Welcome
Welcome to The Jewish Educator - NewCAJE's journal of Jewish Education. Here you'll find summaries of the articles, links to the full PDF's, and - most importantly - a chance to comment on what you read.
Please keep the conversation going.
A Changing Vision Leads to a Brighter Future
by Eyal Bor and Jill Eisen
The role of being an educator has changed. No longer is it just about writing the finest
curriculum, offering engaging lesson plans, and providing inspiring teacher development. Our
focus is now diverted to reaching out to unaffiliated families and fundraising.
Throughout the country, we have seen a trend where families lost the need, desire or ability to
be a part of mainstream Judaism and have chosen not to affiliate with synagogues or religious
schools.1 As a result, the future of our Hebrew schools is in peril. Funding for Jewish education
is scarce, causing those in the profession to lose their jobs or reevaluate careers where they do
not see a future. Registration plummets after Bar/Bat Mitzvah as the desire to continue in
Jewish education is no longer a priority.2 Something must be done to reverse this disturbing
trend and regain interest in Jewish education. The structure of religious school must become
flexible and convenient for families. The content must be tailored to meet the personal needs
of the students, whether the child is from an interfaith family, has learning challenges or is
advanced in Hebrew communication. We have made it our mission to make our religious
school Baltimore, MD strong, interactive, and prosperous.
By Tamara Beliak
A Judaism based on community and focused on the “here and now” of a person’s life will build Jewish identity and inspire long-term allegiance to Judaism.
Two years ago, this issue crystallized for me in the “eternal classroom,” my family’s Pesach seder. One uncle in his 50′s was talking about how much it had meant for him to travel to Poland and how much it strengthened his Judaism. His daughter, a senior in high school, was unimpressed and countered that if anti-Semitism was the man reason to be Jewish, she wanted out. As a teacher of Jewish History, this predicament is something I struggle with.
Judaism as a Spiritual Path
By Zvi Bellin
Zvi’s dream for being a Jewish educator is to ground the intellectual pursuit of study in the process of helping people live more authentic and supported lives.
We were 40 GLBTQ Jews gathered together for an alternative Shabbat morning prayer service. As co-facilitator of the service, I was faced with a significant issue. The Torah scroll that had been reserved for our group was torn, and thus was considered pasul (unfit for ritual use). My co-leader and I discussed several viable options to proceed with the Torah service and decided that we could use the “broken” Torah as a focal point for a healing service that we offered before we read from a Chumash (Torah text book).
The Beating Heart of Jewish Education
By Heidi Rabinowitz Estrin
We are the People of the Book, and the library is the beating heart of our very Jewish love of learning.
If you are lucky, your institution has its own library. I don’t mean a bookshelf in a corner, filled with random donated volumes. I mean a full-service circulating library, staffed by a librarian who supports your curriculum. That is my wish for you — that you have access to a library like the one I am privileged to run at Congregation B’nai Israel in Boca Raton.
A Touch of Love in the Curriculum
By Celeste Kessler
Once in a while we have to allow a touch of love in our curriculum.
Middle grades were my favorites when teaching Sunday School teaching. One cold, cloudy day (in California, we have those on occasion, in February), it was nearing noon, the end of sessions on Valentine’s Day, and a shy, sweet little girl surreptitiously handed me a greeting card.
Working Collaboratively to Provide Jewish Identity
By Helene Kornsgold
Helene advocates for working collaboratively to redefine the current state of Jewish education.
From the time I was five years old through graduate school, I have always studied at a Jewish school. Living life as a Jew was just what I did. I studied about Judaism at school and practiced Judaism at home. I grew up with a love of and deep appreciation for Judaism and what it meant to be a Jew. It was not until I was older that I realized others did not live the same way as I did. Now I know better!
By Miles L. Roger
Miles knows that it is equally important to have quality teachers in our classrooms and administrative staff who are committed to the cause of Jewish education.
