Diversity, Community, and Pluralism in Jewish Community Day High Schools

ABSTRACT

Students in “community” (nondenominational) Jewish high schools represent a diversity of denominational affiliations, including those who affiliate with more than one denomination and those that affiliate with none. These schools strive to create communities in which students with varying Jewish beliefs and practices are, at the very least, respected and comfortable. At the same time, schools work to avoid internal Jewish communal fragmentation. In this article, the approach to diversity in three such high schools is compared. Each school, in addition to presenting an approach distinct from the others, has created opportunities for communal Jewish engagement through the enactment of practices that are rooted in Judaism and in the ethos of the school, and allow individualization within universal participation. Further, the range of approaches to Jewish diversity exhibited raises questions about pluralism as it relates to the Jewish educational goals of these schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Diversity
• Jewish education
• Jewish day schools
• pluralism

Notes

¹ Further description of these schools can be found in Kress (2012).

² The names of the schools are pseudonyms. The schools’ specific geographic locations are suppressed.

³ Interestingly, the study of Torah—a behavior that is performed regularly by all students at each of these schools—is not framed by educators as an opportunity to jointly participate in a broadly embraced ritual. Judaic studies seems to be framed in the realm of “academics” and not “Jewish life.” Though not regular practice in these schools, I have occasionally observed educators who will recite Kaddish d’Rabanan, a prayer that follows the study of Torah, at the end of a class, seemingly elevating the study to a ritual level. At Jacob, the dialogical methods of Torah study are relevant to the school’s approach to pluralism, but the focus is on an element or modality of Torah study, not Torah study in and of itself.

⁴ I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue.

⁵ I am setting aside, in this article, another of Steinmetz’ concerns having to do with the viability of pluralism as a core of Judaism to begin with.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeffrey S. Kress

Jeffrey S. Kress is the Bernard Heller Associate Professor of Jewish Education at the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education of the Jewish Theological Seminary.