Journal of Jewish Education, 71:3351, 2005 Copyright Network for Research in Jewish Education ISSN: 0021-6249 DOI: 10.

1080/00216240590924024

American Jewish Education 2 16 2005 10.1080/00216240590924024 52601 Network & FrancisTaylor and Education UTEH 711Taylorfor Research in JewishFrancis 325 Chestnut StreetPhiladelphiaPA191060021-624917440548 Journal of Jewish Educational Historiography

Whats Wrong with the History of American Jewish Education?

BENJAMIN M. JACOBS

The history of education is a worthwhile pursuit within the study of history writ-large, for education is a powerful cultural device that has been manipulated for a variety of social, political, and economic purposes. So, why is it the case that little work has been done to date on the history of American Jewish schooling? This article assesses the state of Jewish educational historiography and suggests that research has been constrained by two major factors: (1) Jewish historians have been reluctant to address educational matters, and (2) Jewish educators have been concerned foremost with the present and future, and not the past.

The history of education occupies a peculiar if not precarious place within the broader fields of educational research and historical scholarship from which it derives.1 It might be said that educational history is neither educational nor history, strictly speaking. On one hand, historians of education deal with compelling historical questions and draw on the methodological and epistemological conventions of the history discipline in order to make rigorous, well-founded, critical contributions to a larger body of historical knowledge. On the other hand, they are often called upon to address the needs 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 status of educational historians is summed up by two American educational historians, Ruben Donato and Marvin Lazerson (2001), as follows: In choosing one end of the spectrum, we risk neglect and rejection by the other, and are often seen either as antiquarians irrelevant to the burning
Benjamin M. Jacobs is a doctoral candidate and instructor in Social Studies Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and coordinator of the Program in Education and Jewish Studies at New York University. 33

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educational issues of our times or as presentists with little appreciation of the 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 historical problems in education and the significance of educational problems in history. Historians of education have achieved important gains (as well as setbacks, of course) in both realms, and a few have even managed to capture the attention of the broader public through best-selling books and op-ed pieces. Nonetheless, in the main, the field of educational history is in a marginal statenot quite valued among educationists who deal with pressing issues regarding teacher education, educational equity, and educational bureaucracy (among other matters), and not quite reputable among historians 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 in various facets of the history of education. Addressing new directions in American educational history, Donato and Lazerson claim that a number of lines of inquiry have yet to be pursued adequatelyincluding the educational history of women, peoples of color, immigrant and ethnic groups, and religious minoritiesand they call for women historians and historians of color, among others, to take up the mantle and expand the scope of educational history to include fresh insiders lines of interpretation.3 In this way, they argue, crosscultural comparisons can emerge, a diversity of audiences can be addressed, and educational history can be brought into conversation with some of the most innovative work being done in American social history, as well as some of the most urgent problems facing American schooling today. With the problems and prospects in educational historiography outlined above in mind, this article will assess how one immigrant, ethnic, religious minority groupAmerican Jewryhas previously dealt with its own educational history in the United States. Specifically, I will offer in this article a critical review of the current state of the field of American Jewish educational historiography, focusing on some of the constraints that I feel have prevented the discipline from flourishing to date. A few prospects for future developments will also be suggested.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CURRICULUM STUDIES TO EDUCATIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

It must be acknowledged from the outset that a major assumption about what educational research should look like underlies this analysis: In my view, attention to educational matters means, in large part, attention to curriculum matters, and attention to curriculum matters means, in large part,

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attention to issues of what should be taught, how it should be taught, and why it should be taught in schools. I look at educational history through the lens of curriculum, then, and my interest centers on how curriculum relates to historical circumstances in schools and society. As a curriculum historian, I focus on the ways in which the knowledge embedded in the school curriculum reflects social values, political arrangements, economic conditions, intellectual traditions, and cultural norms among particular groups in a given time and place. In short, I am interested in curriculum as a historical agent.4 Educational historiography is not limited to studies of curriculum, of course. The history of education encompasses a broad range of research areas, including the history of the teaching profession, the history of higher education, the history of women and education, the history of educational ideas, and so on. Broadly speaking, curriculum history explains the integral relationship 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, house of worship, and community, and educational activities for children occur in multiple venues outside of schools, such as camps and youth groups. Even within schools, the notion that sports, clubs, and other activities, are extracurricular implies that, strictly speaking, curriculum only encompasses the teaching and learning of subject matter in the classroom. In light of these considerations, the argument might be made that the study of curriculum history is a rather limited pursuit within the scheme of educational history and, most certainly, within the study of history writ-large.6 But curriculum is much more than a lesson plan, a textbook, a bundle of photocopied worksheets, a course to be run, the subjects offered for study, or the planned activities and experiences in the school.7 Rather, curriculum is a form of culture. It is an artifact that represents, in tangible form, a set of ideas, norms, worldviews, longings, customs, and/or beliefs about the roles schools play in the maintenance and perpetuation of civilization.8 Further, curriculum is a powerful cultural device that can be wielded, manipulated, and exploited for a variety of social, political, and economic purposes, such as the perpetuation (or negation) of certain forms of hegemony. Over the course of time, as the circumstances under which schools operate fluctuate (e.g., regime change), so too does the curriculum. Curriculum change is not merely the byproduct of sociopolitical shifts, intellectual forces, and momentous events, however. It is, fundamentally, the result of impassioned conflicts over how the culture of schoolingand, by extension, societyis defined by its stakeholders. Questions historians of curriculum commonly ask include the following: What sorts of ideologies does this curriculum represent? Whose interests does this curriculum serve? Who is being included and who is being excluded from participation in this curriculum scheme? and Toward what

