Upper East Side, Manhattan, the Ramaz School

This year too, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the principal of the Ramaz School in New York, is teaching 10-graders a course on the Jewish view of sexual relations. "I think that they know the subject better than I do," he says, "but nevertheless, we go through everything." The course is comprehensive, dealing not only with the Jewish view of marriage and abortion but also Jewish parties for trading partners.

In the middle of April, Rabbi Lookstein, who a few days earlier had marked his 75th birthday, left for a short vacation in Florida. "I need to recuperate from all those celebrations," he explained. "I hope to play a bit of tennis and recover."

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The course on Jewish sex is not perceived as anything unusual, but rather as a natural expression of the school's main goal: to be part of Western culture, and still maintain Jewish differentiation, at least in its modern Orthodox version. "I want the students to know what there is outside so that they will decide what to do later," says Lookstein. "It's necessary to be familiar with the general culture not only in order to get a good job or to get ahead in life, but also because it can enrich everyone's tradition. This is the meaning of symbiotic relations."

The first manifestation of these special relations is evident right at the entrance to Ramaz, in the form of two flags, American and Israeli. Flags constitute a standard backdrop at Jewish schools in the United States, and generally hang at the top of a pole about a meter and a half in length. Perhaps because of the architecture of the Ramaz High School, though, or perhaps because of a huge picture of the three Israeli soldiers being held captive, in Lebanon and in Gaza, the sense is that the flags here are larger, more splendid, coming together in a kind of declaration of strength of one of the oldest and most influential Jewish educational institutions in the city.

The Ramaz School (the name is an acronym for the initials of Rabbi Moses Zevulun Margolies, 1851-1936, a leader of Orthodox Judaism in the U.S.) was founded in 1937 by Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, the father of Haskel Lookstein. Today it has, in its three divisions, elementary through high school, some 1,100 students. It's a school that emphasizes the Orthodox interpretation in Bible and Gemara studies, but nevertheless, in which boys and girls study together, even in the Jewish studies classes (including in the upper classes, in contrast to other schools that allow coeducational study but separate the sexes at the age of 12 or 13), and the importance attributed to Jewish subjects is equal to that of the general studies.

The integrative message is expressed in the planning of the school day, which begins at 8:00 A.M. and ends at 4:45 P.M, and in which periods of Jewish and secular studies are mixed, so that both worlds benefit, at least formally, from equal attention by teachers and students.

"It's no challenge to teach Jewish subjects until 3:00, and then to start to teach the general subjects, when the pupil is already tired and wants to sleep," explains Rabbi Lookstein. The coeducation is another one of the things in which the school takes pride. "In a reality in which resources are limited, separate studies for boys and for girls would of necessity raise a question of priorities, for example which class will get the best teacher. Only coeducation ensures that everyone receives an education at an identical level," they say here.

At the entrance to some of the classrooms hangs a sheet detailing the compulsory dress code: Boys must wear a skullcap during all classes, and have their shirts tucked inside their pants; girls are required to wear a knee-length skirt and no low necklines. The war on dress is apparently a universal phenomenon: There are girls here who come in skirts that are shorter than permitted (and who try to blur this by wearing long tights), and some of the boys scramble to pull their kippah out of a pocket when they see the principal walking through the halls.

Rabbi Lookstein estimates that about 70 percent of the students are observant, while the rest "observe at least kashrut and something of the Sabbath. I am also prepared to accept students from other streams, on condition that they are serious and go to synagogue every Sabbath," he explains. Some of the students define themselves as "Conservadox," a kind of intermediate position between the Conservative and Orthodox worlds. Other sources, including some within the school, estimate that the proportion of Orthodox among the students is far lower. "Ramaz is considered an excellent school that prepares students for college. This is the main reason parents pay about $25,000 a year and send their children to it, and not so much the principles of modern Orthodoxy," explains the mother of a student at the school.

