Gershon Distenfield’s op-ed “Is There a Tuition Crisis?” (November 3, 2016) is an interesting article. I can’t argue with the value proposition that Yeshivat He’atid offers. It is a valuable institution to have access to for those who find that value proposition inviting. However, I disagree with the hashkafic component of your argument. While I would agree that parents, often to their children’s detriment, microanalyze many aspects of their children’s education, including hashkafa, I think hashkafa is very important, perhaps even more important than quality of secular education.

We need to give our children an adequate secular education system to set them up to succeed, whatever that means to each family, in their adult professional lives. But what Jewish kids need more than anything is a palatable, relatable and believable introduction to Torah that makes it something they want to incorporate into their lives, as children, teenagers and eventually as parents. Putting them into a very wrong hashkafic environment is going to make that very unlikely. No, two inches to the left or to the right isn’t going to matter. But if you are sending your children to a school where the Judaism they are learning has to be “untaught” at home, or where you as parents are going to be undermining and dismissing the messages of your children’s rabbeim, then you are likely to have serious problems with your children respecting either (or perhaps any) version of Judaism.

Cost is important. Quality is important. Accessibility is important. These are all true. But to suggest that some or all of these problems can be solved by parents making large hashkafic compromises I think is off the mark.

I have spent the last five years building a Modern Orthodox school system so that my wife and I (and our friends and community members) didn’t have to choose between a conservative/pluralistic school system and a right-leaning, community Orthodox school system. I’m not saying doing what I’ve tried to do is the answer, since it has not been cheap or easy. It requires deep pockets, thick skin and an enormous amount of resolve. But I’m also not saying it isn’t the answer.

Educating our children isn’t just a problem to be solved. It’s a life-long, generation-spanning, communal endeavor that we never stop working on and never really solve. We just have to keep doing it. Donors have to give and teachers have to adapt and parents have to work with the schools to achieve the best outcome for their children.

Compromise, on all fronts, is always going to be a part of the solution. But only b’dieved, not l’chatchila.

David Magerman

President, The Kohelet Foundation