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ends is this curriculum intended?9 Curriculum documents are especially rich sources for historians, insofar as they help us understand what values a society held (or holds) dear, why society held (or holds) these values dear, how these values made (or make) their way into the school curriculum, for what purposes, and to what effect.10 It follows that the study of curriculum is not only a vital enterprise in the study of education, but also an eminently worthwhile 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 curriculum, as well as how Jewish school curricula have evolved over time in various contexts (i.e., the history of the curriculum), have by and large been neglected in research on American Jewish education. In the one and only scholarly survey of research on the history of American Jewish education published 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 been attempted, Sarna argues, and what has been written tends to focus on questions regarding the return on investment in educational activities, rather than the structure, content, and meaning of the educational activities themselves. In my own reading of some of the broad surveys of American Jewish educational history written in the last half century, I have noticed a marked emphasis on (1) the proliferation of Jewish educational settings, including schools, synagogues, camps, and community centers, as well as early child, adult, family, and informal education programs; (2) the steady (or at some points substantial) increase of financial support for Jewish educational programs from community organizations, major philanthropists, patrons, and consumers; (3) the continuous expansion (or at some points decline) of enrollment in a variety of Jewish educational activities, in all segments of American Jewish society; (4) improvements or shortcomings regarding the quantity, quality, and status (preparation, compensation, and promotion, etc.) of leadership and personnel in the field; and (5) technical evaluations of the short-term or long-term efficacy of various Jewish educational initiatives.12 In most cases, some mention also is made of the purposes and practices of Jewish schooling, as well as the place of Jewish education in the American Jewish community and in the surrounding society.13 Jack Wertheimers (1999) lengthy treatment of historical and contemporary trends and issues in American Jewish education is representative of this survey literature.14 Wertheimer devotes the majority of his study to three major themes: (1) the institutions, programs, students, and professionals in the world of formal Jewish education (i.e., schools); (2) the extensive array

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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 abundance of names (particularly educational institutions and community organizations), dates (focusing especially on the last 25 years), and above all, numbers (dollars spent, schools established, programs created, students enrolled, personnel employed, tuitions and salaries paid, etc.). He also offers some key insights regarding the steady shift of power in American Jewish education from the hands of educational professionals to the hands of community leaders working in conjunction with major philanthropists. What is most significant about Wertheimers study is his expansive view of what American Jewish education encompasses. For Wertheimer, Jewish education is not merely about what goes on in classrooms, it also is about the abundant variety of educational activities that occur outside of school walls. Moreover, Wertheimer sees American Jewish education at once as a self-contained enterprise, with its own goals, institutions, stakeholders, and culture, and, concomitantly, as only one component of the larger American Jewish communal apparatus, which has its own set of priorities, organizations, trustees, and mores. In pointing out the complex ways in which these powerful systems interact, especially regarding policymaking, 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 Wertheimers studyhis broad view of American Jewish educationalso is one of its great weaknesses, at least from the perspective of those of us interested in the processes of education and schooling. Of the more than 100 pages of text dedicated to an assessment of major issues in the Jewish education field, only approximately ten pages are devoted to an explicit discussion of curriculum and instruction. Furthermore, when Wertheimer delves into school programs, he generally seems more concerned with the amount of instructional time allotted to particular subject areas and the amount of curriculum materials (textbooks, guides) available to teachers, than with the actual substance (purposes, content, methods) of the curriculum itself. To Wertheimers credit, there are some curriculum-related issuesincluding tacit references to the hidden and null curriculumembedded within his appraisal of Jewish educational programs, especially schools and summer camps.15 For example, he makes repeated mention of the formal and informal ways that problems such as Jewish cultural literacy, Jewish identification, intermarriage, and continuity, affect the planning and implementation of Jewish educational activities. Nonetheless, in the end, Wertheimer provides us very little data on what actually is going on in schools and why. If, as the curriculum theorist Ralph Tyler (1990) once put it, curriculum is the heart of schooling, then Wertheimers discussion of Jewish schooling has to a great extent missed its mark.16

