Jewish day schools today educate students in a cultural environment shaped by distraction, rapid information flow, and exposure to competing value systems. For many students, religious language and practice can feel inherited rather than chosen, and belief can appear fragile or performative. In this context, the central challenge for Jewish education is not simply how to transmit faith, but how to cultivate a form of faith that is resilient, reflective, and capable of growth.

I submit that faith in K-12 Jewish education does not develop primarily through doctrinal instruction or rote assent. Instead, it emerges through lived experience, responsibility, and structured encounters with doubt. Rather than treating doubt as a threat, Jewish education can frame it as a catalyst for deeper commitment.

In my first year of teaching, I taught a student whom we will call Yossi. From the time he started 1st grade reading groups, Yossi was placed in the lowest track. This pattern persisted through my 11th grade Gemara class. A few weeks into the first semester of 11th grade, Yossi approached me after class to ask me a burning question which he was embarrassed to ask in front of his peers. He asked, “Who is Rabbi Baraita?” I said, “What do you mean?” He responded, “My past teachers kept explaining ‘the Baraita says…’ Who is Rabbi Baraita and why is he referred to as the Baraita?”

The rapid shifts in society brought on by the coronavirus pandemic open up an opportunity to understand the challenges children face in school at the system level. Parents tend to address their child’s issues “in the moment,” at a specific (and perhaps, granular) level. This makes sense: parents understand their children’s experiences in school via a limited set of data from a limited number of informants. The COVID crisis brought school into the home, and as such, gave parents a new view into their child’s school experience, a chance for parents to pause, step back, and partner with the school to explore challenges from a systems level. In order to do this, parents need to understand not only how schools work, but how the systems of schools work. A child in one system context looks different than the same child in another system.