Conservative Judaism and The Educational Process.

Kadima's elementary school is a Solomon Schechter School. This means that the elementary school is, at least formally, associated with Conservative Judaism. The relationship between the school and Conservative Judaism is often confusing and ill-understood, and unpacking and exploring this issue will be one of the first jobs of the new Board.

One of the inherent difficulties is that many people--through no fault of their own--have a limited understanding of Conservative Judaism itself. Thus, if you don't know principles of Conservative Judaism, it is hard to have an understanding of how being a Conservative elementary school can impact the educational process.

I recently read an interesting article by Rabbi Carol Levithan in CJ, the national magazine of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the national group of Conservative synagogues. Writing why she is a Conservative Jew, Rabbi Levithan, states:

"It was the intellectual integrity of the Conservative movement, rooted in Wissenschaft des Judentums (the scientific approach to the study of Judaism), that drew me in. It is a movement courageous enough to acknowledge a scholarship that questions the historical truth of the Exodus of Egypt, for example, while insisting that yitziat Mitzrayim--liberation from bondage-- occupies the higher plane of human aspiration where all are equal. . . .It is a movement of intellectual and ethical rigor that accepts change not for its own sake but for the sake of realizing more fully the transcendent values of our sacred biblical constitution" (emphasis added).

It doesn't take a leap of logic to see how such a philosophy might impact an educational program. If the religious philosophy requires intellectual and ethical rigor, then a school that adheres to this religious philosophy must teach the rigorous and critical thinking skills inherent in a modern liberal arts education. The School must teach science, history, art, literature, math, music, technology and everything else we normally associate with the "secular" side of things because our students need these tools to understand and fullfil their own religious responsibilities to effectively, responsibly and enthusiastically live their Jewish lives. In other words, the school must excel on the secular side because these skills are required for our students to be able to engage in a rigorous Jewish studies program.

The two sides of the program--secular and Jewish--are complementary and must be integrated at every level.

Or so goes the Schechter theory. This is, of course, a much larger discussion, and one that will cut to the core of who Kadima is. And one that the Board hopes to tackle this year.