What Are Schools Really Teaching?

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Why wouldn't a Jewish school accept a non Jewish kid? Very good question. It all boils down to the question of what is education? What are we doing in school? If the school would be only teaching children academics, if the school would only teach children the intellectual part of Judaism, you are studying the Torah. You want to know what the Jewish religion does, what the Jewish religion is about, then if this is all a Jewish school would be teaching, then it would be obviously 100 appropriate for anyone who wants to come to Jewish school. If they want to come, they should come. The issue is that this is not what Jewish education is all about. Judaism is not only studying and Judaism is not only an academical subject. Judaism is a way of life. We teach children a way of life, a way of thinking about themselves and about the world around them. We are teaching children about who they are. Children are taught how great it is to be a Jewish, how special it is that they have these commandments. We have a very special mission. This is our mission in the world and we need to fulfill this mission. We need to do it with pride, with love. So here's the question. [00:01:34] Speaker B: If somebody who is not part of the Jewish nation, somebody who has not given this mission, how would he feel if he is sitting in a class where he's thought, well, this is your mission, this is your mission. You should be proud to fulfill this mission. And he's like, well, that's not my mission. I'm just here for general information. So it's going to become really awkward really quickly for this kid. [00:01:57] Speaker A: And we don't mind if a non Jew wants to know about Judaism. And there are a lot of classes about that. We just now had a Jewish Learning institute class. It was a series of six classes that were about the message that Jews have for non Jews. What we tell them about morality, about how we are supposed to look at ourselves, at the world around us. So this is all good and fine. We don't have any secrets that we keep from them. Any one of them could buy, could go to a Jewish store and buy a book that's translated in every language under the sun. They could learn anything they want about Judaism. It's not about secrets, but the Jewish education that is focusing every single day on our special Jewish mission and how it invested we are in fulfilling this [00:02:44] Speaker B: mission and how proud we are that we have this mission for a non Jew. Come and sit in this class. [00:02:49] Speaker A: That's going to be really weird. It happens because one of the parents assuming is Jewish. It happens because they know that Jews have a good education and that specific Jewish school could have higher academic ratings than other schools around. This could be for many different reasons. By the way. Generally, I noticed within the Jewish world, the more observant, the more orthodox a school is, the cheaper it is.