By Donald H. Harrison 

It's a good thing that the Avi Chai Foundation attached a subtitle to its report entitled "Linking the Silos," or someone might have assumed some hacker has a plan for launching all the underground nuclear missiles at once!  The subtitle explains the report issued last month is about "How to Accelerate the Momentum in Jewish Education Today."  

What does Jewish education have to do with silos?  It turns out that "silo" is a buzz word to describe "the uni-dimensional manner in which institutions and fields of knowledge operate in isolation, as vertically organized operations, divorced from constructive, horizontal interaction with others," according to the report.

For example, various afternoon religious schools may not have much communication with each other, much less with the day schools in their city, or the Jewish high school, and certainly not with programs for adult education. Students and parents more or less are required to find their way to need-specific programs in Jewish schools by trial and error, serendipity, or by the accident of geography, rather than through some informed process.

The report was written by Jack Wertheimer, provost and professor of American Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary, drawing on a research team consisting of  his JTS colleague Jeffrey S. Kress, and Steven M. Cohen of Hebrew Union College, Sylvia Barack Fishman of Brandeis University, Shaul Kelner of Vanderbilt University,  Alex Pomson of  York University, and Riv-Ellen Prell of the University of Minnesota. 

After studying Jewish education in ten local communities, Wertheimer and his academic colleagues concluded that we need to have people who can conduct families from one Jewish educational opportunity to another—"bus drivers," he calls these public servants, taking the concept from the field of transportation and adapting it to educational guidance.

"We should recruit the bus drivers who will usher people from one place to the next," he suggests. "We should teach those bus drivers how to channel people and to think about the entire network of education ...."

Wertheimer goes on to ask "Who will make the horizontal linkages between the silos of Jewish education?  And can we conceive of programs to reach into communities to identify potential bus drivers and train them to play such a role?  How can we overcome some of the natural obstacles impeding such an effort—i.e, the competition between federations, central agencies and educational institutions to get credit for success?"

As I cogitated upon this, it all began to take on a familiar ring, thanks to an interview I did recently with Alan Rusonik, the executive director of San Diego's Agency for Jewish Education, for an article that will appear tomorrow (January 11)  in early-delivered editions of the San Diego Jewish Times.

Rusonik told me that he conceptualizes the Agency for Jewish Education primarily as one that facilitates Jewish education, rather than as being a provider of such education. AJE will continue to operate the High School of Jewish Studies and to conduct pedagogic courses for Jewish teachers, but it will defer to the synagogues, community centers, and schools when it comes to offering classes for students of the pre- and post-high school levels.

In this regard, the Agency is publishing a resource booklet—and making the information available on line—indicating places throughout the county where Jewish education is being offered and what those courses entail.  

Furthermore, the AJE is sponsoring on Sunday, January 22nd, an all-day Limmud—a day of learning—in which various styles and methodologies of education will be showcased.  The wide range includes classes in which parents and children actually learn interactively together,  to using gospel-style Hebrew music as a learning tool.  

After reading the Avi Chai Foundations's 38-page booklet, I telephoned Rusonik and asked if  he had helped influence its contents, or, perhaps, vice versa, the booklet had been a factor in his thinking  It turned out that neither was true. It was more a question of great minds thinking alike.   

He called the report, about which more may be found at the website, www.avichai.org.il, a form of "validation" for his approach.

From a personal standpoint, I have come to understand why we need more "bus drivers" in San Diego County.  Our little grandson, Shor, is about to finish his pre-school at Tifereth Israel Synagogue, a Conservative synagogue.  Along with his parents, we are wrestling with where to send him next.  The community day school— San Diego Jewish Academy— a few years ago shut down its second campus at Tifereth Israel Synagogue to go to a one-school system in Carmel Valley. 

San Diego Jewish Academy might have been an ideological fit enabling Shor to receive a more intensive Jewish education, but the long ride from our neighborhood to the Academy simply is too far for a kindergarten student, in my opinion.  A closer alternative is the Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School, of which I am an admirer, but Shor's father, a secular Israeli, has grave misgivings about Orthodox schools.

So, now what? No decision has been made, but most likely Shor will continue at Tifereth Israel's Torah School,  supplementing his public school education  But which public school would be best for him?  How well will the hours and curriculum at such a public school mesh with Tifereth Israel's program?  And what other Jewish programs might we avail ourselves of?  

Multiply my questions by the number of Jewish families in San Diego County—for that matter in Jewish communities throughout North America—and you can appreciate the concerns of  Rusonik and Wertheimer et al.