IN 1990 the Commission on Jewish Education in North America concluded that ‘the System of Jewish education is plagued by many problems, and because of its inadequacies it is failing to engage the minds of a critical segment of the Jewish population who have no other way of experiencing the beauty and richness of Jewish life'. The Commission then went on to suggest that strategies to address ‘this crisis of major proportions’ should rest on two building blocks, one of which is mobilizing Community support to meet the needs and goals of Jewish education. In specifying what ‘community support’ or ‘community mobilization’ might involve, the Commission recommended ‘recruiting top community leaders to the cause of Jewish education, raising Jewish education to the top of the communal agenda, creating a positive environment for Jewish education and providing substantially increased funding from federation, private family foundations and other sources’.

However, the Commission viewed the community not only as a key part of the solution to the crisis in Jewish education, but also as part of the problem. The Jewish community, it remarked, ‘has not yet recognized the indispensable role it must play, … it lacks understanding … and it is not sufficiently supportive of the massive investment required to bring about systemic change'.

What strikes me when rereading this assessment from over a decade ago is the prominence given to the need for the community to support the school, while there is the absence of any substantial role for the school in redefining the nature of collaboration between itself and the Community it serves.

In this chapter I focus on the role of the school in redefining that collaboration. I argue that it is important to explore the purposes and mechanisms of school-community collaboration. Why should a school pursue collaboration with the Community, and what are the mechanisms by which schools and communities can interact with and mutually support one another? I focus on three purposes, on the corresponding perspectives on why and how school-community relations can ‘work', and on appropriate mechanisms for bringing this about.

Background

Clearly, addressing the topic of Community in general, and as it relates to Jewish day schools in particular, is very complex.