about her family’s Jewishness, despite the fact that her husband is not a Jew. In fact, she says, her non-Jewish husband is more involved Jewishly than many Jewish men she knows.

“When I was dating over the years, there were a lot of guys that were Jewish that wouldn’t go to temple, wouldn’t fast, wouldn’t keep Passover,” said Mendlowitz. “I have a wonderful husband who is very supportive. In fact, we go to services at Beth David on the weekend and friends of mine with Jewish husbands, the husband are not there. My husband looks at me and says, ‘What am I doing here?’ I tell him, ‘You’re setting a good example.’”

News

Features

JCN Issues