Several years ago, Joel Grishaver told me that he had been told that Nancy Parkes is the best Jewish educator in the country. I had to meet her. So I asked her to lunch. And she asked me to teach her teachers. And then we were in the Leadership Institute together. And traveled to Israel and learned together. I am not sure if she is the best - I have not actually studied her school, and I am not sure I am qualified to determine or declare who is the best. 

I will say that she is one of the smartest and most creative colleagues I have ever had the pleasure to learn and talk with, and we do not get together nearly enough. Like many of you I have been reading and attending meetings and thinking about the Pew report and the responses. Nancy went a step further today. She spoke up - from the perspective of a synagogue based supplementary school educator - and proposed a way forward.

After thirty seconds of "that's what I was thinking" and "I should have said that" nonsense, I decided to re-post her ideas that ran today on eJewishPhilanthropy (what? you don't get Dan Brown's daily email? Shame on you!) and hopefully expand the audience and the conversation. I suggest comments should be on eJP (Leave a Comment) or Jedlab (https://www.facebook.com/groups/jdsmedialab/ - look for a posting by Saul Kaiserman around 9:30 am EST on December 3. What you are not in JEDLAB? For shame! Fix that too!).

I agree with everything Nancy says and wish I said it first. More students come through our supplementary schools than any other part of the Jewish education eco-system. We must get it right. And when get students to couple their enrollment in our schools with Jewish camps, Israel programs and youth groups (to name just a few opportunities) we can really change the future. Read on!

Ira

One Educator’s Response….. on the Findings of the Pew Report and the Jewish Future

By Nancy Parkes

I have read the reports and the responses. I have attended meetings and have discussed the findings of the Pew report with many of my colleagues and with experts in the field, all whom I would define as people who care deeply about the future of Jewish life in America.

And, like many others, I am concerned about the Jewish future. But not in the way you may think.

It is clear from the findings of the Pew Report that we still have work to do in making Jewish learning and life meaningful, engaging, and relevant for American Jews. I don’t believe that anyone would deny that. My issue with the articles and proposal presented by Steven Cohen and Jack Wertheimer is that there is absolutely no mention of the value and importance of supplementary synagogue education.

It is interesting that despite the Pew Report demonstrating that supplementary education in the high school years is indeed effective, the proposal makes no mention of supporting these programs. It does, however, mention day schools, Jewish camps, youth groups and trips to Israel.
I don’t know of one Jewish educator, lay leader, or Rabbi that would dispute that day schools and informal educational experiences are powerful influences in the lives of our young people. I certainly believe that they are. One of the reasons why these experiences are so effective is that they do not occur in isolation. As noted by Cohen and Wertheimer, “These programs work synergistically with each other and also with formal schooling during the critical high-school years.”

As a Jewish educator and director in a supplementary synagogue school, I would never claim that supplementary education alone guarantees or leads to Jewish engagement as adults. Why then is this the way so many evaluate our programs?

Educators and directors in the synagogue setting have done much soul searching during the past decade. We were told that our system was “broken”; that children and parents were not finding the joy in Jewish learning in our settings; and even more importantly, we were told that the learning that was taking place was not leading to Jewish living.

We took all of this to heart- because we were concerned and because we care deeply about the future of Judaism.

How did many of us respond? We made changes - significant changes – in the structure and design of our schools. We advocated for Jewish camp and even brought the camp experience into our schools. We made youth groups an integral part of our educational programming blending the formal setting with this valuable informal Jewish experience. Many programs now take teens on trips to Israel, and more and more programs take learning out of the traditional classroom setting. Perhaps one of the most significant changes that has been made is the education and involvement of parents. We involve them because we know that if Judaism is not relevant and meaningful for them, they as the decision makers, will not only remove themselves from Jewish life, but their children, as well.

With more than 60% of our families enrolling their children in supplementary educational programs, we know that much is at stake in the kind of educational experiences we create for our learners. So, what kind of message are they receiving by the silence – and worse, the negativity – leaders in research and education send them by not supporting their decision with funding? That they are not worth the investment? That they have made the “wrong” decision? That they care less about their child’s Jewish education?

I keep a running list of the negative comments I hear from lay leaders, clergy, and professionals in the Jewish world about supplementary education. Unfortunately, the list is long and continues to grow. Is it any wonder that less and less young people are going into the field of Jewish education, and why synagogue schools have difficultly finding educators and leaders for their schools? This kind of rhetoric perpetuates a self-filling cycle.

