Jewish Literacy

I chuckled in nervous recognition the other day, when I read a piece that began, “This summer, I paid my 12-year-old daughter $100 to read a book. As far as mom maneuvers go, it was definitely last ditch and the size of the payout was certainly excessive. I can’t say I am proud — but I am extremely satisfied. Because the plan worked. It worked so well, I’d suggest other parents of reluctant readers open their wallets and bribe their kids to read, too.” (Mireille Silkoff New York Times, 9-2-24)

A few decades ago I also tried bribery. Concerned that my pre-teen kids had already lost their youthful love of reading I came up with the idea of paying them a penny a page.  For a little while it worked; reading a short novel doubled their allowance. But soon the kids wizened up to the ruse, and declared it made no economic sense. But distressingly, they did not counter-offer. They said they had better things to do with their time and had enough homework as it is.

So my experiment to encourage reading for pleasure failed (disclaimer- my kids think it did work to an extent). And apparently its failing all over. We don’t need statistics to tell us what we see anecdotally every time we try to wean our youth away from their screens. But a 2021 federal survey confirmed our fears and found that almost a third of 13-year-olds said they “never or hardly ever” read for fun. That’s way, way up from the 8 percent who said the same when my kids were young, roughly 35 years ago. The picture was similar for older teens. Less than 20% of both cohorts now read for pleasure on a daily basis.

The pandemic only increased our kids’ digital addiction. And while they technically may be reading on-line during their free time, more often than not it is rather mindless scrolling, and nothing like the “deep reading” of non-fiction and novels that truly educates, illuminates, and motivates.

As a rabbi (never-mind as a parent and now grandparent), I’m concerned about the decline not just of literacy in general, but Jewish literacy in particular.

Here’s the basic question: are your kids (or grandkids) reading great Jewish books?

So what can we do other than lament the situation? Well, even though it didn’t work for me, yes, I believe we should consider bribery. But let’s call it by its positive name: incentive-based compensation!

Here’s my basic idea (for the diaspora Jewish community)- for every age-appropriate Jewish book read for pleasure by our teens, a matching contribution of parents, synagogue and federation will contribute $18 each to a college education fund. Let’s say a teen reads twenty books a year (about one every two to three weeks) for the five years between age 13-18. That would be $5400 toward their college tuition. That’s nothing to sneeze at. Each partner would be contributing $360 per student per year. What a worthwhile investment in the Jewish future.

So what books should our youth be reading? I leave that for each community to decide. Obviously there would be a list for younger teens and older teens. Regarding the latter, I have a list of great Jewish books that I require for adult students converting to Judaism, that could be adapted for older teens. It may be a bit dated, but let’s not neglect the bountiful basket of modern-day classics that we ourselves grew up with.

Shouldn’t every teen read a great history book, like Jews, God and History by Max Diamont?

Shouldn’t every teen read a moving memoir of the Holocaust, like Night by Elie Wiesel?

Shouldn’t every teen read a poignant novel of traditional Jewish life like The Chosen by Chaim Potok, of antisemitism like The Fixer by Bernard Malamud, and of Israel, like Exodus by Leon Uris?

I’m sure that coming up with the master list of great Jewish books will be both informative and fun for each community that endeavors to do so.

Do you remember getting lost in a great book that you could not put down? Do you remember being transported to a new world with new possibilities? Do you remember people, places and stories that quickened your pulse and lodged in your mind?

We are called “the People of the Book”. Let’s live up to our namesake!