Jewish Education Is the Jewish Superpower
Posted on 03/06/2026 @ 10:23 AM
Rabbi Elie Kaunfer of the Hadar Institute presenting "Prayer in a Time of War" on Wednesday, March 4th at Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center. Part of the SAGES in the 305 Lecture Series.
By Mark Kravitz, CAJE Chair
of the Board
This past week felt almost surreal.
Purim always invites reflection. It is the holiday that reminds Jews that history does not always move in straight lines.
Identities are hidden. Events suddenly reverse themselves. The expected outcome is not always the one that arrives.
This year that lesson felt especially vivid.
While Jews around the world were celebrating Purim, many people were also watching events unfold in the Middle East that some observers were already describing as a kind of modern-day Purim story.
Purim itself offers a powerful lesson about identity.
Esther does not begin the story as a hero. She becomes one when she decides to step forward and claim who she is.
Jewish history often turns on moments exactly like that. Someone decides to step forward.
But identity does not appear out of nowhere. It has to be transmitted.
Generation to generation. Through teachers and texts. Through classrooms, conversations, and communities.
In other words, through Jewish education.
I know this not only as the chair of CAJE, the Center for the Advancement of Jewish Education, but from my own experience growing up in Miami.
I graduated from one of the city’s largest Jewish day schools.
I still remember sitting in classrooms wrestling with Hebrew texts and arguing about what they meant. At the time it mostly felt like schoolwork.
Only later did I fully appreciate how much those years shaped my Jewish identity and my sense of belonging.
Seen this way, the pattern becomes hard to miss.
When you step back and think about it, the Jewish survival strategy over the past three thousand years has actually been remarkably simple: We learn.
Other civilizations built pyramids and palaces. The Jewish people built schools instead.
Others invested in monuments. We invested in minds.
That investment has turned out to be one of the most successful continuity strategies in human history.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once observed that to defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilization you need schools.
Jewish learning preserves memory, transmits values, and cultivates the moral courage that allows a community to endure even in uncertain times.
Anyone who has ever opened a page of Talmud quickly discovers another defining feature of Jewish culture.
We question. We debate. We analyze. And sometimes the debates get a little intense. But that is part of the process.
Jewish learning thrives on argument, interpretation, and the belief that every generation can find new meaning in ancient texts.
Pirkei Avot captures this idea in a simple line: “Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it.”
That habit of learning is not incidental to Jewish life. It is the engine of Jewish life.
This is the work CAJE carries forward across Miami.
From young children encountering Jewish ideas for the first time to adults who continue to explore Judaism’s enduring questions, Jewish education is not a phase of life.
It is something that continues across a lifetime.
Today CAJE helps facilitate nearly sixty adult learning experiences each year across the community.
Some take place in living rooms, others on campuses, others on Zoom or around dining tables.
The participants include retirees, young parents, empty nesters, and professionals who make time in busy schedules because learning together still matters.
In a city as dynamic as Miami, Jewish education remains one of the most important ways we sustain Jewish identity across generations.
The Miami Jewish Film Festival offers another example of this culture of learning in action.
Nearly sixty thousand people attended screenings this year, and more than fifty post-film conversations were shaped by CAJE Adult Learning.
In Jewish culture, stories are rarely consumed passively.
We interpret them. We debate them. Often the conversation continues long after the credits roll.
The SAGES in the 305 series grew from a simple idea.
Miami should not only be a destination for sunshine. We already have plenty of that.
It should also be a destination for Jewish ideas.
The series honors the memory of Charles Ganz (z'l), remembered for his curiosity and engagement with Jewish life.
His mother, Ellie Ganz, and the Ganz Family Foundation ensured that his love of learning would continue to inspire meaningful conversations in the community he cared about.
That kind of legacy reflects a core Jewish insight.
Jewish education has been our most reliable investment. And frankly, it has probably delivered a better return than most portfolios.
It remains our greatest asset and, in many ways, our quiet superpower.
When the world feels uncertain, communities often search for sources of strength.
For the Jewish people, one of those sources has always been learning.
We gather. We study. We ask questions. Sometimes we argue a little.
And through that process we remind ourselves who we are.
Jewish learning has sustained the Jewish people for thousands of years. It has outlasted empires.
If history is any guide, it will continue to shape the Jewish future for generations to come, as it always has.
