The Great American Jewish Placebo

George D. Hanus, the chairman of the Superfund for Jewish Education and Continuity, admits that Reform and Conservative Judaism have only contributed to the assimilation and intermarriage of a huge swath of America's Jews.

The word "placebo" is derived from the Latin for "I shall please" and denotes a medical treatment whose only benefit is in the mind of the patient.

Throughout medical history and even as late as the late 1940's, sugar pills were prescribed by physicians in the hope that taking a pill would mobilize patients' internal powers to combat illness. It is the nature of a placebo that it works better for minor maladies than terminal diseases. A competent doctor would never administer an inert placebo when a genuine treatment was available.

The United States, as we all know, is a country of immigrants. For centuries, wave after wave arrived on these shores, fleeing persecution, hoping to better their economic condition and merge into the mainstream of American society

Jews are no exception to this pattern. Immigrant Jews rapidly learned English, adopted American dress styles and sent their children to colleges and graduate schools as they became respectable members of society. It is no accident that American Jews quickly moved out of poor urban neighborhoods into the suburbs and have become the most successful ethnic group in the United States.

Even while we were moving up the ladder, most Jews did not forget the Torah injunctions to remember our heritage. So we Jews set up neighborhood synagogues, spent our free time involved with Federations and Jewish fraternal organizations and built museums to remember destroyed Jewish communities. We collected money, attended meetings and ate chicken at fundraising dinners. And to religiously educate our children, we invented the Great American Jewish Placebo: Hebrew and Sunday school.

Imagine our surprise and shock, several generations later, when the placebo turned out to be a sugar pill. Our grown children did not follow in our Jewish footsteps. Today, a majority are intermarrying and assimilating. They are walking away from 4,000 years of Jewish history and we are shocked. After all, didn’t we do everything that our rabbinic and philanthropic leadership told us to do?

We provided good homes, sent them to top colleges, gave our annual charity pledges and even ensured their Jewish education in Hebrew and Sunday schools until bar mitzvah. When our children bitterly complained that they hated Hebrew school, while their friends were having fun in other after-school activities, we told them to hush because it was a rite of passage to suffer through Hebrew school just as we parents did. When they didn’t want to continue Hebrew school after the age of 13, we didn’t insist.

But we never imagined we would end up having grandchildren who have abandoned their heritage, know very little about Judaism and don’t believe in God. We never expected to visit their homes in December only to see a giant Christmas tree in the living room.

We are fortunate to live in a country that has allowed us to excel in every field of American endeavor without fear of persecution. But why have we not been equally successful at preserving our Jewish identity?

Part of the problem is the failed model of Hebrew and Sunday school. We delude ourselves that it will ensure the next generation of committed Jews. The great tragedy is that, by now, everybody knows it doesn’t work, yet we continue to go about business as usual. It is the Great American Jewish Placebo.

As documented by WJD's Mindy Schiller in last month’s cover story, "What’s Wrong With Hebrew School?" according to a new study by noted Jewish American sociologist Steven M. Cohen, the likelihood of intermarriage actually increases among students who attend once-a-week Sunday schools, and attending congregational school—two or more times a week, for less than seven years— hardly decreases that percentage. [Emphasis mine.]

"A little learning is a dangerous thing," wrote the poet Alexander Pope in the 18th century, and this seems to apply to Hebrew and Sunday schools today. In fact, at a recent conference of Jewish educators, Joel Hoffman, a language expert and congregational teacher, told The Jerusalem Post, "Our Hebrew schools aren't teaching Hebrew, the kids are miserable and are making the teachers miserable in the process."

So why do Hebrew schools still exist? Because they are funding mechanisms for synagogues, which depend on the dues of families paying for their children's bar/bat mitzvah and confirmation ceremonies to survive. If it weren't for Hebrew and Sunday schools, synagogues would have a lot of families show up from time to time without becoming members. The discontinuation of the Hebrew school model would disrupt the financial structure of congregational Jewish life in this country.

So if the dismal performance of Hebrew schools is one of the biggest open secrets in the Jewish world, why do they remain in place? Like all placebos, Jewish leaders and parents believe they have a benefit. Also, they are relatively inexpensive to administer. We have treated Jewish education as a communal joke by allocating laughable, paltry financial resources to our children's spiritual development.

It is time to declare Hebrew and Sunday school a placebo that is failing our community. After many decades of experience, few academics or rabbis would assert that our current Hebrew school structure is generating spiritually engaged, Torah knowledgeable and truly happy children, who are proud of being Jewish.

It is very troubling that American rabbis and Federation leadership seem oblivious to the obvious. In the United States, there are approximately 1.2 million Jewish children between the ages of 4 and 19. If the current trajectory continues, approximately 55 percent of these children will intermarry over the next 17 years and create 660,000 intermarried units. The 540,000 remaining Jewish children will marry other Jews and create 270,000 Jewish homes. The enormity of this trend is devastating.

Just as no doctor would prescribe a placebo when a truly effective remedy was available, so too our Jewish leadership is aware that there is a potent way of keeping kids Jewish. If day school were free and available to all Jewish children regardless of their stream of affiliation or family finances, the problems of intermarriage and assimilation in America would be significantly diminished. If our children felt connected spiritually with God and our heritage, they would become enthusiastic links for the next 4,000 years.

Can anyone imagine the outrage that would occur if a doctor administered a placebo to a patient, while an effective but more expensive treatment was available?

All parents must decide for their families how they want to Jewishly educate their children. It is a very personal decision. However, there are tens of thousands of young Jewish families who want to attend Jewish day schools, but the tuition costs are economic barriers to entry. This is outrageous. Torah education was never meant to be only for the rich.

It is time that the Jewish community demand an adoption of policies that constitute an effective resolution of the crisis. We must clearly articulate that it is each Jewish community's absolute responsibility to fund universal Jewish day school education for all of our children, irrespective of a child's stream of religious affiliation or family's financial resources. If the existing Federations are unable or unwilling to adopt and implement this policy, then it is incumbent on each Jewish community to start independent fundraising initiatives that focus entirely on Jewish day school education.

We are the guardians of our children's Jewish identity and the custodians of the Jewish future. We are failing miserably in both areas. Massive funding of Jewish education is the remedy required to strengthen and heal our American Jewish community. Everything else is a placebo.

George D. Hanus is chairman of the Superfund for Jewish Education and Continuity, the Jewish Broadcasting Network and the World Jewish Digest.