Daniel Mark has been teaching history at Ramaz for three years now. In his classes, Mark relates among other things to the Catholic Church's attitude toward the Jews over the years. "We definitely learn about the Crusades, the persecutions, the Inquisition and the Church's position during the Holocaust, but I don't try to teach the typical Jewish line that holds that the Church was and still is evil," he says, "and when the course gets to the main points of Catholic belief, and a few of the students say, for example, that the sacraments are nonsense, I suggest that they pause for a moment, because the criticism that they are directing at the Catholics could also be directed at Jews, for example on the issue of belief in miracles. This is the beautiful thing about education: to think about something that doesn't necessarily accord with your basic instincts."

In another class, Mark compared one of the chapters in the Book of Psalms to an Egyptian hymn that antedates it by hundreds of years. For some of the students, it was hard to accept the similarity between the two texts and even more so the fact that the Jewish version is the more recent of the two. "I don't try to be subversive, but rather to recognize that the source of this wonderful prayer is in Egypt, that Judaism developed with influences from the non-Jewish environment throughout history."

A group of 9th-graders is studying Joseph's dream and the tension that arises among his brothers. One girl says, "I don't understand this reaction of the brothers. Why didn't they ignore Jospeh, why didn't they just say 'whatever?'" To the non-local ear, "whatever" sounds emphasized in a way that is reminiscent of Britney Spears.

Los Angeles, the Milken Community School

On Friday at noon, Rabbi Gordon Bernat-Kunin stands at the entrance to the campus of the Milken Community School in Los Angeles, wishing the students who pass him "Shabbat shalom," and handing them little Hershey's Chocolate Kisses. The students are swallowed up into parents' fancy cars or get on buses that let them off among the homes of Beverly Hills, Bel- Air and elsewhere. Bernat-Kunin, rabbinic director of the Milken Upper School, would be glad if the school, which has a Reform orientation, had more activities connected to Judaism, for example a requirement for boys to wear skullcaps during lessons in Jewish subjects. Apparently this will not happen. If Milken were to become a more observant school, "the parents will take their children out and transfer them to other private schools," says Metuka Benjamin, the school's director of education. "It is impossible to force the wearing of skullcaps. Even at the central synagogue there is a basket of kippot, but worshippers use them only if they want to."

Milken is one of the largest Jewish schools in the United States, with about 1,500 students. The elementary school belongs to the network of Reform institutions, but the middle and high schools are defined as "community" institutions. Nevertheless, there too the Reform approach is maintained. The investment in the school expresses a profound change in the movement's basic outlook. Up until 15 or 20 years ago, the Reform movement was opposed to Jewish day schools. There were a number of reasons for this, the principal one perhaps being the aspiration to full integration into American society. The best way to integration, argued the movement leaders for many years, will be by means of sending the children to public schools.

In the meantime, the level of the public schools declined and private schools became more inviting.

As the perception that the aims of integration had been achieved took hold, the possibility for opening Reform movement day schools emerged. "Support for the day school idea was considered a betrayal of American values," says Benjamin. "The Reform Jews did not realize the meaningfulness and the depth that these schools give, not only in elementary school and junior high, but rather, mainly, at the high school level. It is only at that stage that you begin to harvest the fruit of strengthening Jewish identity."

Milken's wealth is manifested in nearly every corner, from the four buildings that constitute the high school, through the youth orchestra for classical music and the chorus that is practicing songs from Broadway musicals in the adjacent hall, and the basketball court, "which provides a game experience almost like college, with all the excitement all around," explains Elliot Tash, a 9th-grader and a member of the student council.

One of Tash's official duties is to handle public relations for outside visitors to Milken. He is very skillful, and does a good job. Somehow it seems that the sports culture receives special emphasis here: In addition to the basketball team, the school has soccer, football, track, tennis and golf teams.

Annual tuition is about $25,000. "We are competing with non-Jewish private schools that attract many Jewish students," says Benjamin. "This is very fierce competition, not only because the commitment to Jewish education is not as strong in the current generation of parents as it was 50 years ago, but also because the pressure to get accepted to the prestigious colleges is only increasing."

