ANNEX GAZA, JUDEA, & SUMMARIA: THE SCREAMING RIGHT

Harold Goldmeier teaches international university students at Touro College Jerusalem. He is an award-winning entrepreneur who received the Governor’s Award (Illinois) for family investment programs in the workplace from the Commission on the Status of Women. He was a Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard, worked for four governors, and recently sold his business in Chicago. He is a managing partner of an investment firm, a business management consultant, and a public speaker on business, social, and public policy issues.

Time is Ripe

The wind is at their backs. Activists screaming for a Greater Israel want the government to annex Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has published the manifesto.

Gaza is no longer a factor among the existential threats to Israel. According to Jared Kushner, the airstrip sliver of land will be gentrified into Vegas with a seashore. Hezbollah is enervated but police actions similar to America’s war on drug cartels ought to suffice. Iran is all talk until the Trump administration and the women of Iran overthrow their abusers. Houthis are busy getting rich off blackmail payoffs from shipping magnets. Iraq is a political and military mess. Syria barely survives as a viable nation lacking enough military forces to stave off rebel tribes. The Arabian Gulf States are morphing into Middle East Disney theme parks. Democrat Party leaders appear pathetic, the party in tatters, and without a clear message.

This simmering stewpot undergirds the hardihood of Religious Zionists, ultra-nationalists, and Evangelicals to fulfill their dreams to expand the state bigger than the Kingdom of David and  Solomon. Imagination has them envisioning Jewish communities from Lebanon’s Latani River to Eilat, from the Mediterranean through Gaza to the eastern border of the Jordan Valley abutting Jordan. Friedman’s screed talks only of Gaza. Unfolding events make anything possible including France enforcing peace in Lebanon, chaos in Syria, Pres-elect Donald Trump filling critical U.S. government positions with politically hard-right thumpers, and few in Israel besides the judiciary willing to challenge Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The Manifesto

Team members responsible for the historic Abraham Accords are visionaries. Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman was a key member of the team. They all deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, at the very least. The Abraham Accords is so authentic it survives the October 7 barbaric, genocidal attack by Hamas against Israel, the vicious battles in Lebanon, the Red Sea attacks, and Israel-Iran hostilities. One Jewish State is David Friedman’s manifesto about where the Middle East goes from here.

Friedman calls for an end to the conundrum of the two-state solution. Friedman is convinced that one state, ruled by Jews – Israel – is the only solution to stability and peace in the Middle East. His position is disappointing. It lacks vision. Friedman offers America’s rule over Puerto Rico as the model for a one-state rule by Israel. He gives no quarter to the innate desire for self-determination and national pride driving Palestinians. He and Simpaticos fervently believe that Palestinians lust far more for the blood of the Jews than seek a national homeland. The two-state solution has been a failing talking point from colonial British times through Donald Trump’s 2020 “deal of the century.” A state of its own will train and arm terrorists to erase Israel. Friedman points to a survey claiming that 85% of Palestinians agree with Hamas regarding October 7. He sighs, “Perhaps that says it all.”

In the last chapter, Friedman claims Israel tried living in peace, side-by-side with Gazan Palestinians since 2005; they had local self-rule and economic independence to build a prosperous, peace-loving, Palestinian pearl on the sea. Instead, terrorists took charge: “We cannot repeat the mistake in Gaza.” Only a Jewish-ruled state governing Palestinians can safeguard Israel.

Ambassador Friedman ignores that Israel lives in relative peace with Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and the Gulf states. The book would be more relevant if Friedman had researched and exposed why Israeli Druze are patriotic. What are the ingredients for successful coexistence with the Arabs of Abu Ghosh, the African Hebrew Israelites, and Bedouins? How can Israel make the formula work with Palestinians? Israel is home to 97 embassies most established following the Oslo Accords. Attempts at peace have had their blessings. Friedman ignores this peace progress.

In a greater Israel, he argues, Palestinians will be ruled akin to US rule over Puerto Rican islanders. It is his model for coexistence. But it took some 300 years for the Spanish and US colonizers to drive out any notion of self-determination and nationalism. Massacres were helpful. The U.S. government maintains army and air force bases and the National Guard is federalized at will. Puerto Ricans prefer statehood but Americans refuse.

What, Ambassador Friedman, is Israel prepared to do with its Palestinians--massacre, deport, offer citizenship including Israeli passports? Allow free movement and civil rights? Manage the healthcare system, schools, and economy? Provide police for civil order and peace on the streets. We barely do any of these things for Arab-Israeli communities.  Is Israel ready to deploy soldiers in Palestinian neighborhoods full-time, forever? Engage in ethnic cleansing? Will peace escape us for another 250 years until self-determination and nationalism are wiped from the Palestinian ethos?  