Supplementary schools matter – and they do make a positive difference in the lives of our families. Can they be better? Absolutely. But, they need support to do so.
Here is my proposal:

• Stop the negative narrative. Leaders and clergy need to become vocal advocates for supplementary education, whether it is from the pulpit, in writing, or at conferences.
  
• Be our partners. We need more leaders and clergy to truly be our partners in creating the educational excellence that we all want. If your synagogue school is not a place that you would send your own child, how can you work with your educational team to make it so?
  
• Encourage people to consider Jewish education as a career. We need more Jewish educators – in all settings. We need to do a better job at reaching out to those who we believe could make a difference in the Jewish world of informal and formal Jewish education. We also need more scholarships dollars to help those who wish to become Jewish educators to realistically be able do so.
  
• Provide mentorship and consulting for supplementary education directors. Change is hard, and it’s even harder when you are doing it on your own.
  
• Collaboration. Jewish camps and youth groups “work.” So does supplementary education when it is combined with these informal experiences. More conferences should be held which bring leaders in these fields together to think about how they can truly collaborate to bring powerful experiential education to the supplementary school setting, while also encouraging our children and teens to attend camp and become active members in youth groups.

I am not an alarmist, but I do believe that supplementary schools matter and that the lack of support that they receive and the negative narrative that is perpetuated is indeed, in the words of Cohen and Wertheimer, “a condition that is dire enough to warrant the serious attention of anyone concerned about the Jewish future.”

Nancy Parkes is the Director of Congregational Learning at Temple Israel Center in White Plains, an egalitarian synagogue in White Plains, NY.

Remarketing Jew Education

This week the Jewish Educators Associatian (JEA) is having their annual conference. This coming week, I will be joining my colleagues from the National Association of Temple Educators (NATE) at our  annual conference in Seattle. Both the Conservative JEA and the Reform NATE conferences are making technology and futuring the centerpiece of their learning. It is very exciting. 


In The Networked Non-Profit, Beth Kantor and Allison Fine point out that when it comes to Social Media, the important word is SOCIAL not MEDIA. In other words the technology is a tool for bringing people together, and in our case, making Jewish learning happen.


Joel Grishaver has posted what I think is a very interesting idea about futuring on his blog, The Gris Mill, and I am glad he wrote it now so I can think about it while I am learning in Seattle.

Remarketing Jew Education

by Joel Lurie Grishaver

We are at an interesting moment in the world of parenting. This parenting chaos directly impacts the way we present ourselves as Jewish “schools.”

The first voice is Amy Chua, author of  "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,"  who says give your child no room to do anything but succeed. The other voice is Wendy Mogul, whose long overdue second book, “The Blessings of a B-Minus,” cajoles us to accept our child as human beings. Both books are now coming to prominence. One is about high achievement, the other is about resilience. Both take a swipe at the long over emphasized issue of self-esteem.

Chua wants us to be tougher on our kids and demand “perfection.” Mogul understands that “failure” is a useful growth opportunity. Both of them wind up as commentary on new reports about the failure of American schools to even teach the difference between facts and opinions and the overall failure of American Universities to make any impact on the learning of many of their present students. Richard Arum, lead author of the study, “Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” (University of Chicago Press) came out in January, too, is the third voice putting the foundations of the way we parent at risk.

Believe it or not, all this comes back to the role and optics of Jewish schools, particularly Jewish supplemental schools. Who we are as a school has a lot to do with what our parents believe a school is.

We are simultaneously being told be like regular schools and become technological. At the same time we are being told, don’t be like a school at all (we’ve had enough of that) be a camp or a program or something interesting (and do that using a lot less time). What is common knowledge every where but in our classroom, is the universal belief that the present Jewish schooling system is a total failure.
Here is a radical idea. We ought to play to our own strengths. We know that the Jewish tradition centers on learning how to close-read texts. (Think reading comprehension!) That we use a thing called “Talmudic Logic” that teaches you how to evaluate evidence, reason, and know the difference between fact and opinion.

Jewish schools can and should do camp pretty well. We need to get better at technology. For sure, our tradition centers on building both self-esteem and resilience. But, what Judaism really is good at is learning—deep learning.

