News & Blogs Category: From the Jim Joseph Foundation

Over the last few years, many grantee-partners of the Jim Joseph Foundation have created or expanded regional operations. The rationale for, and approach to, this work varies from one organization to the next. And in some cases the staff lead this regional work from home; in other instances the organizations have a regional office—a hub of sorts. Regardless of these differences, these organizations, along with the Foundation, recognize the multiple benefits of this regional structure. Given the costs associated with this, we also understand why organizations might be hesitant to build out their work in this way. That in mind, we asked some grantee-partners to share why they operate in this way, challenges they have faced (and hopefully overcome) and positive outcomes they experience. Responses include themes around organizational nimbleness, deeper collaborations, donor cultivation, customized programming and pilot projects, and much more. Here’s what grantee-partners shared:

Hadar Institute – Designed to Meet Demand

When Hadar opens a new regional office, it’s because there is both broader demand for our style and approach to learning and a critical mass of people who share our vision and are asking us to invest in their city. One of our main goals is to collaborate, not compete, with the institutions that are already there. We spend months speaking to people on the ground— experts in the local community and organizational leaders, so we can be additive to the Jewish community. One of the challenges of regional expansion is that by nature it is a small team, often only one person, and they end up being a mini-start up in the context of a larger organization. That is why we look for candidates with entrepreneurial energy.

We’ve received a lot of positive feedback from communities where we’ve opened regional offices. Our directors are educators/rabbis, which allows for learning to happen throughout the year. Unsurprisingly, people feel a closer connection to Hadar when there is a local presence, and they end up participating in a broader array of Hadar’s offerings, beyond their local programs. They are also more likely to invest in the organization when the organization invests in them. And of course, our regional directors can forge deeper relationships with people since they are a real part of these communities and not swooping in as visitors. This approach has helped Hadar be a successful convener and community-builder across the country.
– R. Elie Kaunfer, President and CEO, Hadar Institute

Moving Traditions – Aligned with a Vision for Greater Reach

As Moving Traditions seeks to double the number of Jewish youth we engage in our programs by 2025, it made sense to think bigger. We are no longer targeting key cities – we’re targeting North America.  Having regional directors working from home offices throughout the United States enables us to build community and relationships, to better serve our partners, and to introduce more teens and parents alike to Moving Traditions’ suite of programs. For instance, we now have a Southern Director who is helping bring our programs to places like Florida and Texas where Jewish teens—particularly LGBTQ+ teens—could really use the circles of support that our programs provide.
– Shuli Karkowsky, CEO Moving Traditions

Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC) – Enabling Innovation and Quick Mobilizations 

Our regional strategy has been an important element in our ability to remain nimble, understand and address needs of local camps, and accelerate innovation through different pilots in different regions. FJC’s West Coast region, for example, has been working collectively with California camps to explore options for property insurance, for which the premiums have skyrocketed. In the Southeast, we have piloted a partnership with Hillel to help camps recruit/retain counselors and to help Hillels identify and afford much-needed additional year-round staff members. Our regional offices in LA and Chicago played a critical role in engaging local funding support in response to the pandemic. Finally, we could not have secured the sponsorships necessary to produce our record-setting Leaders Assembly in December in Atlanta without our regional focus in the Southeast.
– Jeremy J. Fingerman, CEO, FJC

Hillel’s Campus Support Directors, a program funded by The Marcus Foundation – Building a Culture of Collaboration

Our organization is set up to assist Hillel’s 1,200 professionals in the field to maximize their impact on the lives of Jewish students on college campuses. As just one example, for the past 5 years, we’ve introduced a model in the state of Florida to support those campuses and students more effectively and efficiently. The seven Florida Hillels have developed a unique and effective model to work together to support each other and collaborate on key projects. Focusing on the Florida Hillels’ executive directors and their relationships, we created a culture of collaboration where these Hillels regularly share information related to fundraising and advancement, craft joint reporting on multiple Federation grants, and share staff training, onboarding, and information about prospective students.

I convene these executive directors every three weeks to discuss topics that range from creating sustainability through endowment and legacy campaigns, to the specifics of staff supervision. Although the campuses and the Hillels themselves are quite different, because of the coordination and support from Hillel International and the close working relationships they have built, these Florida Hillel executive directors describe this group as their most important cohort of colleagues.  Over the past few years, we have run in-state and travel programs for students at all Florida campuses, brought board chairs and executive directors together to share lessons learned and explore collaborations, and confronted antisemitism across campuses in a coordinated, strategic way.
– Debbie Pine, Campus Support Director at Hillel International

Jews of Color Initiative – A Physical Office Still Offers Benefits

Opening a Jews of Color Initiative (JoCI) office in New York solidified our footprint in a region with a large Jews of Color (JoC) presence and has woven us into local culture, communities, and events. Our New York Hub has proven to be an impactful pilot for JoC in the region and for JoCI organizationally. One challenge is that regionally-specific offices and programs can limit who we serve. For example, our Incubator was restricted to those in the Greater New York area, though we saw many instances where the program could benefit leaders outside of the region. An additional challenge of securing physical office space is the current workforce trend toward more work-from-home and hybrid workplace environments. While our offices weren’t always used, they did create a valuable physical address for co-working teams, programs, and community engagement. We also evaluated location options with great diligence, ultimately selecting a Manhattan location that is easily commutable from various NYC boroughs, though not specific to the residencies of JoC.
– Riki Robinson, Program Director of the New York Hub of the Jews of Color Initiative

Keshet – Targeting Populations in Need of Support

Keshet’s strategy for geographic expansion focuses on states with significant Jewish populations and anti-LGBTQ+ political climates. We opened an office in Florida two years ago and in Texas earlier this summer, resulting in an outpouring of energy and interest to get involved with Keshet. At a time of unprecedented legal assaults on LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender youth, local leaders are eager to send the message that in the Jewish community, our LGBTQ+ community members are seen, loved, and cherished.
– Idit Klein, President and CEO, Keshet

Repair the World – Moving From a Local to a Regional Structure

In 2022, Repair moved into a regional programmatic and development structure to provide greater support and accountability across our Repair communities, as well as create cost savings to ensure we use funding and support strategically. We hired regional directors who provide executive leadership, coaching, and organizational guidance to a group of Repair communities, and regional development directors, who hold relationships with the local lay and professional leadership to focus on sustaining local giving and bringing new individual and institutional partners to support our communities.

We’ve learned from our peers and seen over the past year that the regional model strengthens consistency across our programming, fosters increased collaboration across communities in the same region, and provides more opportunities for staff and fellows to come together to learn and connect. The added support also frees up local leadership to focus on the service and Jewish learning programming, since much of the fundraising responsibility and some relationship building has been transferred to the regional team.

To set up this model for success, we ensured the hiring process for the regional roles tested which candidates could demonstrate a clear ability to learn new landscapes quickly and build relationships in a remote environment. We have also committed to building local advisory councils of lay leaders in each community to support Repair’s local programs. A year into the rollout of this model, we have seen qualitative and quantitative evidence that the model is on a pathway to success, and know that the added support for strong connections between programming and development is key to this success.
– Kate O’Bannon, Chief Strategy Officer, Repair the World

The common link in all these examples is that each organization saw a reason, aligned with its mission and audience engagement goals, to deploy a regional approach. Careful planning and hiring were instrumental in making these ventures successful. Certainly other aspects were part of the “how” as well. We are happy to connect  any people interested in learning more about a specific regional model to the appropriate organization highlighted here (reach out to [email protected]). By sharing best practices and insights, more organizations will be able to bring meaningful Jewish learning and engagement experiences to people around the country.

Retaining consultants with expertise in different areas enables the Jim Joseph Foundation to better support grantee-partners and take a more holistic approach to philanthropy. Whether looking for consultants for evaluation and research, strategic planning, event facilitation or any other specialized area, we crowd-sourced ideas from our team to think about best practices borne from our own experience hiring consultants and from supporting many grantee partners through this process. In the spirit of helping others in the field, here are some important points to keep in mind when undertaking a process to select a consultant:

Utilize Every Step of the Request for Proposal Process as a Way to Gather Information
Providing a Request for Proposal (RFP) helps ensure clarity around the project and is a space to provide information (and expectations) about the timeline, budget, communications, deliverables and more. Share the RFP with plenty of time before the project starts so potential consultants can develop thoughtful proposals that answer each question with as much detail as possible. For each proposal received, look to see if the potential consultant responded to questions with specificity, unique to your project or if they used a template.