Takeaway

The most egregious shortcoming of One Jewish State is that Friedman ignores that, de facto, one Jewish-ruled state has ruled Judea and Samaria, more or less, for 57 years. Palestinians and world leaders call it “occupation.” Both sides have documented the extent of that rule. A responsible overview is detailed in a May 28, 2024, article for the Council on Foreign Affairs, titled “Who Governs the Palestinians?”

Daniel Gordis tells the story in one of his books about a colleague who is a popular, soft-spoken, and dedicated Palestinian teacher. They were friendly so he asked the colleague’s opinion about the conflict. To paraphrase, she calmly responded that conquerors have come and gone across Palestine for centuries and one day the Jews will be gone, too. Friedman’s vision of one Jewish-ruled state condemns Israel to another 250 years of “occupation.” It is, he asserts, “the last best hope to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”  The book lacks the vision Friedman and his colleagues brought to the Abraham Accords. We expected so much more from him.

One Jewish State: The Last, Best Hope to Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

David Friedman

Humanix Books, 2024

256 pages; hardcover $25.22 

Tuvia Tenenbom Searching for Self

By Dr. Harold Goldmeier

Dr. Harold Goldmeier is an Instructor at Touro University, Jerusalem, a small business owner, and writes about finance, social, and political issues. He is a free public speaker for community groups and consults on matters of commerce and industry. He can be reached at harold.goldmeier@gmail.com.

OVERVIEW

            The crisis between the Ultra-Orthodox and Zionists has the makings of an existential threat to the Jewish state. My review of Tuvia Tenenbom's new book gives remarkable insight into the workings of this community. Tuvia explores and uncovers segments of the Ultra- Orthodox each following their own rabbi. He reveals the good and the bad, contributions to a civil society and narcissistic gangsterism. Tuvia focuses on individuals, one on one, as he seeks to revive memories of youth.

            Tuvia Tenenbom’s newly released book in English, Careful Beauties Ahead! My Year With The Ultra-Orthodox (Gefen Publishing House, 2024) is the latest in his oeuvre of witty creative nonfiction. The book is a mix of social anthropology and memoir. Throughout his labyrinthine storytelling, this reader was captivated by Tuvia’s encounters with clandestine Ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects usually viewed as one large community. They are not all alike.  They do not observe Jewish law alike, share loyalties to the same rabbis, the women are not all Stepford wives, and some adults live on the brink of walking out of the community.

            Tuvia brashly encounters Ultra-Orthodox men and women on the streets, in their schools, synagogues, and homes to regenerate his youthful memories.  His roots are among the Ultra-Orthodox. Tuvia was born, raised, and educated as one of them for his first 17 years. He dressed in black and spent days and nights learning Torah. Tuvia left everything behind for adventures in the secular world; he forged a life in journalism and literature, watching the beauties on the streets while fressing in European and American cafés.  Tuvia achieved the renown and the pleasure he was after. But his fond memories from Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, home to the Ultra-Orthodox, were indelible.

            Now he tries to go home in search of roots and community. Tuvia immerses himself for a year among the Ultra-Orthodox. The book is packed with Tuvia’s insights and revelations. We learn a lot about Tuvia but more about the lives and organization of the Ultra-Orthodox. Doors open for Tuvia because of his arcanum, affability, and fluency in ancient Yiddish, the first language of the Ultra-Orthodox. He finds the people friendly and generally happy with their lives; their bellies are full of delicious homemade traditional European Jewish foods made by grateful wives who get pleasure from their roles. Looking back, Tuvia ruminates, “These kids of Mea Shearim, who sometimes look like tough kids, are awesomely sweet.” 

Know They Enemy

            Angry secularists hate the Ultra-Orthodox but will gain insights from Tuvia’s 551-page book. Enemies see the Ultra-Orthodox as block voters who portray themselves as victims of the secularists (Zionists) trying to drive Godliness out of them. Ultra-Orthodox generally reject modernism, secular education, most technology, and any language other than old-world Yiddish. Independent thinking is forbidden.

            He explores how some in the community despise the government, the IDF, and the police. They fear a Satanic cabal is trying to persuade the Ultra-Orthodox to become secularists by threatening to cut off yeshiva subsidies, force religious children to spend time on secular studies, speak Hebrew, chastise religious men to work for a living where they will mix with non-religious people in workplaces, on trains, and buses and be enticed away from Torah study.