The current world of Jewish education is very different from that of twenty years ago. We are no longer living in a Jewish world where the Jewish educator at our local synagogue or Federation agency is the one with the answers. No longer are we dependent on catalogs from Israel or New York to provide us with materials for our classrooms. Our ties with Israel are not to create a Jewish state, but to maintain a strong one. This is no longer your parent’s world of Jewish education.
The Israel Connection
By Alex Schindler
Alex understands that learning about the social issues that confront Israelis today forges strong connections between American Jews and the Jewish State.
Diogenes Laertius, the biographer of Greek philosophers, was in as good a place as anyone to recognize that “The foundation of any state is the education of its youth.” He was, after all, the historian of multiple traditions, one who described the achievements of Athens and of Sparta as well as the intellectual foundations undergirding them. His dictum thus should be taken to heart by we who inherit the traditions of Moses and of Maimonides, of Hezekiah and of Herzl, of Jerusalem and of Athens. Modern Israel, after all, has been described (originally by Saul Bellow) as a place that captures Jewish (and gentile) admiration for succeeding in the traditions of both Athens and Sparta.
Queering Judaism
By Joanna Ware
Joanna posits that listening to the insights and perspectives informed by a view from the margins, underbelly, and sidelines of Judaism strengthens Judaism.
My parents joined a synagogue when I was eight years old, at my behest. When I began expressing a need for spiritual and religious community, they attempted to channel my desires in the direction of religious communities more palatable to my father’s anti-authoritarian, agnostic, fundamentally scientific worldview. Though halachically Jewish, I also am the child of two agnostic scientists from different faith backgrounds, which has meant a complicated relationship with religion in my family. We sat in on Quaker meetings, attended Unitarian Services, even toured the meditation grounds of the Self Realization Fellowship, but none of them quite grabbed my interest. When we left erev Shabbat services at the local synagogue, though, something had stuck in my head and my gut, and we joined the next week.
Finding the Divine
By Leah Wolff-Pellingra
Leah believes that the future of Jewish education beings when we give our students permission to seek their own answers.
Every person finds the Divine in his or her own way. Each of us must struggle and strive to find our path. Truly, we are Israel: the ones who wrestle with God.
As a cantorial soloist and educator, it is my privilege and joy to share my path with others. I invite my students to question and to seek answers by showing them that I do the same. I work to give them tools that they can use throughout their lives. Their journeys to their own relationships with God do not end when they leave our schools. They will do as we do, finding their own paths throughout their lives. When we create joyful Jewish memories, when we give our students permission to question and to “wrestle” while they are young. We give them the strength to find their own way.
Impacting the Community Through Music
By Emily Aronoff
Emily’s mission is to educate and empower children and their families through music.
I want to teach, create, and share music that is developmentally appropriate and accessible for young children, while remaining educational and enjoyable for their families.
I believe wholeheartedly in the power of informal education and utilize music as my tool of choice. I love to work with young children and their families because I believe that creating terrific experiences for families in these formative years lays a foundation for a lifelong love of Jewish learning. These positive associations with Judaism can be powerful tool in our efforts to retain students in our schools and youth programs.
Extending Community and Responsibility
By Mara Berde
A Jewish educator finds that the same Jewish values she was raised on are values that exist in Rwanda and around the world.
“Why would a Jewish educator spend a year in Rwanda? Are there Jews in Rwanda?” This was a common response when I announced that I’d be spending a year volunteering in Rwanda after completing my Master’s degree in Jewish Education. While there are no Jewish Rwandans, the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village is modeled after youth villages in Israel — another country that faced an orphan problem after the Jewish people were ravaged by genocide — and imbues its youth with the values of community, respect, integrity, learning, and support of one another.
By Sapphira Fein
The job of the Jewish educator is to make being Jewish engaging and valuable in a time when there are so many distractions.
Tell what you were doing at 10:00 this morning. I dreaded ice-breakers in general, but this one in particular was a nightmare. It was bad enough that at every Friday night Shabbat dinner the first line of conversation with anyone — whether someone new or a regular in the havurah — would be about our professions. Weren’t we supposed to refrain from work on Shabbat? Nonetheless, we went around in a circle, each sharing a glimpse into is or her life. After several people mentioned their patients or promotions, their successful legal cases or loving family, it was my turn. At 10:00 that morning, I had sold a $35,000 diamond ring at Tiffany & Co. I really wanted to make up something like I was working with homeless families on a mural for the public library or I was signing a contract to be a tap dancer for a South American cruise company. But, if I had lied, I may not have become a Jewish educator.
