jacobs-history of american jewish education

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Journal of Jewish Education, 71:33–51, 2005Copyright © Network for Research in Jewish EducationISSN: 0021-6249DOI: 10.1080/00216240590924024

Journal of Jewish Education711Taylor & FrancisTaylor and Francis 325 Chestnut StreetPhiladelphiaPA191060021-62491744–0548UTEHNetwork for Research in Jewish Education5260110.1080/002162405909240242005126Journal of Jewish EducationAmerican Jewish Educational Historiography

What’s Wrong with the History of American Jewish Education?

BENJAMIN M. JACOBS

The history of education is a worthwhile pursuit within the studyof history writ-large, for education is a powerful cultural devicethat has been manipulated for a variety of social, political, andeconomic purposes. So, why is it the case that little work has beendone to date on the history of American Jewish schooling? Thisarticle assesses the state of Jewish educational historiography andsuggests that research has been constrained by two major factors:(1) Jewish historians have been reluctant to address educationalmatters, and (2) Jewish educators have been concerned foremostwith the present and future, and not the past.

The history of education occupies a peculiar if not precarious place withinthe broader fields of educational research and historical scholarship fromwhich it derives.1 It might be said that educational history is neither “educa-tional” nor “history,” strictly speaking. On one hand, historians of educationdeal with compelling historical questions and draw on the methodologicaland epistemological conventions of the history discipline in order to makerigorous, well-founded, critical contributions to a larger body of historicalknowledge. On the other hand, they are often called upon to address theneeds and concerns of current-minded educational practitioners, policymakers,and researchers working in the trenches, who seek “historical perspectives,”“lessons,” and “solutions” for contemporary problems. The seesawing statusof educational historians is summed up by two American educationalhistorians, Ruben Donato and Marvin Lazerson (2001), as follows: “Inchoosing one end of the spectrum, we risk neglect and rejection by theother, and are often seen either as antiquarians irrelevant to the burning

Benjamin M. Jacobs is a doctoral candidate and instructor in Social Studies Education atTeachers College, Columbia University and coordinator of the Program in Education andJewish Studies at New York University.

Amitai Blickstein

Amitai Blickstein

Amitai Blickstein

34 Journal of Jewish Education

educational issues of our times or as ‘presentists’ with little appreciation ofthe uniqueness of the past.”2

This dilemma leaves educational historians in a state akin to purgatory,where they are regularly forced to advocate for the legitimacy of historicalproblems in education and the significance of educational problems in his-tory. Historians of education have achieved important gains (as well as set-backs, of course) in both realms, and a few have even managed to capturethe attention of the broader public through best-selling books and op-edpieces. Nonetheless, in the main, the field of educational history is in a mar-ginal state—not quite valued among educationists who deal with pressingissues regarding teacher education, educational equity, and educationalbureaucracy (among other matters), and not quite reputable among histori-ans who have long tended to view the history of the professions as “soft”and the history of education as “presentist.”

Despite these circumstances, significant work continues to be done invarious facets of the history of education. Addressing “new directions” inAmerican educational history, Donato and Lazerson claim that a number oflines of inquiry have yet to be pursued adequately—including the educa-tional history of women, peoples of color, immigrant and ethnic groups,and religious minorities—and they call for women historians and historiansof color, among others, to take up the mantle and expand the scope of edu-cational history to include fresh “insider’s” lines of interpretation.3 In thisway, they argue, crosscultural comparisons can emerge, a diversity of audi-ences can be addressed, and educational history can be brought into con-versation with some of the most innovative work being done in Americansocial history, as well as some of the most urgent problems facing Americanschooling today.

With the problems and prospects in educational historiography out-lined above in mind, this article will assess how one immigrant, ethnic, reli-gious minority group—American Jewry—has previously dealt with its owneducational history in the United States. Specifically, I will offer in this articlea critical review of the current state of the field of American Jewish educa-tional historiography, focusing on some of the constraints that I feel haveprevented the discipline from flourishing to date. A few prospects for futuredevelopments will also be suggested.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CURRICULUM STUDIES TO EDUCATIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

It must be acknowledged from the outset that a major assumption aboutwhat educational research should look like underlies this analysis: In myview, attention to educational matters means, in large part, attention to curri-culum matters, and attention to curriculum matters means, in large part,

American Jewish Educational Historiography 35

attention to issues of what should be taught, how it should be taught, andwhy it should be taught in schools. I look at educational history through thelens of curriculum, then, and my interest centers on how curriculum relatesto historical circumstances in schools and society. As a curriculum historian,I focus on the ways in which the knowledge embedded in the school curri-culum reflects social values, political arrangements, economic conditions,intellectual traditions, and cultural norms among particular groups in agiven time and place. In short, I am interested in curriculum as a historicalagent.4

Educational historiography is not limited to studies of curriculum, ofcourse. The history of education encompasses a broad range of researchareas, including the history of the teaching profession, the history of highereducation, the history of women and education, the history of educationalideas, and so on. Broadly speaking, curriculum history explains the integralrelationship of society and schools, or, as Larry Cuban (1992) once put it,“When society has an itch, the schools scratch.”5 To be sure, however,schools are only one socializing agent among many, including home, houseof worship, and community, and educational activities for children occur inmultiple venues outside of schools, such as camps and youth groups. Evenwithin schools, the notion that sports, clubs, and other activities, are extra-curricular implies that, strictly speaking, curriculum only encompasses theteaching and learning of subject matter in the classroom. In light of theseconsiderations, the argument might be made that the study of curriculumhistory is a rather limited pursuit within the scheme of educational historyand, most certainly, within the study of history writ-large.6

But curriculum is much more than a lesson plan, a textbook, a bundleof photocopied worksheets, a “course to be run,” “the subjects offered forstudy,” or “the planned activities and experiences in the school.”7 Rather,curriculum is a form of culture. It is an artifact that represents, in tangibleform, a set of ideas, norms, worldviews, longings, customs, and/or beliefsabout the roles schools play in the maintenance and perpetuation of civili-zation.8 Further, curriculum is a powerful cultural device that can bewielded, manipulated, and exploited for a variety of social, political, andeconomic purposes, such as the perpetuation (or negation) of certain formsof hegemony. Over the course of time, as the circumstances under whichschools operate fluctuate (e.g., regime change), so too does the curriculum.Curriculum change is not merely the byproduct of sociopolitical shifts, intel-lectual forces, and momentous events, however. It is, fundamentally, theresult of impassioned conflicts over how the culture of schooling—and, byextension, society—is defined by its stakeholders.