            Drafting Ultra-Orthodox students into the military is to force them to forsake their Godly ways and beliefs. They would rather die at the hands of Jew haters and the Zionists if that is God’s decree.

            Tuvia writes, “Jews have been saved from total annihilation, they taught me,” by not forsaking Yiddish, black and white clothes, keeping the Sabbath, and believing their rabbis speak with and sometimes holier than God’s word. While not everyone believes to the extreme of many Ultra-Orthodox that “Zionists are not Jews,” the larger community acquiesces and remains silent. Extreme believers garner gravitas and chutzpa from the silent majority who fear for their personal safety, ex-communication, having their children outcast from schools, and daughters and wives shunned.

            About 130 of Israel’s economists and 73 professors released a letter in May characterizing Haredim as an existential threat to Israel. Haredim scantily contribute to the nation’s economy and its military defense.  “There are no dogs…And no Progressives” in this community.

            It is important to understand the Ultra-Orthodox because they hold political sway, more or less, over the governments of Israel, the U. S., and the UK. They have extraordinary influence in Russia, Eastern European capitals, and several South American political machines.   Second, Haredim, the fur and black-hatted, white shirt, black coat, and black suit-wearing men, and their shadowy, enshrouded women are the fastest growing segment of the Jewish people in every country.     

            Are these the same people Tuvia left behind? Tuvia is amazed four decades later at the political noise and headlines from the Ultra-Orthodox. They launch street protests, turn out by the tens of thousands for funerals of their great rabbis, and are astute at raising millions of shekels to build elaborate houses of worship, live in splendorous homes, and operate an extensive, worldwide network of charitable and money-lending organizations. Nefarious acts Tuvia relates that happen in every community are covered up because “the media in Israel is very weak” and Haredim “have all the money in the world” to sue.

Takeaway      

            His story in Careful Beauties Ahead! is to rejewvinate the sights, sounds, smells, and religious banter he loved as a child. Nostalgia is a desire but not enough of a motivator for Tuvia to live permanently among them. His book is laced with love even as he peels back some ugly and criminal sore spots given cover by the rabbis.     

            His waywardness, i.e., off the derech, was in part due to their sensible philosophies and arguments that led Ultra-Orthodox “to reach the most ridiculous of conclusions.”  For instance, as a teen, Tuvia “demanded to know (from his rabbis) why he was not allowed to look at women.” He was told only infidels look at women. Satan must be inside him; some sects believe that man’s desires are inspired by the Satanic wiles of females. One sect allows martial relations once a month, primarily to satisfy the wives and keep men’s focus on the Torah.   

            Tuvia’s greatest accomplishments come forward when he uses his knowledge of Torah and Talmud and Yiddish to get male and female Haredim to speak with him and answer his poignant intrusive questions. Quite a feat. But that is meaningless without Tuvia’s gift of great storytelling.

Despite the headwinds, “98 percent of Haredim report being satisfied with their lives, higher than any other segment of the society, and only 11 percent of them say that they feel lonely…” And this is true of the women as well.

            Tuvia is a Zionist but “The Haredim are my family, whether I want it or not, whether they want it or not. The umbilical cords of our grandmothers attach us, and we can’t separate.”

             “When I started the journey, I was filled with memories of the sweet boy I once was and thought he had died long ago, forever gone. Today, I know a little better. That boy has never gone…” nor is the sense of community. But now home is in the European cafés and the secular world.

Triggers

Dr. Harold Goldmeier is a free public speaker for community groups and consults businesses and NGOs on management and marketing. He manages an investment company and writes about business, social, and political issues. He can be reached a harold.goldmeier@gmail.com

Triggers, those fleeting moments when a sound, a smell, a word reminds us of a happy or sad time. Living in Israel, my wife and I are triggered daily with memories of our youngest son in uniform and soldiers everywhere now. He was taken by demons and Dybbuks three years ago. We smile when we see a soldier with his girlfriend or boyfriend and an M-16 slung over their shoulder.  Or, we hear the breaking news stories about the murders of young kidnapped hostages by Hamas captors and their bodies left alone and unfound for multiple days. We wince and tear up. It was four days before his brother found our boy’s body.

