Separate ways
Two S. Orange Conservative shuls end 27-year school partnership
Rabbi Francine Roston, left, of Congregation Beth El said her synagogue would
continue to hold joint programs with Oheb Shalom Congregation.
Oheb Shalom's Rabbi Mark Cooper said Jewish education works best "in
a community of Jewish families who belong to each other."
When Linda Specht, director of the Academy of Jewish Studies, announced her resignation in January, it marked the end of a 27-year educational relationship between Oheb Shalom Congregation and Congregation Beth El, two Conservative synagogues in South Orange.
Representatives of both synagogues said that beginning with the next school session, they will develop separate religious-school programs that stress a sense of community at each house of worship.
"The leadership of Beth El looked at [Specht's] resignation as an opportunity to look at our vision of education for our children and the congregation as a whole," congregation president Sheryl Hoffman told NJ Jewish News in a telephone interview. "In evaluating everything…we decided that this was the right time to start our own school."
Rabbi Mark Cooper of Oheb Shalom agreed that the end of the combined school was a mutual decision designed to help both congregations retain their identities, something that the AJS did not convey well.
"Each synagogue has its own way of doing things," he said. The Oheb Shalom community felt it was important for its children to have the benefit of more than 160 years of history and tradition, said Cooper. (Beth El was established in 1946.) "The best chance for Oheb Shalom to achieve its educational goals was to establish its own school," he said.
Julie Schwartz Wohl, a graduate of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary, will take over as Oheb Shalom's educational director in the fall.
Sherri Morris, also a Davidson graduate and currently principal at Congregation Neve Shalom in Metuchen, was named director of the Beth El program. In addition to overseeing the religious school, she will be responsible for the synagogue's family, senior, and adult education programs.
"Parents want their children to develop a relationship with their synagogue and with their clergy so they have a strong grounding," said Rabbi Francine Roston, who took over the pulpit of Beth El in 2005. The AJS model sometimes made it "very difficult to make the connection between synagogue and family," she said. "It was hard to have three entities figure out how to work together so that everyone felt connected."
Hoffman estimated the 2006-07 enrollment at AJS at around 220 students, with about 40 percent of the students coming from Beth El, which has a membership of about 220 families.
"Our school…will be building on what the joint school offered, but at the same time, we'll be looking to form a school that will use the best thinking and practice the field has to offer in collaboration with our vision," Hoffman said. "We won't be using a canned product; we're open to trying new things."
In the combined AJS, classes for grades kindergarten through two as well as the sixth and seventh grades were held at Oheb Shalom; grades three-five and eight-10 were held at Beth El. The synagogues are located about a mile apart from each other.
"We are not totally separating, [with] each community going into their own corner of South Orange," Roston said. "We're going to work hard to continue to do what we can to keep our connection." The synagogues' youngsters will continue to participate in a number of joint projects, including a United Synagogue Youth/Kadima program.
Oheb Shalom and Beth El each have "stakeholder" interests to see that their children receive an education in line with each congregation's philosophy, Oheb Shalom's Cooper said. Most important, he said, "is seeing to it that Jewish learning is inexorably linked to Jewish living. This takes place in a community of Jewish families who belong to each other."
Gary Survis, chair of Oheb Shalom's educational transition team, said the move is in line with the findings of a March 2007 report commissioned by The Avi Chai Foundation. Among several conclusions, the study — "Recent Trends in Supplementary Jewish Education" — found that "new work on synagogue revitalization has spurred fresh thinking of the synagogue school in the life of the congregation."
"We have been talking about this and wondering what we have to do to change our approach in order to make the education of our children more effective," Survis said. "We need to integrate it better with our shul — to reach outside the boundaries of traditional classrooms — to get the children learning in traditional and nontraditional ways, something that was not a possibility under the [AJS] model." Figuring out how to inculcate synagogue life within traditional educational programs has become "a challenge."
"There are so few hours that the children are actually in the school that every minute counts," Survis said. He added that Oheb Shalom was looking forward to the new school year. "There's a huge amount of excitement in being able to take a much more integrated approach."
Both synagogues stressed that there was no animosity in the decision to head in different educational directions.
"It was just the realization that both schools needed a different mode and how each shul can represent best who they are and bring that to their families and…their children," Survis said.
Diane Stein, a member of Beth El, said she was looking forward to the new arrangement.
Stein, whose daughter Carley is in the sixth-grade class at AJS, believes the situation will be "greatly improved once this split happens…. The connection between Beth El and the school will be there when it's not there right now." The additional time spent at Beth El can only strengthen her child's feeling of community with the synagogue, Stein said.
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