Questions historians of curriculum commonly ask include the following:“What sorts of ideologies does this curriculum represent?” “Whose interestsdoes this curriculum serve?” “Who is being included and who is beingexcluded from participation in this curriculum scheme?” and “Toward what


ends is this curriculum intended?”9 Curriculum documents are especiallyrich sources for historians, insofar as they help us understand what values asociety held (or holds) dear, why society held (or holds) these values dear,how these values made (or make) their way into the school curriculum, forwhat purposes, and to what effect.10 It follows that the study of curriculumis not only a vital enterprise in the study of education, but also an eminentlyworthwhile pursuit in the study of social and cultural history.

THE PROBLEM OF AMERICAN JEWISH EDUCATIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

Even so, it is my contention that questions regarding the Jewish school curri-culum, as well as how Jewish school curricula have evolved over time invarious contexts (i.e., the history of the curriculum), have by and large beenneglected in research on American Jewish education. In the one and onlyscholarly survey of research on the history of American Jewish educationpublished to date, Jonathan Sarna (1998) claims that, with few exceptions,most studies in the field have been “parochial,” “narrowly conceived,” and“long on facts and short on analysis.”11 Few full-scale histories have beenattempted, Sarna argues, and what has been written tends to focus on ques-tions regarding the return on investment in educational activities, rather thanthe structure, content, and meaning of the educational activities themselves.

In my own reading of some of the broad surveys of American Jewisheducational history written in the last half century, I have noticed a markedemphasis on (1) the proliferation of Jewish educational settings, includingschools, synagogues, camps, and community centers, as well as early child,adult, family, and informal education programs; (2) the steady (or at somepoints substantial) increase of financial support for Jewish educational pro-grams from community organizations, major philanthropists, patrons, andconsumers; (3) the continuous expansion (or at some points decline) ofenrollment in a variety of Jewish educational activities, in all segments ofAmerican Jewish society; (4) improvements or shortcomings regarding thequantity, quality, and status (preparation, compensation, and promotion,etc.) of leadership and personnel in the field; and (5) technical evaluationsof the short-term or long-term efficacy of various Jewish educational initia-tives.12 In most cases, some mention also is made of the purposes and prac-tices of Jewish schooling, as well as the place of Jewish education in theAmerican Jewish community and in the surrounding society.13

Jack Wertheimer’s (1999) lengthy treatment of historical and contempo-rary trends and issues in American Jewish education is representative of thissurvey literature.14 Wertheimer devotes the majority of his study to threemajor themes: (1) the institutions, programs, students, and professionals inthe world of formal Jewish education (i.e., schools); (2) the extensive array


of new programs in informal Jewish education (e.g., adult education); and(3) the politics that determine who controls the structures, organizations,and resources of American Jewish education at-large. He provides an abun-dance of names (particularly educational institutions and community organi-zations), dates (focusing especially on the last 25 years), and above all,numbers (dollars spent, schools established, programs created, studentsenrolled, personnel employed, tuitions and salaries paid, etc.). He alsooffers some key insights regarding the steady shift of power in AmericanJewish education from the hands of educational professionals to the handsof community leaders working in conjunction with major philanthropists.

What is most significant about Wertheimer’s study is his expansiveview of what “American Jewish education” encompasses. For Wertheimer,Jewish education is not merely about what goes on in classrooms, it also isabout the abundant variety of educational activities that occur outside ofschool walls. Moreover, Wertheimer sees American Jewish education atonce as a self-contained enterprise, with its own goals, institutions, stake-holders, and culture, and, concomitantly, as only one component of thelarger American Jewish communal apparatus, which has its own set of pri-orities, organizations, trustees, and mores. In pointing out the complexways in which these powerful systems interact, especially regarding policy-making, Wertheimer succeeds in illuminating, at least on the structural level,the codependency of education and society.

At the same time, one of the strengths of Wertheimer’s study—hisbroad view of American Jewish education—also is one of its great weak-nesses, at least from the perspective of those of us interested in the pro-cesses of education and schooling. Of the more than 100 pages of textdedicated to an assessment of major issues in the Jewish education field,only approximately ten pages are devoted to an explicit discussion of curri-culum and instruction. Furthermore, when Wertheimer delves into schoolprograms, he generally seems more concerned with the amount of instruc-tional time allotted to particular subject areas and the amount of curriculummaterials (textbooks, guides) available to teachers, than with the actual sub-stance (purposes, content, methods) of the curriculum itself. To Wertheimer’scredit, there are some curriculum-related issues—including tacit referencesto the hidden and null curriculum—embedded within his appraisal ofJewish educational programs, especially schools and summer camps.15 Forexample, he makes repeated mention of the formal and informal ways thatproblems such as Jewish cultural literacy, Jewish identification, intermar-riage, and continuity, affect the planning and implementation of Jewisheducational activities. Nonetheless, in the end, Wertheimer provides us verylittle data on what actually is going on in schools and why. If, as the curric-ulum theorist Ralph Tyler (1990) once put it, “curriculum is the heart ofschooling,” then Wertheimer’s discussion of Jewish schooling has to a greatextent missed its mark.16


Wertheimer’s oversight regarding curriculum is not unique to AmericanJewish educational historiography. As Sarna (1998) has argued, the pervad-ing concern among American Jewish educational historians with issuesregarding the return on educational investment creates “something of aninterpretive straightjacket” that “constrains scholars from asking what maybe far more productive questions concerning the content of American Jewisheducation, the relationship of American Jewish education to AmericanJewish life, and how both have changed over time.”17 Barry Chazan (1983),Michael Rosenak (1984), and David Resnick (1988) likewise have found alack of attention in American Jewish educational research to the state ofaffairs in the classroom—regarding teachers, instructional methods, curricu-lum, students, and learning activities.18 Stuart L. Kelman’s (1992) compila-tion, What We Know About Jewish Education: A Handbook of Today’sResearch for Tomorrow’s Jewish Education, has numerous chapters aboutschool-related issues, but not one about the substance of the curriculum, letalone its history.19 In short, little work has been done in the history ofAmerican Jewish education on the purposes, processes, and practices ofJewish schooling.20 Sweeping historical surveys tend to provide only a per-functory consideration of curriculum.

