This CASJE-supported study investigated how Hebrew is taught and perceived at American part-time Jewish schools (also known as supplementary schools, religious schools, and Hebrew schools). Phase 1 consisted of a survey of 519 school directors around the United States, focusing on rationales, goals, teaching methods, curricula, and teacher selection. Phase 2 involved brief classroom observations at 12 schools and stakeholder surveys (376 total) at 8 schools with diverse approaches. These observations and stakeholder surveys were intended to determine how teachers teach, use, and discuss Hebrew; how students respond; how students, parents, clergy, and teachers perceive their program; and these constituencies’ rationales and goals for Hebrew education.
Here are some of the study’s key findings:
- Most schools emphasize decoding (sounding out letters to form words) and recitation of Liturgical and Biblical Hebrew without comprehension for the purpose of ritual participation. Many schools also incorporate some Modern Hebrew, but only a small percentage teach Modern Hebrew conversation through immersive teaching techniques.
- In addition, most schools practice Hebrew infusion—the incorporation of Hebrew words, songs, and signs into the primarily English environment. The (unstated) goal of infusion is to foster a metalinguistic community of Jews who value Hebrew. This is reflected in the high importance of affective goals—such as associating Hebrew with Jewishness and feeling personally connected to Hebrew—for all constituencies, especially school directors.
- A major challenge in Hebrew education is the small number of “contact hours” that most schools have with their students. On average, schools spend 3.9 hours per week with 6th graders, including 1.7 hours on Hebrew. Multiple stakeholders consider this limited time the most significant challenge. Even schools on the high end of contact hours wish they had more time.
- School directors, clergy, teachers, parents, and students have diverse rationales and goals for Hebrew education, which at times can create tensions. School directors believe parents are only or primarily interested in bar/bat mitzvah preparation. This is true for many parents, but some parents also have other goals for their children, including gaining conversational Hebrew skills. Parents and students value Hebrew for reasons besides bar/bat mitzvah more than school directors and clergy expect them to.
- School directors express less interest in some Modern Hebrew-related goals than do parents and other constituents. Perhaps this reflects school directors’ more realistic sense of what is possible with limited contact hours.
- Students generally express positive feelings about their school and learning Hebrew. Their responses suggest that schools are generally succeeding in affective goals more than school directors believe.
- School directors are more likely to feel they are accomplishing goals that are important to them when certain factors are present: when they have been in their positions longer, when they have realistic goals based on the contact hours they have, when their schools do much of their Hebrew learning in small groups, and when their schools assign a small amount of homework.
- Many schools have trouble finding teachers with sufficient Hebrew knowledge, as well as teachers with adequate pedagogical skills for teaching Hebrew.
- Schools are making changes in opposite directions. Some schools are adding more Modern Hebrew instruction; others are shifting their focus solely to Textual Hebrew.
- Hebrew Through Movement and other elements of #OnwardHebrew have become popular. Many school directors consider these approaches successful.
- Online Hebrew learning is gaining some traction. Online options include gamified activities and one-on-one Skype/FaceTime tutoring sessions (this study was conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic). School directors generally feel that these individualized and technologically based approaches are effective.
- Many school directors and teachers are not aware of the resources for Hebrew education in part-time Jewish schools.
Based on these findings, researchers recommend several actions for schools to take:
- Initiate a comprehensive process of collaborative visioning regarding rationales, goals, and practices involving teachers, clergy, parents, and students.
- Make explicit the primacy of affective goals and expand Hebrew infusion practices to accomplish those goals.
- To teach decoding, spend less class time in large groups and more time in one-on-one and small-group configurations.
- With parent buy-in, offer a small amount of gamified homework.
- Offer multiple tracks or an enrichment option for families interested in conversational Hebrew.
- Change the informal nomenclature to stop using the misnomer “Hebrew school,” except where Hebrew language proficiency is the primary focus.
View the full report, Let’s Stop Calling it “Hebrew School”: Rationales, Goals, and Practices of Hebrew Education in Part-time Jewish Schools and an infographic on the key findings.
CASJE is in the midst of a multipronged project to study the Recruitment, Retention, and Development of Jewish Educators (RRDOJE) in the United States. For the purposes of this study, Jewish educators are defined as individuals who work for pay, either part time or full
time, in an institutional setting geared to Jewish educational outcomes. Or, they’re self-employed individuals intending to achieve the same outcomes. They design and/or deliver experiences for the purpose of facilitating Jewish learning, engagement, connection, and
meaning through direct contact with participants.
The Preparing for Entry strand of this inquiry addresses a set of questions that will shed light on what it takes to launch a career in Jewish education and, in turn, what interventions might encourage promising candidates to seek and take up employment as Jewish educators.
