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MAY 18, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT



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Israel to Invest $40 Million in
North American Jewish Day Schools
Jackie Hajdenberg and Philissa Cramer | JTA
C iting “a major crisis in Jewish education,”
Israel’s Diaspora ministry plans to pour about
$40 million into training educators at Jewish
schools in the United States and Canada.

Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister of Diaspora affairs,
announced the initiative, called “Aleph Bet” after
the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, on May
15. He hopes enrollment will increase at Jewish day
schools, fearing that “we are losing large parts of the
Jewish people,” and said the initiative would “focus
on training teachers for Jewish education and Israel
studies as well as principals for Jewish day schools,”
according to The Jerusalem Post.

Chikli did not elaborate on how his ministry would
spend the allocation of NIS 150 million, nor did he
detail when funds could start making their way into
North American Jewish schools. His office did not
respond to a request for comment. Israel’s governing
coalition plans to approve a state budget next week,
ahead of a May 29 deadline.

North American Jewish schools have received
varying levels of Israeli government support for
years, according to Paul Bernstein, CEO of Prizmah,
a nonprofit supporting Jewish day schools. He said
staff members of day schools were optimistic about
the additional funding despite lacking details about
where it would go.

“There’s quite a lot of chatter. People are excited
by the fact that the state of Israel really sees the
importance of Diaspora education, and is recogniz-
ing that the strength of the Diaspora is integral to
[a] strong Israel and strong relationships,” Bernstein
said. “Irrespective of all that’s going on in the world,
that is a very positive and important long-term
development.” The announcement comes at a time of tension
between Israel’s right-wing governing coalition and
North American Jewish communities. A chorus of
U.S. Jewish leaders has criticized the government’s
proposed overhaul of Israel’s judiciary, and last month,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a
speech at a signature conference of North American
Jews in Tel Aviv in the face of anti-government
protests. Chikli, who assumed his role in January,
has defended the judicial overhaul while acting as an
ambassador of sorts to an often skeptical audience of
Diaspora Jews.

Chikli, whose father is a Jewish educator in Mexico,
had previously indicated that he sees Jewish day
schools abroad as an important destination for Israeli
aid. He has said repeatedly — including on Monday
— that children who do not attend Jewish day schools
are at risk of being lost to the Jewish people.

“We are in the midst of a crisis where it is possible to
lose an entire generation of Jews,” he said during the
funding announcement.

Early in his tenure, Chikli floated the idea of working
with philanthropists to subsidize day school tuition
in the Diaspora. More recently, he has signaled that
covering tuition — which can range from several
thousand dollars at haredi Orthodox yeshivas to more
than $40,000 a year — is less of a priority.

“Jewish education in private schools is very expen-
sive, and at times out of range for the average family,”
he told Hamodia, a haredi publication, in April. “This
is where we step up to the plate. This isn’t to say
we’re giving out free scholarships … but we invest, as
noted earlier, in the teachers, in the school systems,
to ensure Jewish education, and continuity of Jewish
generations. We want to raise the pride of Jewish
studies teachers.”
Attending a Jewish school is widely considered a
strong predictor of lasting Jewish identity, although
that may be because parents who prioritize Jewish
identity are more likely to send their children to Jewish
day school. Enrollment in Jewish schools in North
American Jewish schools is growing, largely because
of the growth of Orthodox communities, where the
vast majority of children attend private Jewish schools.

Outside of those communities, most North
American Jewish children do not attend Jewish day
schools. But the pandemic saw Conservative, Reform
and nondenominational day schools grow as well,
according to a survey by Prizmah, following more than
a decade of decline. The survey found that schools
have maintained those enrollment gains even as the
pandemic has ended.

Meanwhile, Hebrew schools and other supplemen-
tal Jewish schools have shrunk by nearly half since
2006, according to a recent report by the Jewish
Education Project. Chikli did not specify whether any
of the new funding could go to such schools.

Chikli’s father, Eitan Chikli, is the rector of the
Hebraic University in Mexico City, which receives
some funding from his son’s ministry. Previously, he
was the longtime director general of Israel’s TALI
Education Fund, which promotes pluralistic Jewish
education in Israeli schools and also produces materi-
als for use in Jewish schools abroad.

The elder Chikli told The Jerusalem Post in January
that he would not discuss the funding his university
receives with his son, who he said is fastidious about
avoiding conflicts of interest. But he said that teacher
training was an urgent problem for Jewish schools.

“The biggest problem Jewish people in the Diaspora
face today is Jewish education and lack of a high level
of teachers for Judaic studies,” Eitan Chikli said in
January. “The most difficult problem is that there is no
new generation of proper teachers for Hebrew and
Judaism.” ■
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 19