We are triggered by the spirit of the Mom of a Hamas-taken hostage killed by “friendly fire;” she forgives the soldiers while demonstrating grace and empathy. We think about our youngest son. He was a sergeant in the IDF. We wonder if the young man might have gone on with his life to become a biochemist, construction worker, songwriter, and author like ours? Jews say the memorial prayer for a year after a parent or sibling dies because their faces and voices fade with time. You never forget a lost child, so Kaddish is 30 days long; his face never fades, and we hear his laugh even now. His smile lasts forever. 

I picked up a book last week by Nechemia J. Peres and Ilan Greenfield. MyIsrael: Seventy Faces of the Land (Gefen Publishing House, 2023, 213 pages). It triggers memories of the old land of Israel we came to know and love before Black Sabbath, October 7th. It is a beautiful picture book and stories from 70 individual Israelis sharing “what they consider to be My Israel.”

They are memory keepers focusing on the land, not the politics, on the vibrant life, not the dissension endemic in a vibrant democracy, on the peace in rural Israel, not the constant din of war and terrorist attacks at bus stops and synagogues. When there are no rocket attacks from Gaza or raids into the West Bank. Pictures and their 70 stories about the land and its olive trees, monuments, parks, farms, and urban development settle the soul in days of anguish.

Peres makes a prophetic observation in the Preface about the collection: “It is a story of human spirit… We had neither mountains nor wide rivers that could slow down potential invaders.” Only people rising to the heights of storybook heroes, only their keen minds and willpower kept invading barbarians at bay. Israeli identities are nourished by diversity, as one contributor reports, who are Black and white and brown,  “Druze, soldier, intelligence agent, IDF officer, businessman, and more. In every role…” comprise this country.

Now, death triggers us every day. We pretend everything is ok. We try to “thrive and grow strong, from one generation to another,” as Peres claims we must. Hope is in the triggers of a hostage’s widow who births and coddles a newborn and the sweet face of a blond four-year-old hostage returning to friends at school after the barbarians kidnapped her for trade. I linger over the full-page picture of children at Bustan Thom’s Orchard slugging a stone wheel to crush pomegranate seeds for juice on a summer desert day. 

The book is an escape from the grisliness of daily life. Our building rumbles, closed doors shiver and windows shake when warning sirens blare and the Iron Dome intercepts Hamas rockets above. Blast waves from mass explosions in Gaza fly across miles of land and hit our building. My Israel reminds me of what living was like. The book inspires us to think about what could be for us and our neighbors again. The book provides moments of sanctuary and should be read during wartime to keep one’s triggers from unhinging our minds.   

Dr. Harold Goldmeier manages an investment company and writes for financial companies about business, social, and political issues. He is a free public speaker for community groups and consults on matters of commerce and industry. He can be reached a harold.goldmeier@gmail.com

Israel and America appear haunted by a sense of despair. The nation is locked in domestic and international political battles exacerbated by tensions between the ultra-religious and open-society proponents. As Rabbi Jonathan Sachs put it, “We live in an era of intense social discord and distrust… cancellation or ostracism.” The Rabbi asks the quintessential question, “How do we heal our fractured world?”

First, learn to think differently. Business schools and executive development programs incorporate psychology courses to stimulate contagious positive energy. Harvard University had us examine challenges with a positive mental attitude to welcome the fast pace of change.

Israel’s business and military complexes focus on the positive, on the miracles in our midst. Author and social anthropologist Avi Jorisch discerns from his studies that  Jewish prophetic tradition creates a remarkable culture of innovation. Its sobriquet as The Start-Up Nation is called an economic miracle by those who coined the term. Solve the world’s most formidable problems by innovating “on agriculture, medicine, water, and defense…making life better for billions of people around the world.” 

Second, ignore the bearer of bad news. Sages consider that person a fool. Negativity feeds into the stewpot of emotions fomenting hate and vengeance. The third change you can make if you want to have hope for our children and the future of the Earth is to read works by Avi Jorisch. His writing is smart, factual, refreshing, and uplifting.

Jorisch studies current trends and accomplishments. He talks of solutions being explored now how “human beings can exert (and are exerting) significant control over what happens to our species and our planet, and that our future is better than most of us think.”  

His new book, NEXT: A Brief History of the Future, reports on “thirteen game-changing innovations that are poised to transform our species from a society of takers to a society of givers.” Innovators are finding solutions to hunger, pollution, and global warming by mobilizing our remarkable abundance and wealth, greater and more democratic, in this writer’s opinion,

at any other time in human history.    

For context, first read about the storied life of Hans Rosling in Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. Rosling explains how our worldview has been distorted. He identifies ten human instincts that cause erroneous thinking. Rosling and Jorisch make the case that we can learn to separate fact from fiction when forming our opinions.