These questions include: What attracts people, after they have completed a college degree or its equivalent, to work in the field of Jewish education? What deters them from the field? What pathways into the field are most likely to yield committed and qualified educators? And what might make the field more attractive to promising candidates?
In this paper, Rosov Consulting explores the central terms in this inquiry: What is a career? How different is someone’s perception and experience of their work when it is seen as part of a career rather than a job? What factors and forces are salient in shaping the desire to pursue a career, and specifically a career in Jewish education? What experiences and resources are understood to prepare individuals psychologically and materially to enter a field of work? What do we mean by deterrents and obstacles to pursuing a career?
Preparing for Entry: Concepts That Support a Study of What It Takes to Launch a Career in Jewish Education, Prepared by Rosov Consulting; Principal Investigator Michael J. Feuer, Dean, Graduate School of Education and Human Development, The George Washington University; CASJE June 2020
Research on the American Jewish population in recent years has measured everything from educational attainment to religious composition, attitudes toward the elderly, views on Israel, geographic dispersal, and political persuasion. Yet, studies to date have not deeply explored the nation’s Jewish young adult population.
Increasingly, young American Jews are being recognized as an independent group within the larger American Jewish community—one that engages with being Jewish in ways that differ from previous generations. Approaches to research, however, have not been updated to reflect that this cohort engages with being Jewish differently. As a result, young American Jews’ attitudes and behaviors are not adequately reflected in research that is based on more long-standing metrics related to ritual and religion. Just what these young people make of their Jewish upbringing and values, and how they self-identify, requires further exploration.
Seeking to fill these gaps and to provide a comprehensive and multi-faceted view of Jewish young adults, a consortium of Jewish philanthropies commissioned Atlantic 57 to conduct a rigorous study of Jewish young adults across the United States. For the purposes of this research, young adults were included in the study if they self-identified as Jewish in any way. By focusing on self-prescribed definitions of being Jewish rather than external measures of such identification, this study allows for a nuanced approach to understanding Jewish engagement. It also challenges definitions of what it means to be Jewish today.
The aim of this research is to provide practitioners and philanthropies with rich context on what being Jewish means to these young adults and on how they engage or aspire to engage in Jewish life. This research does not aim to assess the effectiveness of specific programs on Jewish engagement or to make a value judgment about right and wrong ways to be Jewish.
This research was funded by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Genesis Philanthropy Group, Jim Joseph Foundation, and Maimonides Fund.
Unlocking the Future of Jewish Engagement, Atlantic 57, March 2020
Access the data files to Unlocking the Future of Jewish Engagement from the Berman Jewish Databank.
The New York Teen Initiative (NYTI) is the collaborative effort of UJA-Federation of New York and the Jim Joseph Foundation (as funding partners), and The Jewish Education Project (as lead operator) to redefine the New York area’s Jewish teen engagement field. This ambitious initiative unfolds as part of a national effort—spearheaded by the Jim Joseph Foundation—in which 14 foundations and federations are working together as a Funder Collaborative to expand and deepen Jewish teen education and engagement in 10 communities across the United States.
To evaluate the ongoing success of its second phase, NYTI has partnered with Rosov Consulting to explore the following five questions:
- In what ways and to what extent do NYTI programs demonstrate readiness to expand?
- To what degree does the diversity of the Jewish teens served by NYTI programs resemble the known diversity of the Greater New York City Jewish community?
- Has NYTI’s investment in marketing efforts—specifically the FindYourSummer.org website and the deployment of Find Your Summer Ambassadors—increased market awareness of NYTI?
- What is the ongoing impact of NYTI’s investment in scholarships on incentivizing participation, at a time when the level of subsidization is projected to decline?
- How has the new internship program—Summer Excelerator—fared? Was it able to successfully get off the ground, meet its recruitment goals, and meaningfully engage teens?
Stepping Up and Forward: NYTI 2019 (Phase II Year 1) Evaluation Report, March 2020
Leading Edge piloted the first Employee Experience Survey for the Jewish nonprofit sector in 2016. This survey, which gathers feedback from employees about their experiences at work, has now been taken by 234 organizations in the Jewish nonprofit sector over the past four years. These organizations are using this feedback to ensure that their most valuable asset—their employees—are set up to succeed.
At the heart of the Jewish nonprofit sector is an innate desire on the part of 73,000 professionals to contribute to making the world a better place. These individuals are the engines powering the programs and services that strengthen Jewish communities and enrich society every day.
Are Jewish Organizations Great Places To Work? Results from the fourth annual employee experience survey, Leading Edge and Culture Amp, Fall 2019
Since its launch in 2016, M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education has worked to advance, professionalize, and elevate the field of experiential Jewish education.
