Since 1989, the Milwaukee Jewish community has had three Jewish day elementary schools — and the rest of the state of Wisconsin has had none.
This fall, that ratio will change. Sept. 2 is scheduled to be the first day of operation of the Madison Jewish Community Day School, which is renting space at Temple Beth El, Madison’s Reform synagogue.
According to the school’s leaders — board of directors chair Robert Ablove, M.D., and head of school Merle Sweet — there should be about 10 children in the first kindergarten class; and a new grade will be added every following year through eighth grade.
The school has also hired Meisha Leibson as its Judaic studies teacher and Jodi Oskin as its secular studies teacher.
In a telephone interview, Ablove said the school “is for parents who don’t want Jewish education to be another extracurricular activity.”
“If you want a really solid Jewish education, [to] learn Hebrew fluently and become conversant with Jewish texts on an in depth basis, I don’t think you can accomplish that in a six-hour-a-week after-school program,” he said.
First generation
Ablove speaks from personal experience. He said he graduated from the Kadimah Hebrew Day School in Buffalo, N.Y. (His wife, Tova, also attended a Jewish day school for four years, he said.)
And Ablove, therefore, may exemplify a trend that has appeared in larger communities but is just now appearing in smaller ones, according to Steven H. Morrison, executive director of the Madison Jewish Community Council.
“The first large generation of day school graduates” now has children of school age, Morrison said. (Ablove and his wife have three children, ages 6, 4 and 2.)
These parents “had wonderful, positive experiences” with day school education and want their own children to have it as well, Morrison said.
Sweet, on the other hand, comes from a different perspective. A native Madisonian, he retired in 2000 from a 35-year career in the Madison public schools, of which he spent 26 as a school principal.
“The reason I’m coming back is because I feel very strongly that if a family would like to send their children to a day school, it ought to have the opportunity,” he told the Chronicle in a telephone interview. “I think the need is growing stronger in Madison.”
Sweet himself had a supplementary Jewish education; but “knowing what I know about teaching and learning, I see the day school as the way to get to the Hebrew language” and learn about Judaism in depth, he said.
Ablove said the presence of such a school will help to attract more Jewish families to Madison, thereby helping the community — which Morrison said currently numbers about 5,000 — to grow.
Ablove works in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s medical school in the department of orthopedic surgery.
He said he has received calls from Jewish prospective university faculty “who indicated that their decision regarding whether or not to come depended on the presence or absence of day school education for their children.”
Not that there has been a rush from the Jews already in Madison. Sweet said he has “been spending a lot of time recruiting families” and has found that “people don’t want to be pioneers” and send their children to “a start up” school.
But “we do have a nucleus” of people, enough for both this year and to add a class next year, Sweet and Ablove said.
One thing they said they have not found is opposition to the idea. “In the past I think there had been,” said Ablove. “I think Madison has a tradition of people loyal to the public school system.”
But creating this new school “is not an indictment of the public school system, this is an augmentation of the system,” said Ablove.
Morrison, on the other hand, had in the past expressed to The Chronicle opposition to the idea of a Jewish day school in Madison, and “I haven’t changed my opinion.”
“I continue to believe public education is essential for a strong American democracy, and that historically, as well as currently, it is in the best interests of the Jewish community and Jewish people to have a strong public education system,” Morrison said.
However, “having said that, I’ve also said that if the day ever comes in the U.S. or in our city that public education begins to wane or begins to have serious problems, as we do in this state because of its funding system, then parents need to make the best decision for their kids,” he said. “I believe that is part of what’s happening in Madison.”
The Madison council, said Morrison, has cooperated with the new school’s organizers “to the extent they asked us to. I wish them a lot of success.”
The school’s current budget is “under $300,000” for the year. Tuition is $10,000 for the year, “but we don’t plan on turning anyone away based on financial need, said Ablove.
As a community Jewish school, it “will teach about the various practices and beliefs of the different denominations” but “we will not practice one over another,” said Sweet.
For more information about the school, visit its Web site, madisonjewishdayschool.com.