The first commandment to humanity in the Bible is pe-ru u-re-vu, be fruitful and multiply. While the world seems to be succeeding, we Jews aren't. The average Jewish family in America has less than the 2-plus-children necessary to break even (when we include infertile couples and others who voluntarily choose not to reproduce.) My understanding is that this is a sociological issue, not peculiar to Jews: the smarter and more successful people have become, the smaller the families are that they have. We Jews have been blessed with a set of values that has resulted in us being successful far out of proportion with our demographics in the greater society.
However, we run into an even greater problem. Judaism is learned because parents and religious school teacher (rabbis included) do our very best to teach. Since we dont succeed 100% here, we lose again. The real gloom and doomers envision the Jewish population in America dropping by half within the next century.
However, I choose to ignore them and say, lets do the best we can hope to do by teaching the next generation the best we can.
For a variety of regional demographic issues, our religious school has been shrinking. This resulted in a restructuring of the school to keep staff ratios in consonance with both the quantity of students and the available funding that we have. Toward that goal, Patrice Liff, Pam Blotcky, Sarah Korins, Rahel and others have spent many hours reviewing curriculums and organizing the restructured programs. This entailed long hours behind the scenes over the summer. If you happen to see any of these people, please say thanks and acknowledge what they are doing.
One more thing: last summer I indicated that our recruiting goal for this year should be to get enough new families with young children so that we will be able to rebuild the religious school. As of this writing, it seems that we have succeeded. Ya-sher ko-ach to those who helped make it happen.
Joshua L. Segal
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