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NEWS
Religious School Enrollment in Johannesburg Reaches 40%
by Yated South African Correspondent
Four Jewish children in ten in Johannesburg who attend a
Jewish day school are now enrolled at one of the eight
religious schools operating in the city according to the
latest enrollment figures. More than 80% of Jewish children
in South Africa attend Jewish day schools, with most of the
remainder going to private colleges.
Despite ongoing Jewish emigration, the religious schools
have shown steady growth over the past ten years. Most
children from religious homes who leave tend to go to Israel
or the United Kingdom.
In contrast, the three King David schools, whose guiding
philosophy is termed "national-traditional" with Zionism as
the central component, have suffered from falling numbers
and have been unable to make good their losses to
emigration. This year, for the first time in their 52 year
history, the schools were forced to turn away Jewish
children whose parents could not afford even the minimum fee
required by the financially stressed schools. Despite their
traditional emphasis on Zionism, the majority of children
from the King David schools who emigrate go to Australia or
the United States. The King David schools, while attended
mainly by children from non-Torah-observant families, have
nevertheless significantly deepened the religious content of
their curricula in recent years and the numbers of
religiously observant pupils there are growing.
The growth of religious institutions in Johannesburg, home
to more than two-thirds of South Africa's 80,000 Jews, has
been dubbed a silent revolution and has been gradually
supplanting or taking over the city's traditional religious,
educational and civic infrastructures. This phenomenon has
been particularly pronounced in the youth movement scene,
where the previously dominant left-wing Zionist movement
Habonim has been completely eclipsed by Bnei Akiva. Concern
has been expressed, however, over the fragmentation of the
community and the effect this will have on communal funding.
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