"You can't maintain a Jewish school without an excellent general studies department," adds Dr. Rennie Wrubel, the principal of the high school. "There's no room here at all for negotiations with the community. We tell parents that there is no need to compromise: Their children will receive the same quality of education that can be found in private schools and in addition they will benefit form a Jewish education. The Jewish studies don't come in second place but they cannot be more important than the general studies."

"This is the Jewish version of the TV series 'Beverly Hills 90210,'" says an Israeli teacher who worked at Milken in the past, and is now at another school on the West Coast. "It is an excellent school that 'just happens' to have a Jewish dimension."

At Milken, though, they say that Jewish studies are taken seriously. A few years ago, a group of parents asked for the number of hours devoted to Hebrew be cut down. They claimed that students found it difficult to master the principles of the language and therefore their grade averages are affected. (There was no objection to the study of Talmud.) The administration rejected the request. Nonetheless, Benjamin reports that the total number of hours devoted to Jewish studies is lower than for other subjects.

Prayers are compulsory, but are held only once or twice a week. Altogether, at the school they prefer not to use the term "prayer" so much as "spiritual experience." Here too the variety is great and includes, among other things, a traditional minyan with a mehitzah between boys and girls, an egalitarian minyan, led by the girl students, a "minyan for skeptics" - which includes not orderly prayer but is, rather, devoted to questions of faith - and three types of "meditation minyans."

Most students choose the latter kind of minyan. "We do a lot of yoga and we talk about the connection between various body movements and our connection to God," relates 10th-grader Bianca Hershkowitz. "There isn't prayer here, but rather meditation. The teacher turns off the lights and tells stories that are connected to Judaism. Sometimes the students talk about what is bothering them, like exam week. This is a moment of spiritual calm that enables looking inwards."

Despite the wide variety of ways of faith - and perhaps in fact because of it - some of the students at Milken say that they know more about Judaism than their friends in Israel do. In recent years the school has participated in a student exchange program between schools in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. "The students who have come back from activities in Israel were very surprised at the low level of knowledge that students in Israel have," says Benjamin. "They were kind of in shock. They had thought that in Israel everyone is knowledgeable about Jewish subjects - but the Israelis were more knowledgeable than they were about the latest brands of clothing and the various electronic devices. They found it hard to understand why there is such strong objection in Israel to studying Judaism."

San Francisco, the Jewish Community High School of the Bay

A little after 8:00 A.M., Evan Wolkenstein, a young teacher at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay, starts the daily "prayer-discussion." About 10 students gather in the classroom. He lights a small candle, places it on his desk and asks them to begin the school day with a personal blessing of their choice. One girl gives thanks for the opportunity to be a member of the school community. Another girl adds that it is nice to see familiar faces every morning. One of the boys thanks his mother, "who made dinner yesterday for no obvious reason."

There are no prayers, not even abbreviated ones. It appears that on the educational continuum of Jewish schools in the United States, JCHS marks an extreme, and not just from the geographical perspective. The outlooks that are familiar from other educational institutions are re-examined here, almost on a daily basis. The discussion that Wolkenstein leads is not atypical. At the school there are also more traditional minyans, but it is the alternative minyans that are considered popular. Down the hall, in the art classroom, the "art minyan" is now in session ("the idol-worship minyan," one teacher calls it, and it is not clear whether she is joking). The students are asked to draw, paint or sculpt in a Jewish context. Chapters from the Bible or certain prayers serve as inspiration. A few weeks earlier, for example, the art teacher, Igael Gurin-Malous, asked students to create contemporary examples of "the hand of God." Their artistic responses now hang in the corridors or near key rooms at the school, such as the counselor's office and library.

