editorials & opinions
An Open Letter from Mid-Atlantic Media
D ear Jewish Philadelphia:
We are the new owners of The Jewish Exponent,
but you already know us.

For the past seven years we have had the privilege
of working with the Jewish Publishing Group and the
Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia in the weekly
publication of The Jewish Exponent. You know our edi-
tors and reporters. We hope you have enjoyed our work.

When we learned of the possibility of acquiring the
Jewish Exponent — an iconic publication with a rich
history and an impressive reputation — we jumped
at the opportunity. And we are very pleased that we
succeeded. We look forward to serving the Greater
Philadelphia Jewish community and to carrying on the
tradition of excellence that has been the hallmark of the
Jewish Exponent since its first edition in 1887.

Our group, Mid-Atlantic Media, has been in the
Jewish publishing business for about a dozen years.

Although the publishing business is challenging, we
see Jewish communal media as a means of building,
promoting and strengthening Jewish communal life in
each of the cities in which we operate.

Our goal is to help build community. And we try to
do that with our communal publications. In addition to
our work with the Jewish Exponent, we own and pub-
lish the Washington Jewish Week and Baltimore Jewish
Times, and provide select media services for Pittsburgh’s
Jewish Chronicle and Phoenix Jewish News. In each city
in which we operate we focus on promoting local Jewish
institutions, organizations, leaders and everyday people
who make up the rich mixture of our diverse and far-
flung Jewish communities. And through the economies
of scale, which enables us to consolidate many of our
back-office and business functions, we have established
a model of operation that has enabled us to grow.

You can expect to see some modest changes in
the appearance, focus and content of your weekly
Jewish Exponent. In addition to a change in format
— which you will see with this edition — we are also
moving toward a more local focus for our stories and
reporting. Under this approach, you will hopefully
see local stories not covered elsewhere, and highlights
of people, events and institutions that are unique
to Jewish Philadelphia. We will feature a weekly
Synagogue Spotlight, introduce you to people in our
You Should Know column and highlight communal
leaders and up and coming personalities in a variety
of feature articles. We will also proudly include a
weekly Federation page, where the Jewish Federation
of Greater Philadelphia will keep you up to date on
events, stories and accomplishments of Philadelphia’s
premier Jewish communal organization.

We will also feature weekly editorials and diverse
op-ed pieces which we hope will be of interest to you
— even if you won’t always agree with all of the views
expressed. And regardless of whether you agree or
disagree with us, we hope you will let us know how
we are doing.

We welcome your input, value your opinion and look
forward to hearing from you through letters, website
posts, emails to our editor and staff reporters, and your
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pages. JE
High School Should Be Upsetting
H BY SAMUEL J. ABRAMS
igh school students today must be put
through the gauntlet of confronting real
viewpoint diversity and learning to man-
age differences if our nation is to move out of its cur-
rent polarized paralysis and actually create citizens.

My thoughts about high school came into sharp
focus recently when I had the opportunity to share
some ideas with the Academic Engagement Network,
a collegiate faculty group that seeks to oppose efforts
to delegitimize Israel and also to promote campus
free expression and academic freedom.

While I knew my words about open inquiry would
resonate with most attendees, I framed them around
my own experiences in high school, college and now
as a professor. In sharing my story, I was reminded
that too many high school students today are leaving
school ill-prepared for life in a raucous, diverse and
polarized society such as ours.

When students head off to higher education, they
enter a world with mob rule and a leftist orthodoxy
that dictates the curriculum in many places and
regularly produces young adults who are utterly
incapable of thinking critically, much less able to
contemplate belief systems that challenge their own.

To combat the indoctrination on our nation’s col-
lege and university campuses and train good citizens
more generally, I realized that high schools must be
the area of focus for all Americans, for it is in one’s
teens that so much value formation occurs, and thus
the skills and ability to question, debate and think is
critically formed.

In my high school experience in a pluralistic,
non-denominational Jewish day school in the
Philadelphia area, I came face to face with questions
that challenged my identity and worldview on an
almost-daily basis.

At Akiba Hebrew Academy (now Jack M. Barrack
Hebrew Academy), I had no choice but to form
my own opinions on a wide swath of issues from
Sabbath observance to questions of gender equity and
keeping kosher, as part of a student body was com-
prised of students who grew up in gender-segregated
Orthodox communities and others ate pepperoni
pizza and treated Saturdays like any other day off.

The wide band of beliefs and practices at Akiba forced
me and my classmates to not only think deeply about
our values but to understand and respect the views of
those who thought and lived differently than ourselves.

Some days were awkward and uncomfortable, but that
is part of learning and finding one’s voice.

These lessons have been critical to my teaching,
research, writing and commitment to diversity in the
25 years since I graduated.

This unusual and deeply pluralistic approach to
education is exactly what is missing in so many
curricula around the nation today, religious or oth-
erwise. Even today, the school states that its students
“engage energetically, intentionally, and consciously
with diversity” and actively seek “understanding
through meaningful, respectful dialogue” which
results in graduates who are prepared to confront the
complexities of the world.

Without such commitments from our schools,
where will young people learn the ability to
compromise and accept others’ views as valid and
legitimate? It certainly won’t happen in college.

See Abrams, Page 16
Letters should be related to articles that have run in the print or
online editions of the JE, and may be edited for space and clarity
prior to publication. Please include your first and last name,
as well your town/neighborhood of residence. Send letters to
letters@jewishexponent.com. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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