The vast majority of people around the world are living middle-class life. Jorisch’s March 2023 Jerusalem Post article contains ten graphs and charts demonstrating human progress in living standards, health status, social services, and technology. According to Rosling, it means our lives improve regularly from generation to generation:
     • They are not impoverished and suffering. 
     • Their boys and girls go to school.

     • Their children get vaccinated.

     • They live in two-child families, and
     • They want to go abroad on holiday, not as refugees.

     • Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is improving.

We might add that opportunities for success are greater for people of most races, religions, genders, and childhood class stations in life. In Next, Jorisch does a cursory review of the writings of futurists. He focuses on the moon-shot landing as the “greatest mobilization of resources and manpower in human history,” which ought to be a lesson for us. We need “moon shot thinking” to overcome our current challenges.

I sent off a note to my cyber-infatuated grandson about investigating Singularity University  Jorisch discusses at length. What this writer finds remarkable about the case reports Jorisch describes is the innovators are all self-made people; they are unique and outstanding only in that they recognize a problem a spend their waking moments—and in their dreams—finding solutions.

There is the space program yielding untold advances for human existence. Russia and America launched the space race and now multitudes of countries and private companies are engaged. “Today, there are more than 50.1 billion devices online worldwide, used by half of the world’s population… The new space economy is the catalyst that will fundamentally transform life on Earth.”

Other case reports cover The Internet Academy and new means of learning, improving shelter, water resources, and health through advances in blood and genetic editing. Prosperity is in the offing for food security, electricity engineering, and more.

One more thought about the author. Jorisch brings a spirit and sense of spirituality to his work. I described his fifth book, Thou Shalt Innovate, as a “bouquet of life enhancing and life-saving innovations flowing from Israel.” Many already knew the stories of the start-up nation. “But Jorisch finds spiritual meaning or ‘higher purpose,’ as a secular man prefers, in them.” Jorisch finds an eternal message in the innovations that benefit humankind. No story is more impactful and inspiring than the 24 pages about the man who empowers girls and women through sanitary blood maintenance. He is changing the life and spirit of a generation.

Jorisch is a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and a prolific lecturer and writer whose books and articles have appeared in a plethora of languages. Everything he writes is documented and presented with extraordinary clarity and simplicity. NEXT flows easily because the stories are about the people he features “working to make the world a better place …and dreaming big enough” to make it happen.” NEXT includes 34 pages of endnotes to each chapter and a 37-page Bibliography.

I tell the story in my review of Rosling’s book about one of my children. He is a graduate of a prestigious university who told me,  “My head can’t handle all the facts and commentaries from pundits, and they don’t seem to care when their facts are wrong. It’s all mind-numbing and paralytic.” I gave him Thou Shalt Innovate to read. Now I will encourage him and others to buy NEXT: A Brief History of the Future. 

Israel Won’t Save the Jewish People: Day Schools Will

Dr. Harold Goldmeier is a free public speaker for community groups and consults businesses and NGOs on management and marketing. He manages an investment company and writes about business, social, and political issues. He can be reached a harold.goldmeier@gmail.com

Jewish community leaders obsess over the rampant assimilation of Diaspora Jews. Assimilation is not just about breaking free of the straitjacket rules of Judaism like keeping the Sabbath, kosher, and marching in Israel Day parades. It manifests as the crumbling of psychological kinship with the Jewish collective, and the inexorable diminution of affinity for Israel.

NGOs and the government of Israel are investing billions of dollars in programs to stem the tide. The somber fact is they are failing. Diaspora Jewry champions diversity, racial and gender equity, and ensuring human rights through class and economic equality at the expense of organized religion and identity politics. Walter Benn Michaels wrote, "Our identity is the least important thing about us.”  

The phenom is so noteworthy that my alma mater, Harvard University, is addressing Jewish assimilation in The Pluralism Project. The Project attributes Jewish assimilation to the unprecedented opportunity Jews have for economic advancement and social inclusion; these spur the “ever-diminishing numbers and the fear of extinction as an identifiable group.”

Young assimilated Jews don’t remember the Borscht Belt. They cannot name a Jewish comedian. Lox and bagels are passe. So is synagogue attendance. Who knows a knish from a kreplach? They know sushi, poutine, and kombucha. But they also do not know Shema Yisroel or Friday night kiddish. Diaspora is not the defining criterion. I watched an on-duty Israeli soldier take a lulav and esrog in hand for the first time in his 20 years. The putative trophic cascades are not limited by geography.