In the future, when the alternative (for example) is 10 minutes of Skype a week plus one informal event a month probably involving families, we will brag:  “We help our students become better learners.”
Camp will do camp better than we do. Other schools will always have more money to spend on technology than we do (and Web 2.0 apps only go so far). But what we can really brag about is “let us teach your children the Jewish tradition and they will do better in life.”

We will incorporate the camp selling point: “You children will make friends to last a lifetime.” We will have the technological appeal: “We allow your children to remix the Jewish tradition.” But our unique promise is about learning skills. Right now we teach not language but mechanical reading. Language provides useful insight. Mechanical reading is self-serving. We are geared to teach names and facts, but “meaning” and “insight” are what are precious. We have to work to make our classrooms both challenging and responsive, and those are goals we can achieve. It is perhaps the only truth that will keep us in business.

To stay on the weekly schedule, to make it worth the carpool time, Jewish Schooling has to have advantages. The good thing is that we own them: Friends, Remixing, Creativity, Resilience, and Academic Excellence. We know how to do this—we simply need to become good Torah teachers and not a pale imitation of secular schools.

Cross posted to The Gris Mill and Davar Acher.

Al tifrosh min hatzibur - Do Not Separate Yourself From The Community

This article was just published in the latest issue of the New York Jewish Week. I think the questions Jo Kay is struggling with cut to the core of one of the biggest challenges we face. BTW, I think Jo is one of the outstanding educators in our world.

How do we help people internalize Hillel's injunction - Al tifrosh min hatzibur - do not separate yourself from the community - in a world that is all about personalized service, and tending to individual needs?

I am less interested in how we think Jo should respond to the requests for private tutoring than I am in the question of how do better learn about people's needs, how do we meet them AND help them to be a part of our synagogue communities? I want my cake and I want to eat it! Thoughts?

Tutoring Trend Tests
Jewish Values

by Julie Wiener, Associate Editor

Several times a year, Jo Kay, the director of the New York campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s education school, finds herself in a tricky position.

She has to decide how best to respond to unaffiliated families who — seeking an alternative to synagogue Hebrew schools — ask her if she can help them find a private tutor.

Kay ran Congregation Rodeph Sholom’s religious school on the Upper West Side immediately before assuming her current role, and her graduate school, a division of the Reform seminary, trains educators to work primarily in synagogues and day schools. A strong believer in Judaism as a communal, rather than do-it-yourself endeavor, she is not a big fan of home tutoring, even though she recognizes that many families have “extenuating circumstances” that make it necessary.

Nonetheless, due to her relationship with graduate students — many eager for extra part-time income — she’s seen as a source for tutor referrals. And, while she wishes the families who call her would instead find a place for themselves in a synagogue, she is reluctant to turn away anyone seeking a Jewish experience.

“The more families are turned away the less likely they are to connect ever,” she notes. “When I get a call from a family, I want to extend a hand, I don’t want to be just another person that they can say wasn’t interested in them.”

Kay, who hopes her tutoring students will inspire the families to get involved in congregational life, is hardly alone in her ambivalence about tutoring.

As seemingly growing numbers of families in New York and other major metropolitan areas eschew Hebrew schools for the convenience and intimacy of private tutors, many in the organized Jewish world — particularly those active in synagogues — worry that tutoring’s individualized approach, part of a larger trend in modern American culture, poses a threat not just to synagogues, but to the very ideals of Jewish community.

“There’s such a notion of privatization in the city,” observes Rabbi Felicia Sol of the Upper West Side’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. “We want to combat the notion that Judaism is all about hiring someone to meet my needs, on my schedule and not necessarily being as interested in the community at large. ... Jewish life has always been centered around the community.”

Yet at the same time, those who criticize tutoring recognize that part of the reason it remains attractive is because a number — though far from all — of Hebrew schools leave much to be desired.

And, like Kay, they understand that for many families the choice is not between Hebrew school and a tutor, but between a tutor and no Jewish education at all.

The most frequently leveled criticism against privatized Jewish education — whether with a one-on-one tutor or in a small group environment — is that it fails to teach about, or expose children to, the broader Jewish community.

Rabbi Laurie Phillips, director of education at Congregation Habonim, on the Upper West Side, likens Jewish studies tutoring to private sports lessons.

“You can learn to play soccer with a tutor, but it’s a different experience if you’re learning one-on-one versus being part of a soccer team. You’ll know how to play, but won’t know how to be part of a team.”

