Professor Devora Steinmetz is a Jewish studies scholar and the founder of Beit Rabban Day School, founded in 1991 on the west side of Manhattan, which was led by her in its early years. The Beit Rabban elementary school was known for its intellectual standards in Jewish and general studies and its focus on the development of autonomy. We interviewed Prof. Steinmetz to learn more about her educational vision for Beit Rabban and the tension between autonomy and identity formation in Jewish education. The following are some excerpts from the interview.

 

Which kind of day school did you attend?

 

I went to a traditional Orthodox Jewish day school. We did what was called "Ivrite Be'Ivrit", which meant that all Jewish studies were taught in Hebrew. So in the morning, we had a teacher who spoke only in Hebrew and did Jewish studies, and then in the afternoon, we had a teacher who spoke English and did general studies.

 

My elementary school was very traditional in terms of education. There was no sense of different learning styles, the teacher teaches the material, and your job is to learn it and do well on tests. But, at the same time, teachers were fanatical about transmitting Hebrew and Jewish learning. So we learned a tremendous amount, but mostly through one way of thinking about it, without taking into account different children, learning styles, or backgrounds.

 

Thinking about schooling for my first kid, we very much wanted a school where kids could learn a lot. Yet, over the course of the decades, fewer schools were still committed to teaching fluency in Hebrew and Jewish texts. I wanted an education that I knew was possible in terms of gaining knowledge. At the same time, I very much believe in autonomy- deciding how we ought to live our lives, as well as a kind of freedom of interpretation; to engage the kids in critical thinking. I didn't want a school that would say, "Orthodoxy is the only right way to be"; I wanted a school that didn't shy away from what the text says but also recognized that different families and different people make different choices.

 

What would you answer to parents saying "what if my child would get confused? They need to form a strong identity in early years."?

 

One of my issues was that looking at Orthodox day schools, where in theory there was a commitment to Hebrew text study, in reality, kids weren't learning a whole lot. Whereas the more liberal schools often were not committed enough to Jewish learning and practice. It was more like, "we don't want anyone to feel judged," and so they often shied away from exposing children to material that might differ from their family's practice. In my school [Biet Rabban] it was different. People would walk into the school and say, "wow, this is like a Beit Midrash, it is living Torah shebe'al peh [Oral Torah]." It was a very, very committed, passionate, immersive, serious environment that didn't take the form of "do it one way".

 

The real risk is when you keep kids in one track till they're eighteen, then you send them off to college, and they find out that there's another world out there that was hidden from them. Same thing about Israel education. Kids who were taught that Israel is perfect, then they get to campuses, and they find out there are actually other people there, and then a lot of these kids go all the way to the other side, become anti-zionist rather than thinking in a more nuanced way. So risk takes many forms. Pretending that nothing else exists and then, by the end of the day, sending your kids off into the bigger world, I don't think that's a lower risk.

 

What was the school's attitude towards observance?

 

So first of all, Beit Rabban also had a different understanding of the role of the school in relation to the parents than some other schools. For example, a traditional Orthodox day school in America has a model Seder before Pesach, in school. We didn't do that. Instead, we spent the month before Pesach learning about the seder. The idea was that we're sending them home to be the fullest participants possible in their family’s Seder. So our job was to educate them, but not to be their Jewish life for them. Their family is their Jewish life.

 

Which kind of Beit Rabban graduates did you imagine?

 

I wanted people who were thoughtful; who saw other people as conversation partners. One of the things about the school was that the whole discourse structure was different. So even in K/1 (kindergarten/first grade mixed-age class), if the children were sitting in a circle and talking about what they did over the weekend, one child would talk and another child might ask them a question instead of immediately saying what they did over the weekend. In Chumash [Torah class], a child might ask an interpretive question and other children would offer responses to it, or a child might offer an interpretation and other children would ask them to clarify it or would offer alternative interpretations or might challenge it. To respect someone means to take their ideas seriously, which might mean disagreeing with them. I wanted the children to see themselves as members of a community of learning, their classroom community as well as other communities: their family, the broader community, learners and scholars who came before them.

 

I wanted the children to become people who understand that they have responsibilities in the world and who think about ways to fulfill those responsibilities. Jewish life, just like American civic life, depends on education; it has to come from a place of strong knowledge and disciplined thinking and engagement in conversation with others. Now, some people don't eat kosher, but what they all can share is engagement in our textual tradition. That's extremely important to me. 

 

What was your attitude towards intellectual challenges as part of your educational vision for Beit Rabban?

 

Kids who need an intellectual challenge have special needs, just like kids who need more help. Kids who find it very easy can develop some negative dispositions like risk avoidance and looking down at other people. Beit Rabban was a school where you wouldn't have a kid come to a teacher and say "that was easy"; they would say, "that wasn't challenging enough for me. Can we find something that would really challenge me?" We didn't have grades. It was very much about helping kids evaluate how they were progressing in relation to themselves, not in relation to other children. 

 

I believe in education per se; I believe in having a deeper understanding of math, science, literature, Jewish studies, Tefilah [prayers], and a deep understanding of Jewish texts. Beit Rabban was an intellectually vibrant school. When you walked in - it was alive. You felt it; it was exciting.

 

The educational vision of the Beit Raban school is taught at the Melton Center of the Hebrew University as part of the Visions of Jewish Education course. Interested in learning about inspiring visions for meaningful Jewish education? Read about our master's degree program that is mostly conducted by distance learning with one summer semester in Jerusalem >>> https://masterjewishprogram.huji.ac.il