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Wertheimers oversight regarding curriculum is not unique to American Jewish educational historiography. As Sarna (1998) has argued, the pervading concern among American Jewish educational historians with issues regarding the return on educational investment creates something of an interpretive straightjacket that constrains scholars from asking what may be far more productive questions concerning the content of American Jewish education, the relationship of American Jewish education to American Jewish life, and how both have changed over time.17 Barry Chazan (1983), Michael Rosenak (1984), and David Resnick (1988) likewise have found a lack of attention in American Jewish educational research to the state of affairs in the classroomregarding teachers, instructional methods, curriculum, students, and learning activities.18 Stuart L. Kelmans (1992) compilation, What We Know About Jewish Education: A Handbook of Todays Research for Tomorrows Jewish Education, has numerous chapters about school-related issues, but not one about the substance of the curriculum, let alone its history.19 In short, little work has been done in the history of American Jewish education on the purposes, processes, and practices of Jewish schooling.20 Sweeping historical surveys tend to provide only a perfunctory consideration of curriculum. What accounts for this problem? I will elaborate on two major constraints. First, there is no established tradition among Jewish historians or Jewish education scholars for doing research on Jewish educational history. Second, much of the research being conducted in the Jewish education field is empirical, technical, and/or presentist in orientation. In other words, the history 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 longstanding involvement of American historians in public school matters. In the mid-nineteenth century, as the field of history was emerging as a scientific discipline, American historians made a concerted effort to establish a place of prominence for themselves within modern studies in American universities. Recognizing early on that the expanding public high school system would serve as both a training ground for future American citizens and a feeder for university history classes, American historians distinguished themselves by becoming major actors in the development of curricula, methods of instruction, and standards of assessment for school history and civics courses. Their activities in the schools would be advantageous for two reasons. First, by introducing young students to some of the most current historical scholarship and methods being advanced in the universities, they would potentially have a cadre of disciples ready for the next level of research. Second, and more important, by directly involving themselves in

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public educationand citizenship education in particularthey would give themselves and their trade a highly visible and influential public face.21 For more than a century, some of the most prominent scholars of American historyfrom Charles A. Beard in the 1930s, to Allan Nevins in the 1950s, to Kenneth T. Jackson in the 1980s, and many others then and nowhave been outspoken advocates (or critics) of the way American history has been taught in American schools. Likewise, the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians have sometimes played pivotal roles in the formulation of educational policy, and have encouraged scholars to dedicate their efforts to the study of educational issues.22 For American historians, in the main, the connection between scholars history and schools history cannot be ignored. By contrast, Jewish historians have been conspicuously absent from direct 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-twentieth century.24 In the early part of the century, academic Judaic studies largely were confined to rabbinic seminaries and colleges of Jewish studies (also known as Hebrew teachers colleges). Only a handful of Jewish historians held academic chairs in major research universities. Moreover, a significant number of American colleges and universities had Jewish admissions quotas in place. Slowly, as universities began to open up to academic Judaic studies and to Jewish students, Jewish historians concentrated on normalizing Jewish studies as well as bolstering their own reputations in the universalistic, humanistic world of the academy. For many of these Jewish studies academics, this meant highlighting scholarly rigor, professionalism, and dispassion, rather than serving as public advocates for Jewish communal causes such as the Jewish education enterprise. For this reason, in contrast to American historians, Jewish historians have tended to shy away from matters regarding the teaching of Jewish history in Jewish schools, among other school issues. Other contributing factors, such as the lack of a major market for Jewish history schoolbooks and thorny town-and-gown politics, also explain the reticence of historians to be involved in Jewish school affairs. In fact, given the circumstances, it might be unreasonable to expect Jewish historians to speak directly to Jewish educational policy. What is more enigmaticand more problematicfrom the perspective of American Jewish educational historiography, though, is that Jewish historians also have tended in the past to disregard in their scholarship the intrinsic correlation of educational history and social and cultural history. In the field of American studies, an interest in the complex and often contradictory relationships between education, culture, and society was established long ago by scholars such as Bernard Bailyn (1960) and Lawrence Cremin (1961).25 Not so in Jewish studies. Few histories of Jewish education have been written by Jewish historians, and few educational issues have been

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addressed in their general histories of the Jews.26 Simply put, the history of Jewish education has not yet become an identifiable subspecialty within the broader agenda of Jewish historical research. Certainly, there are some notable exceptions, particularly within the field of American Jewish history. Two factors may explain the uniqueness of American Jewish historiography in its treatment of educational issues. First, unlike their counterparts who study ancient Israelite history, medieval Jewish life, modern European Jewry, and the like, American Jewish historians tend to be more conscious of the immediate implications of their work for contemporary American Jewish life. Salo Baron, long regarded as the dean of Jewish historians on the American scene, originally encouraged the connection between historians and the public and helped to legitimize the study of American Jewish history as both a scholarly endeavor and a service to community interestswhich, to some extent, it remains to this day.27 Second, American Jewish historiography, which came of age in the academy alongside American studies, ethnic studies, and womens 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 fact concentrated their attention on the issue of how American Jews have been educated. Jacob Rader Marcus (19891993) monumental series, United States Jewry, 1776 1985, stands out in this regard.29 In each of the four volumes, Marcus dedicates two or more extensive and thoughtful chapters to issues regarding Jewish educational activities on the American scene. In Marcus view, the growth of Jewish schooling was inextricably linked to the development and expansion of American Jewish culture and society. His primary interest throughout the work is in (1) the ways in which Jewish religious schools served as transitional institutions in American Jewish life, bridging the gap between Old and New Worlds and helping to usher in new forms of American Judaism; (2) efforts among community leaders and organizations to establish Jewish communal schools for all Jewish children, though with greater and lesser success in different times and places; and, (3) the continuity or discontinuity of Jewish socialization between school, synagogue, and home. To Marcus credit, his focus is not limited to the major population centers of the East; educational activities in smaller communities of the Midwest, South, and West, also get their due. In addition, Marcus pays considerable attention to the flowering of Jewish literature, the rise of Jewish publishing and the Jewish press, the burgeoning of academic Jewish studies, 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 intrinsic connection between patterns of Jewish schooling and patterns of Jewish culture and identification among Americas Jews, Marcus demonstrates the ways in which the communitys stance on Jewish education has historically

