The tremendous emphasis that Judaism places on education is powerfully stated by Maimonides:

"Appoint teachers for children in every country, province and city. In any city that does not have a school excommunicate the people of the city until they get teachers for the children. If they don't, destroy that city because the world exists only because of the breath of children studying."
MISHNA TORAH, "The Laws of Learning Torah" 2:1 in Quote 22

Imagine how different the world would have been if this law was universally in effect 1,000 years ago. No Jewish city ever lacked a school, even in the Diaspora. The French medieval monk, Peter Abelard (1079-1142), wrote about Jewish education:

"A Jew, however poor, even if he had ten sons, would put them all to letters, not for gain as the Christians do, but for understanding of G-d’s law. And not only his sons but his daughters."

ELLIS ISLAND

What a different attitude the Jews had towards education than the rest of the world. This commitment to education is consistent throughout Jewish history. In 1910, the U.S. Immigration Commission carried out a study on literacy among new immigrants in America. They discovered that the rate of literacy among the new Jewish arrivals from Eastern Europe was 74%, significantly higher than the 60% overall figure in the U.S. And these were Jews coming from one of the poorest and most oppressed Jewish communities in the world!

Today, Jews comprise about 25% of both the student body and faculty of the Ivy League schools, although in the U.S. they constitute less than 2.5% of the population.

In theory and practice, Jewish communities have always made education a top priority.

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