Many of M²’s signature programs bring cohorts of professionals together for many months to explore such concepts, the best known being their Senior Educators Cohort. In 2018, M2 received funding along with nine other educator training programs from the Jim Joseph Foundation to create professional development around “deep dives” into specific conceptual frameworks. The first was a Relational Learning Circle, for educators seeking to put relationship-building at the center of their work. After seeing this program’s success at engaging educators in bringing theory to their practice, M² decided to develop a Circle that would explore the application of other conceptual frameworks to Jewish education, as well as reach educators who might not have the ability to commit to a year-long program.
The Design of Immersive Experiences Circle consisted of three five-day seminars in March, May, and September 2019, offered as stand-alone experiences or in combination. Each drew upon a different field of knowledge to explore how educators can create and implement powerful immersive experiences, which M² defines as a “deliberately crafted educational experience where participants leave their home environment for a period lasting from two days to two months.”
As part of the evaluation work for the initiative, Rosov Consulting is producing a series of case studies of the peak moments–some form of intensive, residential, or retreat component–of each program. The second case study explores M²’s work in “The Architecture of Immersive Experiences.”
Building a Field by Bringing Theory to Practice: M²’s “The Architecture of Immersive Experiences,” Rosov Consulting, August 2019
On behalf of the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Center for Creative Leadership is conducting a cross-portfolio research study of leadership development in the American Jewish community to support Jewish learning experiences. The Foundation defines Jewish learning experiences broadly as “experiences that draw upon Jewish wisdom, values, practices, culture, traditions and history to engage people in activities that guide them towards living more connected, meaningful and purpose-filled lives.” The primary research questions guiding this study can be paraphrased as follows:
- How have Jewish leaders developed through opportunities and learning experiences?
- What are best practices for leadership development in the Jewish community?
- How can understanding the learning journeys of Jewish leaders and state of the art practices in leadership development inform strategies to achieve greater impact through investment in leadership development in the Jewish community?
This literature review represents our first step to exploring these complex questions by researching the distinguishing features of Jewish leadership and highlighting the current day challenges faced by Jewish leaders.
Cross-Portfolio Research Study: Literature Review on Jewish Leadership, Executive Summary, Center for Creative Leadership, May 2019
Read the Foundation’s series of guest blogs reflecting on the CCL literature review:
- A Path Forward in Jewish Leadership Development, Mordy Walfish, Leading Edge
- The Power of Leaders Who Leverage Networks, Stosh Cotler, Bend the Arc
- The “Crisis Narrative,” Revisited, Yehuda Kurtzer, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America
- Promote Dialogue: Next Steps as We Navigate Education Challenges in Training for Effective Jewish Leadership, Mark Young
- Polarity Challenges in Developing Jewish Leaders, Yavilah McCoy, Dimensions Educational Consulting
Phase One of the New York Teen Initiative (NYTI) has been a four-year, nine-million-dollar endeavor to redefine the New York City area’s Jewish teen engagement through the incubation of new and innovative models for summer engagement, a robust online marketing platform (FindYourSummer.org), and the provision of scholarships to participating teens and their families. The Initiative is part of a national effort—spearheaded by the Jim Joseph Foundation—in which 14 foundations and federations are working together as a Funder Collaborative to expand and deepen Jewish teen education and engagement in 10 communities across the United States. Over its first four years, NYTI has been jointly funded by UJA-Federation of New York and the Jim Joseph Foundation, with The Jewish Education Project serving as lead operator.
A team at Rosov Consulting has partnered with NYTI to evaluate the efficacy of this endeavor. This report explores NYTI’s ongoing and lasting impact on the programs it has incubated, their sponsor organizations, and the many teens who have benefited from these programs.
In its first four years, NYTI has introduced to the field of Jewish teen engagement a diverse array of programmatic approaches, concepts, and models, some of which are now being replicated by other program providers. It has supported the personal and Jewish growth of hundreds of teens, many of whom would not have otherwise connected to Jewish life. And it has promoted hundreds of Jewish engagement programs through the implementation of FindYourSummer.org.
Cracking the Programming Code: The New York Teen Initiative and Its Contribution to the Field of Summer Experiences and the Lives of Jewish Teens, Rosov Consulting, May 2019
In 2017, the Foundation simultaneously awarded three-year grants to ten different programs offering professional development of Jewish educators. Selected in the Foundation’s first ever competitive RFP process, these programs form a grantee cohort with a Professional Learning Community at its heart. The educators served by these programs include Federation professionals, early childhood directors, day school educators, Talmud teachers, and peer educators.
