(RNS) — A newly released census of Jewish religious schools for non-Orthodox children in the United States shows that enrollment had plunged over the decade and a half preceding the pandemic, falling by nearly 45%.The forces that depressed attendance are still present. That, along with, according to experts, a turn to online learning during the pandemic, mean that the trend has likely continued in the past three years.
The Jewish Education Project’s census of the 2019-20 school year found there were 135,087 children enrolled in U.S. “supplementary schools,” known familiarly as Hebrew schools, down from 230,000 in the 2006-07 school year when the last census was taken. The census focused on children in liberal Jewish movements who do not attend Jewish day schools.
In addition, the number of religious schools, most of them attached to synagogues, dipped from 1,700 to 1,398, almost 20%. Most of that decline came from the 150 religious schools in the Conservative movement that have shuttered.
Jewish religious schools, which typically meet on Sunday mornings and on two weekday afternoons, have been a staple of American Jewish life. Parents enroll their children in all grades but particularly in fifth or sixth grade, when students are preparing for their bar or bat mitzvahs, the coming-of-age ritual when boys and girls first read from the Torah in front of the cong …

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