Now that the living hostages have been returned, and the ceasefire which ended the war in Gaza seems to be holding, it feels as though an extremely painful chapter in Jewish history is concluding. For the last two years the yellow ribbon, the dog tag, and the photos of the hostages have marked Jewish clothing and spaces as much as a Star of David necklace or a mezuzah. And though many of these visuals may be taken down, we are not returning to a pre-Oct. 7 Jewish existence. That is gone. Yet a new chapter is beginning, informed by the traumas and challenges of the last two years, and it is the job of rabbis, educators, and Jewish communal leaders to write that new chapter.
I have been thinking a lot about this metaphor of a new chapter as I begin a new chapter in my career. The previous chapter, where I served as executive director of Hillel Milwaukee, was dominated by this Oct. 7 reality. My tenure at Hillel became focused on guiding students and representing our Jewish community through the anti-Israel and antisemitic outburst which focused on campus. Yet in my new role as head of school at Milwaukee Jewish Day School, I am tasked with leading an institution that will be educating the first generation of post-Oct. 7th Jews. And just as the Milwaukee Jewish community rallied to my students at Hillel, it is my sincere hope that our community will now rally around the generation of learners that will follow them as we shift our focus to the future. Oct. 7 was not the first massacre of Jews, and these past two years were not the first major outbreak of Jew-hatred. Sadly, they will also not be the last. Thus, while we should still support our students on campus and fight antisemitism wherever it appears currently, I urge all of us to also look to the future.
That future – the future of the Jewish people and of Milwaukee’s Jewish community – is being shaped right now at MJDS. The challenges of the past two years have demonstrated the power and impact of Jewish day school education. In his “State of World Jewry Address” this past year, author and podcast host Dan Senor noted that in all his travels to many campuses following Oct. 7, that “almost without exception, the students who were leading Jewish and pro-Israel communities on these campuses shared one formative experience. They had attended Jewish day schools.” Senor referenced a study which indicated that graduates of Jewish day schools are twice as likely as their peers to have a strong Jewish identity, and nearly four times as likely to have a strong connection to Israel. Those who were tasked with leading their Jewish communities during this trying time had Jewish day schools to thank for establishing the foundations of their identities as Jews and as Zionists.
What Senor describes is consistent with my experience on campus as well. I had student leaders from diverse Jewish backgrounds who led the fight against antisemitism on campus, but many who did not have a strong Jewish education found the process considerably more jarring and painful than those who did. Anyone who attended the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Hineni event this past September saw this phenomenon firsthand. When MJDS alumna Hilary Miller gave her impassioned speech, I couldn’t help but say to her parents, sitting in front of me, that I hope my own daughter can grow up to be like Hilary. In his usual humble manner, Hilary’s father, Jamie, said to me, “We have MJDS to thank for her.” We need more Hilary Millers, we need more brilliant and passionate Jewish leaders, and the time to educate them and establish the foundations of their Jewish identities is now.
The urgency of the need to educate these leaders is matched by the urgency to find a way to fund this opportunity for a wider swath of our Jewish community. My generation is the first generation of American Jews that will, on average, earn less than our parents. Saddled by student loans and massive increases in the prices of housing and healthcare, paying for day school education is rapidly becoming less affordable to the average Jewish family. In a recent conversation, a past president of the MJDS board mentioned that when she was a parent at the school, many of her friends faced the choice of paying for MJDS or joining a country club. My peers face the choice of paying for MJDS or simply affording a home in Milwaukee’s North Shore.
We must respond as a community to this continuing divergence between the need for Jewish education, now more than ever, and the reality that such an education may not be reasonably affordable to a growing number of families. We need a massive increase in our community’s investment in our day schools. Other communities have already taken note. The UJA-Federation of New York, for example, is investing $15 million to help subsidize the cost of Jewish day schools for children of Jewish professionals and middle-income families. In Cleveland, the Mandel Foundation has agreed to put up half of their Federation’s $180 million investment in local Jewish day schools. These major investments by pillars of the local Jewish community indicate an awareness of how vital it is to ensure that day school education remains affordable and accessible to all Jewish families.
It is time for our Milwaukee Jewish community to act with the same urgency. At MJDS, we are eternally grateful for the tremendous support we receive from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, and from other local foundations and generous donors. This support allows us to fund our Affordable Customized Tuition program to subsidize tuition for middle-income families, provide meaningful living wages and benefits for our exceptional faculty, and to cover the gap between our full tuition and the actual cost to educate our students. But the reality is that, as generous as that support has been, it has not kept pace with the increasing needs and costs to make MJDS financially sustainable for the long-term future, at a time when we need it more than ever. We at MJDS are grateful for a committed group of generous donors who have already started leading this charge by helping us to increase our endowment and ensure that MJDS will become a more affordable option for Milwaukee’s Jewish families.
Our hope is that others will join them, and that the next chapter will be one of Jewish resilience. Jewish resilience has only ever come through knowledge of our history, living out our values, and practicing our faith and culture in pride and joy. This is what we do at MJDS, and we invite you to join us and help us write the next chapter in this powerful book.
The Chronicle publishes a variety of opinion articles, including this one, which are not necessarily representative of the views of this newspaper or its publisher.
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