VIVIAN YEE – NY Times
In the boys’ classroom at Lamplighters Yeshivah in the Hasidic Jewish stronghold of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Montessori number-counting boards and decimal beads share space with Hebrew-learning materials. A colorful timeline on the wall shows two strands of world history in parallel: secular on the left, Jewish on the right. A photo of the grand rabbi of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement hangs above a list of tasks that children perform individually: make a fractions poster, practice cursive, learn about the moon’s phases.
Into the classroom on a recent morning came Rivkah Schack, one of the school’s principals, holding a tool whose form, if not its content, would be familiar to any Montessori teacher: a small nomenclature booklet in which the students were to write words from the Bible by hand and illustrate them. In secular Montessori, the booklets might be used to teach botanical terms; here, they were for Hebrew.
“Not to mix our metaphors, but that’s our holy grail,” said Ami Petter-Lipstein, the director of the Jewish Montessori Society, based in Highland Park, N.J., as Ms. Schack gathered a few pupils around her on the rug for a group Hebrew lesson.
For an educational movement trying to use a century-old pedagogical method developed by an Italian Catholic, Maria Montessori, to teach Jewish tenets, mixing metaphors is the point. Arguing that the traditional Jewish day-school model they grew up with is outmoded and too clannish for 21st-century Judaism, a new generation of parents and educators are flocking to Montessori preschools and elementary schools that combine secular studies with Torah and Hebrew lessons.
Daniel Septimus, who attended a modern Orthodox school but now identifies as a traditional egalitarian Jew, said the schools he had attended were “purposely insular.”
“We knew there was a big, wide world out there where people did different things, but it was kind of scary, and we were supposed to have limited contact with it,” he said.
His son Lev, 3, attends Luria Academy in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, a Montessori school that proudly advertises the religious diversity of its students. “I think this is just more realistic,” Mr. Septimus said. “Ultimately, our kids are going to live in diverse and multicultural communities.”
In Brooklyn, whose more than 600,000 Jews include secular Jews in brownstone Brooklyn and Hasidic Jews in Borough Park and Williamsburg, four Montessori schools have opened in the last decade. Each is tailored to a different group: one is for Hasidic girls in Borough Park, another for Hasidic boys in Midwood; Lamplighters’ students are mainly Chabad-Lubavitchers, while Luria’s students range from secular to Hasidic.
Both Luria and Lamplighters have expanded to accommodate growing demand.
Jewish Montessori schools, which began to catch on about 15 years ago, have also surged in popularity across the country. In Boca Raton, Fla., there are centrist Orthodox, Chabad Orthodox, Reform and Conservative Montessori preschools; Orthodox day schools have started Montessori programs in Houston and Cincinnati; and several New Jersey towns with large Jewish populations now have Montessori schools. The American Montessori Society says there are more than 4,000 Montessori schools in the United States; most are private (and secular, although some are associated with other religions) but a few are public. Ms. Petter-Lipstein said her group was tracking more than 40 Jewish Montessoris in North America and about 30 in Israel.
Though some secular parents criticize the Montessori schools as expensive and elitist, too unstructured or even cultish, the philosophy of allowing children to learn at their own pace and develop personal responsibility through individual learning tasks gels well with the Jewish tenet of educating each child according to his or her own way, its advocates say.
“We’re not just educating for academics, we’re trying to bring the child for God,” said Yocheved Sidof, the executive director at Lamplighters. “It’s all one world.” (Chabad-Lubavitchers also embrace the Montessori method because the movement’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, endorsed it before his death in 1994.)
The interest in the Montessori method reflects what some Jewish educators say is a broader trend toward innovation and opening up to the secular world. Once focused on perpetuating Jewish religious identity, educators, like the leaders of the Solomon Schechter Conservative school network, are adopting buzz words like “engagement” and “cosmopolitanism,” said Benjamin M. Jacobs, a professor of Jewish studies at New York University.
The economic downturn prompted soul-searching about the high cost of most Jewish day schools, which are concerned about losing students to public schools, other private schools or new alternatives like Montessori or Hebrew charter schools, Professor Jacobs said. Day-school tuitions can be $15,000 to $20,000 per child — or higher in the New York area — and Jewish Montessoris seem comparably priced. Lamplighters’ yearly elementary school tuition for new families is $12,000; Luria’s is about $15,000 a year depending on the age of the child.
“There are a ton of people out there who think they’re too stifling, who want their kids to have a broader perspective on the world,” Professor Jacobs said of the traditional schools. The question is, he said, how are students “going to be served, Jewish educationally, so that they could still want to quote on quote ‘stay in the fold,’ but have their differing, more contemporary needs met?”