Talk with people who have worked with the consultant (or consultants) before on similar projects to learn about the experience. Find out if the consultants’ work proved to be valuable. If you are considering a larger firm, ask for references who have worked with the specific team or individual who would lead your project.

Also be sure to have one-on-one conversations with potential consultants either before or after they submit a proposal. Do the consultants follow up with clarifying questions and show interest in the project? Do they validate your questions and address your concerns? Do they communicate well and in a timely manner? Do they “get” you and what you are trying to accomplish? You can learn a lot both by the knowledge the consultant shares and the ways in which they share it.

Find Out Who is Doing the Work
If the potential consultants are part of a larger firm, ask to know who exactly will be working on your project and communicating with you regularly. A client-consultant relationship should have a high level of comfort, which leads to a more honest and trusting relationship. You want to be able to ask questions throughout the project, and you might at certain points need to address and resolve conflict and have deep (sometimes vulnerable) conversations. Moreover, while the overall reputation of the firm is important, so too is that of the specific individual or team assigned. Over time, firms can grow, evolve or shift strategies. Make sure the firm’s current reputation reflects accurately on the team who will work on your project.

Be Thoughtful About When to Go Outside of the Jewish World & Remember that Expertise Can Take Many Forms
Our experience is that if the consultancy needed is very specific to Jewish content, it often (not always) is best to hire a consultant with a track record in that space. But for areas like diversity, equity and inclusion, strategic visioning or other projects unrelated to Jewish education and engagement directly, it is beneficial to consider all consultants with the requisite expertise. Your consultant should have a basic understanding of the space in which your organization operates; there should not be a steep learning curve to understand your organization and field. Additionally, do not immediately rule out a proposal that might not look as sophisticated as others. That could simply reflect the consultants not having someone in-house with a strong proposal-writing skill set, which may not be so relevant to the project you need them to do. While there is value in working with consultants who are well known in the space, there is also value in identifying a newer consultant who may bring fresh perspectives.

For Funders, Empower Grantee-Partners to Make Their Own Decision
Grantee-partners often ask who we suggest as a consultant for specific projects. In fact, we keep a list of consultants with whom we worked previously. This makes it easy to offer some suggestions to grantees for initial outreach. And while we are happy to offer some suggestions, and share our experience working with each, we make sure that grantees feel empowered to select a consultant entirely on their own. This helps ensure that grantees have full ownership of their engagement with the consultant, positioning both parties for honest, transparent interactions.

Determine the Optimal Number of Proposals to Consider
Reviewing proposals is an important process but should not be an exceedingly lengthy one. For a larger project, we identify at least two, but ideally three or four, potential consultants for the work. Multiple proposals enables us to compare different possible approaches to a project and provides options for the individual(s) ultimately making the hiring decision. There is such a thing as too many proposals. If you only plan to hire a single consultant, we suggest pre-vetting a select group of potential consultants and inviting that limited group to apply, rather than putting out an open RFP. This increases the likelihood that prospective consultants will want to submit and it is more respectful of the consultants’ time and your time.

When Considering Evaluation Consultants
Evaluation is an integral part of our approach to philanthropy and is increasingly changing and evolving. That in mind, when considering an evaluator or evaluation firm, there are numerous best practices to especially consider (many of which align with best practices for retaining a consult for any work):

•  Read their previous work. Ask yourself: Is this high quality? Am I easily able to understand the evaluation? Is this previous work relevant to my organization’s work?
• Consider the makeup of the team. Ask yourself: Does the evaluation team bring the diversity of perspectives your project will require? Does the evaluation team bring a background in or the content expertise that your project requires? Does the team have the capacity to do this work in the time frame you need?
• Gut check the proposal plan. Ask yourself: Does the budget seem reasonable for the quantity and quality of deliverables? Does the methodology seem well-reasoned and strong? Is there built in time for stakeholder input, reflection and meaning making at multiple points in the project?

No matter which side of the funding relationship you are on, having highly skilled, trusted consultants often is critical to both advancing and elevating your work, and for fundraising. The more information you have, the more likely you are to select the consultant most equipped for your project at hand. And as you build relationships with consultants that are the best fit for your organization, you’ll be well positioned to both maximize opportunities and overcome any challenges you encounter throughout a project together.

originally published in eJewish Philanthropy

As a Foundation that wants to always learn—one of our internal values is Hitlamdoot—we need to hear directly from leaders and practitioners in the field. Particularly at this moment, understanding what these individuals are experiencing, thinking, doing, and planning is integral to building our team’s knowledge base about the many subfields that make up the broader world of Jewish education and engagement.

In this vein, representatives from different grantee-partners are speaking with the Foundation each month in Learning Sessions. While initially we planned for these sessions to be entirely internal, the insights and perspectives we are hearing from grantee-partners will be interesting and informative for others as well. We continue to approach our work with Kavanah, intention, to always elevate the efforts of others who help us pursue our mission. And we look forward to sharing brief recaps of each Learning Session. Read previous recaps on learning sessions with

Daniel Septimus, CEO of Sefaria, Deborah Meyer, founder and CEO, and Rabbi Tamara Cohen, VP of Program Strategy, Moving Traditions,  Sarah Levin, CEO of JIMENA  Rabbi Benjamin Berger, Vice President of Jewish Education, Hillel International, Mike Wise and Avi Rubel, Co-CEOs of Honeymoon Israel, and Rabba Sara Hurwitz , Co-Founder and President of Maharat

Learning Session Guest: Rabbi Benay Lappe, Founder and Rosh Yeshiva of SVARA

Personal Experiences Inspire a Vision
Rabbi Benay Lappe is the Founder and Rosh Yeshiva of SVARA. Ordained by The Jewish Theological Seminary in 1997, Benay also currently serves as Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Next Jewish Future in Chicago.

Benay began SVARA in 2003 as a small, Chicago-based yeshiva with a dozen students, no operating budget, and no paid staff. It has since grown into a nationally recognized organization with an operating budget of $1.7 million, thirteen faculty and staff, and an international learning community that reached 3,500 in 2019, 7,000 in 2020, and 10,000 in 2021.

SVARA’s work in “changing the weather” on how the Talmud and the Jewish tradition are perceived (“traditionally radical”) significantly contributed to svara, or moral intuition—a 2,000-year-old talmudic source of law equal to Torah itself—being recognized widely both within and beyond the boundaries of the Jewish world. Today, Benay is committed to making sure every Jewish kid learns the word svara, so they know that when a moral conviction arising from their lived experience and informed by their learning speaks to them profoundly, yet may be outside of the boundaries of the Judaism they know, they no longer have just two choices: leave Judaism in order to embrace their truth or stay and deny it. Rather, they will know that they are supposed to bring that insight into the tradition to make it better.

Three Key Ideas Drive SVARA’s Work Today:

            1. “Inclusion” is Over & “Engagement” is the Wrong Goal

“We have to stop talking about ‘inclusion’ and ‘engagement,'” Benay offers. “They are approaches that take as given the current cultural and values contexts, which make sense only if one is happy with the status quo.”

Instead, we need to build spaces that are consciously created and carefully curated, from the ground up, to reflect the culture, values, and commitments of the people we want in the space. Creating it for one demographic (generally, white, cis, straight, able-bodied people)—which will be the default if the creators of it and people “at the front of the room” are members of those categories—while hoping to “include” another (POC’s, queer folk, etc.), will inevitably fail. And, worse, this approach fails to benefit from all that people in those marginalized groups have to offer if given the space to be fully at home. In this next era, many of these spaces will be affinity spaces centering the cultures, values, and life experiences of those formerly on the margins.

SVARA’s first assumption is that, just as in every age of profound societal change, Judaism needs major upgrading. If that’s true, “engagement” is the wrong goal. People will neither come nor stay, in significant numbers, if the “product” isn’t working well for them. And, it’s simply too modest a goal. We have to shoot higher! What we need are more spaces, like SVARA, that are explicitly engaged in the project of inspiring and activating people to become passionate and empowered agents of change in what the Jewish enterprise should look like, in order to make it work better at creating the kinds of human beings that the entire Jewish system is in business to create.

Benay believes that philanthropies should invest much more heavily in these spaces that are dedicated to experimentation and trust deeply in the insights and truths that rise up from the formerly marginalized makers and leaders within them.