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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 States Jewry might in fact be one of the most important pieces of Jewish educational history written to date, if only because it is one of the few comprehensive histories of the Jews to provide an extensive, deliberate, and detailed consideration of educational issues and activities in the community.32 Notwithstanding the work of Marcus and a few other like-minded historiansand, here, I will make particular mention of the concise, albeit rich, work of Arthur A. Goren (1970) on the New York Bureau of Jewish Education, Deborah Dash Moore (1981) on immigrant Jews in New York public schools, Jeffrey Gurock (1988) on Orthodox schooling, and Daniel Soyer (2000) on the Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyndiscussions of the Jewish education enterprise have been by and large absent from American Jewish historical literature as well.33 Gerald Sorins (1992) survey history of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century American Jewry (the same period covered by the historians just mentioned) is evidence of this problem. Outside of a few rather perfunctory paragraphs on the Educational Alliance, heders, and Talmud Torahs in New York City, Sorins narrative is for the most part devoid of a consideration of Jewish schoolingor public schooling, for that matteramong eastern European Jewish immigrants to the United States. In fact, his lone reference to the person universally recognized as the father of modern American Jewish education, Samson Benderly, identifies him as Samuel Benderly.34 Were Sorins work obscure, it could easily be dismissed. But, it is part of a much heralded multivolume series, The Jewish People in America (1992), edited by one of the prominent scholars in the field, sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society, and published by a respected university press. This makes the oversight emblematic of how lacking mainstream Jewish historical literature can be 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 of theoretical and methodological challenges. For example, studying the ways any subgroup has educated its children entails understanding the ways that subgroup has related to the broader society, including, among other factors, the extent to which the subgroup has engaged or disengaged from the educational activities offered in the broader society. Thus, historians of American Jewish education must have a solid knowledge base in American Jewish history and American history, as well as in Jewish educational history and American educational history, to properly situate the American Jewish educational enterprise within the multiple historical contexts in which it operates.

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It may be that case the Jewish historians are simply uncomfortable or they feel incapable of commenting with sophistication on matters regarding education in general, or curriculum, pedagogy, and schooling in particular. A researcher who is not skilled at interpreting history through an educational lens may not be equipped to draw educational implications from historical circumstances in the same way that an education scholar might.36 Therefore, it might be argued, the task of writing Jewish educational history should be the purview of Jewish education scholars. By the some token, though, educational researchers who are more equipped to comment on educational matters than to do disciplinary history might be perceived by historians as being dilettantish. These status problems could potentially be resolved if Jewish educational historians were rigorously trained in both education and history. However, there is no established tradition within the Jewish education field for doing historical research.37 Few avenues exist for the formal training of professional historians of Jewish education. Seminaries and Hebrew teachers colleges in the United States dedicate the majority of their efforts and resources to training educational personnel, rather than researchers, so that few educational theorists or analysts emerge from their ranks.38 Perhaps the most reputable historian of American Jewish education to date, the late Walter Ackerman, earned his doctorate at Harvard and had a stint at the University of Judaism, but he spent much of his career at Ben Gurion University; although his influence on Jewish education scholars worldwide was significant, the fact remains that, from his base in Israel, he was ill-suited to train a cadre of American Jewish educational historians who could continue his work. Indeed, most of the work that has been done in Jewish educational history has been an extension of doctoral dissertations completed at university-based schools of education, where disciplinary, humanistic research in areas like history and philosophy of education is de rigueur, or under the auspices of Jewish studies programs, which have been seeing more work on educational history of late. This work tends to be isolated, though. Because major research universities historically have lacked their own agendas for Jewish educational research, their capacity for providing support to budding scholars in the field is limited. Even if the infrastructure was in place for the training of Jewish educational historians, it is not altogether clear that there is an interest in, or a demand for, historical research within the Jewish education field to begin with. As noted earlier, history is not normally viewed as part and parcel of educational practice. In fact, the field of Jewish education is essentially ahistorical. For example, the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic texts, the Hebrew language, Jewish history, and Israel have been entrenched subjects in most American Jewish schools for generations now without much regard for how and why these particular subjects came to dominate the curriculum or why they continue to hold sway. They are just there, presumably because thats