What accounts for this problem? I will elaborate on two major con-straints. First, there is no established tradition among Jewish historians orJewish education scholars for doing research on Jewish educational history.Second, much of the research being conducted in the Jewish education fieldis empirical, technical, and/or presentist in orientation. In other words, thehistory of Jewish education is not a priority on the research agenda.

JEWISH EDUCATION AND THE JEWISH HISTORIANS

The first constraint can best be understood in juxtaposition to the long-standing involvement of American historians in public school matters. In themid-nineteenth century, as the field of history was emerging as a scientificdiscipline, American historians made a concerted effort to establish a placeof prominence for themselves within modern studies in American universi-ties. Recognizing early on that the expanding public high school systemwould serve as both a training ground for future American citizens and afeeder for university history classes, American historians distinguished them-selves by becoming major actors in the development of curricula, methodsof instruction, and standards of assessment for school history and civicscourses. Their activities in the schools would be advantageous for two rea-sons. First, by introducing young students to some of the most current his-torical scholarship and methods being advanced in the universities, theywould potentially have a cadre of disciples ready for the next level ofresearch. Second, and more important, by directly involving themselves in


public education—and citizenship education in particular—they would givethemselves and their trade a highly visible and influential public face.21

For more than a century, some of the most prominent scholars ofAmerican history—from Charles A. Beard in the 1930s, to Allan Nevins inthe 1950s, to Kenneth T. Jackson in the 1980s, and many others then andnow—have been outspoken advocates (or critics) of the way American his-tory has been taught in American schools. Likewise, the American HistoricalAssociation and the Organization of American Historians have sometimesplayed pivotal roles in the formulation of educational policy, and haveencouraged scholars to dedicate their efforts to the study of educationalissues.22 For American historians, in the main, the connection betweenscholars’ history and schools’ history cannot be ignored.

By contrast, Jewish historians have been conspicuously absent fromdirect involvement in Jewish school matters.23 Unlike their counterparts,Jewish historians in the United States did not secure a place of integration,prominence, or even comfort in universities until the mid- to late-twentiethcentury.24 In the early part of the century, academic Judaic studies largelywere confined to rabbinic seminaries and colleges of Jewish studies (alsoknown as Hebrew teachers colleges). Only a handful of Jewish historiansheld academic chairs in major research universities. Moreover, a significantnumber of American colleges and universities had Jewish admissions quotasin place. Slowly, as universities began to open up to academic Judaic stud-ies and to Jewish students, Jewish historians concentrated on normalizingJewish studies as well as bolstering their own reputations in the universalistic,humanistic world of the academy. For many of these Jewish studies aca-demics, this meant highlighting scholarly rigor, professionalism, and dispas-sion, rather than serving as public advocates for Jewish communal causessuch as the Jewish education enterprise. For this reason, in contrast toAmerican historians, Jewish historians have tended to shy away from mat-ters regarding the teaching of Jewish history in Jewish schools, among otherschool issues. Other contributing factors, such as the lack of a major marketfor Jewish history schoolbooks and thorny town-and-gown politics, alsoexplain the reticence of historians to be involved in Jewish school affairs. Infact, given the circumstances, it might be unreasonable to expect Jewishhistorians to speak directly to Jewish educational policy.

What is more enigmatic—and more problematic—from the perspectiveof American Jewish educational historiography, though, is that Jewish historiansalso have tended in the past to disregard in their scholarship the intrinsiccorrelation of educational history and social and cultural history. In the fieldof American studies, an interest in the complex and often contradictoryrelationships between education, culture, and society was established longago by scholars such as Bernard Bailyn (1960) and Lawrence Cremin(1961).25 Not so in Jewish studies. Few histories of Jewish education havebeen written by Jewish historians, and few educational issues have been


addressed in their general histories of the Jews.26 Simply put, the history ofJewish education has not yet become an identifiable subspecialty within thebroader agenda of Jewish historical research.

Certainly, there are some notable exceptions, particularly within thefield of American Jewish history. Two factors may explain the uniqueness ofAmerican Jewish historiography in its treatment of educational issues. First,unlike their counterparts who study ancient Israelite history, medieval Jewishlife, modern European Jewry, and the like, American Jewish historians tendto be more conscious of the immediate implications of their work for con-temporary American Jewish life. Salo Baron, long regarded as the dean ofJewish historians on the American scene, originally encouraged the connec-tion between historians and the public and helped to legitimize the study ofAmerican Jewish history as both a scholarly endeavor and a service to com-munity interests—which, to some extent, it remains to this day.27 Second,American Jewish historiography, which came of age in the academy along-side American studies, ethnic studies, and women’s studies in the 1970s –1980s,has tended like its counterparts to emphasize social and cultural history.28

Thus, in the past few decades, some American Jewish historians have in factconcentrated their attention on the issue of how American Jews have beeneducated.

