Jewish day schools should not teach critical race theory as established dogma

• Date: 08 June 2021
• Published date: 08 June 2021
• Author: David Bernstein
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

Most Jewish day schools became more nuanced over time and started teaching about varied Zionist thinkers, competing narratives and diverse perspectives. But the damage had already been done.

You would think that Jewish day schools would have learned their lesson not to instill dogma in their students. Indeed, many pride themselves on imparting critical thinking skills. But I'm hearing that numerous Jewish day schools, like so many other educational institutions, teach a singular perspective on social issues. They have been swept up by "The Great Awokening," teaching about race and racism with all the nuance of my Zionist youth director's enthusiastic endorsement of Menachem Begin's peace policies. Like many public and private schools, they've embraced Critical Race Theory (CRT) not as one of several theoretical lenses through which to see the world, but as the one true way.

CRT is a framework that claims racial oppression is embedded in the very structures of American society and is often invisible to the dominant class. CRT proponents generally regard America as a white-supremacist society and racism as the only legitimate explanation for the disparity among groups. CRT is, of course, a perfectly valid way of analyzing social issues. A hallmark of applied CRT, however, is its insistence on its own unquestioned, inviolable truth. And in the wake of the George Floyd killing by police last year in Minneapolis, many educators have acceded to the demand for unconditional acceptance.

The Heschel School, for example, one of the nation's premier pluralistic Jewish day schools in New York City, seems to embrace a CRT framework. "We will learn from all of our attempts to strengthen an anti-racist stance in our curriculum and our community and, true to Rabbi Heschel's teachings, to embrace the imperative to take responsibility for systemic racism and injustice, as well as our roles in perpetuating these systems of inequality," say school administrators.

I do not question the school's values. Jewish day schools should teach Jewish kids to be respectful and tolerant, to oppose racism and prejudice, and to work for a fair and just society. But how they do it matters.

The "anti-racist" language suggests that the school is viewing these values through the prism of Ibrahim X. Kendi's How to be an Antiracist, a staple of modern CRT. Whether, as the school asserts, there is "systemic racism" in America, how much systemic racism exists and where it manifests are matters of...