Religious Preschool’s Appeal to the Secular Parent

[rug]

In 2007, New York had 20,000 children at religious preschools, including 340 at the Yeshivah of Flatbush. (Ruby Washington/The New York Times)

March 18, 2014, 10:20 am
By JUDY BATALION

“Do I have to wear a kippa?” Jon asked as we walked into the synagogue. Usually excited by preschool visits, today he grimaced. We’d joined this local shul for its laid-back community, but the idea of faith-based education made him uncomfortable.

“It’s not a religious school.” I geared up my sales-pitch zest. I wasn’t sure how keen I was myself, but I’d been hoping he’d stay open-minded. “It’s about culture, community, Hebrew songs!” I tried to appeal to his musician instincts.

Only, he didn’t know many Hebrew songs. Jon and I were both Jewish, but differently so. He’d attended a British Christian boys school: He knew about saints, not tsimmes. He felt more at ease at conservative church schools than synagogues, where his English secularism cringed at the idea of blessings.

I too dismissed formal prayer, but I was from a family of Yiddish-speaking, kosher-keeping, Holocaust-surviving immigrants. My day school was not religious but taught shtetl literature and 1960s Hebrew poetry about kibbutz romance.

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