          2. The Future is Queer

Benay believes that the U.S. is experiencing the most significant demographic shift in modern history—a shift from a hetero-normative culture to a queer culture. Two studies in 2019 by Ipsos MORI and J Walter Thompson Innovation Group show that 34-52% of Gen Z identify as queer. Mills College reports that 58% of their most recent undergrads identify as queer. In recruitment talks, Columbia College in Chicago brags that 33% of their undergraduates identify as queer.

Benay doesn’t think these numbers correspond to what we used to think of as “the LGBT community.”  Many of the kids who identify as trans or gender non-conforming or using they/them pronouns are different from those of a generation ago. These kids are saying “I don’t believe in gender, period.” These numbers reflect a profound shift in beliefs, values, worldview, and perspectives that young people hold regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. And these cultural norms will be non-negotiables for them in the Jewish spaces that they will choose to opt into. Queer normative spaces will be the only spaces they will be willing to occupy.

These kids will not settle for just inclusion. They will only feel comfortable in queer normative spaces.

SVARA started out as a niche project but became mainstream primarily because of this demographic shift. SVARA is committed to raising up this generation of queer and trans people—a generation that increasingly holds intersectional and marginalized identities, and filled with people who “we know will be central not only as consumers of but as the leaders and shapers of the next Jewish future, for everybody.”

          3. A New Jewish Center is Forming

SVARA believes that a new Jewish center is already forming, made up of the spaces, projects, and organizations who are centering folks who had historically found themselves on the margins. This center will be characterized not so much by the forms of Jewish activities going on at the surface (be it Talmud study, singing, meditating, praying, farming, what have you), but rather the “deep structure” of the foundational values, culture, worldview, and commitments of the spaces and the people who occupy them.

The projects and organizations that make up this new Jewish center will likely have all of the following characteristics:

1. Commitment to Justice & Equity: Approaching their work in a radical, politicized, anti-oppression, non-heteronormative, antiracist, disability justice framework
2. Liberatory Culture: Holding participants in a serious, rigorous, but also profoundly loving, joyful, and empowering way
3. Traditionally Radical: Having a good sense of how “Judaism works,” how traditions are constructed, and how they change
4. Centers & Activates the Margins: Focusing primarily on the people most likely to be the leaders and content-creators/upgraders we need right now, namely those on the margins of the status quo—and able to clearly articulate that vision
5. Spiritual Practice: Offering a new/better way to “do Jewish,”i.e., a spiritual practice,  along the way
6. Community: Creating thick community that offers grounding, connection, and meaning

Benay is confident that in the future Judaism will do what it’s always done, only better. It will be a giant set of practices, rituals, holidays, values, principles, and justice commitments that make people more whole human beings.

My dream world is for the folks who Judaism is working the least well for, will roll up their sleeves and create spaces where people start experimenting with new values, practices, and traditions that they will create for all kinds of people.

As a Foundation that wants to always learn—one of our internal values is Hitlamdoot—we need to hear directly from leaders and practitioners in the field. Particularly at this moment, understanding what these individuals are experiencing, thinking, doing, and planning is integral to building our team’s knowledge base about the many subfields that makeup the broader world of Jewish education and engagement.

In this vein, representatives from different grantee-partners are speaking with the Foundation each month in Learning Sessions. While initially we planned for these sessions to be entirely internal, the insights and perspectives we are hearing from grantee-partners will be interesting and informative for others as well. We continue to approach our work with Kavanah, intention, to always elevate the efforts of others who help us pursue our mission. And we look forward to sharing brief recaps of each Learning Session. Read previous recaps on learning sessions with Daniel Septimus, CEO of Sefaria, Deborah Meyer, founder and CEO, and Rabbi Tamara Cohen, VP of Program Strategy, Moving Traditions,  Sarah Levin, CEO of JIMENA  Rabbi Benjamin Berger, Vice President of Jewish Education, Hillel International, and Mike Wise and Avi Rubel, Co-CEOs of Honeymoon Israel.

Learning Session Guest: Rabba Sara Hurwitz , Co-Founder and President of Maharat

Introduction
Rabba Sara Hurwitz is Co-Founder and President of Maharat, the first institution to ordain Orthodox women as clergy, and she is the first orthodox woman ordained as a Rabba.  She has received numerous awards and recognition for her knowledge, leadership, and vision.

Maharat’s mission is to educate, ordain, and invest in passionate and committed orthodox women who model a dynamic Judaism to inspire and support individuals and communities.

The ordination of orthodox women is imperative to changing the conversation about women and women’s power. The unique value female clergy bring to the table is the same unique value female CEOs, producers, senators, mayors, and governors bring to the table.  They force an overdue shift in our communal norms and standards.  A female rabbinic presence can change the conversation around numerous intimate subjects such as sexuality and fertility; issues of Jewish law such as mourning and Shabbat and even difficult topics surrounding divorce.  Moreover, the ordination of women is a step towards ending gender inequality in a community where the greatest power, pay and prestige is reserved for rabbis. – Rabba Sara Hurwitz

From Small Beginnings to Major Impact
Maharat opened in 2009 with just three students, two employees and a $100,000 budget. Today Maharat has 36 students, 19 employees, and a $2.6 million budget. In just 12 years, Maharat has graduated 49 women who are serving as clergy across the Jewish community in synagogues, schools, hospitals, universities, and Jewish communal institutions.

Rabba Sara shared her thoughts on what it means to be an orthodox rabbinic leader today and how Maharat plays a central role in the Jewish education landscape:

So much has changed in just 12 years. I think that I can mark my journey by the reaction of the orthodox community and the community at large. When I was first ordained there was actually very little pushback. It wasn’t until the change in nomenclature, the change in title, that sparked a lot of controversy in 2010. That was very lonely, except outside of the orthodox movement I felt a lot of support and excitement, because the time had come. But within the orthodox movement beyond my own community there was a lot of skepticism and pushback.

Growth and Culture Change
Rabba Sara believes the next flashpoint was after the first class of Maharat students graduated and people were waiting and watching to see what would happen. All graduates found jobs, which of course was cause for celebration but also caused the next round of pushback in the orthodox community. Still, by this time sentiments had begun to change and Rabba Sara says it was not as lonely as in 2009 and 2010 when she was ordained.

She also found genuine support at this time. Others began explaining the importance of having a woman’s voice as part of the fabric of their community. Since then, two or three other times there has been a “bubbling up” in the orthodox community questioning whether women can serve as clergy, she said, and each time it feels less and less relevant.

There are always going to be detractors in communities and in the world, she says. What is important to Rabba Sara is to have a base of support. Maharat asks their program interviewees about their support network because “to do this work you have to have a good support network.” Why?  Change is hard. Maharat’s strategy is simply “feet on the ground”—having women occupy positions of leadership to show and prove what they can do.

Rabba Sara believes that even if everyone in the orthodox community does not accept women as part of their clergy team or leader, it is clear that nobody is going backwards:

We’re only going forward.  The amount of support and change in our community is beyond my imagination.  Even in the right wing of the orthodox community, women are searching and seeking for more professional roles and titles within the Jewish community.  I think that has a lot to do with Maharat — even if not all those women are part of Maharat’s academic curriculum.

The Impact of Maharat Beyond Gender
Women’s voices are necessary and important, as is being able to interpret text through the lens of our experiences. That is the gender piece of what we’re offering, she says.

Beyond gender, Maharat is trying to open up Jewish culture—by giving women access to authority, to being teachers, and to being authorities on rabbinic texts.  She highlights that they are sending the message that leadership—the structure and power of dynamic leadership—should be more decentralized with more voices:

We are interested in trying to present a Judaism that meets people where they’re at, that is really relevant to 21st century Jews wherever they are.

Maharat students are successful chaplains in hospitals, teachers in schools, and have congregational pulpits; some have started their own communities and some are becoming rabbis in small communities. There are now 49 women out in the field impacting the thousands and thousands of people who they reach and engage.

Maharat’s Vision for the Future
Rabba Sara envisions a future where women as leaders in the orthodox community is normative. As rabbinic leaders of diverse and vibrant communities, it’s important for alumni not only to focus and elevate issues and areas that are important to women without apology but also to ground their expertise in issues and areas that are important for everyone.

