Why send your child to Hebrew School?

As I meet prospective Hebrew School families, I pose this question: “Why send your child to Hebrew School? What is it that you hope to accomplish?”
Each family answers in its own unique way, but the core idea is always the same, “My child is Jewish and I want him/her to connect with his/her identity.”

Each family might define connection and identity differently, but the fundamental goal is the same – a goal that we at Chabad Hebrew School take very seriously.
To connect with an identity, a child’s toolbox needs three broad categories of tools:

      1.    Knowledge
2.     Skills
3.     An openness (‘disposition’ in pedagogical language) to learning and positive associations with the object of their study.

A curriculum needs to include a balanced combination of all three components. The last one, the disposition for learning, is the most important – for it fuels the other two. It is the ‘disposition for learning’ that gives the knowledge and skills the legs to move forward. Yet, ironically, it is the one that is most frequently omitted from educational agendas (across the board, not just in Hebrew Schools).

That is why, in the design of our curriculum, we place tremendous emphasis on the positivity and the joy of Judaism – on creating dispositions for learning – in addition to skills and knowledge. For, what good would it do to train the child with the skill to read Hebrew (for example), if we don’t expend equal attention on creating the want (the disposition) to read Hebrew. Or, the knowledge of a holiday’s customs, without the affinity for its message, etc.

At the end of school day, I overheard a parent say, “They always seem to be baking or cooking here.” Let me share with you the context for why we include baking in our curriculum: The sense of taste and the sense of smell are internal (we ingest the food and the smells, unlike sights, sounds and touch). That is why smells and tastes of our childhood can be accessed long into adulthood. Since Chabad Hebrew School focuses so strongly on positive associations, cooking the holiday foods (for example) is a great means to accomplish that goal.

That sense of positivity, balanced with a curriculum of skills and knowledge, provides the child with a toolbox that truly has the potential to meet the goal that you, the parents, have expressed: “My child is Jewish and I want him/her to connect with his/her identity.”