"As far as I am concerned, this is a practical prayer that connects the students to Judaism in a personal way," says Gurin-Malous. "If prayer is defined as connecting to the tradition that is shared by the entire Jewish people, to values, to the Hebrew language, to examine the connection with God - then the students in the artistic minyan are also doing this. The Orthodox style doesn't say much to the students here: They read the words, and they don't understand anything. It's verbiage with no meaning. Instead of that, we are offering them the search for God in everyday life.

"Prayer isn't a curiosity. This isn't an art project that is superimposing itself on prayer, but rather a prayer that is motivated by a new creation. These are ideas that are usually absent from ordinary prayer. Orthodoxy claims that there has to be a single basis for all of Judaism. That doesn't interest me. Creative freedom makes it possible for everyone to connect with God in his own way." Participation in some sort of Jewish activity is a daily requirement. According to Rabbi Andrew Shapiro Katz, the school's vice principal, about two- thirds of the students do not formally pray, but instead participate in activities like the artistic minyan, the yoga minyan, and so on. This is apparently the background to one of the nicknames that have been given to the Jews of San Francisco: Bu-Jews, a kind of combination of Buddhists and Jews.

This is a relatively new high school, which opened only six years ago. Currently it has about 140 students, whose parents pay about $25,000 a year (although around 60 percent of the students pay lower tuition, thanks to an extensive system of scholarships). The number of students is constantly growing. The institution's heads define JCHS as a community school, like Heschel. However, unlike in New York, which has a long tradition of Jewish day schools of various sorts, the reality in San Francisco is different, in large part because of the historical background of the Jewish community in the city, whose members in many cases left behind traditional communities on the East Coast and integrated into the general society. In New York and in other places in the United States, it is generally easy to define Jewish neighborhoods. In San Francisco this is nearly impossible.

About 10 years ago the situation began to change. One of the triggers was in fact the spread of Jewish learning frameworks in the Bay area for adults from non-Orthodox backgrounds, people who had grown up in the 1960s and 1970s. When people from this generation entered their fourth decade, they wanted to strengthen - perhaps even "reinvent," says one of the teachers here - their Jewish identity by means of studying for two or three years. It was a group of parents of this sort that pushed for the establishment of the high school.

"These people could have become newly Orthodox, but there was also another possibility: to open a school that would transmit to the students broader and more serious knowledge than the other settings, like Sunday schools or the Orthodox institutions. For the parents, this was almost a revelation. The answer to the urge for profound knowledge of Judaism doesn't reside in the Orthodox approach, but rather in day schools - that aren't Orthodox," says Shapiro Katz, who has been with the school since its establishment.

As at Heschel, there is no unambiguous answer to the question of whether the pluralistic environment strengthens or weakens religious faith. The variety of possibilities is the strength of these institutions. Ben Bovarnik, an 11th grader, relates that his religious identity has been strengthened at the school, but he immediately goes on to say that this is a specific case and it is impossible to derive general conclusions from it. His brother, for example, attends a Catholic school in the city where the number of Jewish students (who, incidentally, receive no exemption from Catholic prayers), apparently, is larger than the number at the Jewish high school. "My brother doesn't have much interest in Judaism," says Bovarnik. "He would be done in by the Jewish atmosphere here. And maybe in fact the Catholic surroundings will strengthen his connection to Judaism."

In contrast to Bovarnik, Arielle Sherman, also an 11th grader, relates that "the day I started to go to school here was the day I also stopped going to synagogue. I didn't decide on that because I felt less Jewish, but rather because I wanted to figure out for myself and by myself whether to continue in the beliefs and practices of my parents, who are somewhere between Conservative and Orthodox. My parents were glad for my decision. They knew how much I wasn't enjoying going to synagogue. The inner search has not yet ended."

It would seem that for the adults as well the self-probing has not been completed. It would seem that it never will be. "The number of 'gray areas' in my religious identity is so large that I can't define myself according to a stream or a movement," adds Gurin-Malous. "I am a Jew by choice: I choose to live my life according to Jewish values that are important to me. My parents say that I choose what suits me on any given day, but I say that my choice comes from a different, strong and real place, because it is made every day anew."