Maharat is excited to launch its strategic plan, with a focus on:

• Leaning in and focusing more on excellence and innovation to ensure Maharat graduates consistently meet the needs of the community.
• Empowering new audiences with a focus on:
  • Their pipeline to give access to younger audiences.
  • Platforms in which alumnae are working. By supporting alumnae, they are also building their new audiences.
  • Investment in lay leadership, professionals, and educators, which began more intently this year through the Foundation supported “Mind the Gap” project. To build on that success, Maharat wants to develop fellowships and leadership workshops focused on specific cohorts, such as female heads of school or chaplains, offering them support along with skills, leadership training, and a place to be with like-minded individuals.
• Helping graduates create innovative projects and launch more programs about how tradition is dynamic and translates into dynamic world.
• Leveraging what it means to be a global Yeshiva. Maharat’s offerings and programs support Maharat alumni globally, in Israel, France, South Africa, Australia, and beyond.

Maharat’s trailblazing history now blends with a growing alumni network of like-minded people who support each other and their fellow graduates. Because of Maharat, every time a graduate goes into a new community they have to “blaze the trail” – but they no longer do it alone.

Visit Maharat.org to learn more.

As a Foundation that wants to always learn—one of our internal values is Hitlamdoot—we need to hear directly from leaders and practitioners in the field. Particularly at this moment, understanding what these individuals are experiencing, thinking, doing, and planning is integral to building our team’s knowledge base about the many subfields that makeup the broader world of Jewish education and engagement.

In this vein, representatives from different grantee-partners are speaking with the Foundation each month in Learning Sessions. While initially we planned for these sessions to be entirely internal, the insights and perspectives we are hearing from grantee-partners will be interesting and informative for others as well. We continue to approach our work with Kavanah, intention, to always elevate the efforts of others who help us pursue our mission. And we look forward to sharing brief recaps of each Learning Session. Read previous recaps on learning sessions with Daniel Septimus, CEO of Sefaria, Deborah Meyer, founder and CEO, and Rabbi Tamara Cohen, VP of Program Strategy, Moving Traditions,  Sarah Levin, CEO of JIMENA and Rabbi Benjamin Berger, Vice President of Jewish Education, Hillel International.

Learning Session Guests: Mike Wise and Avi Rubel, Co-CEOs, Honeymoon Israel (HMI)

Honeymoon Israel’s vision is that every committed couple with at least one Jewish partner will possess the knowledge, inspiration, support system, and sense of belonging to build a family with meaningful connections to Jewish life and the Jewish people, thereby enhancing and strengthening the Jewish community.

For many young couples, there’s no easy way into Jewish life, especially during those critical years when they’re in permanent relationships and deciding how to shape their lives and family.

Honeymoon Israel (HMI) offers a way in through immersive group travel to Israel that lets couples encounter and explore history, tradition, and identity on their own terms. HMI engages couples in an open-ended inquiry into how they connect to Jewish life and how they’ll incorporate Jewish values and traditions into their families. Couples are offered space to explore for themselves how they can develop and experience community.

How It All Began

Mike Wise and Avi Rubel conceptualized HMI after the 2013 Pew report on the American Jewish population, which noted the high rate of interfaith marriage and was often defined as a problem in the Jewish community. Mike and Avi wanted to define it as an opportunity to engage young couples by creating a welcoming community for them. Many couples in this life stage do not yet have other couple friends; rather, they often have individual friends from other life experiences. HMI wanted to engage couples while they were still making decisions about their families and their futures—and whether they envisioned a connection to the Jewish community as being a part of that.

In selecting the first cities with which HMI would engage, Mike and Avi were deliberate. They mapped the population, paying close attention to the age range, local Jewish community, and other facts on the ground. They wanted to make sure there was a community to support the couples after the trip. As Avi and Mike explained:

HMI’s primary audience is what we call ‘roamers,’ those on the edge of Jewish life who are not necessarily involved, but have questions about their faith and future. We seek them out and look to create a feeling within these couples that ‘we need this; this is for us.’

Importantly, HMI wants its cohort of trips to mirror the communities from where the trips emanate. On most tips this means that 60-75 percent of couples are interfaith. HMI brings all couples together for the Israel experience, creating a sense of community and welcome that some of the couples have not previously experiences.

Why Co-CEOs?

Just like a marriage or any serious relationship, Mike and Avi both put a great deal of work into this partnership.  They trust each other and like each other “most of the time.” They point out that with a trusted co-CEO they:

• Are less likely to make mistakes.
• Are able to bring different perspectives from different backgrounds.
• Challenge each other to be part of the success.
• Are a stronger organization because of it.
• Push and challenge each other and do it with great respect.

While they recognize this is not ideal for every individual, they encourage people to consider the benefits that come with this leadership structure.

What about DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion)?

Diversity of all kinds is important to HMI, which has an external consultant helping the organization pursue DEI-related goals. HMI works to ensure that anyone is able to travel on their trips. They are also expanding their board and their staff to include more people of color and working towards increasing the diversity of the couples who travel with HMI.

HMI wants people to bring their “whole selves” into this Jewish community, and make people feel that, with the HMI experience, they “don’t need to check any part of themselves at the door.”  They continue to gauge whether this message is being received.

The Pandemic

Mike and Avi share that one silver lining of the pandemic is the newly formed Israel Travel Alliance, which includes over 40 similar Israel trip organizations that first focused on how to maintain their organizations when travel ceased. Today, the group continues to meet and learn from each other in important areas including training, staff, guides and other key elements of travel.  HMI sees the light at the end of the tunnel and hopes to offer 32-36 groups next year; it is cautiously and optimistically planning to restart trips in November (for social dynamics, it is important that trips have 15-20 couples).

Another silver lining of the pandemic was that HMI could focus exclusively on community engagement post-trip. They reflect:

Our virtual events attract many group alumni who say that their ‘Honeymoon friends are my community.’ In Chicago, one of HMI’s rabbis led a virtual baby naming for a young family and their HMI friends; the new parents said this would not have happened without HMI. Another couple told us they “felt lucky” that their HMI trip happened just before the pandemic as the couple friends made on their trip became part of their “Covid community.” 

The Future for HMI

HMI is focused on controlled, intentional growth and ensuring they can deliver the trips and programs that best serve their groups. Currently HMI says no to three couples for every one they accept nationally; they don’t want to add more trips unless they’re set up for meaningful post-trip follow-up, which includes staffing and support on the ground. HMI also has more communities that want to partner, but HMI continues to be deliberate in the communities they select to ensure that the trip is not just an empty experience, but fulfills their goal:

…to make young couples of all backgrounds feel welcome in the Jewish community and inspire them to incorporate Jewish values and traditions into their lives in their own way.

Having more demand than supply is a good thing, according to Avi. He notes that is does raise important questions about the population being neglected.  Why haven’t other startups launched to focus on these couples that HMI can’t take? Teens and parents with young kids are engaged in the Jewish community, but what about this population?  He wonders why other start-ups haven’t launched to handle the couples that HMI can’t take—and believes this is an important area for focus in the future.

Visit HoneymoonIsrael.org

As a Foundation that wants to always learn—one of our internal values is Hitlamdoot—we need to hear directly from leaders and practitioners in the field. Particularly at this moment, understanding what these individuals are experiencing, thinking, doing, and planning is integral to building our team’s knowledge base about the many subfields that makeup the broader world of Jewish education and engagement.

In this vein, representatives from different grantee-partners are speaking with the Foundation each month in Learning Sessions. While initially we planned for these sessions to be entirely internal, the insights and perspectives we are hearing from grantee-partners will be interesting and informative for others as well. We continue to approach our work with Kavanah, intention, to always elevate the efforts of others who help us pursue our mission. And we look forward to sharing brief recaps of each Learning Session. Read previous recaps on learning sessions with Daniel Septimus, CEO of Sefaria, Deborah Meyer, founder and CEO, and Rabbi Tamara Cohen, VP of Program Strategy, Moving Traditions, and Sarah Levin, CEO of JIMENA.

Learning Session Guest: Rabbi Benjamin Berger, Vice President of Jewish Education, Hillel International

Although most are familiar with Hillel’s mission and history, Ben explained that it is important to understand that Hillel’s comprehensive development platform is modeled after programs in private industry. These programs aim to enrich every one of Hillel’s 1,200 professionals through best-in-class professional development and education. Hillel U offers a blend of in-person and online education courses through its four centers of learning, one of which is the Center For Jewish and Israel Education (CJIE), which Ben oversees.

Despite the challenges of the COVID pandemic, Hillel engaged over 140,000 students with over 50,000 immersive activities. Local Hillels hosted more than 20,000 virtual programs.

Ben’s journey to his role today took many twists and turns, but truly started when he returned to UC Santa Cruz as an undergraduate after a year in Israel. At that time, the beginning of the second intifada deeply impacted him and his perspective of campus engagement. One clear realization for him was the passion he held for Jewish leadership, not necessarily solely Israel advocacy. “I began to understand my desire to inspire Jews and others to create a better world,” Ben adds.

When Hillel approached him about serving in his current role—following six years working at The Wexner Foundation—it felt like coming back home. He served previously as the Senior Jewish Educator at The Ohio State University Hillel. Ben’s core passion is helping college students find connection, meaning, and purpose, so returning to Hillel felt natural to him.

Hillel’s Evolution to Invest Deeply in Talent

Bringing Ben on board was part of Hillel’s major decision to invest in talent through the development of Hillel U, which now includes four pods. The first pod was CJIE, raising the level of talent for professionals and giving Ben room to craft the vision for the program.

Previously, Hillel looked externally to train educators. Through Hillel U, Hillel began to build out, design, and run its own programs to train people. With two Masterclass offerings, “Israel” and “Torah”—with more in development—Ben leads programs around core pedagogy of the essential skills of a Hillel educator:

• Authentic use of self – how an educator uses themselves in the space while also allowing space for the learner.
• Artful facilitation – how to make the space lively with a deep use of essential and beautiful questions; and the curation of educational space that creates physical and emotional space where people want to learn and feel embraced by more than just  experience and content.
• Relational engagement – making people feel connected so they want to come back.

Hillel teaches their educators so they can excel in each of these areas today. “Our mentality is that if you’re not an educator now, you’re an aspiring educator,” Ben adds. Other ideas for future Masterclass offerings across Hillel U include:

• Ritual – how to help campuses more fully develop ritual and spiritual life.
• Justice – how to integrate engagement around social justice into more campus experiences.
• Civil Discourse – a partnership with Pardes to bring and extend their “Machloket Matters” curriculum to be integrated with Hillel’s Masterclass skills and content knowledge orientation.
• Wellness – to address the staggering mental health needs of students. Hillel educators would be trained on how to help students and where to refer those who need additional support. Ben notes, “In many ways, our communities have been distracted by the smoke of the Israel situation; the real fire on campus is related to mental health needs on campus.”

Advocacy and Engagement: Two Different Experiences

Over the last 20 years, Hillel has undergone a major shift in how it views its role in students’ lives. When the second intifada occurred, the Jewish organizational world reacted as though it was dealing with a marketing problem that could be addressed with well-designed posters and books of myths and facts. Over time Hillel has come to understand that is the wrong approach—and there was not a need to fight every battle on every campus, despite the unfortunate necessity of having to engage in some of those battles more than they wish. Hillel understands that a multi-faceted approach including supporting campuses to defend against antisemitic and anti-Zionist action on campus might be necessary, but that alone is not enough for meaningful engagement. Rather, Hillel’s deep commitment to be an educational organization means that it has to lead with a proactive, values, and questions-centered approach, which has been at the core of its Masterclass:Israel work. Ben explains this is a much different approach than prioritizing advocacy:

While advocacy has a clear outcome, education doesn’t always have a specific outcome. It’s about opening students’ minds and supporting them through a journey of learning. To get there, Hillel professionals have to be well trained, confident, and knowledgeable.

In many ways, Ben adds, the COVID-19 pandemic brought out the best of Hillel and the team. Now he sees Hillel doing more to support campuses and students. The immediate needs pushed the Hillel team to be creative, to listen, and to respond rapidly to build out ideas—and to raise the dollars to do so.

Programs such as Winterfest, for example, came out of these efforts, after students reported staggering rates of loneliness and isolation.  Winterfest was put together in a matter of weeks (Ben wrote about Hillel’s approach here), and included almost 1,500 students, 263 campus in 9 countries. The agility of the team during the time of disconnection was inspiring. That approach to programming and experimentation will inform Hillel activities long after the pandemic wanes.

Hillel’s partnership with Reboot to create the Higher Holidays is another example of creativity and agility in a time of uncertainty and campus need. With nearly 30 hours of streaming High Holiday content, Ben led an effort to bring a beautifully produced, engaging and meaningful experience that reached 16,000 participants. The quick support of the Jewish Community Response and Impact Fund enabled both Higher Holidays and Winterfest to achieve such significant impact.

As a Foundation that wants to always learn—one of our internal values is Hitlamdoot—we need to hear directly from leaders and practitioners in the field. Particularly at this moment, understanding what these individuals are experiencing, thinking, doing, and planning is integral to building our team’s knowledge base about the many subfields that makeup the broader world of Jewish education and engagement.

In this vein, representatives from different grantee-partners are speaking with the Foundation each month in Learning Sessions. While initially we planned for these sessions to be entirely internal, the insights and perspectives we are hearing from grantee-partners will be interesting and informative for others as well. We continue to approach our work with Kavanah, intention, to always elevate the efforts of others who help us pursue our mission. And we look forward to sharing brief recaps of each Learning Session. Read previous recaps on learning sessions with Daniel Septimus, CEO of Sefaria, Deborah Meyer, founder and CEO, and Rabbi Tamara Cohen, VP of Program Strategy, Moving Traditions, and Sarah Levin, CEO of JIMENA.

Learning Session Guest: Nina Bruder, Senior Director, Jewish New Teacher Project

Nina Bruder, Senior Director at the Jewish New Teacher Project (JNTP), began by sharing the organization’s mission:

The Jewish New Teacher Project, a division of New Teacher Center, is dedicated to improving student learning in Jewish day schools by accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers and promoting the growth of school leadership

JNTP has a long-standing and valuable relationship to its parent organization, the New Teacher Center (NTC), which influences JNTP’s work, especially with of its focus on DEI efforts. This relationship with NTC also enables JNTP to bring “outside expertise” to the Jewish private school community, something less common in the Jewish communal sector.

As Nina shared her insights, she explained that she was modeling how JNTP runs various training and support programs for educators. The collaborative norms JNTP brings to all shared learning include:

• Stay curious
• Equity of Voice
• Active Listening
• Perspective-Taking
• Safety and Confidentiality
• Respectful Use of Electronics

JNTP and the New Teacher Center (NTC): A Mutually Beneficial Relationship
Founded in 1998, NTC started as a UC Santa Cruz Department of Education initiative to support new teachers as they started their careers. NTC pioneered the successful “new teacher induction model,” leveraging seasoned educators to support those who were new to their field. Once the program was in place with a stable budget and developed content, they parted ways with the university to increase their range and impact.

Ellen Moir, NTC’s founder and CEO for 20 years, says that relationships are key to NTC’s mission. Moir, who grew up disconnected from her Jewish roots, was contacted by the AVI CHAI Foundation about bringing NTC’s work on teacher retention, cultivation, and success to Jewish private schools. She felt that this was a key personal moment – her son was of Bar Mitzvah age, and this was an opportunity for her professional expertise to connect with a neglected part of her personal life, as well as to fulfill her belief that “all students deserve a good teacher.”

Early on, NTC’s work was split into “projects” focused on public schools in specific geographic locations; as these separate initiatives were absorbed into NTC, the “Jewish New Teacher Project”—the only one to focus on private schools—was founded in 2002.

As part of NTC, JNTP can leverage the resources of a large organization. This includes NTC’s larger budget and staff, back-office functions such as HR and legal, an R&D department funding new content development, and quality research into impact and best practices, as well as a window outside the Jewish community and exposure to greater diversity of experiences.

As JNTP’s host, NTC benefits as well. JNTP pays overhead to NTC, contributes to the diversity of the organization, adds the unique perspective of the private school community, and benefits from the thriving relationship between the two organizations.

The New Teacher Center’s New Focus on Social Justice and Equity through Education
In the past five years, Moir and her two other founders retired. The new CEO is Dr. Desmond Blackburn, a former superintendent. The entire C-level leadership team is new and is more geographically diverse, expanding NTC’s national presence.

NTC’s new mission is more explicitly centered on increasing social justice and equity through education:

We work to disrupt the predictability of educational inequities for systemically underserved students by accelerating educator effectiveness.

The focus is shifting from teachers’ needs to students’ needs, with five target student populations defined as Students of Color (Black/Brown/Native); English Language Learners (ELL); Students with Disabilities; Students living in Poverty; and Children of Immigrants. Importantly, this shift has called attention to diversity within Jewish schools – socioeconomic, cultural, and religious diversity —that may not always be apparent. Although at first Jewish educators do not always see the diversity in their schools, when asked at trainings to reflect on their schools and their own classroom environments, Nina notes:

They start to realize there’s cultural diversity between Ashkenazi and Sephardi. In Brooklyn there’s a strong Syrian community, in LA there’s a very strong Persian community, and in all schools there are kids with learning differences. There are also very wide-ranging socioeconomic differences. When they start to think about who’s in their classrooms, the room gets quiet and they start to really get sensitized to things they were not paying as much attention to previously.

Reflections on JNTP’s DEI Journey and Conscientious Inclusion
From 2017-2018, the Pacific Educational Group led NTC staff in two annual two-day workshops on Courageous Conversations About Race. These powerful reflections on race were predicated on four agreements that JNTP brings to all professional learning:

• Stay Engaged
• Speak your Truth
• Experience Discomfort
• Expect and Accept Non-Closure

Although these were uncomfortable and difficult conversations for JNTP staff that took them beyond their comfort zones, the experience underscored the urgent need for change. This sparked other DEI work, including a JNTP Team White Fragility book club, a private learning session with Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz, and a move to incorporate diversity and equity into JNTP content.

JNTP staff experienced all along that Jews may not necessarily fit into the dominant narrative of white people as perpetrators of white supremacy. From 2020-2021, NTC’s DEI focus shifted from one solely focused on race to Conscientious Inclusion, which broadens the view of diversity to include multiple identities of people. NTC created Affinity Groups to provide space for colleagues to come together over shared identities, such as the People of Color, LGBTQ, and Nina chairs the Faith-Based Affinity Group. NTC also began working with the Valbrun Consulting Group on the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI).

Based on a survey of every NTC employee, NTC and JNTP are at the “Minimization” mindset. Those in the Minimization mindset are either part of the minority group and don’t want to call attention to themselves or are the dominant group and fail to notice or differentiate others. NTC and JNTP are working towards Acceptance and Adaptation.

Conscientious Inclusion focuses on individual stories. JNTP’s emphasis on relationships expands this conversation. Although he comes from a public school background, NTC’s current CEO values religious education, helping JNTP continue to build and strengthen the relationship with its parent organization. NTC is so committed to work along the IDI continuum toward Acceptance and Adaptation that they have built into their staff learning days dedicated time to focus on Conscientious Inclusion and relationship-building among staff.

As a Foundation that wants to always learn—one of our internal values is Hitlamdoot—we need to hear directly from leaders and practitioners in the field. Particularly at this moment, understanding what these individuals are experiencing, thinking, doing, and planning is integral to building our team’s knowledge base about the many subfields that makeup the broader world of Jewish education and engagement.

In this vein, representatives from different grantee-partners are speaking with the Foundation each month in Learning Sessions. While initially we planned for these sessions to be entirely internal, the insights and perspectives we are hearing from grantee-partners will be interesting and informative for others as well. We continue to approach our work with Kavanah, intention, to always elevate the efforts of others who help us pursue our mission. And we look forward to sharing brief recaps of each Learning Session. Read the first recap on learnings from Daniel Septimus, CEO of Sefaria, and the second recap from Deborah Meyer, founder and CEO, and Rabbi Tamara Cohen, VP of Program Strategy, Moving Traditions

Learning Session Guest: Sarah Levin, Executive Director, JIMENA

Sarah Levin, Executive Director of JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa), first shared a personal anecdote to provide context for the conversation about JIMENA’s evolution:

I didn’t really connect my Sephardic heritage with the larger Jewish community until I took trips to Israel as a teenager, and even more so when I graduated college. It was in Israel where I discovered that this part of my heritage is connected to the Jewish people.

Organization Background

When Israel was founded, 650,000 of the one million Sephardic Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries fled to Israel as stateless refugees and today their descendants comprise more than half of Israel’s Jewish population. The remaining refugees dispersed to countries throughout the world, and their experiences have been ignored and forgotten. Here in California there is an estimated 200,000 Mizrahi Jews, with the Iranian Jewish community in Southern California comprising one of the largest Middle Eastern diasporic communities in the world. Sarah’s feeling of disconnectedness from Sephardic community was shared by many of the children and grandchildren of JIMENA’s founders when they created the organization in 2002. Shortly after 9/11, a group of San Francisco Bay Area Jews from North Africa began to gather for the “purpose of redress and acknowledgement of what was taken from them and destroyed,” Sarah notes.

The mission of JIMENA grew from this history and experience. Today, JIMENA works to achieve universal recognition for the heritage and history of the 850,000 indigenous Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa and their descendants.

Sarah adds, “We can’t talk about JIMENA without acknowledging that Jewish people are indigenous to the Middle East and have had a continuous and ongoing presence in the region for nearly 3,000 years. We must acknowledge that there were periods of time when Jewish communities in Arab and Muslim countries thrived and the experiences of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, now and throughout history, isn’t monolithic whatsoever. There is incredible diversity in the culture, history, and experiences of Jewish people from the Middle East and North Africa.”

JIMENA’s Two Main Areas

JIMENA’s programs and partnerships fall into two main categories:

1. Advocacy – This work primarily encompasses efforts to safeguard and restitute confiscated Jewish cultural property in and from the Middle East and North Africa. JIMENA also uses its unique intersectional position on campaigns to protect the American Jewish community from antisemitism.
2. Education and Engagement – Core to this work has been sharing personal stories of Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews, and using these stories to educate the Jewish public. These are broad, expansive initiatives, some of which have concluded and are preserved in museums.

Initially JIMENA focused primarily on sending eye-witness speakers to college campuses to share their lived experiences as Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran , Sarah says. Today, our work is more expansive and we aim to serve as national hub and resource center for Jewish and non-Jewish groups seeking an access point to Sephardic Jewish life, leaders, and resources such as curriculum.

The education and engagement efforts also include JIMENA’s reach to about 400,000 individuals in the Arab world every week, educating people in that region of the world about Sephardic Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. This is a growing area of work, premised on important relationships.

JIMENA’s programs also focus on elevating Mizrachi and Sephardic voices so they are better positioned within the Jewish community. Its new Sephardic Leaders Fellowship, for example, aims to educate and empower Mizrachi and Sephardic leaders in the community. Adds Sarah, “These types of programs that educate and reconnect passionate Sephardic professionals and lay leaders to traditional Sephardic knowledge and to community can potentially help create the type systemic changes that our Jewish communities need.”

JIMENA also produces curricula about Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews that is used in over 200 schools across the world. Learn more about JIMENA’s use of Hacaham HaYomi  into these curriculum offerings.

Partnerships and DEI: A Connected Strategy

Partnerships are integral to JIMENA’s strategic approach to creating impact.

“We cannot do our work, cannot educate the public, and cannot advocate for the rights of Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews without partnerships,” Sarah adds. “Up to 80 percent of the programs JIMENA produces are in partnership with non-Sephardic organizations. We cannot strengthen Jewish communal efforts around DEI and support other Jewish institutions unless they have access to resources, knowledge, and information.”

Through JIMENA, partner organizations can access Sephardic thought leaders, rabbis, texts, and communities. JIMENA shares this access and knowledge with the hope that partner organizations will integrate what they’ve learned through JIMENA into their own programs and help their own communities become more diverse, inclusive, and better responsive to the needs of affiliated and unaffiliated Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews.

Adds Sarah, “We try to give practical knowledge, skills, and access to Jewish institutions through our partnership model and to strengthen their work around DEI. Thus, these partnerships enable JIMENA to work towards a more diverse and inclusive Jewish landscape that better “recognizes, reflects, and represents, Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews.”

This DEI work is—and has been—core to JIMENA’s purpose. Sarah notes, “We’ve been doing this work around DEI since we were formed – it’s the very essence of why we exist! JIMENA, like many other Sephardic organizations in the USA have followed in the tradition of Sephardic American Jews who have been here for hundreds of years and have worked both internally and externally to meet our own communities needs while navigating participation in mainstream Jewish spaces – often times unsuccessfully. JIMENA welcomes the emphasis to include Jews of Color in community, and, at the same time, there is still much work to be done to include and represent Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews appropriately.

Using Research to Create Impact

In recent years, the plethora of studies about different Jewish demographics exposed a void in JIMENA’s toolkit. JIMENA now is laying the groundwork for a major study of Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews. It has a 50 member Sephardic Advisory Committee—comprised of rabbis, community leaders, philanthropists, and scholars—currently discussing what such research should focus on and seek to find.

“Through an intensive process it’s quite clear that we need reliable demographic data and we also need qualitative data,” says Sarah. “Accurate numbers can help shape the communal landscape and inform how organizations serve and represent Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews. We are particularly interested in examining young adult and college aged Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews.”

Looking Ahead to Create Change

The importance of naming cannot be understated regarding Sephardic communities. “The majority of Sephardic leaders who I work with agree that we need more consensus and consent around language,” adds Sarah. “Who are we? How do we want to be defined, labeled, and represented in mainstream Jewish and non-Jewish spaces? We need to be provided with the space to decide how we want to fit within the frame of DEI initiatives and research. Many people are frustrated with labels and stereotypes that have been projected onto Sephardic communities – especially as the vast majority of Sephardic leaders are marginalized and removed from mainstream Jewish spaces, including spaces that focus on DEI.”

Mizrachi and Sephardic communities and cultures are incredibly diverse and many leaders carry traditions that are relevant today. There are communities of Sephardic rabbis and thought leaders that have a great deal of traditional knowledge on how the larger Jewish community can move forward towards building more inclusive, equitable communities.

We want to push the broader Jewish community to “go back to these ‘Sephardic well-springs’ to learn ancient communal modalities and practices that may help us all be more inclusive and meet the current needs of diverse Jewish communities.” Sarah says.

As a Foundation that wants to always learn—one of our internal values Hitlamdoot—we need to hear directly from leaders and practitioners in the field. Particularly at this moment, understanding what these individuals are experiencing, thinking, doing, and planning is integral to building our team’s knowledge base about the many subfields that makeup the broader world of Jewish education and engagement.

In this vein, representatives from different grantee-partners are speaking with the Foundation each month in Learning Sessions. While initially we planned for these sessions to be entirely internal, the insights and perspectives we are hearing from grantee-partners will be interesting and informative for others as well. We continue to approach our work with Kavanah, intention, to always elevate the efforts of others who help us pursue our mission. And we look forward to sharing brief recaps of each Learning Session. Read the first recap on learnings from Daniel Septimus, CEO of Sefaria, here.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions.

Learning Session Guests:
Deborah Meyer, founder and CEO, and Rabbi Tamara Cohen, VP of Program Strategy, Moving Traditions

Deborah Meyer, founder and CEO, shared the inspiration and impetus for launching Moving Traditions in 2005 with then Board Chair Sally Gottesman:

• Identified the need to focus on building teen wellness as part of building Jewish identity
• Recognized the value to teens of fostering their commitment to social justice
• Sought to embolden Jewish teens to create community and world they want to live in

“When we started out, our concerns were focused on Jewish teen girls,” says Deborah. “Girls are at high risk of anxiety and depression as they enter adolescence. We wanted to connect Jewish teachings with social-emotional learnings from psychology and education to keep girls healthy and whole, as they enter adolescence and throughout their teen years. We wanted the Jewish community to understand the issues and social pressures that girls face in our society, and to address these issues as a core part of the Jewish education curriculum.”

After launching its Rosh Hodesh program for teen girls—and experiencing the success and demand for the program—Moving Traditions realized how important it was to offer something similar to Jewish boys. Deborah adds, “It turns out patriarchy isn’t good for boys either.” Like Rosh Hodesh, the Shevet program is a space for Jewish teen boys to come together in small groups and talk with each other and an adult male mentor about the joys and challenges of their lives.

When VP of Program Strategy Rabbi Tamara Cohen joined Moving Traditions, she created Tzelem, in collaboration with Keshet, as a third parallel group for non-binary and transgender teens. Since then, some Tzelem groups have expanded to serve any teen looking for an affirming monthly LGBTQ+ Jewish space. Today these three programs—which all blend social emotional learning, a progressive understanding of gender and society, and Judaism—are one of Moving Traditions’ suite of offerings for  on its pathway to flourishing teens:

Taken together, these programs provide meaning, purpose, and health. Through these programs, and by training adults who work with teens, Moving Traditions opens a Jewish space for all teens to explore identity, gender, and the joys and challenges of adolescence.

While the field of Jewish education and engagement today sees building mental health as essential, Moving Traditions has been pioneering this approach for 16 years. Two key learnings that deeply inform its work today are the ideas that:

• Resilience is at the heart, where social justice and wellness intersect. When teens work for change, they reduce their stress and build resilience, while also building communities and a society that is stronger and more just. “What’s good for individuals is good for society and the wider world,” adds Deborah.
• Building “members” of society is necessary and important work. In addition to leadership development, Moving Traditions strives to develop engaged citizens, active “members” of their community. Skills needed to be an active member, such as empathy, communication, and navigating differences are taught in its teen groups, Rosh Hodesh, Shevet, and Tzelem.

Responsive Curriculum and Teens’ Needs

In 2020, Moving Traditions conducted a rapid needs assessment to understand, in the midst of the pandemic, what teens and their families were experiencing and what they needed from congregations and other Jewish communal organizations. Moving Traditions found that teens are experiencing stress and feelings of dissociation from school—social distancing is the exact opposite of what teens need, developmentally—and the organization is concerned about long-term trauma. At the same time, teens are incredibly resilient. They are creative and they want to help their families and community, and work for social justice. “We can help teens find their outlet for making a difference,” says Tamara.

Part of what we are doing right now is trying to help teens navigate risk-taking during these hard months of the pandemic. Moving Traditions generally approaches healthy risk-taking with openness, wanting teens to learn from their good and bad decisions. With the pandemic and the heightened consequences of bad decisions, we still have to honor the agency of teens and yet, perhaps more than ever we need to help them find the right balance.
– Tamara Cohen

During the pandemic, Moving Traditions generated responsive curriculum for its teen groups on the emerging issues that matter most to teens to engage them with a sense of meaning and purpose:

• Prolonged Stress? Oh Yes!
• Reflection 2020: A Moving Traditions Election Toolkit for Teens
• May Her Memory Be a Revolution: Grieving for RBG
• Racial Justice: Rage, Riots and Righteousness

Seeing that all Jewish teen educators needed curricula that were easy to use and ready to engage teens, in addition to the responsive curricula it shared widely with all Jewish educators, Moving Traditions created Heart to Heart, a five-session course of intimate conversations on key issues in teen life and in our society today.  The program is a good fit for institutions looking for a way to offer engaging programming to mixed gender groups of teens in a different format than the organization’s Teen Groups. The experience offers value in and of itself and can serve as a gateway for institutions and teens to commit to Teen Groups.

By pivoting to online training, Moving Traditions trained twice the number of educators and clergy than previous years, and will continue using virtual platforms moving forward. In addition, they are addressing the needs of parents.

Broadening Impact and Looking Ahead

“We want teens and Jewish educators to have more access to our programs,” Tamara says. “We are focused on six core cities and we would like to expand and reach more teens by partnering with more institutions throughout the country.”

To scale its work, Moving Tradition’s strategy is to leverage partnerships—with national youth groups, regional teen groups, and individual synagogues, JCCs, camps, and other local organizations. Instead of hiring staff to directly deliver its programs to Jewish youth in every region, Moving Traditions conducts research and develops resources—and then partners with local organizations to implement its programs. To ensure quality and preparedness, Moving Traditions trains its partner educators and clergy. This approach enables Moving Traditions have greater impact and to create change from within the Jewish community.

An exception to this strategy is the Kol Koleinu Feminist Fellowship, led by Moving Traditions in collaboration with URJ and USY, which now has 50 national feminist fellows in 10-12th grade. The fellowship emboldens Jewish teens to lead social change initiatives for their peers across the country. For example, in October, Kol Koleinu fellows led a three-part workshop series they created for new voters, “Voting with a Feminist Lens.”

“We are leveraging the passion of Jewish teens for social justice,” adds Tamara. “We equip Kol Koleinu Fellows with mentors and frameworks for creating changemaking projects which they implement for and with the Jewish teens in their networks. In this way we are fostering social justice leadership and Jewish engagement for this generation of teens.”

Partnering with national organizations such as URJ and USY, with regional Teen Initiatives, as well as with individual synagogues, day schools, and camps, Moving Traditions is thinking about how it can further leverage its collaborations to engage more Jewish youth across the country.

“As a result of Moving Traditions’ work, clergy and educators are joining our idea to embrace wellness and social justice activism. We are actually changing the Jewish teen curriculum. As a result, people are experiencing Judaism as a force for good.
– Deborah Meyer

As a Foundation that wants to always learn—one of our internal values Hitlamdoot—we need to hear directly from leaders and practitioners in the field. Particularly at this moment, understanding what these individuals are experiencing, thinking, doing, and planning is integral to building our team’s knowledge base about the many subfields that makeup the broader world of Jewish education and engagement. 

In this vein, representatives from different grantee-partners are speaking with the Foundation each month in Learning Sessions. While initially we planned for these sessions to be entirely internal, the insights and perspectives we are hearing from grantee-partners will be interesting and informative for others as well. We continue to approach our work with Kavanah, intention, to always elevate the efforts of others who help us pursue our mission. And we look forward to sharing brief recaps of each Learning Session here.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions.

Learning Session Guest: Daniel Septimus, CEO, Sefaria

Daniel shared the genesis and history of Sefaria, which offers important context when thinking about how ideas come to life:

• Neither of Sefaria’s founders came from traditional, formal Jewish education backgrounds.
• They saw a void and a stark limitation to accessing English language Jewish texts online.
• The most difficult aspect of beginning this type of venture was raising enough funds initially to make it possible. 

Three Pillars

Sefaria has three pillars that define who they are and why they do this work. These pillars strike a balance between a focused approach and an understanding that they don’t always know what they don’t know. Their pillars are:

1. Access

• Jewish texts are the Jewish people’s collective inheritance and they belong to all of us. Accordingly, all Jewish texts should be as accessible as possible—in translation and available online for free.
• Sefaria aims to make these texts not just available but accessible—meaning comprehensible and meaningful to those who encounter them. 
• Sefaria believes it can use technology to help people find things they wouldn’t find on their own.

2. Infrastructure 

• Sefaria considers this to be its most important pillar; its core value proposition is a free database—a project that if done right only needs to be done once. 
• They don’t know what kind of devices people will be studying Torah on in 20 years, but they know those devices will be chomping on digital data. 
• They want technologists in the future to be able to use Sefaria and this is why they hold tight to their Open Source philosophy—where everything on Sefaria is free for use and reuse, forever.
  

3. Education

• Sefaria operates on the principle that Sefaria can make Jewish learning not just easier but better. 
• Sefaria can power education in nearly any environment—camp; rabbinic; school; home; and elsewhere.

Without Sefaria I would be stuck as I literally cannot afford many sefarim and do not live close to a Beit Midrash I can easily access as a woman. It is brilliant and more translations and more texts are always welcomed by those of us who do not have top notch Hebrew and Aramaic. – Sefaria user

How Sefaria Operates
Sefaria operates like a technology company. They build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), put it out into the world, get feedback on its usefulness, and make changes if it makes sense to advance that product. As Daniel says, “this is a much different way of working than building a five-year plan.”

Daniel also notes that this approach does create challenges with traditional funders and fundraising. “As a general rule, we don’t promise product features. We can’t promise it until we do it.”

New Developments and Challenges Ahead
New features connect texts on Sefaria to diverse sources on a wide array of external Jewish websites, media, and other organizations, broadening the commentary and perspectives with which users can engage. 

As the organization looks ahead, there is an exciting element of the unknown, rich with possibilities. Daniel notes, “For the first time we know we’ll be around in five more years. While opportunities are vast, it’s less obvious what the priorities should be. But that’s fun. At some point, your new directions are more compelling than your original directions. This creates a need to prioritize or to get more resources.”

One thing Sefaria knows for sure is that it will not compromise on its core principle to offer open access. Sefaria’s “brand is rooted in the fact that we are this source of infinite generosity.” With that in mind, Sefaria is thinking about how to translate texts into more languages, how to make Torah written by women more accessible, and how to create opportunities for a deeper experience, like matching people for chevrutah study.

These resources are geared primarily toward educators and other professionals in the field to support their work and leadership during this challenging time.

Upcoming and Timely:

With Education and Engagement in Mind:

• Pardes offers different professional development opportunities for Jewish educators during the summer to help them “grow as educators, deepen their impact on students, and remain inspired.”
• With travel to Israel is still on hold, Makom continues to develop new ways of learning about and from Israel, including its “new and exciting set of educational resources in the form of a project we call Zimrat Ha’aretz: Makom’s New Israeli Playlist.
• New research from the Benenson Strategy Group offers insights on the kinds of virtual programming Jewish young adults are seeking out right now.
• Prizmah’s Reshet groups enable day school faculty, educators, and lay leaders to network with peers and colleagues. Choose from groups Judaic Administrator, Learning Specialist, Orthodox Women Leadership, and more.
• The Jewish Education Project launched The Jewish Educator Portal, filled with curated content and resources, ongoing professional development, and a mechanism to create community by holding their own convenings and gatherings.
• Hebrew at the Center offers a full menu of online resources for Hebrew teachers and leaders to specifically help prepare schools and the field for the continued uncertainty.
• Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion has a resource guide with tips and best practices for “Teaching in Relationship Online.”
• The Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative (FC) launched NewRealityResources.com to aggregate timely content and offerings for Jewish youth professionals and educators who work with Jewish teens.
• The iCenter offers materials and links to live experiences to help educators continue Israel education.
• The Jewish New Teacher Project has a list of free ed-tech resources for schools that have moved to online learning and ‘low-tech’ ideas for home learning.
• Facing History and Ourselves has “readings and resources to start important conversations with your students about the coronavirus outbreak, and to explore questions about community, responsibility, decision-making and upstanding that are relevant in this moment.”
• CASJE has curated a set of resources that look at how changes as a result of COVID-19 are testing education in a variety of settings, including K-12 schooling, after-school learning, early childhood education, and higher education.
• Torrey Trust, Ph.D. at University of Massachusetts Amherst has a presentation available on “Teaching Remotely in Times of Need.”
• Moving Traditions has a thoughtful “Blessing for B’nai Mitzvah Impacted by the Coronavirus.”

Helping Leaders Navigate Crises:

• UpStart offers a guide, Facilitating in the Virtual World: 26 interactive exercises to engage participants at all stages of the learning journey, to help with digital engagement–whether it occurs in a board meeting, a Jewish afterschool program, or elsewhere.
• The Jewish Service Alliance launched Serve the Moment to mobilize Jewish young adults and college students (ages 18-29) through a full-time stipended fellowship program that starts this summer. Nominate a changemaker in your community for the fall.
• Leading Edge has released a new playbook on “Reopening Our Workspaces.” Learn how to keep human factors like team culture, emotional support, and equity front and center in your reopening plans.
• Resources to facilitate conversations and prompt actions regarding race and equality are available from the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative, The Jewish Education Project, Repair the World, Moishe House, Moving Traditions, Prizmah, and PJ Library.
• Leading Edge has resources to help professionals at all career levels and in different positions approach “the challenges of work under quarantine, arranged by some questions we’ve been hearing a lot lately.”
• JPRO offers new Masterclasses within its ongoing webinar series to address current issues facing professionals and their organizations.
• Jewish Funders Network Resources Hub offers many helpful and timely resources by category.
• Board Member Institute for Jewish Nonprofits is hosting a number of webinars on board-related topics.
• The Center for Creative Leadership has “Leadership Resources for Times of Crisis.”

For Self-Care:

• The COVID Grief Network, an international mutual aid network, offers free 1:1 and group grief support and builds long-term community for young adults in their 20s and 30s who are grieving the illness or death of someone to COVID-19.
• JPRO and Jewish Federations of North America offer Rise, an initiative to help out-of-work Jewish community professionals financial resources, career resources and personal resilience resources.
• Maharat and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah “have partnered to launch an exciting new program: Mind the Gap: A Mini Sabbatical designed for Jewish professionals who are headed to or in-between jobs in the Jewish communal sector, with the goals of deepening knowledge of Jewish content and strengthening leadership skills.” You can share the names and email addresses of potential candidates at [email protected]