We know Jewish day school education builds Jewish self-identification and attachment to Israel. We have to increase access to Jewish day schools supplemented with summer camps, trips to Israel, and youth groups. Spend more money on the daily grind of outreach.

Yet, these tools are the poor sisters and do not expect a change in priorities from funding sources. The bulk of dollars will continue flowing to arcane, creaky, old-line establishment groups where the average age of leaders (among the six most influential Jewish organizations) is 76 years. Each man has been in office for decades. But there is a whisper of hope.  

On taking office in January 2023, Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli, declared his agency would spend nis60M (nearly $20M) to make Jewish education affordable. “It is our duty to act so that every Jewish community is interested in Jewish education… many Jewish families are unable to pay for private Jewish schools.”

Chikli is right on the mark. A few years ago, 73 North American Jewish Federations out of 146 invested $52M in day schools; that was out of $3 billion raised annually or a mere, on average, 16% of the Federations’ budgeted funds. 301 schools out of 906 got something like $173.33 per student per year. Concomitantly, K-12 tuitions were $7,000 to $30K per child per year. MK Chikli will need to muster all the gravitas of his new position to influence change.

Perhaps a new book will inspire the old guard to get behind Chikli’s initiatives. Inside Jewish Day Schools: Leadership, Learning, & Community (Brandeis University Press 2022) makes the case for “rejewvinating” Diaspora. Day schools succeed regardless of denomination, whether Israel-centric, focusing on STEAMM, Torah knowledge, and faith, or in any combination. Alex Pomson and Professor Jack Wertheimer of Rosov Consulting Israel and The Jewish Theological Seminary, respectively, studied nine American-based day schools “to identify important challenges facing these schools—and how they respond to those challenges.”

Schools “cultivate Jewish cultural virtuosos… (despite) ongoing struggles to ensure their financial sustainability and to recruit quality personnel.” The Introduction is appropriately sub-titled The Black Box. A black box is commonly thought of as a recording device. In other fields, the black box details the characteristics of a system’s internal workings. That’s what the reader gets from Pomson and Wertheimer. They report “on what happens inside Jewish day schools,” asserting “every school we studied has a profound impact on the lives of people it touches.”

The book is a more social anthropology tome. It is not an academic read in the style of narrative nonfiction. Their case is persuasive. Their descriptions of schools and school leaders are expository. On the critical side, the font of the 281 pages is small with a lot on each page. The Glossary and Index are convenient tools. Inside Jewish Day Schools is akin to a travelogue, the scenes, the settings, the missions, the amenities, and the challenges.  Names, job descriptions, and stories are true. Style of leadership and quality of communication seems to determine success.

The book offers 27 pages of conclusions. Foremost, “Day schools possess the special potential to nurture young people with the ability to contribute to Jewish culture; they cultivate Jewish cultural virtuosos.” Students internalize the Jewish values the schools promote, “becoming expert in complex endeavors and were growing in responsibility.”

Then there is the bandwagon effect. Students bring home their values and knowledge that touch and sometimes change the less intensively Jewish lives of families increasing their Jewishness. My doctoral thesis concluded the same from my studies of parent education programs in three Hebrew schools.

The more diverse the parent body, the more crucial is Israel in the mission and curricula. In community and pluralistic schools, students celebrate Jewish holidays; most have prayer services and extol Israel. “Israel serves as an important glue holding such schools together because it is a common denominator in an otherwise diverse parent body.” The schools, it seems, need Israel to nourish their raison d'etre. 

MK Chikli is meeting in Israel this week with the presidents of major Jewish American NGOs. We hope the Minister and later the Prime Minister will tout the value of Jewish day school education and embolden the presidents to dramatically increasing financial aid to their local day schools.

The book, however, offers no clarion call for more money. None of the nine schools is in danger of financial collapse but school leaders agree they need to increase salaries to attract and keep good staff and pay for better programs and facilities. Pomson and Wertheimer sidestep the issues created when American day schools recruit Israelis to teach and their pay packages are more lucrative than locals’.  

BTW, one year, our day school tuition costs were more than the income my wife and I earned during the first six years of marriage. For us, it was worth every penny in terms of outcomes. Like the Jewish fruit vendor in Cabaret sang, money, money, money makes the world go ‘round.  

Dr. Harold Goldmeier

22/3 Nachal Dolev, Bet Shemesh  050 2619116

Teacher, Business Consultant, Public Speaker, Financial Writer 

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