The Wall Street Journal is out with an op-ed piece by the left wing critic of the American Jewish leadership, Peter Beinart, endorsing the idea of school vouchers here at America. It is drawn from Mr. Beinart’s new book on what he perceives to be a crisis in Zionism. The tome has been denounced in one publication after another, for, among other errors of judgment, calling for an economic boycott of settlers in Judea and Samaria. In the Journal Mr. Beinart is making the neo-conservative case for school vouchers so as to make it easier for Jewish parents to send their children to Jewish day schools.

A former editor of the New Republic, Mr. Beinart charges that American Jews have done “a singularly bad job of inculcating Jewish commitment” in their children, citing the 50% rate at which Jews intermarry with Christians and others who aren’t Jewish. He concludes that it’s “no coincidence” that America has “one of the weakest Jewish school systems in the world.” Fewer than 20% of American Jewish children attend full-time Jewish schools, he notes — half the rate in France, one-third the rate in Canada and Australia, and one-fourth the rate in Mexico. He blames this on their commitment to public education and the high cost of tuition at Jewish schools.

Jewish schools, he asserts, “rarely have significant endowments or first-rate facilities, and teacher salaries are generally low.” So he complains that “Jewish parents are often asked to pay top dollar for schools with makeshift gymnasiums and antiquated science labs when they can send their children to the best private schools for the same amount of money, or the best public schools for almost no money.” Nor can philanthropy solve the problem. He quotes Jack Wertheimer of the Jewish Theological Seminary as noting that offering a voucher of $2,000 a year to just the 200,000 American youngsters in Jewish schools would require an endowment that, at $8 billion, would be three times what the Jewish Federations raise annually.

The solution Mr. Beinart backs is that America do something like what is done at Melbourne, London, and Montreal, where, as he puts it, “the government picks up part of the tab, often by covering the cost of the school’s secular subjects.” Writes he: “If American Jews want our Jewish schools to flourish, we must push our government to do the same.” He acknowledges it would be a radical shift given that, apart from the Orthodox community, “American Jewish organizations have for decades opposed government funding for religious schools.” He lays this to concerns over intertwining church and state but concludes that such a fear is “overblown.”

Mr. Beinart observes that the prospect of “substantial government aid to religious schools might seem remote” with all the budgetary crises in cities and states. But he notes that there is support among evangelical Protestants, Catholics, and some African Americans. “If,” he writes, “the organized American Jewish community — currently a vocal opponent of vouchers — switched sides, the politics of the issue could change.” He concludes by saying bluntly: “The organized American Jewish community’s excessive concern about the separation of church and state perpetuates Jewish ignorance and thus threatens the Jewish future.” He expresses the hope that they “reconsider while there is still time.”

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We’d be tempted to say “Welcome to the fight,” save for the fact that the New Republic declared for vouchers back when Mr. Beinart was its editor. It did so for situational rather than principled reasons. In any event, vouchers are a far better fight for him than his campaign for a boycott of the West Bank settlements. All the more so because whatever else one can say about the settlers on the West Bank, they’ve figured out how to educate their children Jewishly and to expand their population. They’ve done so under the most hostile conditions. Mr. Beinart might yet discover, if he keeps an open mind, that the neo-conservative prism will open his eyes not only to possibilities in respect of education but in respect of other problems that have stymied the statist left. The realities of Jewish education are as good a reality as any other by which to be mugged.