A team from Rosov Consulting is facilitating the Professional Learning Community and is also evaluating multiple dimensions of the professional development initiative. Rosov Consulting is examining who is being recruited to the 10 programs and their motivations for participation; the ways in which different programs work to develop their participants; and how participants grow professionally, and the outcomes of this growth for their respective fields.
As part of the evaluation work for the initiative, Rosov Consulting is producing a series of case studies of the peak moments–some form of intensive, residential, or retreat component–of each program. The first case study is of the JCC Association Sheva Center for Leadership Institute (SCLI), an initiative intended to build a pipeline in the field of early childhood education of prepared leadership.
Sheva Center Leadership Institute: A Jim Joseph Foundation Case Study, Rosov Consulting, November 2018
This study is animated by the vision that all Jewish teens in America will see their Jewish heritage as a source of wisdom, inspiration, and strength as they grow and discover their place in the world. Authored by The Jewish Education Project and Rosov Consulting, GenZ Now, Understanding and Connecting with Jewish Teens Today is the largest study of American Jewish teens ever conducted, with 17,576 teens participating. It deepens our understanding of the complexities of being a Jewish teen in the United States today.
Among the key headlines from the report:
- Participation in Jewish youth movements, youth groups and other organizations – collectively referred to as youth-serving organizations, or YSOs – measurably contributes to teens connecting to being Jewish, and to feeling good about themselves, their relationships, and their ability to make change in the world.
- Jewish teens get along with their parents and often reflect their Jewish values and practices.
- For Jewish teens, being Jewish is often about family, holiday celebrations, and cultural practices.
- Jewish teens share the troubles and concerns of other American adolescents, notably managing anxiety and depression, and coping with academic pressure.
Perhaps the most important message that communities and organizations can take away from this study is that youth-serving organizations are awesome. Teens who participate in a youth-serving organization (or at least the organizations studied in the report) score higher on almost every outcome measured by our researchers, including affinity toward Israel and behaving with the intention of making world a better place.
The findings of this report suggest an imperative to invest further in youth-serving organizations as a model for teen engagement, both to champion the invaluable work that YSOs are already doing, and to imagine new possibilities, including opportunities that appeal to teens who are underrepresented and not yet engaged.
GenZ Now: Understanding and Connecting With Jewish Teens Today, The Jewish Education Project and Rosov Consulting, March 2019
Access the GenZ Now data files from the Berman Jewish Databank.
Among the many ways in which the internet has irreversibly changed our lives is how it has enabled access to information with unprecedented speed and ease. By changing how we engage with information, it has also changed how people relate to information and how they negotiate its various meanings. Social media have accelerated this process by creating new ways to connect people through sharing information. These changes have influenced our communities, our politics, our consumption patterns, how we spend our leisure time, and even our definitions of “friend” and “like.”
Learning online does not look exactly like learning in classrooms or schools, summer camps or seminaries. Nor should we expect it to. And yet, people are learning online, and this report makes the case for understanding online engagements as educational. The question it answers is, “How are people learning online?” Combining leading research about secular online learning and new data about Jewish online learning, The Future of Jewish Learning Is Here offers a substantive, richly illustrative, and intimately informed account of Jewish learning online. It accounts for when, where, and how it happens, what people are learning, and how they are engaging with information alone and in relation with others. Jewish educational online media enable learners to:
Jewish educational online media enable learners to:
- Connect with others around Jewish learning
- Access Jewish knowledge beyond Jewish institutions
- Learn in sync with the rhythms of the Jewish calendar
- Utilize different platforms for different ends
- Integrate online learning and offline practice
Together, these key findings represent a portrait of Jewish learning online, with the understanding that learning online is more diffuse, less coordinated, more generally self-directed than learning in schools and other formal settings. The Future of Jewish Learning Is Here: How Digital Media Are Reshaping Jewish Education offers insights into how and what people learn online, as part of a larger conversation about what Jewish education looks like in the 21st century.
The Future of Jewish Learning Is Here: How Digital Media Are Reshaping Jewish Education, March 2019
(view as single pages)
Read a series of blogs in eJewishPhilanthropy on insights from the report:
- A Funder Approach to the (Seemingly) Limitless World of Online Learning, Josh Miller and Seth Linden, Jim Joseph Foundation
- Seek and You Shall Find, Eli Kannai, The AVI CHAI Foundation
- Hey Siri, Meredith Lewis, PJ Library
- A Bright Future for Jewish Education and Technology, Daniel Septimus, Sefaria
- Introducing the Future of Jewish Learning, Dr. Ari Kelman, Stanford University
Add comments and feedback on the report here: