To help the Jim Joseph Foundation and the field better understand how pivoting to distance learning has unfolded for Jewish education and professional development organizations, Rosov Consulting interviewed nine program providers from the Jim Joseph Foundation Professional Development Initiative (PDI) cohort, along with five other Foundation grantees that operate in overlapping fields. The interviews explored the initial choices organizations made and how those choices evolved over time. We investigated the challenges that programs faced when moving online, whether and how they were able to address those challenges, the positive “silver linings” of being forced to reimagine how they do their work, and which dimensions might continue once people can gather in person again.
This report synthesizes the key themes we heard in these conversations, categorized into the challenges programs have faced in the pivot to distance learning, the strategies to overcome them that have proved most effective, and the opportunities (both predictable and surprising) that have emerged from the crisis. We conclude by sharing organizational leaders’ perspectives on how they envision the “new normal” in a post-COVID world.
Zooming Toward the Future: The Challenges, Strategies, and Opportunities of Distance Learning, Rosov Consulting, September 2020
Supported by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation and Jim Joseph Foundation, the Benenson Strategy Group surveyed 1,001 American Jews nationwide, ages 18-40, from June 29 – July 15, 2020. The research objectives of this projects were to:
- Assess how Jewish young adults are responding to the ongoing pandemic and how they are engaging (or not engaging) with virtual programming from organizations right now.
- Understand what kinds of virtual programming Jewish young adults are seeking out right now, and why: what appeals to them about certain programs and/or organizations, what kind of needs they fill, and what it is about a program that makes it worthwhile or meaningful.
- Identify how organizations can enhance and expand virtual Jewish programming to best meet the needs of young Jews today.
Virtual Engagement Research, Benenson Strategy Group, August 2020
Access the data files to Virtual Engagement Research from the Berman Jewish Databank
Read Emotion Before Content: Evidence Based Recommendations for Designing Virtual Jewish Engagement, by Rella Kaplowitz, Stacie Cherner, and Lisa Narodick Colton, in eJewish Philanthropy
In July 2020, 16 Jewish day high schools fielded a survey to their students about their experience of remote learning since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey was developed with support from the Government of Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs as part of work for Unit.Ed—a day school initiative in Europe and Latin America. It was originally fielded in Jewish communities such as Milan, Paris, and Buenos Aires. Subsequently, it was slightly modified for students in North America. North American data were collected and analyzed by Rosov Consulting with the support of the Foundation and in partnership with Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools. After data analysis was complete, interviews were conducted with school leaders at the schools whose students had responded most positively in order to learn about their educational practices during this period.
This bulletin focuses on student responses to the question: “Do you feel that remote learning has set your education back in some way?” Possible responses, on a four-point scale, were: “Not at all,” “A little,” “Somewhat,” and “Very much.” Students were asked to explain their responses to this question in their own words; 1,112 did so.
In total, 1,383 students responded to the North American survey. All of these respondents were enrolled in 9th through 12th grade during the 2019–2020 academic year. Ten of the participating schools are Modern Orthodox; six are Community or Conservative high schools.
Has Remote Learning Set Back Jewish Day School Students?, Rosov Consulting, August 2020
Starting in 2013, when the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative came into existence, the Jim Joseph Foundation along with 10 local funders and 4 national funders came together to make a noticeable difference to the outcomes achieved by Jewish teen education and engagement. Coinvesting with the Foundation, each of the 10 communities crafted local initiatives, while the full group identified measures of success and hired an evaluation firm to assess the extent to which those measures were being achieved.
These two documents from Rosov Consulting—a case study of the Funder Collaborative and a cross-community evaluation report—offer deep insights and learnings about the structure, challenges, and successes of a Collaborative and about the efficacy of efforts in Jewish teen education and engagement.
- Signs Along the Way: A Funder Collaborative Assesses its Influence. This final case study covers a three-year period roughly from November 2016 through the end of 2019 and attempts to answer the questions posed by the final phase in the trajectory of a funder collaborative: How might the Funder Collaborative begin to assess its impact in the field of teen engagement and how, if at all, are ideas spreading between and beyond the work of the funders?
- Cross-Community Evaluation for the Funder Collaborative. The evaluation presents findings of work completed during the 2018–2019 program year and homes in on those findings most ripe for appreciation and action. There is a strong correlation between teens’ connection to Jewish values and the influence those values have on the lives teens choose to lead. Substantive Jewish content creates a sense of belonging, a desire to do good in the world, and a platform for teens to build friendships—these peer relationships also contribute to strong Jewish outcomes overall. The report concludes with recommendations applicable beyond the 10 community-based teen initiatives, informing any organization committed to effective teen programs, professional development for youth professionals, and affordability of programs for parents.
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