Jacob Rader Marcus’ (1989–1993) monumental series, United StatesJewry, 1776 –1985, stands out in this regard.29 In each of the four volumes,Marcus dedicates two or more extensive and thoughtful chapters to issuesregarding Jewish educational activities on the American scene. In Marcus’view, the growth of Jewish schooling was inextricably linked to the devel-opment and expansion of American Jewish culture and society. His primaryinterest throughout the work is in (1) the ways in which Jewish religiousschools served as transitional institutions in American Jewish life, bridgingthe gap between Old and New Worlds and helping to usher in new formsof American Judaism; (2) efforts among community leaders and organiza-tions to establish Jewish communal schools for all Jewish children, thoughwith greater and lesser success in different times and places; and, (3) thecontinuity or discontinuity of Jewish socialization between school, syna-gogue, and home. To Marcus’ credit, his focus is not limited to the majorpopulation centers of the East; educational activities in smaller communitiesof the Midwest, South, and West, also get their due. In addition, Marcuspays considerable attention to the flowering of Jewish literature, the rise ofJewish publishing and the Jewish press, the burgeoning of academic Jewishstudies, and the proliferation of adult educational activities in multiple venues.For Marcus, American Jewish religion, education, social welfare, culture,and social life are, in his words, “all of one piece.”30 By drawing an intrinsicconnection between patterns of Jewish schooling and patterns of Jewishculture and identification among America’s Jews, Marcus demonstrates theways in which the community’s stance on Jewish education has historically


served as a barometer of its outlook on Judaism and Jewish life, and vice versa.This is hardly a novel observation, to be sure.31 Yet, Marcus’ United StatesJewry might in fact be one of the most important pieces of Jewish educa-tional history written to date, if only because it is one of the few compre-hensive histories of the Jews to provide an extensive, deliberate, anddetailed consideration of educational issues and activities in the community.32

Notwithstanding the work of Marcus and a few other like-mindedhistorians—and, here, I will make particular mention of the concise, albeitrich, work of Arthur A. Goren (1970) on the New York Bureau of JewishEducation, Deborah Dash Moore (1981) on immigrant Jews in New Yorkpublic schools, Jeffrey Gurock (1988) on Orthodox schooling, andDaniel Soyer (2000) on the Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn—dis-cussions of the Jewish education enterprise have been by and large absentfrom American Jewish historical literature as well.33 Gerald Sorin’s (1992)survey history of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century American Jewry(the same period covered by the historians just mentioned) is evidence ofthis problem. Outside of a few rather perfunctory paragraphs on the Educa-tional Alliance, heders, and Talmud Torahs in New York City, Sorin’s narra-tive is for the most part devoid of a consideration of Jewish schooling—orpublic schooling, for that matter—among eastern European Jewish immi-grants to the United States. In fact, his lone reference to the person univer-sally recognized as the “father” of modern American Jewish education,Samson Benderly, identifies him as Samuel Benderly.34 Were Sorin’s workobscure, it could easily be dismissed. But, it is part of a much heralded mul-tivolume series, The Jewish People in America (1992), edited by one of theprominent scholars in the field, sponsored by the American Jewish HistoricalSociety, and published by a respected university press. This makes the over-sight emblematic of how lacking mainstream Jewish historical literature canbe in its attention to educational issues.35

JEWISH EDUCATORS AND THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN JEWISH EDUCATION

Doing the history of American Jewish education presents a unique set oftheoretical and methodological challenges. For example, studying the waysany subgroup has educated its children entails understanding the ways thatsubgroup has related to the broader society, including, among other factors,the extent to which the subgroup has engaged or disengaged from the edu-cational activities offered in the broader society. Thus, historians of AmericanJewish education must have a solid knowledge base in American Jewishhistory and American history, as well as in Jewish educational history andAmerican educational history, to properly situate the American Jewish edu-cational enterprise within the multiple historical contexts in which it operates.


It may be that case the Jewish historians are simply uncomfortable orthey feel incapable of commenting with sophistication on matters regardingeducation in general, or curriculum, pedagogy, and schooling in particular.A researcher who is not skilled at interpreting history through an educa-tional lens may not be equipped to draw educational implications from his-torical circumstances in the same way that an education scholar might.36

Therefore, it might be argued, the task of writing Jewish educational historyshould be the purview of Jewish education scholars. By the some token,though, educational researchers who are more equipped to comment oneducational matters than to do disciplinary history might be perceived byhistorians as being dilettantish.

These status problems could potentially be resolved if Jewish educa-tional historians were rigorously trained in both education and history.However, there is no established tradition within the Jewish education fieldfor doing historical research.37 Few avenues exist for the formal training ofprofessional historians of Jewish education. Seminaries and Hebrew teach-ers colleges in the United States dedicate the majority of their efforts andresources to training educational personnel, rather than researchers, so thatfew educational theorists or analysts emerge from their ranks.38 Perhaps themost reputable historian of American Jewish education to date, the lateWalter Ackerman, earned his doctorate at Harvard and had a stint at theUniversity of Judaism, but he spent much of his career at Ben Gurion Uni-versity; although his influence on Jewish education scholars worldwide wassignificant, the fact remains that, from his base in Israel, he was ill-suited totrain a cadre of American Jewish educational historians who could continuehis work. Indeed, most of the work that has been done in Jewish educa-tional history has been an extension of doctoral dissertations completedat university-based schools of education, where disciplinary, humanisticresearch in areas like history and philosophy of education is de rigueur, orunder the auspices of Jewish studies programs, which have been seeingmore work on educational history of late. This work tends to be isolated,though. Because major research universities historically have lacked theirown agendas for Jewish educational research, their capacity for providingsupport to budding scholars in the field is limited.

Even if the infrastructure was in place for the training of Jewish educa-tional historians, it is not altogether clear that there is an interest in, or ademand for, historical research within the Jewish education field to beginwith. As noted earlier, history is not normally viewed as part and parcel ofeducational practice. In fact, the field of Jewish education is essentially ahis-torical. For example, the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic texts, the Hebrew lan-guage, Jewish history, and Israel have been entrenched subjects in mostAmerican Jewish schools for generations now without much regard for howand why these particular subjects came to dominate the curriculum or whythey continue to hold sway. They are just there, presumably because “that’s


the way it’s always been.” Rarely are questions asked about whatapproaches to teaching these subjects have worked in the past and howthese approaches might be adapted for contemporary classrooms. Rather,curriculum innovations in Jewish education draw from innovations in thegeneral education field (sometimes a decade or so behind), without regardto innovations that may have been attempted in Jewish education circlesbefore.39 Contemporary teachers have little or no sense of the historical tra-dition of American Jewish schooling that they themselves are a part of.