Jack Wertheimer, a Jewish history professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary and editor of “Learning and Community: Jewish Supplementary Schools in the Twenty-first Century” (Brandeis University Press, 2009) wonders “how well” private programs “can socialize young Jews to feel part of a congregation.

“One of the great advantages of Jewish children being educated in schools is that they are exposed to different types of Jewish role models,” he says. “They see the rabbi, they see their teachers, they see other adults engaged in Jewish living. The private route limits the exposure of young people.”

In addition to exposing children to congregational life and, ideally, instilling in them a sense of belonging to a community, Hebrew schools, unlike tutoring, offer students a chance to socialize with other Jewish children — including ones who come from different backgrounds.

While one-on-one tutoring, by definition, cannot expose students to Jewish diversity, even small groups of kids learning together with a private tutor — such as the model Rabbi Reuben Modek offers in his Rockland-based Hebrew Learning Circles program — tend to “end up with very homogenous groupings,” notes Saul Kaiserman, director of lifelong learning at the Upper East Side’s Temple Emanuel.

“When synagogues are doing their best work, you have public and private school kids from all over the city that are having to deal with their different backgrounds and different levels of observance,” he says.

Says Rabbi Sol: “We really believe that having relationships and experiences together, and growing up with the same group of kids, instills something in our children that ‘it’s not just all about me.’”

At B’nai Jeshurun even the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony — and, while an exception is made for special-needs children, privately tutored children cannot have a BJ rabbi officiate, nor can they have the ceremony on Shabbat morning or a community mincha —teaches about community, Rabbi Sol says.

“B’nai mitzvah don’t lead the whole service, because it’s not only about them. The ultimate expression of bar mitzvah is actually becoming a functioning participant in the community at large — not that everyone suspends their own spiritual needs to have a concert or performance by a 13-year-old kid.”

Even if Hebrew schools do a better job than tutoring when it comes to fostering community, some leaders believe that synagogues would do well to adapt some of the practices of private tutoring — such as offering students more flexibility, more options and one-on-one attention.

“The organized Jewish community should adapt this model within its institutions so people don’t have to seek it outside,” says Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute, which often gets calls from people seeking recommendations for a private tutor.

“If the goal is to provide Jewish education, then we should provide as many opportunities to get there as possible,” he says.

Some Hebrew schools offer some of these features, particularly opportunities for one-on-one attention.

Central Synagogue, one of the few Hebrew schools to employ full-time teachers, has a homework room, where children can go after class to receive extra help.

Scott Shay, who co-founded and helps run the Jewish Youth Connection, a Sunday school that is now sponsored by Kehillath Jeshurun, on the Upper East Side, says his program is a “hybrid” that provides the best of what Hebrew school and private tutoring have to offer.

All the JYC students spend part of Sunday morning working on Hebrew one-on-one with college students, called “big brothers and big sisters,” Shay says. The college students often check in on their charges during the week in order to see how they are managing their homework.

But the program also features regular classes, as well as parties and other group activities.

Where private tutoring wins hands-down, however, is convenience. With a teacher who comes to your home at a mutually convenient time, there is no commuting, no need to carve out one, two or even three afternoons a week — and for busy families struggling to balance an array of competing demands and activities, this is no small thing.

Nonetheless, argues Kaiserman, convenience isn’t everything.

“I suspect those parents wouldn’t have their kids study karate or ballet in their living room, but somehow manage to get them to class because they want a quality program, and value it.”

Hebrew schools, he says, need to offer high quality — to compete not only with tutors, but with “the marketplace of after-school activities.”

“We’re down the street from the [Metropolitan Museum of Art], so we have to offer something as good as an art class at the Met,” he adds.

And while “we try to make it not impossible or unbearable,” Kaiserman says, “I don’t think inconvenience is necessarily a negative. Jewish values, yeah, they’re inconvenient. That’s the whole point. If they weren’t we wouldn’t need to be learning about them.”

JYC’s Shay agrees that requiring a bit of effort from parents is not necessarily a bad thing.

“While for some tutoring is a good option, I think there’s tremendous value in the parent having to get up and bring the child to a place with other Jews and other parents and say ‘This is something we Jews do,’” Shay says. “As opposed to saying ‘Here’s Rabbi X who’s coming, and your piano teacher is coming an hour later.’”

Reports of the Hebrew School's Demise Have Been Greatly Exagerated

I have dedicated my professional life to supplementary, or complementary or afternoon Jewish Education. In other words, Hebrew School. I am committed to it be cause:

1. It worked for me and my friends. We all came through a wonderful experience at B'nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in suburban Chicago, learning from Rabbi Mark Shapiro, educators Barbara Irlen, Bernice Waitsman and Marshall Wolf, and dozens of teachers including Sharon Steinhorn (arguably the first - and second - congregation based family educator ever), Sy Bierman, Sandee Holleb, Joan Goldberg and more than I can name right now. It led us to be campers at Olin Sang Ruby Union Institute, to participating in our Jr. and Sr. youth groups, to becoming camp staff and teachers, etc. over 25 of us grew up to go to HUC-JIR and become rabbis, cantors, educators and Jewish communal workers. Lots more became functional Jewish adults and leaders of our Jewish communities.
   
   
2. Something in the neighborhood of 85 - 90% of all Jewish children in North America will not be going to day school. Period. They need a place to learn about being Jewish and to love being Jewish. Waiting for Birthright is too little, too late. Summer camps are awesome, but it is extremely difficult to get the "unsynagogued" to go in many communities. (I know MIlwaukee is different! Please don't flame me from Eagle River you Interlaken folks!) Not much left of the non-Orthodox Zionist youth movements. I mourn Young Judaea's present state. I would like to back up the following statement with actual research (I recall it but can't cite, so therefore it is an opinion, not a fact): I believe that the majority of families with children in Hebrew schools would not choose to enroll their children in day schools if there was no tuition charged.
   
   The decision to enroll in day school or not is, I believe, based on much more than cost. Those who make the choice are either believers in the endeavor day school represents (a valid, meaningful choice), driven there by inadequate public options in their community (equally valid and meaningful, if unfortunate) or looking for something that a particular day school offers that they believe is more beneficial to their child(ren) than the public option (again, valid and meaningful). Cost does turn some away who would otherwise choose day school. I believe if it were free, most would continue to make the choice not to enroll in Day School, because the alternative is pleasing to them. It is not a last resort.
   
   
3. Finally, because I believe in Hebrew School, I have made it my life's wrok to make the experience as meaningful and impactful as I can. I owe it to those who helped me become who I am. I owe it to my sons. I owe it to my grandchildren who are merely dreams in my and my wife's heads (and not yet very vivid -- we have lot's of time!).

I believe Hebrew School can be great. Not for everyone. Certanily not for the kid whose parent says: "I hated it. You'll hate it. You gotta go." Fortunately, we don;t hear that much in our synagogue anymore. I think you can judge the strength of a school by how many B'nai Mitzvah keep coming. Nearly 70% of our B'nai Mitzvah become confirmed at the end of tenth grade. One or two of them choose not to continue to High School graduation. Fifteen years ago it was 29%. Our goal is 85%. We will get there. I don't think we are the best of the best or anywhere near alone. Some things become facts (like the failure of the supplemental school) just by repeating them loudly and frequently.

Why am I talking about this? My friend Robyn Faintich of the Florence Melton Communiteen High School (and fellow Jim Joseph Foundation Fellow at the Lookstein Institute) tweeted about the following blog from Benjamin Weiner on the Jewcy blog.

Jewcy is an online media outlet/blog, social network, and brand devoted to helping Jews and their peers expand the meaning of community by presenting a spectrum of voices, content, and discussion. JEWCY is a project of JDub Records, a non-profit organization dedicated to innovative Jewish content, community, and cross-cultural dialogue. Read it. Join the conversation.

Stop Blaming Hebrew School

by Benjamin Weiner,
January 7, 2010

My weekly unsolicited email from Shalom TV, "America's Jewish Television Cable Network," informs me that Michael Steinhardt, philanthropist provocateur, in a recent "rare, personal interview," launched into a tirade against non-Orthodox American Jewish education. Hebrew school, argued the hedge-fund tycoon and Taglit-BIrthright impressario, spitting the word out through clenched teeth (or so I imagine the scene), "has been, and continues to be, a shandah--an abysmal failure." In Steinhardt's estimation, the ineptitude of this warhorse of an educational model is responsible for skyrocketing rates of non-Orthodox intermarriage, and the plummeting percentage of Jewish philanthropic dollars actually going these days to Jewish causes. (He sets the figure at 15%). "Can there be a worse term in the American Jewish lexicon than 'Hebrew School?" he asks. "There were six kids in the 20th Century who liked it!"

