Where are the presidents of the major Jewish organizations? Why is funding Jewish education not the number-one agenda item on any Jewish organizations’ annual meeting? Why is funding Jewish education not even a significant topic at any Jewish organizational annual meeting?
There is a terrible piece of black humor circulating among many young Jewish families – families that are committed to sending their children to Jewish day schools but are struggling to pay the $15,000 tuition per child. The joke is that tuition is the best form of birth control. In fact, many families are limiting the number of children they have because they just can’t fathom paying an additional $15,000 per year per child.
Do we not comprehend the current tragic state of affairs facing the wealthiest Jewish community in the history of the world? Jewish education has become a philanthropic stepchild relegated only to the wealthy and those families willing to assume mammoth financial sacrifices, while more children are not being born because tuition for Torah education is cost-prohibitive.
We should not be surprised if a new book is soon published that closely resembles the Where’s Waldo? series. Instead, the new landscape would be the contemporary Jewish organizational maze. Hidden within that picture, the readers’ task would be to answer, “Where’s the Waldo Jewish Leadership?” that presided over the Generation That Abandoned Jewish Children.