The Maccabaean

ZIONISM has done much to shift the attention of Jews from the past to the future. Not so much the glory of yesterday, as the destiny of the Jew and his place in organized mankind tomorrow, have been the elements in the message of Zionism which caught the imagination and harnessed the devotion of the young and of the old-young in Israel. But hitherto the limited energies of Zionists have been dedicated to the task of fostering and organizing the interest in the Jewish future as centralized about Palestine, without paying adequate attention to the process of preparing for that future through the Jewish education of their children. Now, when Zionism is changing from a national movement into a national task, Zionists, as Zionists, are everywhere turning with ever-increasing interest to the problems of education. Not only do they desire to reproduce themselves spiritually in their children, but they realize also that only through such transmission of interests will it be possible to insure achievement of the great tasks to which they have given their best energies: the establishment of the national homeland and the reorientation and revival of international Jewry.

What are the conditions of Jewish education in this country? The schools of a people are its stethoscope, indicating the state of group vitality and health. In a state of apparent robust well-being, the stethoscope is called upon to indicate the probability of continued health and vigor. Similarly, in these days of great achievement and of greater promise, nothing will repay more fully those who are interested in the future of our people than to apply the educational stethoscope in order to learn the elements of strength and weakness of Jewish education in this country.

In general, it may be said that Jewish education in America is chaotic, penurious, inadequate, and pitched on a very low level; and yet, it is at the same time hopeful and indicative of a great deal of self-directing activity. This apparently contradictory situation mirrors, after a fashion, the conditions of American Jewish life. The Jews of America are just now beginning to "catch up" in the organization of their communal activities. The Jewish settlement in this country grew with abnormal rapidity in the thirty three years between 1881 and 1914. The communal energies of American Jews were absorbed in the immediate tasks of immigration and charity, just as their individual energies were concentrated upon the tasks of gaining livelihood and position. The Jews of America had to neglect their perennial problems, the chayie olam, for the more immediate problems, the chayie shaa. But with the decrease in immigration, and with the general economic betterment, American Jews are beginning to turn their attention to the more lasting though more intangible problems of education and of communal organization. Now, however, they find that the problem is already too large and too involved for simple solution. They are thirty years behind in their educational program and are vaguely striving to "catch up." To what extent they have the will and the power to master the problem in spite of its complexity, it is not possible to say.

Another reason for the hopefulness in the midst of chaos, is that Zionism has begun to touch the activities of the Jewish schools with the magic wand of the national future.

Our Jewish educational institutions are the creations of our mediaeval past, and have been transplanted to this country with but little change. Some fairy was needed to touch the sordid Cheder and Talmud Torah of mediaeval days, and by a miricle to transform them with their wretched instruction and management, so that American Jews may see in them the modern institutions in which the souls of their children are to be shaped. This fairy was the Zionist movement. It touched the miserable present of Jewish education with the fascinating wand of the Jewish national future, and behold! modern men and women are turning to Jewish education with an intense belief in its potency.

A cold statistical report of the conditions of Jewish education in this country would present a dismal picture. For only one-fourth of our children are educational facilities of any kind provided. At any one time, only one child out of every four Jewish children of elementary school age is given any kind of Jewish instruction, whether in Hebrew schools, Sunday schools, or by private itinerant teachers at home. If we ignore those schools in which Hebrew is not taught at all, or is practically not taught, and if we eliminate also the instruction given by those melamedim who confine their teaching merely to the "Chinese" reading of Ivri, we should find that less than one-tenth of our children receive any sort of Hebrew education worthy of the name. Of the 700,000 children in the elementary public schools of America, not more than 75,000 are at any one time taught in Hebrew schools. New York provides Hebrew educational facilities for one elementary school child out of every nine; Chicago for one in eleven; Boston for one in six; Philadelphia for one in twelve; Atlanta for one in twenty, etc. Many an American town having a fairly large Jewish settlement, is without any Hebrew school whatever, or has one so poor that most Jews of the town refuse to send their children to it. Indeed, the problem is growing faster than we are at present solving it. In New York, for example, the annual increase in Jewish children of school age is almost 10,000, whereas the new school buildings built annually, if used to their capacity, provide for only 1,000 to 1,500 pupils. In other words, unless some drastic means are found for increasing the facilities for Jewish education, the number of unschooled Jewish children is bound to grow larger every year. Those who believe in the essential place of Hebrew education in our Jewish future, cannot help but ponder over these facts.

But even those few children who are taught in Hebrew schools are not properly provided for. Most of them are taught in dingy, underground vestry rooms of synagogues, or in dilapidated dwelling houses converted without much alteration into "schools,"—in most cases dangerous fire traps. In the great city of New York, with its 300,000 Jewish children in the elementary public schools, there are less than one dozen buildings especially constructed for school purposes. In the entire country there are probably not more than two dozen Jewish educational institutions that in point of sanitation and equipment can compare favorably with the average city public school. The dreary, repulsive environment of Jewish education is the first tangible expression of the meaning of Judaism to our children. What wonder that they think it ugly and "narrow," and that later