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the way its always been. Rarely are questions asked about what approaches to teaching these subjects have worked in the past and how these approaches might be adapted for contemporary classrooms. Rather, curriculum innovations in Jewish education draw from innovations in the general education field (sometimes a decade or so behind), without regard to innovations that may have been attempted in Jewish education circles before.39 Contemporary teachers have little or no sense of the historical tradition of American Jewish schooling that they themselves are a part of. Jewish educational practitioners, policymakers, and curriculum makers are not the only ones who tend to be lacking in historical perspective. The entire field of Jewish educational research is, for the most part, empirical, technical, and presentist in orientation. Concern with logistical and practical matters in Jewish education has come at the expense of purely academic or intellectual pursuits. Commenting on the state of the field more than 50 years ago, Salo Baron (1947) claimed that too frequently, we find a board of Jewish education judging educational success by statistical figures. This is even truer in the case of the general communal leadership which has to balance educational needs against other communal requirements.40 For Baron, concerns such as the number of children attending school, the number of teachers and their respective salaries, the number of hours of instruction per child, and so forth should be decidedly secondary to matters such as the quality and content of Jewish education.41 After all, he concluded, the point of the Jewish educational enterprise is not to produce more Jewish education but to produce more educated Jews. Barons call for a qualitative turn in Jewish educational research has been echoed in various ways through the past half century. In the 1960s1970s, Seymour Fox led the way in calling for serious deliberation about the purposes, aims, and practices of Jewish education, and the development of substantive curricula.42 Walter Ackerman (1989), citing a laundry list of deficiencies in Jewish educational research, claimed that, with only statistical data at hand, proposals for improving the quality of Jewish education fall somewhere between educated guessing and an inexcusable waste of time, effort and money.43 Harvey Shaprio and Michael Zeldin (1998) called for the development of narrative research in Jewish education that examines specific phenomena closely as they have been manifest over time.44 Some headway has been made in these directions over the last decade or so, as scholars have been dedicating themselves to developing research in moral education, teacher preparation, curriculum and instruction, and classroom culture, using methodologies like ethnography, action research, and portraiture.45 A recent volume on Visions of Jewish Education (2003) likewise makes some inroads toward the development of Jewish educational philosophy.46 Nonetheless, the central paradigm of Jewish educational research is still grounded in quantifiable measurements of success, with an emphasis on assessments and outcomes rather than form and substance. This situation is

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not unique to the Jewish education field. Landon Beyer and Michael Apple (1998) similarly claim that, among educators in general, difficult ethical and political questions of content, of what knowledge is most worth, have been pushed to the background in our attempts to define technically-oriented methods that will solve our problems once and for all.47 In large part, they argue, this situation results from the ongoing intensification of a culture of accountability in education. Accountability also pervades the Jewish education enterprise, where much of the research agenda is set (and subsidized) by community agencies, philanthropic foundations, and program administrators. Not surprisingly, these policymaking groups are most interested in (1) qualitative/quantitative evaluations of institutions and programs; (2) survey studies regarding attitudes and commitments towards Jewish education among parents, students, teachers, and community members; (3) data on the human, financial, and instrumental resources available for Jewish education; and (4) the long-term effects of participating in Jewish education activities on the development of adult Jewish identity.48 The resulting body of research consists mainly of descriptive summaries of statistics and trends regarding Jewish educational outcomesalso known as impact studiesrather than interpretive analyses of the Jewish education process. A review of the research leaves one with the impression that the community is more concerned with providing and receiving a Jewish education than it is with determining what successful schooling looks like. In other words, attending school, rather than achieving in school, appears to be the primary (if implicit) goal of the Jewish educational enterprise.49 Typical of the social scientific research on Jewish educational outcomes is Steven M. Cohens (1995) article-length study of The Impact of Varieties of Jewish Education upon Jewish Identity.50 Cohen sets out to provide a quantitative, empirical evaluation of whether or not participants in Jewish education programs become more Jewishly identifiedmeasured in terms of patterns of religious behavior and rates of intermarriageas a result of their experience in Jewish schools or informal Jewish education activities like summer camps and Israel trips. For community leaders and donors who are interested in whether or not the Jewish education enterprise effectively is working, this type of impact study can certainly be useful.51 But what is entirely missing from Cohens study, and others like it, is a consideration of what is actually going on in any of the Jewish educational programs being investigated. Thus, Jewish educators who are interested in precisely what kinds of curriculum, instruction, and learning activities can have an impact on Jewish youth will likely find studies such as Cohens to be of limited applicability. In the end, as David Breakstone (1987) has observed, the pervasive technical/administrative approach to Jewish education research has left us with a body of literature that is little more than a piecemeal series of inconsistent and unsatisfying decisions [i.e., findings] which leave unanswered the question: Jewish educationfor what?52

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Not only have important questions regarding what is going on and what should be going on in Jewish schools been left unanswered, there also has been little incentive to pursue research on what happened in the past and what implications the past might have for todays practice. Herbert Kliebard (1992), an eminent historian of the American school curriculum, has noted that educationists and curriculum-makers hoping to reform or improve public school conditions and programs tend to view the past as something to be gotten away from.53 This observation applies equally in the world of American Jewish education, where the operating assumption seems to be that the past mainly instructs about what it is that needs to be surpassed. There is a widespread feeling in the Jewish education world, shared by community members, parents, and even educators alike, that teaching and learning in Jewish schools has always been rather paltry. As one member of the Commission on Jewish Education in North America (1991) put it, As long as supplementary school is something you have to live through rather than enjoy, it cannot be valuable. So many Jewish-Americans have had an impoverished supplementary school experience as their only Jewish education.54 A field long pervaded by a sense of malaise may not be inclined to look to the past for solutions to persistent problems. Or, if the past is evoked, it is apt to be for the sake of nostalgia, rather than for interpretation. In light of these considerations, it is questionable whether a critical study of American Jewish educational history would be in the interest of, or of 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 Jewish educational history have presented themselves in the past few years. First, recent conferences of the Network for Research in Jewish Education (NRJE) and the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) have featured an unusually high number of panels on the history of education. What is more, a revisionist spirit appears to be taking hold, as previously closed areas of research are steadily being brought to new light. One of the panels at the 2003 NRJE conference was dedicated to rediscovering, reinterpreting, or uncovering for the first time, the place of Jewish women, Jewish womens identity, and Jewish girls, within the traditional historical narrative of Jewish education. A session at the 2004 AJS conference discussed so-called alternative Jewish youth activitiesmeaning, educational activities in non-school settingsin the United States. Interestingly enough, while the Jewish youth papers most definitely addressed various venues for Jewish education, such as settlement houses and college campuses, they were nonetheless identified by their authors, and by the conference organizers, as studies

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of American Jewish youth rather than education. This categorization calls into question status issues regarding the study of Jewish education among Judaic studies scholars. Is it better, or safer, to study Jewish youth than Jewish education? Notwithstanding, it must at least be acknowledged that the history of Jewish education is now earning a more prominent place on the Jewish studies and Jewish education research agendas. Second, American Jewish historians increasingly have been calling for the study of ordinary people and nonelites in American Jewish society. In light of the fact that teaching in Jewish schools has historically been a low status occupation (at least on the American scene), and the majority of Jewish educators come from the rank-and-file of the community, it seems entirely appropriate for Jewish teachers to be studied as quintessential ordinary people working in the trenches of American Jewish communal life.55 Third, masters and doctoral programs in Jewish education are beginning to proliferate in colleges and universities nationwide. New York University and the University of WisconsinMadison, among others, have fashioned their programs as proving grounds for the creative and fruitful integration of research methodologies in education and Jewish studies. This suggests that more support structures might come into place for the training of historians of Jewish education going forward. Finally, since 2000, at least a half dozen or more dissertations have been written by young scholars in Jewish studies and Jewish education on issues related to the history of Jewish education (see, for example, Jonathan Kransers [2002] look at American Jewish history schoolbooks, Melissa Klappers [2001] study of Jewish education for American girls, and Steven Rappaports [2000] study of Jewish schooling in the Russian Empire).56 My own interest in the history of Jewish education stems from my long-time experience as a student and teacher of Jewish history in Jewish educational settings. I surmise that the same might be said of many of my historian colleagues. Assuming this is the case, then American Jewish education will have had another valuable impact on the American Jewish community, aside from producing the self-identified, endogamous, committed Jews social scientists are often looking for. That is, Jewish schools will have cultivated a rising generation of scholars interested and willing to do meaningful research on Jewish education. Let us hope this trend continues and even expands. Now that would be historic.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. A version of this paper was originally presented at the Conference of The Association for Jewish Studies in Boston, MA, December 2003. I would like to acknowledge with appreciation the 20032004 members of the seminar in Education and Jewish Studies at New York UniversityProfessor Robert Chazan,

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2. 3. 4.

5.

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11. 12.

13.

14.