I am still digesting the press release--the lack of a cable hookup means it will take me some effort to watch the actual interview. Other tidbits include Steinhardt inveighing against the use of "mythical" anti-Semitism as a "boogeyman" to "raise money" for Jewish organizations, and against an obsession with the Holocaust that hinders us from thinking "about what we want to accomplish and what we want to be in the 21st century." The "religion of Judaism," he says further, is "so deeply disappointing" in its "practice, its verbiage, its inability to reflect realistically upon our lives."

The only redemption he sees for the "moribund world" of the Diaspora is a relationship with Israel, "my Jewish miracle." He has no respect, mind you, for the political and business establishment of the country, which he described with adjectives such as "awful" and "less than glorious," and he does not seem to be in favor of living there all the time, either. "I have a wonderful house in the middle of Jerusalem," he says. "I love Israel. I love America. And," like Alec Baldwin in bed with Meryl Streep, "it's a complicated situation."

I admit again that I am only relying here on the sampling of quotes provided in the press release, so I don't feel justified launching a full critique of Steinhardt's performance. Instead, I'd like to focus on the first salvo, the oft repeated claim that synagogue Hebrew schools are responsible for the decline of the Jewish people--a claim that is more or less akin to stripping your parents' house of all viable woodwork, plumbing, and appliances and then wondering why they live in such a dump.

Firstly, it should be noted that Hebrew school has not been a failure, as it is largely responsible for the success of many who have spent time on the editorial board of Heeb, or in the Alpine fortress of Reboot, or the stables of the Foundation for Jewish Culture, or most likely, if you will pardon me, the inner sancta of Jewcy and JDub [Editor's note: I should just point out that I didn't go to Hebrew school, but several of my colleagues did].

Anyone who has jockeyed disaffection with the Jewish establishment into a successful career of personal expression on the American mass-media stage, including the Coen brothers (who, since "A Serious Man," I consider the patron saints of the genre), should reflect on the debt of gratitude he or she owes to this half-assed system of religio-ethno-cultural indoctrination. Things might have been far less interesting had the ingredients come out fully-baked.

But, snarkiness aside, the problem with blaming Hebrew School for the collapse of our millennia-old civilization is that such talk, to paraphrase Tevye, blames the cart for the inherent lameness of the horse; exonerates the many who fled the challenge of creating meaningful Jewish life for the sorry state of affairs they left behind, and ignores the implacability of the forces that made them flee in the first place.

For what created the supposition that two to six hours a week of afterschool guttarality could foment a firm commitment to the Jewish people? I don't think this paradigm was determined deliberately from the outset, by committee. At the turn of the last century, there were viable models of Jewish education, and there was a critical mass of Jewish community prepared to embody them. And then there was mass immigration, and genocide, and breakneck assimilation--from a flummoxed traditional culture into a post-War America that was primed with petroleum to give Jewish people the greatest thrill ride they had ever experienced in a Gentile world. And, at the end of the day, Hebrew School emerged because it was the best we were allowed to do. Speaking, gloves off, as a working rabbi and education director, trying hard to find ways to reflect the "verbiage" of the Jewish religion "realistically upon our lives," it is frustrating that, by consensus of the parents of my community, I can only educate their children for two hours a week with no homework, and that those hours come well after regular school hours, and that the expectations for behavior and attendance sometimes fall somewhere between a railway station and a monkey house--despite the fact that they are all, without exception, great kids. But this is roughly the extent of the concession that many American Jewish families are willing to make these days to their Jewish identities, and there should be a category of Nobel prize for whoever figures out how to put these parameters to the best use.

There is a lot of talk in circulation about "what we want to accomplish, and what we want to be in the 21st century;" what it will take to "get our groove back," whether that means summoning the "boogeyman," or replacing religion with spirituality, or pretending we're Jamaican, or humping each other at younger ages with fewer prophylactics, or giving "Jewish barbarians" (Steinhardt's term) free trips to an Israel whose only redeeming virtue seems to be that we only have to be there sporadically. Of course, it is the responsibility of those who care to come up with compelling answers to the question of why be Jewish. But these answers are getting shorter and shorter, and sounding more and more often like marketing slogans, and, at the end of the day, the lack of substance is less the fault of educators than it is the fault of Jewish consumers who don't want to buy, no matter how cheap the cost. Beyond that, it is the fault of history.