New Book Provides Up-Close Look at North American Jewish Day Schools

Readers get an up-close look at nine different Jewish day schools across North America — including two in California — in a new book, Inside Jewish Day Schools: Leadership, Learning, and Community, co-authored by Alex Pomson, PhD, Principal and Managing Director at Rosov Consulting, and Jack Wertheimer, PhD, the Joseph and Martha Mendelson Professor of American Jewish History at The Jewish Theological Seminary. With vivid narratives of different learning experiences and community engagement, the book captures day-to-day life at each school, showcasing the varied day school experience and ultimately helping readers understand the schools’ value and impact.

“Approaches to learning at day schools, both in general and Jewish studies, have shifted dramatically in just the last 20 years,” says Alex Pomson, co-author of Inside Jewish Day Schools. “Beyond these field-wide changes, we see how each day school brings a distinctive approach to education and family engagement, depending on the local community and environment. Day schools succeed when their missions are truly aligned with their families’ priorities and their communities’ cultures.”

The schools included in the book represent the full diversity of day school education today. There are traditional, non-coed yeshivas and pluralistic, community day schools; a small school serving about 50 families and large schools with more than a thousand students; schools from all parts of North America reflecting local cultures and educational marketplaces; historic institutions and newly established ones too. Each school provides a chance to learn anew who day schools serve and how they fulfill their educational missions. 

“For those of us who attended a Jewish day school, let alone for those who have not, it’s hard to fathom how massively these schools have changed in the current century,” says Jack Wertheimer, co-author of Inside Jewish Day Schools. “Their approach to learners, embrace of parents and grandparents in the educational process, and assumption of leadership roles in the wider Jewish community attest to new thinking, even as fulfilling multiple roles strains the resources of educators. Our book takes readers inside these schools, showing both their achievements and ongoing challengers, while also situating the schools in the wider family and communal contexts which they influence.”

Researched over three years, Inside Jewish Day Schools examines where new learning technologies are present in these schools and where they are not. In exploring the Jewish education they offer, the authors discuss what is taught, how the curriculum has shifted in recent years, and how schools find ways to integrate Jewish and general studies. Day schools, the book shows, have invested especially heavily in providing mental health support to students while providing extracurricular options to help students develop their talents in sports, the arts, Jewish self-expression, and caring for others.

Rabbi Marc Baker, President and CEO at Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston, and former Head of School, Gann Academy, says, “Pomson and Wertheimer invite us to see these nine schools, and Jewish Day Schools everywhere, with new eyes. They combine expertise in educational research with a depth of curiosity, insight and human connection that bring the schools, and the people in them, to life. These refreshingly honest portrayals powerfully illustrate the similar and different ways that leadership, education, Judaism, community come together to shape the hearts and minds of our next generation.”