Jewish educational practitioners, policymakers, and curriculum makersare not the only ones who tend to be lacking in historical perspective. Theentire field of Jewish educational research is, for the most part, empirical,technical, and presentist in orientation. Concern with logistical and practicalmatters in Jewish education has come at the expense of purely academic orintellectual pursuits. Commenting on the state of the field more than50 years ago, Salo Baron (1947) claimed that “too frequently, we find aboard of Jewish education judging educational success by statistical figures.This is even truer in the case of the general communal leadership which hasto balance educational needs against other communal requirements.”40 ForBaron, concerns such as “the number of children attending school, thenumber of teachers and their respective salaries, the number of hours ofinstruction per child, and so forth” should be “decidedly secondary” to mat-ters such as the quality and content of Jewish education.41 After all, he con-cluded, the point of the Jewish educational enterprise is not to producemore Jewish education but to produce more educated Jews.

Baron’s call for a qualitative turn in Jewish educational research hasbeen echoed in various ways through the past half century. In the 1960s–1970s,Seymour Fox led the way in calling for “serious deliberation” about thepurposes, aims, and practices of Jewish education, and the development ofsubstantive curricula.42 Walter Ackerman (1989), citing a laundry list of defi-ciencies in Jewish educational research, claimed that, with only statisticaldata at hand, “proposals for improving the quality of Jewish education fallsomewhere between educated guessing and an inexcusable waste of time,effort and money.”43 Harvey Shaprio and Michael Zeldin (1998) called forthe development of “narrative” research in Jewish education that examines“specific phenomena closely as they have been manifest over time.”44 Someheadway has been made in these directions over the last decade or so, asscholars have been dedicating themselves to developing research in moraleducation, teacher preparation, curriculum and instruction, and classroomculture, using methodologies like ethnography, action research, and portrai-ture.45 A recent volume on Visions of Jewish Education (2003) likewise makessome inroads toward the development of Jewish educational philosophy.46

Nonetheless, the central paradigm of Jewish educational research is stillgrounded in quantifiable measurements of success, with an emphasis onassessments and outcomes rather than form and substance. This situation is


not unique to the Jewish education field. Landon Beyer and Michael Apple(1998) similarly claim that, among educators in general, “difficult ethical andpolitical questions of content, of what knowledge is most worth, have beenpushed to the background in our attempts to define technically-orientedmethods that will ‘solve’ our problems once and for all.”47 In large part, theyargue, this situation results from the ongoing intensification of a “culture ofaccountability” in education.

Accountability also pervades the Jewish education enterprise, wheremuch of the research agenda is set (and subsidized) by community agencies,philanthropic foundations, and program administrators. Not surprisingly, thesepolicymaking groups are most interested in (1) qualitative/quantitative evalua-tions of institutions and programs; (2) survey studies regarding attitudes andcommitments towards Jewish education among parents, students, teachers,and community members; (3) data on the human, financial, and instrumentalresources available for Jewish education; and (4) the long-term effects of par-ticipating in Jewish education activities on the development of adult Jewishidentity.48 The resulting body of research consists mainly of descriptive sum-maries of statistics and trends regarding Jewish educational outcomes—alsoknown as impact studies—rather than interpretive analyses of the Jewish edu-cation process. A review of the research leaves one with the impression thatthe community is more concerned with providing and receiving a Jewish edu-cation than it is with determining what successful schooling looks like. Inother words, attending school, rather than achieving in school, appears to bethe primary (if implicit) goal of the Jewish educational enterprise.49

Typical of the social scientific research on Jewish educational outcomesis Steven M. Cohen’s (1995) article-length study of “The Impact of Varietiesof Jewish Education upon Jewish Identity.”50 Cohen sets out to provide aquantitative, empirical evaluation of whether or not participants in Jewisheducation programs become more Jewishly identified—measured in termsof patterns of religious behavior and rates of intermarriage—as a result oftheir experience in Jewish schools or informal Jewish education activitieslike summer camps and Israel trips. For community leaders and donors whoare interested in whether or not the Jewish education enterprise effectivelyis working, this type of impact study can certainly be useful.51 But what isentirely missing from Cohen’s study, and others like it, is a consideration ofwhat is actually going on in any of the Jewish educational programs beinginvestigated. Thus, Jewish educators who are interested in precisely whatkinds of curriculum, instruction, and learning activities can have an impacton Jewish youth will likely find studies such as Cohen’s to be of limitedapplicability. In the end, as David Breakstone (1987) has observed, the per-vasive “technical/administrative approach” to Jewish education research hasleft us with a body of literature that is little more than “a piecemeal series ofinconsistent and unsatisfying decisions [i.e., findings] which leave unan-swered the question: Jewish education—for what?”52


Not only have important questions regarding what is going on andwhat should be going on in Jewish schools been left unanswered, there alsohas been little incentive to pursue research on what happened in the pastand what implications the past might have for today’s practice. Herbert Kliebard(1992), an eminent historian of the American school curriculum, has notedthat educationists and curriculum-makers hoping to reform or improve pub-lic school conditions and programs tend to “view the past as something tobe gotten away from.”53 This observation applies equally in the world ofAmerican Jewish education, where the operating assumption seems to bethat the past mainly instructs about what it is that needs to be surpassed.There is a widespread feeling in the Jewish education world, shared bycommunity members, parents, and even educators alike, that teaching andlearning in Jewish schools has always been rather paltry. As one member ofthe Commission on Jewish Education in North America (1991) put it, “Aslong as supplementary school is something you have to live through ratherthan enjoy, it cannot be valuable. So many Jewish-Americans have had animpoverished supplementary school experience as their only Jewish educa-tion.”54 A field long pervaded by a sense of malaise may not be inclined tolook to the past for solutions to persistent problems. Or, if the past isevoked, it is apt to be for the sake of nostalgia, rather than for interpreta-tion. In light of these considerations, it is questionable whether a criticalstudy of American Jewish educational history would be in the interest of, orof interest to, practitioners or even scholars.

PROSPECTS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH IN JEWISH EDUCATIONAL HISTORY

Not all is lost. In fact, a few prospects for future work in American Jewisheducational history have presented themselves in the past few years.

