The children filed out of yellow school buses and descended the stairs to the basement of a Jewish community center in Queens, where they put on plastic aprons and paper chef hats in preparation for a lesson on how to make matzo.
But the trip was not really about baking. It was a dose of religious education, offered free to public school students — during school hours, outside their school’s buildings — under a long-running program known as “released time.”
Established some 70 years ago in school districts nationwide, the program allows children to leave public school early one day a week for religious instruction. It has survived constitutional challenges and dwindling enrollment. In the 1950s and 1960s as many as 100,000 New York City public school students took part; it had just 11,507 participants last month, about 1 percent of the school population, according to the city’s Department of Education.
The city does not track the religions the students belong to, but Catholics and Jews have traditionally used the program most.
Rabbi Shea Hecht, chairman of the board at the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education, a group run by the Chabad-Lubavitch group of Hasidic Jews, says there are roughly 1,500 city Jewish children attending its program, from 109 schools, in every borough but the Bronx. (The city has roughly 1,700 schools.) Its biggest group comes from Public School 175 in Rego Park, Queens, with 86 children. The smallest are from P.S. 42 and P.S. 58 in Staten Island, which have five students apiece.
Msgr. Kieran Harrington, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, which also serves Queens, said that he participated in the program from elementary school through junior high school, starting in 1976, when he attended P.S. 32 in Flushing.
“School kind of emptied out on Wednesday afternoons,” Monsignor Harrington said.
He said that enrollment among Catholics dropped primarily because many of the stay-at-home mothers who were volunteer catechism teachers in the released-time program went to work in the 1980’s, and churches, in turn, opened more religious education classes on weekends. Today, only a small fraction of the more than 35,000 children enrolled in religious education classes by the diocese attend them through the released-time program, Monsignor Harrington said.
Enrollment among Jews also declined significantly once Jewish day schools and yeshivas became more prevalent and Orthodox families increasingly relied on them for their children’s education, Rabbi Hecht said. These days, participants are more likely to come from families who may not be able to afford private education or who are not strictly observant, but still want their children to learn the tenets of their faith.
Recruitment is a challenge, governed by strict rules outlined in one of the schools chancellor’s guidelines. It cannot happen in or near schools, so people like Sadya Engel, a Lubavitch rabbi who coordinates the Jewish released-time program, must rely on ads in PTA newsletters, fliers handed out to parents at community meetings and, most of all, word of mouth.
“The children are our best promoters,” Rabbi Engel said. “That’s why we have to make the classes fun.”
Released time in New York City happens every Wednesday, from 2 p.m. until 3 p.m., which generally leaves instructors with little more than 40 minutes for religious education, accounting for travel time between school and wherever the class is held, be it a church, mosque, synagogue or community center. Teachers whose students participate in released time are advised not to teach any new material during that time. If a test is scheduled, makeup dates should be offered.
Last Wednesday, at the Bukharian Jewish Community Center in Forest Hills, Aharon Matusof, the baker who is a Lubavitch rabbi, directed the children to a pair of long tables, where they would learn to handle the matzo dough.
“Canyouworkveryveryfast-canyou-canyou?” he bellowed into the microphone, his horse-race-announcer clip sending the children into a frenzy.
The task requires speed, skill and strict observance of very specific rules, he said, like the amount of time that can elapse from the moment water and flour mix to the moment the matzo comes out of the oven.
“Eighteen minutes,” Rabbi Matusof told the children. According to tradition, Jewish families fleeing Egypt did not even have time to let their dough rise, and hit the road with the flat bread known as matzo. “If they mix for 19 minutes,” Rabbi Matusof said, “the matzo turns to bread” and is therefore not edible during Passover, when all leavened bread products are banned.
They had 10 minutes left before they had to slide the matzo into the oven.
Gabriella Malayeva, a 7-year-old who is in second grade at P.S. 139 in Rego Park, pulled up the sleeves of her hot-pink shirt and got to work flattening the dough with a roller. Beside her, Gabriela Fazilova, 6 years old and in first grade at P.S. 174, also in Rego Park, gently rubbed some flour on a ball of matzo she had yet to handle.
Seven minutes left.
“You have to poke holes on the matzo,” Rabbi Matusof instructed them. “Poke holes on both sides, moreholesmoreholesmoreholes-rollroll-skinnyskinny-pokeholespokeholes.”
Mariya Korostyleva, 9, a third grader at P.S. 144 in Forest Hills, furiously stabbed at the matzo with a white plastic fork.
Three minutes.
It was the second of three Passover classes: in the first, they learned about the meaning of the holiday, and in the third, they will learn what makes a proper Seder.
Rabbi Matusof, his neat beard sprinkled with flour, assessed the students’ work, giving pointers to those whose matzo was still too thick (“This looks like pizza,” he told one boy) and praise to those who got it just right.
“Bakingtimebakingtime,” he announced. The children carefully peeled their matzo from the table, cradled it in their arms and, one by one, walked toward the oven.
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