Last night, for the first time, I actually studied Torah with my son.

I had dreamed of the moment for years. I was helping my 7-year-old Joshua with his second-grade homework, and, together, we read and translated the Hebrew words.

Ever since we began attending synagogue, Josh has been fascinated to "read from the Torah," and ever since a relative gave him a paper Torah-scroll replica, Josh longed to be able to read it.

When homework was done, I brought him the scroll, rolled it to the verses we had studied, and asked him to read from it and translate. He did, with such excitement he could barely contain himself. As a parent, I felt his joy vicariously - I think, even more intensely.

My daughter Eliana, in kindergarten, is already ahead of me. She reported to my wife that she learned in school about the mitzvah of hashavat aveidah - translating the term for us (returning lost objects). She's learning not only mitzvot but middot (proper behavior) from each weekly Torah portion, like the importance of being thankful, respecting one's parents - the kind of values we teach at home, but need reinforcing at school. The kind that we can only wish our public schools can teach.

For both of them, reading Hebrew is as easy as reading English. Why shouldn't it be? They learned a "B" and a "Bet" at the same time. A new letter is a new letter, and, at that young age, it’s all new. In one year, my son learned four alphabets (upper and lower case English, Hebrew block, and Hebrew script) without problem, now reading them as an average seven-year-old can read English.

So why is someone like me, who had served as a UAHC Regional Board member and on UAHC’s Commission on Synagogue Executive Committee, sending my kids to an Orthodox day school?

First, I’m determined that they get the Jewish education I never got. Second, I’m determined that they learn values and ethics that they won't likely learn at public school. Third, I’m determined that they not get "burned out" on Judaism by having to spend precious play time in a Sunday or an after-school Hebrew program.

My friends and relatives wonder if my kids are being deprived of a "multi-cultural" consciousness, and if, as they get older, they will be able to "fit in" to the larger American society. My answer is simple: hey, if you live in America, you are exposed to American culture, like it or not. My children hardly lead insulated lives; they learned to skateboard from the Catholic kid next door. My son's into The Phantom Menace; my daughter, Toy Story (I and II) and both are avid fans of A Bug's Life, among other contemporary offerings.

But any loss of lack of exposure to all that American society has to offer (much of it hardly healthful) is more than outweighed in my mind with what my children gain from a strong Jewish education. I often think about how many Jewish adults today feel reluctant to go to synagogue because of the hard time they have figuring out what's going on. Until two years ago, that huge group included me (and I still get lost occasionally!). One reason I never visited the Hillel at my college was that I feared my lack of Jewish knowledge would be exposed. That four-year separation from my Jewish religious heritage all too easily stretched into 10 years, and I was so close to fully dropping my Jewish identity. I don't want that to happen to my kids. No way.

An extra bonus of my children's Jewish education is that, through my parent's role as homework-helper, I myself am getting the Jewish education I never had. In two years Joshua will be reading Mishna in the original Hebrew - and I hope I’ll be doing the same.

Then there are the ethics. Even if responsible Jewish parents teach their children the Jewish way - that "returning lost objects" is a mitzvah, that "lashon hara", even truthful hurtful speech, is a sin - how great can their influence be when their kids spend most of their waking hours at school (where the ethical model considers "finders keepers" and "dissing" acceptable social conventions)?

Josh is blessed, moreover, with a fabulous Jewish studies teacher. This young dynamic, enthusiastic "rebbe" thinks nothing of standing on his desk to make a point, or pacing off 300 "arm-breadths" at recess to demonstrate how long Noah's ark was. He plays with the kids during recess, using the playground to inculcate Jewish ethics and values. It's all part of the Jewish educational process, he says.

And as far as the school's secular studies are concerned, not only did my careful comparison with the public school curriculum show them to be right on grade level, but the yeshiva high school into which the day school "feeds" offers an assortment of impressive advanced placement secular studies courses. I now understand why Jewish day school graduates seem to succeed in such high proportions in higher secular education.

Some of my friends chide me for my educational choice, and claim that they send their own children to public schools to "support public education." But my tax dollars support public education as much as theirs do. As a matter of fact, since I'm not utilizing the public school system's services, my support of the system is arguably even greater. The point, in the end, though, is moot. I would never sacrifice what I consider the best interests of my children to make a political statement - and doubt that my friends would either. They just don't realize how much a Jewish education could benefit their kids.

Why so many Jews think that Jewish day school is only for the Orthodox is beyond me. If non-Orthodox Jews care so much about "informed choice," isn't providing their young with a Jewish education the best way to keep them informed, to be in a position to make rational choices about their Jewish futures? As the wife of a local Conservative Rabbi put it at a board meeting: if we want our kids to appreciate their Jewish heritage, they have to at least be able to read Jewish texts in their original language, because all translation is interpretation. Over 90% of the important Jewish texts have never even been translated out of Hebrew. Where I live in Northern Virginia, it seems that almost every Orthodox child attends a Jewish day school, but no more than 5% of children from Conservative families, and only a handful of children from Reform backgrounds do.

What is interesting, though, is that the overwhelming majority of local rabbis – including the Conservative and Reform rabbis, send their children to Day School.

Do they know something most other Jews don't?