First, recent conferences of the Network for Research in Jewish Educa-tion (NRJE) and the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) have featured anunusually high number of panels on the history of education. What is more,a revisionist spirit appears to be taking hold, as previously closed areas ofresearch are steadily being brought to new light. One of the panels at the2003 NRJE conference was dedicated to rediscovering, reinterpreting, oruncovering for the first time, the place of Jewish women, Jewish women’sidentity, and Jewish girls, within the traditional historical narrative of Jewisheducation. A session at the 2004 AJS conference discussed so-called “alterna-tive Jewish youth activities”—meaning, educational activities in non-schoolsettings—in the United States. Interestingly enough, while the “Jewishyouth” papers most definitely addressed various venues for “Jewish educa-tion,” such as settlement houses and college campuses, they were nonethe-less identified by their authors, and by the conference organizers, as studies

Amitai Blickstein

Amitai Blickstein

Amitai Blickstein


of American Jewish “youth” rather than “education.” This categorizationcalls into question status issues regarding the study of Jewish educationamong Judaic studies scholars. Is it better, or safer, to study “Jewish youth”than “Jewish education?” Notwithstanding, it must at least be acknowledgedthat the history of Jewish education is now earning a more prominent placeon the Jewish studies and Jewish education research agendas.

Second, American Jewish historians increasingly have been calling forthe study of “ordinary people” and “nonelites” in American Jewish society. Inlight of the fact that teaching in Jewish schools has historically been a lowstatus occupation (at least on the American scene), and the majority of Jew-ish educators come from the rank-and-file of the community, it seemsentirely appropriate for Jewish teachers to be studied as quintessential “ordi-nary people” working in the trenches of American Jewish communal life.55

Third, masters and doctoral programs in Jewish education are begin-ning to proliferate in colleges and universities nationwide. New York Universityand the University of Wisconsin–Madison, among others, have fashionedtheir programs as proving grounds for the creative and fruitful integration ofresearch methodologies in education and Jewish studies. This suggests thatmore support structures might come into place for the training of historiansof Jewish education going forward.

Finally, since 2000, at least a half dozen or more dissertations havebeen written by young scholars in Jewish studies and Jewish education onissues related to the history of Jewish education (see, for example, JonathanKranser’s [2002] look at American Jewish history schoolbooks, MelissaKlapper’s [2001] study of Jewish education for American girls, and StevenRappaport’s [2000] study of Jewish schooling in the Russian Empire).56 Myown interest in the history of Jewish education stems from my long-timeexperience as a student and teacher of Jewish history in Jewish educationalsettings. I surmise that the same might be said of many of my historian col-leagues. Assuming this is the case, then American Jewish education willhave had another valuable impact on the American Jewish community,aside from producing the self-identified, endogamous, committed Jewssocial scientists are often looking for. That is, Jewish schools will have culti-vated a rising generation of scholars interested and willing to do meaningfulresearch on Jewish education. Let us hope this trend continues and evenexpands. Now that would be historic.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. A version of this paper was originally presented at the Conference of TheAssociation for Jewish Studies in Boston, MA, December 2003. I would like toacknowledge with appreciation the 2003–2004 members of the seminar in Edu-cation and Jewish Studies at New York University—Professor Robert Chazan,

Amitai Blickstein

Amitai Blickstein

Amitai Blickstein

Amitai Blickstein


Professor Barry Chazan, Michelle Lynn-Sachs, Tali Hyman, Leah Strigler,Michael Kay, Tali Aldouby-Schuck, and Leslie Ginsparg—for their constructivecomments on earlier drafts.

2. Donato, R., & Lazerson, M. (2001). New directions in American educational his-tory: Problems and prospects. Educational Researcher, 29(8): 1–15.

3. Ibid., pp. 5–7.4. Ball, S., & Goodson, I. (1984). Introduction: Defining the curriculum; histories

and ethnographies. In F. Goodson & J. Ball (Eds.). Defining the curriculum:Histories and ethnographies. London: Falmer Press.

5. Cuban, L. (1992) Curriculum stability and change. In P.W. Jackson (Ed.). Hand-book of research on curriculum: A project of the American Educational ResearchAssociation (pp. 216–247). New York: Macmillan.

6. For a discussion of the limitations of the curriculum framework in Jewisheducational research, see Chazan, B. (2005) Toward a critical study of Jewisheducation. Jewish Education, 71(1): 95–105.

7. See Eisner, E.W. (1994). The educational imagination: On the design and evalu-ation of school programs (3rd ed.). pp.25–27, New York: Macmillan (especiallyChapter 2).

8. For a discussion of these anthropological and ethnographic conceptions ofcurriculum as culture, see Joseph, P.B., Bvaverman, S. L., Windschitl, M.A.,Mikel, E.R. (2000). Cultures of curri-culum. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates.

9. Bullogh, Jr., R.V. (1989). Curriculum history: Flight to the sidelines. In C. Krid(Ed.), Curriculum history: Conference presentations from the Society for the Studyof Curriculum History (pp. 32–39) Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

10. See Kliebard, H.M. (1992). Constructing a history of the American curriculum. InP.W. Jackson (Ed.). Handbook of research on curriculum: A project of the AmericanEducational Research Association (pp. 157–184). New York: Macmillan.

11. Sarna, J. (1998). American Jewish education in historical perspective. Journal ofJewish Education 64 (1–2): 8–21

12. The surveys include Duskin A.M., & Engelman, U.Z. (1959). Jewish educationin the United States. New York: American Association for Jewish Education1959; Schiff, A.I. (1966). The Jewish Day School in America. New York: JewishEducation Committee Press; Dushkin, A.M. (1967). Fifty years of AmericanJewish education—Retrospects and prospects. Jewish Education 37 (1/2) 44–57; Pilch, J. (Ed.). A history of Jewish education in America (New York: AmericanAssociation for Jewish Education, (1969); Ackerman, W.I. (1978). Jewish edu-cation., In B. Martin (Ed.). Movements and issues in American Judaism: An anal-ysis and sourcebook of developments since 1945. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

13. The work of Walter Ackerman and Eduardo Rauch stands out in this regard. See,for example, Ackerman, W.I. (1969). Jewish Education—For What? In AmericanJewish year book 1969, M. Fine & M. Himmelfarb (Eds.), pp. 3–36. New York:American Jewish Committee. See also, Rauch, E. (1984). Some aspects of the edu-cations of Jews in the United States from 1840 to 1920. In Studies in Jewish educa-tion, B. Chazan (Ed.), vol. II, pp. 21–51. Jerusalem: Magnes Press.

