The 1920’s in America marks the beginning of a period when a segment of the Jewish community started opting for private sectarian Jewish all day schooling for their children, instead of the U.S. public school system along with “supplemental” Jewish education classes. When tracing the rhetoric which accompanied the recruitment of individuals to join this new endeavor in the press, it is clear that the attempt was being cast wholeheartedly as within the “true spirit of Americanism”. The educators leading the venture proposed that the goal of the new institutions would be “to forge the best Jew and consequently the best American (The Jewish Forum, 1925)”. They rejected the charges that parochial schooling erected a “wall” between an insular community and the “outside” world, and rather contended that the person fortified with his own faith would do the best job at truly integrating with and fully contributing to society at large. Even regarding the teaching of “controversial” subjects, such as Darwinian evolution, these faith based schools were ever-conscientious about placing their narrative within the greater-American story, with an emphasis on their over-arching pro-science stance, even if there might be some scientists, say those who claimed that science has proven religion out-dated, with whom they disagree. The proposed paper will look specifically at the teaching of Darwinism, then and now, in “modern Orthodox” Jewish institutions as a medium through which to look at questions relating to the relationship of science and religion in society—does America ask its citizens to accept a strict separation between science and religion, and at what benefit versus what cost?