Professor Barry Chazan, Michelle Lynn-Sachs, Tali Hyman, Leah Strigler, Michael Kay, Tali Aldouby-Schuck, and Leslie Ginspargfor their constructive comments on earlier drafts. Donato, R., & Lazerson, M. (2001). New directions in American educational history: Problems and prospects. Educational Researcher, 29(8): 115. Ibid., pp. 57. 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. Cuban, L. (1992) Curriculum stability and change. In P.W. Jackson (Ed.). Handbook of research on curriculum: A project of the American Educational Research Association (pp. 216247). New York: Macmillan. For a discussion of the limitations of the curriculum framework in Jewish educational research, see Chazan, B. (2005) Toward a critical study of Jewish education. Jewish Education, 71(1): 95105. See Eisner, E.W. (1994). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs (3rd ed.). pp.2527, New York: Macmillan (especially Chapter 2). For a discussion of these anthropological and ethnographic conceptions of curriculum as culture, see Joseph, P.B., Bvaverman, S. L., Windschitl, M.A., Mikel, E.R. (2000). Cultures of curri-culum. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bullogh, Jr., R.V. (1989). Curriculum history: Flight to the sidelines. In C. Krid (Ed.), Curriculum history: Conference presentations from the Society for the Study of Curriculum History (pp. 3239) Lanham, MD: University Press of America. See Kliebard, H.M. (1992). Constructing a history of the American curriculum. In P.W. Jackson (Ed.). Handbook of research on curriculum: A project of the American Educational Research Association (pp. 157184). New York: Macmillan. Sarna, J. (1998). American Jewish education in historical perspective. Journal of Jewish Education 64 (12): 821 The surveys include Duskin A.M., & Engelman, U.Z. (1959). Jewish education in the United States. New York: American Association for Jewish Education 1959; Schiff, A.I. (1966). The Jewish Day School in America. New York: Jewish Education Committee Press; Dushkin, A.M. (1967). Fifty years of American Jewish educationRetrospects and prospects. Jewish Education 37 (1/2) 44 57; Pilch, J. (Ed.). A history of Jewish education in America (New York: American Association for Jewish Education, (1969); Ackerman, W.I. (1978). Jewish education., In B. Martin (Ed.). Movements and issues in American Judaism: An analysis and sourcebook of developments since 1945. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. The work of Walter Ackerman and Eduardo Rauch stands out in this regard. See, for example, Ackerman, W.I. (1969). Jewish EducationFor What? In American Jewish year book 1969, M. Fine & M. Himmelfarb (Eds.), pp. 336. New York: American Jewish Committee. See also, Rauch, E. (1984). Some aspects of the educations of Jews in the United States from 1840 to 1920. In Studies in Jewish education, B. Chazan (Ed.), vol. II, pp. 2151. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. Wertheimer, J. (1999). Jewish education in the United States: Recent trends and issues. In American Jewish year book 1999, D. Singer (Ed.), pp. 3114. New York: American Jewish Committee.

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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 and L. 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. 919. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. Rosenak, M. (1984). Introduction: Trends and problems in current Jewish educational scholarship. In Studies in Jewish education, B. Chazan (Ed.), vol. II, pp. 918. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. Resnick, D. (1988). The current state of research in Jewish education. In Studies in Jewish education, B. Chazan (Ed.), vol. III, pp. 1122. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. 19. Kelman, S.L. (Ed.). (1992). What do we know about Jewish education: A handbook of todays research for tomorrows Jewish education. Los Angeles: Torah Aura Publications. Kelman acknowledges this omission in the preface, claiming that a second volume would address matters such as curriculum and instruction. The second volume has yet to appear. 20. Walter Ackermans work is a lone exception. See, most notably. Ackerman, W.I. (1980). Toward a history of the curriculum if the conservative congregational school. Jewish Education 48(1): 1926 and Jewish Education 48(2); 121220, for his two-part essay. 21. Hertzberg, H.W. (1988). Are method and content enemies? In History in the schools: What shall we teach?, B. Gifford (Ed.), pp. 1340. New York: Macmillan. 22. See, for examples, the A.H.A.s monthly newsmagazine, Perspectives, which contains 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 K12 history teachers. Neither parallel exists for AJS. 23. It should be noted that Israeli historians have shown more consistent interest in educational matters than their American counterparts. This is in part because Israeli educational history has been recognized as significant to the Israeli national educational system. For an interesting collection of essays written by Israeli 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 universities: The first century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 25. Baylin and Cremin are often credited with revolutionizing the field of American educational history b creating frameworks for understanding broader social change in light of education. See Baylin. B. (1960). Education in the forming of American society: Needs and opportunities for study. New York: W.W. Norton. Cremin, L.A. (1961). The transformation of the school: Progressivism in American education, 18761957. New York: Vintage Books. For comments on the impact of Baylin and Cremin, see, Kaestle, C.F. (1997). Recent methodological developments in history of American education. In Complementary methods for research in education, 2nd ed., R.M. Jaeger (Ed.), pp. 119138. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. 26. Issues regarding Jewish education also have been mostly absent from the general literature on American history. It would be interesting to review such

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27.

28.

29. 30. 31.

32.

33.

34.

literature and speculate on its reasons why this is so: however, this is beyond the 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, 18801935. New York: Cambridge University Press,) 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 life by Salo Wittamayer Baron. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. For an interesting commentary on these developments in Jewish historiography, see Endelmann, T.M. (2001). In defense of Jewish social history. Jewish Social Studies 7(3): pp. 5267. Marcus, J.R. (19891993). United States Jewry: 17761985, 4 vols. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 249. Overall, Marcus; work is monumental but flawed. For example, he makes a number of rather hyperbolic and/or polemic assessments of American Jewish education (and society as a whole) without citing evidence from the historical record to support his assertions. He also tends to see the history of American Jewry in the nineteenth through the eyes of the Reform movement (for which he was a spokesperson), making some of his conclusions about changes in Judaism and Jewish life on the American scene somewhat uneven. Despite this, for the reasons outlined in this paper, Jewish educational historians should not overlook Marcus work. Marcus can also be credited with providing one of a few thorough treatments we have of nineteenth century American Jewish educational history, and with giving full attention to the role of women in initiating Jewish educational activities. As Sarna points out, both of these have been lacking in Jewish educational historiography. See Sarna, American Jewish education, pp. 1112. Goren, A.A. (1970). New York Jews and the quest for community: The Kehillah experiment, 19081922. 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: Columbia University Press. Soyer, D. (2000). Brownstones and Brownsville: Elite philanthropists and immigrant constituents at Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn, 18991929. American Jewish History 88(2): 181207. Sorin, G. (1992). A time for building: The third migration, 18801920. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. The reference to Benderly appears on page 216. It should be noted that the other volumes in the series place education in a somewhat greater prominence. See, especially, Diner, H.R. (1992). A time for gathering: The second migration, 18201880. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press and Feingold, H.L. (1992). A time for searching: Entering the mainstream, 19201945. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. In addition, Sorin has an established reputation for strong scholarship in American Jewish history. Interestingly enough, one of his other works, The Nurturing Neighborhood: The Brownsville Boys Club and Jewish Community in Urban America, 19401990 (New York: New York University Press, 1990), concentrates on the history of the quasi-educational organization. One wonders why

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35.

36.

37.

38.

39. 40.

41. 42.

43. 44.

this familiarity with youth activities did not make its way to his general history of Jewish American life. For a critical review of other deficiencies in the writing of American Jewish history, especially as compared to American historiography, see Shapiro, E.S. (1999). The state of American Jewish historiography. American Jewish Congress Monthly, March/April: 1820. Shapiro calls for more comparative history, economic history (especially regarding class), womens history, and, above all, more analysis of the issue of American Jewish identity. It should be noted that the identity project has one of its greatest iterations within the Jewish educational enterprise. Thus, Shapiros charge to American Jewish historians includes, at least implicitly, a call for more research on American Jewish education. This limitation regarding academic historians working in the educational domain is explained further in McCulloch, G., & Richardson, W. (2000). Historical research in educational settings. Buckingham: Open University Press. (See page 123 more specifically.) Only three book-length treatments on the history of American Jewish education have been published to date. Pilch, J. (Ed.). (1969). History of Jewish education in America. New York: National Curriculum Research Institute of the American Association for Jewish Education. Gartner, L.P. (Ed.). (1969). Jewish education in the United States: A documentary history. New York: Teachers College Press. Rauch, E. (2004). The education of Jews and the American community: 1840 to the new millennium. Tel Aviv: Constantiner School of Education, Tel Aviv University. However, all three of these books have been deemed useful but inadequate. For now, Walter Ackermans numerous articles on American Jewish educational history serve as the best foundation for future scholarship in the field. See, especially, Ackerman, W.I. (1975) The Americanization of Jewish education. Judaism, 24: 416435. Ackerman, W.I. (1989). Strangers to the tradition: Idea and constraint in American Jewish education. In Jewish education worldwide: Cross-cultural perspectives, H.S. Himmelfarb & S. DellaPergola (Eds.). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. At the time of this writing, New York University, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yeshiva University are the only institutions with active doctoral programs in Jewish education. (NYU and JTS established their programs only in 2000.) Most seminaries and colleges of Jewish studies, and a few major research universities, offer masters degrees in Jewish education. See 2004 Guide to Academic Programs in Formal and Informal Jewish Education. (New York: Jewish Education Service of North America, 2003). See Chazan, B. Toward the critical study. Barton, S.W. (1947). The Jewish community and Jewish education. Address delivered to the Board of Governors of the American Association for Jewish Education, October 19, 1947. Reprinted in Baron, Steeled by adversity, p. 529. Ibid., p. 528 (emphasis in the original). 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: BasicBooks. Fox is drawing on the work of curriculum theorist Joseph Schwab here. Ackerman, Stranger to the tradition, p. 108 Shapiro, H., & Zeldin, M. (1998). Paradox and prospect in Jewish educational research. Journal of Jewish Education, 64(1/2): 4.

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45. See Zeldin, M., & Kurshan, A.R. (2002). The landscape of Jewish educational research. Journal of Jewish Education, 68(1): 712. 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 possibilities, 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 serious about Jewish education. @jesna.org, Winter: 34. Woocher, the executive director of the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA), concentrates primarily on mobilizing and coordinating human and financial resources in the community and in the Jewish education field toward the creation of a Jewish educational system characterized by consistent excellence. Implied in his call to action is a research agenda that addresses all of the issues I have listed here. For a broad survey of the major components of Jewish educational research, 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: 6896. 51. The answer, by the way, is that the children do become more Jewishly identified, accordingly to Cohen. 52. Breakstone, D. (1987). The dynamics of Israel in American Jewish life: An analysis of educational means and cultural texts. Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University 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 in the report. 55. The importance of doing the history of teachers and teaching is discussed in Rousmaniere, K. (1997). City teachers: Teaching and school reform in historical perspective. New York: Teachers College Press. 56. Krasner, J. (2002). Representations of self and other in American Jewish history and social studies schoolbooks: An exploration of the changing shape of American Jewish identity. Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. Klapper, M.R. (2001). A fair portion of the worlds knowledge: Jewish girls coming of age in America, 18601920. Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Rappaport, S.G. (2000). Jewish education and Jewish culture in the Russian Empire, 18801914. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA.