Israel to invest NIS 150 million in Jewish education in N. America

The Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry will invest NIS 150 million in establishing a new project to substantially expand the number of children in Jewish day schools in North America.

Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli unveiled the project, titled “Aleph Bet,” during a briefing on his ministry’s work at the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee on Monday.

The crisis in Jewish education in North America

“There is a major crisis in Jewish education in North America, outside of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities,” Chikli said. “The Aleph Bet project will be focused on schools in North America with a focus on training teachers for Jewish education and Israel studies as well as principles for Jewish day schools.”

Chikli added that “we are losing large parts of the Jewish people,” as a result of the small percentage of Jews who send their children to Jewish day schools. The minister added that “we are in the midst of a crisis where it is possible to lose an entire generation of Jews [as result of the lack of participation in Jewish education] and we will be all over this issue in the next coming years.”

According to the 2020 Pew Survey, 85% of Orthodox adults said that they attended full-time Jewish day schools for at least one year, as opposed to 31% of the Conservative-affiliated Jews and 14% of Reform-affiliated Jews.

Additionally, the AVI CHAI Census of Jewish day schools published in 2020 found that a total of 292,172 students were enrolled in Jewish day schools operating at the elementary and secondary school levels in the US in the 2018–2019 school year. This represents an increase of 37,423 students, or 14.7%, in the five-year period between the 2013–2014 census and this report.

Each of the previous three censuses showed increases of 11% over the preceding reports.

“It appears that the rate of growth in the day school world has accelerated – good news for advocates of day school education,” the report noted, but added that the growth rate is “entirely lopsided,” since nearly all the growth in the number of students is in the hassidic and yeshiva world sectors, that now comprise more than 65% of all day school enrollment. The census showed a significant decrease of students in Reform (-18%), Conservative (-26%) and modern-orthodox (-7%) schools.