The founder of Luria, Sam Boymelgreen, grew up ultra-Orthodox but now identifies as “open Orthodox.” Recalling that he “spent a lot of time sleeping at my desk” as a student, he said he started the school after finding that there were few options in Brooklyn for parents looking for progressive, yet Jewish educations.
Luria may embrace diversity, but many new Jewish Montessoris are the only such schools in town and draw a heterogeneous array of students by accident.
One mother in Highland Park pulled her son out of the local Montessori after preschool because it was coeducational, and the family’s rabbi said the boy had to be in a single-sex environment as he grew older; others find the schools too religious, Ms. Petter-Lipstein said.
Parents also often worry about the seeming lack of structure and supervision, and have questioned whether the religious education would be rigorous enough. But several parents interviewed said their fears were allayed after several months. The secular-plus-Jewish approach “reinforces all the different ideas, makes for a richer learning experience,” said Belle Guttman, whose daughter Aviva is in a class for 5- and 6-year-olds at Luria.
For schools like Lamplighters, even giving secular subjects like English equal billing with religious studies is radically innovative. Boys in traditional Chabad elementary schools receive no secular lessons except through after-school programs and private tutors; girls often learn Hebrew, Hasidic law and Jewish philosophy in the morning and secular subjects in the afternoon.
Read more here.
You’ve got to be kidding… Are you suggesting the egos of the kids who attend the standard Crown Heights schools are properly balanced or healthy?
Why did the Rebbe need to WASTE so many hours of his precious time repeating the same themes over and over. The chinuch of a child has been fixed by chazal for generations: when we veer off the derech we lose our children, our derech, our ability not only to light up the world but to even keep our own flame burning. If the NY Times is your guide as to the “brucha” in something, that is already a sign of how far things have fallen. Why don’t we spend extra money paying our Rebbeim and our teachers and our… Read more »
This philosophy is fantastic and innovative and alive.Wonderful aspects of education. But MAKE SURE the “individual pace and approach” doesn’t let the kid think s/he is the only factor that really counts in assessing reality. This is a huge obstacle to Montessori which Chassidim MUST keep a watch on for each individual child. Yes be independent. Yes learn about who you are and what you are capable of. But NO – the world is not only about ME in all circumstances.
The Rebbe never endorsed Montessori! Instead, the Rebbe advocated strongly for Chinuch Al Taharas HaKodesh, in which Jewish and general studies ARE NOT MIXED at all. Using the Rebbe for one’s own agenda is appalling and a terrible mistake.
May we see the original endorsement of the Rebbe in 1994?
THESE ARE NOT MONTESSORI SCHOOLS! THEY ARE MONTESSORI STYLE SCHOOL! there is a huge difference. You cannot officially call yourself a Montessori school without specific trainings and certifications. The reason that the only teachers in these school who are not Jewish are the Montessori teachers is because they are certified Montessori teachers! Most Jewish teachers sorry to say do not become certified which is a real shame.
CHicago is lucky to have a well -run Montessori Torah school, Shaarei Chinuch, which is off to a great start.
The majority of teachers in Montessori school (the teachers that teach Montessori method) are not Jewish, especially in out of town preschools . They bring a lot of non Jewish influence into the class. You have to supervise them very carefully!
We are blessed to have such an amazing Jewish Montessori school in our midst. WE LOVE DARKO LA
My friends kids go to the best Jewish Montessori school in the world – Darko LA. Their kids love going to school and love learning all the time.
« Just to be absolutely clear: Lamplighters is NOT similar to other schools who value ‘diversity’ in their students’ religious experience. Lamplighters is an uncompromisingly FRUM school, founded on the values of Torah and chassidus! It is progressive in the way it utilizes methodology of education that promotes the most basic principles of yiddishkeit and chassidishkeit.
Keep up the good work!
It’s not secular vs. Jewish studies. It’s a method that works beautifully to develop a healthy individual, intellectually and emotionally and can be applied to any material you want to teach.
we made it into the New York Slimes
and we are now almost like everybody else.!!
Iz az achin vey
and to shlep the Rebbe into this – ?!
Just to be absolutely clear: Lamplighters is NOT similar to other schools who value ‘diversity’ in their students’ religious experience. Lamplighters is an uncompromisingly FRUM school, founded on the values of Torah and chassidus! It is progressive in the way it utilizes methodology of education that promotes the most basic principles of yiddishkeit and chassidishkeit.