Comments (0)Seeking Help In Howard County
September 18, 2009Ariel Ilan Roth
Special to the Jewish Times
The school year has just started, but I am already in a mild panic about next year.
My son is in his last year of preschool and we have to choose an elementary school for him. Living in Howard County, choosing public schooling with the county’s extraordinary system is certainly one option.
However, I want my children to have a comprehensive Jewish education that encompasses Hebrew language, Bible, Israel and Jewish culture. Outside of Chabad, there exists no day school option for the county’s Jews.
Despite having a significant Jewish population, the only dedicated, non-denominational, full-time Jewish educational institution here is Bet Yeladim in Columbia. Bet Yeladim, which just moved into a shiny new state-of-the-art building, has both full- and part-day programs for children from ages 3 months through 5 years. Both of my children are there and have been since the day we moved here.
Bet Yeladim does a wonderful job in creating a pluralistic and engaged Jewish learning environment outside of a denominational or synagogue framework.
There are problems, though. My son is 4, and thus will “age out” of Bet Yeladim at the end of this year. He has much to learn. He thinks, despite both my and his teacher’s clarifications, that Judah Maccabee is the bad guy, for example. That needs to be cleared up. He can count to 10 in Hebrew. He has a sense of Shabbat.
Those skills represent a good start, but a preschool education is not enough to build a base of knowledge that will facilitate my children making an informed decision about the nature of their Jewish practice and the manifestation of their Jewish identity.
Those in Howard County who want to continue their children’s Jewish education tend to enroll their kids in Hebrew school. Now, I give Howard County’s few synagogues credit for trying to meet needs, but the reality has always been that Hebrew school is no substitute for a day school in the depth and breadth of Jewish knowledge that they impart.
What I have learned as a Bet Yeladim parent is that Howard County’s Jews tend to be less observant of mitzvot like Shabbat and kashrut, but care very deeply about Jewish identity and cultural values. What Howard County needs is for the non-denominational, culturally oriented model represented by Bet Yeladim to be extended to a full elementary and middle school … and, someday, beyond.
In thinking about this, I often come close to despair. In the best of times, starting a school from scratch is a Herculean task. These are not the best of times. As a parent I worry about making my own children guinea pigs in an educational experiment that may not work.
Baltimore City and County have a wonderful array of options, but those of us compelled by circumstance or by choice to live between Washington and Baltimore find ourselves in a shetach hefker — no man’s land. We are a bit too far from Baltimore to realistically enroll many children in its Jewish schools and way too far from D.C.
Bet Yeladim’s outstanding curriculum and nurturing environment is a good start, but Howard County needs more options for comprehensive Jewish education for it to thrive as a Jewish cultural center. With so much else going for it, the addition of more educational options would make Howard County nearly perfect.
Ariel Ilan Roth is the president-elect of Bet Yeladim’s Board of Directors and a Howard County resident.