My Life as a Teacher – Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
By Yehudis Fishman
Teaching is changing the world for good, one person at a time.
Like the famous role in Mr. Holland’s Opus, teaching for me was often an afterthought. On one hand, living as a welfare child in the slums of Roxbury, the Judaic teachers at Maimonides School in Boston during the 40′s and 50′s were both my heroes and my saviors from an otherwise humdrum life. But so were the literary and mythic figures that captured my imagination in classic literature. So, as my graduation drew near, being a teacher was too ordinary a profession for a dreamy, somewhat introverted Jewish girl. But, as the saying goes, “A mench tracht un Gott lacht,” or its contemporary counterpart, “Life happens when you’re making other plans.”
Identifying the Mission
By Darren Kleinberg
Only an understanding that all of Judaism has evolved and changed over time will empower and reassure students that they, too, can be a part of the process of change within Judaism.
As an educator in a pluralistic, community high school, I have never been committed to students graduating as Conservative, Reform, or Orthodox Jews. A student’s standard of observance never has been the measuring stick. My goal always has been to graduate students who, regardless of their particular affiliation (or lack thereof) — take their Judaism seriously.
Torah Lishma
By Shira Lowenstein
To help students understand that learning is a never-ending process filled with small, subtle rewards Jewish educators must become more transparent about their own teaching practices.
In Pirkei Avot 6:1 (Ethics of the Fathers), we learn that a person who learns purely for the sake of learning will merit many things. The mishnah goes on to tell us how important this concept is: a person who learns for no merit will have abundant auxiliary rewards. As a teacher, I firmly believe in learning for no outward reward. How do I get my students to embrace this idea? How can I teach them to love learning just for the love of it? How can I show them the importance of their education, without sounding didactic and phony?
Forty Years in the Oasis
By Ed Frankel
Our texts are the documentation of our existence as a people. Constantly relating lessons and values of the past to realities of today helps students examine their world through Jewish eyes.
Mom thought I was crazy, some forty years back, when I followed in Dad’s footsteps and began my career as a Jewish educator.
I had no long-term goals when I started. I really had little idea what I was doing. I had yet to receive any training and could not distinguish between methods and goals, skills and knowledge sets. Back then, as I strove to bring in a little gelt, I operated on pure instinct as I pushed my sluggish students to read more rapidly, to think less, and just do it. Did I have any sense back then that decoding was strictly a skill? Naah! Still, the gut instinct was borne out by the research I discovered when my career blossomed and as I advanced from Jewish educator to becoming a fully-trained educator who specialized in Judaism.
By Paul A. Flexner and Richard D. Solomon
Blended instruction — a combination of face-to-face classroom teaching with an online component or a mix of both asynchronous and synchronous instruction taking place entirely online — will enhance the quality of the Jewish learning experience for both K-12 students and post-secondary learners whether as students, faculty members, or adult learners.
The Internet is omnipresent. It is in the homes in which we reside, the places where we dine, and even has infiltrated devices such as the watch, the phone, the calendar, and the address book that originally were designed for a singular purpose. In addition, the Internet, also termed Web 1.0, which was first created to serve as a powerful search engine, has morphed into Web 2.0, a collection of software tools for information sharing, data analysis, collaborative writing, knowledge construction, and dissemination. This transformation in technology from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 has significant implications for teaching and learning. These new Internet tools provide a new platform through which instructors and learners can explore their topics, ideas, and insights online without being in a physical classroom. What are we to make of these changes? How can we harness the power of Web 2.0 to enhance Jewish education?
Building a Dream out of Empowering Reality
By Yechiel Hoffman
As we bridge the gap between secular and religious, formal and non-formal, socialization and empowerment, we must remember that change happens over time and only with the right support. By providing philanthropic and institutional support to change agents, we empower the leaders in Jewish education to build a Jewish education for the 21st Century that will empower others to make change for themselves.
My Jewish and personal journey passes across bridges linking the various worlds I have belonged to personally, spiritually, professionally, and educationally. I journeyed from a Chabad Yeshiva upbringing to become a modern orthodox activist. I migrated from film school to orthodox smicha (Rabbinic ordination). I passed through an education fellowship at a Reform college to a doctorate program in Jewish Educational Leadership at a joint program at a pluralistic Jewish college and a secular university. Each of these bridges enhances my pluralistic approach to Jewish learning and living, as well as my embrace of media and technology as tools to encounter life and social relationships and as a means to challenge and accept my traditional observance. Through my journeys of reflection, I discovered that the engine that drives me down the windy road is my will and desire to empower myself to empower others, whether it be young filmmakers, Jewish teens, or disenfranchised Jews. As an educator, I seek ways to empower not only my students directly, but also their families and communities.
A Dream for NewCAJE
By Leora Koller-Fox
Leora’s dream for NewCAJE is that it be strong for Jewish educators when they fell powerless as individuals, and a powerful voice when they feel they are being silenced.
At my last job, I was laid off when the grant money ran out. I worked at a school where the principal only hired “yes” men because he didn’t trust educators.
More Than One Path to Judaism
By Avram Mandell
Avram aspires to show each family and each individual that there is always more than one path to take when trying to encounter God and more than one path to take on the journey of life.
Innovation, variation, outside-the-box, creativity, online learning, private B’nai Mitzvah ceremonies, summer camp programming, family programming, blogs, emails, tweets, Facebook, social networking… ahhhhh!!! There is so much talk about how to reach our families and how to make Judaism exciting and engaging for our children. All of this could make your head explode. It could make you feel like you’re constantly behind the eight ball. I guarantee you that if I charged $1300 for a pill that would be taken only once a year so that your child wouldn’t have to go to Religious School, but they’d have all of the Hebrew and Jewish knowledge they’d need for that year… I would have a line out my door and around the block.
By Scott Mandel
Aligning our Jewish curricula to the general education curricula that students experience every day will create a cultural awareness within our students of the Jewish presence throughout world, and American, history.
The biggest problem facing Jewish education today is the issue of relevancy. More than ever before, we are facing an entire generation of American Jewish students who see little relevance in their Jewish education. Long past are the days where children were sent to Hebrew School because of grandparent pressure. Today, more than any other time in our history, children who have no desire to attend supplemental school can easily convince their parents to drop the idea. As a result, if Jewish education is not relevant to their lives, supplemental school enrollment falls by the wayside.
Inclusion by Design, not by Default
By Fran Pearlman
It is time that we are proactive and assertive in both our philosophy and in our actions as we move towards Jewish educational institutions of inclusion by design.
In 1981 I began my administrative career in Jewish education in a part-time position. The responsibilities were described as hiring, training, and supervising staff; creating programs; and writing curriculum. Nothing was shared about the students in terms of learning styles or preferences, and certainly the words “inclusion” or “special needs” were never mentioned. At that time, special education was a separate entity in the secular world and certainly in the Jewish education world. There were separate classrooms with specifically trained and experienced faculty who, theoretically, met the needs of those students who were classified as “special edu.”
Jewish Education Should be Good
By Rachel Silverman
Rachel’s vision for Jewish education is a traditional Hebrew School model that offers immersive communal and experiential learning, delivered by stellar educators compensated for their great work and provided with professional development opportunities.
I suppose you could say that I began my career as a Jewish educator as the smarty-pants kid in Hebrew school, correcting classmates’ Hebrew reading. I began my career as a good Jewish educator much later, in high school as a teacher’s aide; during college as a religious school teacher; and in the years since, at summer camps, youth groups, and Israel trips. Now with Masters in Informal Jewish Education from the Davidson School at JTS, a year running a small congregational Hebrew School, and a new job as the Associate Director of Prozdor in Newton, MA, I like to think my skills as an educator have come a long way.
