One class is analyzing a talmudic debate after having read it in the original Aramaic; in a neighboring room, students are conversing entirely in Hebrew; in a third, an "Ethicist" column from the New York Times is being examined in light of rabbinic sources; in still another, young men and women are working their way through a biblical text.

A Jewish day school? No: a "supplementary" high school in New Jersey whose students attend once a week, most on Sunday but others after a full day at their regular school. There, at the Bergen County High School of Jewish Studies (BCHSJS), they have the option of picking their own courses from a menu of electives. But the setting has all the academic trappings of a superior "real" school—clearly articulated syllabi and goals; the expectation that students will attend regularly, prepare homework assignments, and write exams; enforced penalties for delinquency; and formal assessments at the end of each semester.  Such has been the credo of the school's principal, Fred Nagler, ever since he took over as principal a quarter-century ago. Only a strong academic atmosphere with accountability, he is convinced, will earn student respect and motivate student performance.

The fundamental purpose of BCHSJS is to address one of the most scandalous facts of American Jewish life. For most young people, Jewish education ends right after bar or bat mitzvah, leaving them with a childlike understanding of their religious culture just as they are developing the capacity to think in a more mature way. In supplementary education, as a rule, one-third of the students quit after the seventh grade, and only 15 percent of seventh graders are still enrolled by grade 12.  Even day schools, at least those under non-Orthodox auspices, suffer similarly sharp declines. True, a number of non-Orthodox congregations manage to hold on to their adolescents by means of educational programs and other sorts of activities. But communal supplementary schools, designed like BCHJS to attract teens from a wide geographical area, may offer much greater promise. 

The Bergen County school highlights both the weaknesses and the strengths of communal education.  The main weakness is this: by definition, it takes a community to support a communal school. Yet even though BCHSJS serves the needs of young people from numerous synagogues, it has great difficulty recruiting adults from those synagogues, or for that matter from local Jewish philanthropies and service organizations, to champion and fight for its interests.

Against this, however, are the strengths.  Academically, precisely because it draws from over a dozen synagogues (most of them Conservative), the school enjoys a sufficient critical mass to sustain diverse offerings. With nearly 300 students, it can field courses in Jewish texts, the arts, values, identity-building, and language, and appeal to students coming with different levels of preparation. Socially, a communal school offers Jewish teens a unique opportunity to meet and befriend others from outside their immediate environs: this, in fact, is one of the major attractions of BCHSJS.

Nor, for all its emphasis on academic study, does BCHSJS ignore this side of its students' lives. Far from it. A full-time staff member organizes after-school activities ranging from service projects (visiting residents in a Jewish senior-citizens home, cleaning up a Jewish cemetery) to outings at amusement parks.  Even more critically, the school encourages participation in weekend programs where students celebrate the Sabbath with each other and with the faculty.  Several teachers, despite the part-time basis of their employment, go out of their way to develop a personal relationship with students, including by inviting them to their homes for the Sabbath.

There is no great mystery here. Many BCHSJS teachers are motivated by a strong sense of Jewish mission. They also appreciate the unusual opportunity to teach in a school with clear expectations. And the results are palpable. As one teacher sums up: "the more you ask from kids, the more they deliver." As for the students—admittedly a self-selected group, but not just an academically high-powered one—they have their own explanation for why they push themselves to get up early on Sunday mornings to go to class while most of their friends sleep late. Says one: "Unlike in [regular] school where you are forced to go . . . I feel like [this] is family. . . . [They're] not shoving stuff down my throat. Even though I don't have strong religious views, . . . I like how we face problems with other points of view." To a tenth grader, "The teachers are a lot more approachable than in public schools. . . . [BCHSJS] has changed my views on Judaism."

The way of BCHSJS is not for everyone. Other communities, of similar size and density, emphasize service programs or Jewish arts activities for their teens. But they would do well to consider, as well, a rich school experience on the BCHSJS model. Not only can teens handle it; some significant number of them enjoy the challenge.

Jack Wertheimer, professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, is the author of A People Divided, among other books, and the editor most recently of Learning and Community (Brandeis).