Two Jews Three Opinions: Klal Yisrael Pluralism and the Jewish Community Day School Network

Two Jews Three Opinions examines a unique educational movement that began in 1980 when eight school leaders met to create RAVSAK: the Jewish Community Day School Network an association of schools distinguished by being inclusive of all Jews in their communities. This singularly-purposed segment of the Jewish educational mosaic has not been studied before. As American Jews struggle with changing demographics and identities it is instructive to see how community day schools and their network anticipated and accommodated many of this centurys most significant Jewish educational challenges. Two Jews Three Opinions illuminates the community day school networks embrace of Klal Yisrael the unity of the Jewish people. It describes what led to RAVSAKs success and then to its elimination as an entity the exceptionality and importance of which was vastly undervalued and underserved by the American Jewish establishment. Arguing for the vital importance of pluralistic Jewish education in the twenty-first century it issues a call to Jewish communal leaders to champion community day schools as guarantors of a knowledgeable and committed Jewish future. Barbara Sheklin Daviss Two Jews Three Opinions is an impassioned and learned defense of the Jewish community day school. Davis takes the reader through the history of RAVSAK the Jewish Community Day School Network and argues that in an age of extremes the pluralistic Jewish day school is more important than ever in safeguarding the perpetuation of a vital literate non-Orthodox Jewish center. --Jonathan Krasner Brandeis University Barbara Sheklin Davis is the author of 100 Jewish Things to Do Before You Die The Syracuse Jewish Community and Syracuse African Americans. She is editor-at-large of HaYidion the field-leading Jewish educational journal and professor emerita at Onondaga Community College. For twenty-seven years she was head of the Syracuse Hebrew Day School. She lives in Syracuse winters in Jacksonville Beach and is the proud mother of three and grandmother of nine.