14. Wertheimer, J. (1999). Jewish education in the United States: Recent trends andissues. In American Jewish year book 1999, D. Singer (Ed.), pp. 3–114. New York:American Jewish Committee.


15. It should be noted that Werthmeier does not use the terms “hidden” or “null”curriculum; his treatment of these issues can only be inferred by the reader.

16. Tyler, R. (1990). Foreword. In History of the school curriculum, D. Tanner andL. Tanner (Eds.), p. xi. New York: Macmillan.

17. Sarna, American Jewish education, p. 9.18. Chazan, B. (1983). Introduction: Research and Jewish education. In Studies in

Jewish education, B. Chazan (Ed.), vol. I, p. 9–19. Jerusalem: Magnes Press.Rosenak, M. (1984). Introduction: Trends and problems in current Jewish edu-cational scholarship. In Studies in Jewish education, B. Chazan (Ed.), vol. II, pp.9–18. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. Resnick, D. (1988). The current state of researchin Jewish education. In Studies in Jewish education, B. Chazan (Ed.), vol. III,pp. 11–22. Jerusalem: Magnes Press.

19. Kelman, S.L. (Ed.). (1992). What do we know about Jewish education: A hand-book of today’s research for tomorrow’s Jewish education. Los Angeles: TorahAura Publications. Kelman acknowledges this omission in the preface, claimingthat a second volume would address matters such as curriculum and instruc-tion. The second volume has yet to appear.

20. Walter Ackerman’s work is a lone exception. See, most notably. Ackerman, W.I.(1980). Toward a history of the curriculum if the conservative congregationalschool. Jewish Education 48(1): 19–26 and Jewish Education 48(2); 12–12–20,for his two-part essay.

21. Hertzberg, H.W. (1988). Are method and content enemies? In History in theschools: What shall we teach?, B. Gifford (Ed.), pp. 13–40. New York: Macmillan.

22. See, for examples, the A.H.A.’s monthly newsmagazine, Perspectives, whichcontains a regular feature on the teaching of history, and the A.H.A. and O.A.H.websites, which contain abundant resources intended especially for K–12 historyteachers. Neither parallel exists for AJS.

23. It should be noted that Israeli historians have shown more consistent interest ineducational matters than their American counterparts. This is in part becauseIsraeli educational history has been recognized as significant to the Israelinational educational system. For an interesting collection of essays written byIsraeli historians on Jewish education and Israeli education, see Feldhay, R., &Etkes, I. (Eds.). (1999). Education and history: Cultural and political contexts.Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History (in Hebrew).

24. See Ritterband, P., & Wechsler, H.S. (1994). Jewish learning in American uni-versities: The first century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

25. Baylin and Cremin are often credited with revolutionizing the field of Americaneducational history b creating frameworks for understanding broader socialchange in light of education. See Baylin. B. (1960). Education in the forming ofAmerican society: Needs and opportunities for study. New York: W.W. Norton.Cremin, L.A. (1961). The transformation of the school: Progressivism in Ameri-can education, 1876–1957. New York: Vintage Books. For comments on theimpact of Baylin and Cremin, see, Kaestle, C.F. (1997). Recent methodologicaldevelopments in history of American education. In Complementary methods forresearch in education, 2nd ed., R.M. Jaeger (Ed.), pp. 119–138. Washington,DC: American Educational Research Association.

26. Issues regarding Jewish education also have been mostly absent from thegeneral literature on American history. It would be interesting to review such


literature and speculate on its reasons why this is so: however, this is beyondthe scope of the current review. (For an exception, see, Perlmann, J. (1988).Ethnic differences: Schooling and social structure among the Irish, Italians,Jews, and Blacks in an American city, 1880–1935. New York: Cambridge Uni-versity Press,)

27. For essays by Baron on the study of American Jewish history, see, Baron, J.M.(Ed.). (1971). Steeled by adversity: Essays and addresses in American Jewish lifeby Salo Wittamayer Baron. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.

28. For an interesting commentary on these developments in Jewish historiography,see Endelmann, T.M. (2001). In defense of Jewish social history. Jewish SocialStudies 7(3): pp. 52–67.

29. Marcus, J.R. (1989–1993). United States Jewry: 1776–1985, 4 vols. Detroit, MI:Wayne State University Press.

30. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 249.31. Overall, Marcus; work is monumental but flawed. For example, he makes a

number of rather hyperbolic and/or polemic assessments of American Jewisheducation (and society as a whole) without citing evidence from the historicalrecord to support his assertions. He also tends to see the history of AmericanJewry in the nineteenth through the eyes of the Reform movement (for whichhe was a spokesperson), making some of his conclusions about changes inJudaism and Jewish life on the American scene somewhat uneven. Despite this,for the reasons outlined in this paper, Jewish educational historians should notoverlook Marcus’ work.

32. Marcus can also be credited with providing one of a few thorough treatmentswe have of nineteenth century American Jewish educational history, and withgiving full attention to the role of women in initiating Jewish educational activi-ties. As Sarna points out, both of these have been lacking in Jewish educationalhistoriography. See Sarna, American Jewish education, pp. 11–12.

33. Goren, A.A. (1970). New York Jews and the quest for community: The Kehillahexperiment, 1908–1922. New York: Columbia University Press. Moore, D.D.(1981). At Home in America: Second generation New York Jews. New York:Columbia University Press. Gurock, J.S. (1988). The men and women of Yeshiva:Higher education, orthodoxy, and American Judaism. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press. Soyer, D. (2000). Brownstones and Brownsville: Elite philan-thropists and immigrant constituents at Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn,1899–1929. American Jewish History 88(2): 181–207.

