Everyone holds a multitude of identities that guide our choices: gender, race, occupation, sexuality, and more. As a professor, my research expertise is in how individuals negotiate these many, and often competing, identities when making choices.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, then, that I would one day negotiate between my own competing identities when deciding where to send my kids to school.
When it comes to my ideological views, I identify as liberal. Like for many liberals, this encompasses a commitment to public schooling. I was always educated by public schools and I learned that as a liberal, I should commit my support and my children as students to the public school system. When my first of three kids was ready for kindergarten, I felt lucky that Tucson has a robust public school system with a variety of great schools to choose from.
But then came the pandemic and my family faced the prospect of sending our son to online kindergarten. Given that my husband and I work outside the home, this was not an option for us, and, for the first time, we had to consider alternatives. My family is Jewish, but it was only these circumstances beyond our control that pushed us to try out our local Jewish day school. We figured we would return to public school once the pandemic subsided and in-person classes resumed. But our experience instead led us to reprioritize the significance of our identities for our kids’ education.
At the Tucson Hebrew Academy (THA), my children get an excellent academic education. In addition, they learn to write and speak Hebrew—a complex and historic language—starting at 5 years old. They learn about Jewish heritage, holidays, and history. They talk about morality and values every day. They are encouraged to ask broad, philosophical questions about where they come from and why we are here. Some kids at our school come from religiously observant families, while many do not (our family included). A significant and growing proportion are not Jewish at all but choose THA for its academics, language education, and school community. The students each approach Jewish studies from their unique backgrounds, learning to respect one another. The school is diverse in ways that I could not have imagined (in large part thanks to generous financial aid).
As enrollment drops at Jewish day schools across the country and many struggle to survive, I have commiserated with so many parents like me: liberals who feel deeply uncomfortable about turning their backs on the public school system. The Pew Research Center has found Jews to be the most liberal religious group in America. Nearly 90% of Jewish women voted for the Democratic Party in the 2024 election. We are an ethnic group with an unusually high level of commitment to liberal values—and with that comes a commitment to public schools.
I once assumed that our liberal values meant public school was our family’s obvious and only choice. But now, as a parent and a liberal Jew, I believe that Jewish education needs my family much more than my public school does. Our Jewish community is a tiny ethnic minority– still smaller than our pre-Holocaust numbers. In recent years, my husband and I have started to see antisemitism that we didn’t in our childhoods. The Jewish community needs us to fight for it with the passion that I always thought a liberal should devote to fighting for public schools.
We still donate money to the public school system, and we are proud to live in a TUSD neighborhood where our tax dollars support our strong public schools. But when I bike past my local public school during the wintertime on my way to work, the Christmas decorations and teachers dressed up in Santa Claus hats remind me that my child will always be exposed to Christianity no matter what school they attend. But only by attending a Jewish school can they really be exposed to Jewish heritage.
I do still believe that, as a liberal, I should support the public school system. But I also feel that, as a Jew, I should support our Jewish school. This tension is real, and it is not easy for families like mine to navigate. But it is up to each of us to decide, for ourselves, which identities guide how we live our lives and raise our children. For me, our exceptional local Jewish day school is the right choice both for my kids and for my community.
Samara Klar is a professor at the University of Arizona and a parent of 3 great kids.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arizona Jewish Post or its publisher, Jewish Philanthropies of Southern Arizona.
