Letters to the editor
Readers respond
We must invest in Jewish schools that serve every Jewish family
Two separate yet related issues stood out to us in Mendy Cohen’s op-ed “If we want Jewish life to survive, we must invest in the living” (April 18).
First, we agree wholeheartedly with the case he makes to invest in Jewish education so that our children understand “where they come from and what it means to be a Jew” as a means of fighting antisemitism. We have noticed a pattern among many Jews who speak out against Israel: They are, to varying degrees, woefully undereducated about the history of Israel, the inextricable connection between Israel and Judaism, and even basic Jewish tradition and halacha, despite many having robust knowledge about the Holocaust. This is a true failure of the past few decades of Jewish education in America and highlights the need for urgent reimagining and bolstering of Jewish education for Jewish families and students.
Second, we are two Jewish moms — among dozens in our Jewish community and likely thousands nationally — who desperately want a high quality Jewish education for our children, but for whom Jewish day school did not meet our children’s and families’ needs. The school our children attended was unprepared and unable to meet the needs of our students who are neurodiverse and have mental health diagnoses. (For the out-of-pocket price tag, it also did not offer anything special in terms of general education, academic acceleration, or, notably, the arts.) As a result, our children have ended up in other schools, to our dismay.
There are many Jewish families who are philosophically and financially committed to Jewish education whose children are not accepted in and do not have their needs met at our educational institutions. Not having schools that provide a supportive, high quality Jewish education for our children puts an additional burden on us to provide this ourselves, when we already have a more challenging parenting journey given our kids’ needs. Both neurodiversity and mental health diagnoses are becoming better and more frequent. Our Jewish schools must become more inclusive by committing themselves to meeting the needs of a wider swath of Jewish students. This will require significant education and training for staff and administrators as well as having robust support for students. The children who need these changes to happen are vital to the future of our Jewish community.
But this, of course, will require a lot of money. Without taking away from the good that may come of the Tree of Life rebuilding initiative, there is no doubt that a sum of tens of millions of dollars would be much better spent on significant strengthening of and innovation at Pittsburgh’s Jewish day schools. Meeting more Jewish students’ needs and making the quality of offerings at our day schools so strong that all Jewish families have the best educational option within the Jewish community would pay incalculable dividends for generations of Jewish people in Pittsburgh and beyond.
Aviva Lubowsky and Karen Kantz
Pittsburgh
In defense of Trump’s campus crackdown on antisemitism
I am very discouraged by the opposition of many Jewish organizations to the president’s policies toward curbing anti-Jewish activities in our country (“10 leading US Jewish groups denounce Trump administration’s campus crackdown,” online, April 17).
I unequivocally support President Trump’s courageous efforts to curtail antisemitism on our university campuses and to remove from our country miscreants such as Mahmoud Khalil, whose very presence constitutes an assault upon decent society.
No one objected when the Roosevelt administration removed third-class mail franking privileges from Father Coughlin’s Social Justice newsletter in 1942, nor do I think any major Jewish organization lost any sleep when President Truman both denaturalized and deported German American Bund leader Fritz Kuhn after World War II.
Frankly, I find the opposition to our president’s policies in this regard from the non-Orthodox camp to be a case of advancing liberal interests over Jewish interests. That has never served our people well.
David L. Blatt
Chicago, Illinois
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