34. Sorin, G. (1992). A time for building: The third migration, 1880–1920. Balti-more: Johns Hopkins University Press. The reference to Benderly appears onpage 216. It should be noted that the other volumes in the series place educa-tion in a somewhat greater prominence. See, especially, Diner, H.R. (1992). Atime for gathering: The second migration, 1820–1880. Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press and Feingold, H.L. (1992). A time for searching: Entering themainstream, 1920–1945. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. In addi-tion, Sorin has an established reputation for strong scholarship in AmericanJewish history. Interestingly enough, one of his other works, The NurturingNeighborhood: The Brownsville Boys Club and Jewish Community in UrbanAmerica, 1940–1990 (New York: New York University Press, 1990), concen-trates on the history of the quasi-educational organization. One wonders why


this familiarity with youth activities did not make its way to his general historyof Jewish American life.

35. For a critical review of other deficiencies in the writing of American Jewish his-tory, especially as compared to American historiography, see Shapiro, E.S.(1999). The state of American Jewish historiography. American Jewish CongressMonthly, March/April: 18–20. Shapiro calls for more comparative history, eco-nomic history (especially regarding class), women’s history, and, above all,more analysis of the issue of American Jewish identity. It should be noted thatthe identity project has one of its greatest iterations within the Jewish educa-tional enterprise. Thus, Shapiro’s charge to American Jewish historians includes,at least implicitly, a call for more research on American Jewish education.

36. This limitation regarding academic historians working in the educationaldomain is explained further in McCulloch, G., & Richardson, W. (2000). Histori-cal research in educational settings. Buckingham: Open University Press. (Seepage 123 more specifically.)

37. Only three book-length treatments on the history of American Jewish educationhave been published to date. Pilch, J. (Ed.). (1969). History of Jewish educationin America. New York: National Curriculum Research Institute of the AmericanAssociation for Jewish Education. Gartner, L.P. (Ed.). (1969). Jewish educationin the United States: A documentary history. New York: Teachers College Press.Rauch, E. (2004). The education of Jews and the American community: 1840 tothe new millennium. Tel Aviv: Constantiner School of Education, Tel Aviv Uni-versity. However, all three of these books have been deemed useful but inade-quate. For now, Walter Ackerman’s numerous articles on American Jewisheducational history serve as the best foundation for future scholarship in thefield. See, especially, Ackerman, W.I. (1975) The Americanization of Jewisheducation. Judaism, 24: 416–435. Ackerman, W.I. (1989). Strangers to the tradi-tion: Idea and constraint in American Jewish education. In Jewish educationworldwide: Cross-cultural perspectives, H.S. Himmelfarb & S. DellaPergola (Eds.).Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

38. At the time of this writing, New York University, The Jewish Theological Semi-nary, and Yeshiva University are the only institutions with active doctoral pro-grams in Jewish education. (NYU and JTS established their programs only in2000.) Most seminaries and colleges of Jewish studies, and a few major researchuniversities, offer master’s degrees in Jewish education. See 2004 Guide to Aca-demic Programs in Formal and Informal Jewish Education. (New York: JewishEducation Service of North America, 2003).

39. See Chazan, B. Toward the critical study.40. Barton, S.W. (1947). The Jewish community and Jewish education. Address

delivered to the Board of Governors of the American Association for JewishEducation, October 19, 1947. Reprinted in Baron, Steeled by adversity, p. 529.

41. Ibid., p. 528 (emphasis in the original).42. Fox, S. (1973). Toward a general theory of Jewish education. In The future of

the Jewish community in America, D. Sidorsky (Ed.), p. 268. New York: Basic-Books. Fox is drawing on the work of curriculum theorist Joseph Schwab here.

43. Ackerman, Stranger to the tradition, p. 10844. Shapiro, H., & Zeldin, M. (1998). Paradox and prospect in Jewish educational

research. Journal of Jewish Education, 64(1/2): 4.


45. See Zeldin, M., & Kurshan, A.R. (2002). The landscape of Jewish educationalresearch. Journal of Jewish Education, 68(1): 7–12.

46. Fox, S., Scheffler, I., & Maron, D. (Eds.). (2003). Visions of Jewish education.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

47. Beyer, L.E., & Apple, M.W. (1998). The curriculum: Problems, politics, and pos-sibilities, 2nd ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press). See page 3.

48. See, for example, Woocher, J. (2002/2003). Why not the best thing? Getting seri-ous about Jewish education. @jesna.org, Winter: 3–4. Woocher, the executivedirector of the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA), concen-trates primarily on mobilizing and coordinating human and financial resourcesin the community and in the Jewish education field toward the creation of aJewish educational system characterized by “consistent excellence.” Implied inhis call to action is a research agenda that addresses all of the issues I havelisted here. For a broad survey of the major components of Jewish educationalresearch, see Kelman, What we know about Jewish education.

49. I am indebted to Resnick, Current state of research, for this formulation.50. Cohen, S.M. (1995). The impact if varieties of Jewish education upon Jewish

identity: An intergenerational perspective. Contemporary Jewry, 16: 68–96.51. The answer, by the way, is that the children do become more Jewishly identi-

fied, accordingly to Cohen.52. Breakstone, D. (1987). The dynamics of Israel in American Jewish life: An ana-

lysis of educational means and cultural texts. Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew Uni-versity of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel. See page 14.

53. Kliebard, Constructing a history, p. 161.54. Commission on Jewish Education in North America. (1991). A time to act. Lanham,

MD: University Press of America. See page 34. The quotation is not attributed inthe report.

55. The importance of doing the history of teachers and teaching is discussed inRousmaniere, K. (1997). City teachers: Teaching and school reform in historicalperspective. New York: Teachers College Press.

56. Krasner, J. (2002). Representations of self and other in American Jewish historyand social studies schoolbooks: An exploration of the changing shape of AmericanJewish identity. Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. Klapper,M.R. (2001). A fair portion of the world’s knowledge: Jewish girls coming of agein America, 1860–1920. Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, New Brunswick,NJ. Rappaport, S.G. (2000). Jewish education and Jewish culture in the RussianEmpire, 1880–1914. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA.

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