News & Blogs Category: Guest Blog

As part of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s investment in Leadership Development through ten grants following an open request for proposals, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is conducting a cross-portfolio research study to understand common outcomes, themes, and strategies in developing Jewish leaders. The Foundation is pleased to share CCL’s literature review exploring this space, along with this ongoing series from leaders in the fields of Jewish education and engagement sharing reflections on this research and questions and challenges related to leadership development.

In its insightful report prepared for the Jim Joseph Foundation, The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) reaches a conclusion which echoes an axiomatic foundational principle of our work at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America: that the conditions of social comfort and relative political security challenge us to articulate visions for Jewish community and Jewish identity that are robust enough for Jews to want to opt into them in an open marketplace of identities and choices. The CCL report wisely observes that the American Jewish project had shifted, by the end of the 20^th century, from the attempt to assimilate into trying to thrive after having successfully assimilated. In such a climate, with the absence of pronounced persecution on par with earlier eras in Jewish history, and with an increasing diversity of ideological expressions and even of the very definitions of Jewishness, Jewish leaders and educators face the challenge of having to “make the case” for Judaism itself to potential adherents who could easily default to opting out.

This is why so many of us do what we do in Jewish education: we believe there is a Judaism that is greater than the one forced upon us by the “crisis narrative,” that Judaism should not be a coercive default; and that a clear articulation of such a Judaism not only makes a better case for Judaism to survive and thrive today, but also reflects a deeper understanding of the covenant itself. My colleague Shaul Magid argues provocatively that to be fixated on existential threats – to be constantly concerned that the Jewish people will be destroyed – is its own act of disbelief in the covenant, a lack of faith in God’s promise that the Jewish people will not be destroyed. Or, if we prefer a secular framing: the Jewish people, in all its lachrymose history, has been relentlessly adaptable. Shouldn’t the business of Jewish leadership be to lead the people towards the next adaptation, rather than merely protecting the people against threats? After a while, if you don’t tend the house, what’s the point of guarding it?

Our institution has premised itself on this understanding of Judaism in general and specifically of American Jewry since its founding, and argues that one of the ways in which we “make the case” for a Judaism of meaning is through the quality of our ideas. David Hartman z”larticulated this in slightly different terms, and for Israeli society, in his landmark essay “Auschwitz or Sinai,” arguing that it was time for Israelis to move past a victimhood-consciousness – which impeded moral obligation and responsibility – and towards a Judaism characterized by the metaphor of Sinai, and the responsibilities created by covenantal commitment. Persecution and oppression may be useful catalysts to sustain community in moments of crisis; but over time, and when existential threats no longer describe the totality of a community’s experience, we need positive and constructive commitments around which to organize our sense of belonging. Failure to identify and invest in these commitments will not only mean that we will fail to hold onto our adherents; it will also seed suspicion in those who believe that our fixation on existential threats belies a vacuousness in whatever it is we seek to protect. For at least a generation, we have heard this refrain echo in the Jewish community: what, after all, is the meaning and morality of survival for its own sake?

Increasingly, however, I find myself conflicted. Antisemitism consciousness is again on the rise in the Jewish community, and I fear that in our haste to repudiate it, those of us critics of Judaisms built on survival and solidarity perhaps never really engaged with the seriousness of its claims. The philosopher Emil Fackenheim, writing in 1967 – still in the shadow of the Shoah, and in the midst of feverish rising hostilities on Israel’s borders – wrote as follows:

“I confess I used to be highly critical of Jewish philosophies which seemed to advocate no more than survival for survival’s sake. I have changed my mind. I now believe that, in this present unbelievable age, even a mere collective commitment to Jewish group survival for its own sake is a momentous response, with the greatest implications. I am convinced that future historians will understand it, not as our present detractors would have it, as a tribal response – mechanism of a fossil, but rather as a profound, albeit fragmentary, act of faith, in an age of crisis to which the response might well have been either flight in total disarray or complete despair.”

I feel indicted by Fackenheim’s words, and I am concerned that inasmuch we have insisted that a previous generation’s survivalism was merely tribalism, we are left unprepared to grapple with the urgency of its moral message. We have been so convinced by the need for a post-crisis moral language that we failed to harvest the moral possibilities and legacies of a generation of Jews whose very survival was an extraordinary affirmation in light of more plausible alternatives. In our haste to insist that the morality of our predecessors was insufficient, did we simply not do the work in understanding it?

Worse than that, we also see now that antisemitism didn’t disappear; the only thing that has disappeared has been the capacity of our community to organize with some sense of shared resistance to it, a commitment – even if ‘secular’ in nature, even if only committed to survival for survival’s sake – to fight it as a collective. Antisemitism for American Jews today is just another datum in the partisan divide, and this is the worst of both worlds: the persistence of a pernicious hate, without even the gift of solidarity among Jews on the other side. Is it possible that in fixating on a moral alternative, we evacuated the useful and instructive moral message of what it was that we were rejecting?

But it’s not that I want survivalism and the crisis narrative to come back again as the organizing principle in American Jewish life, to swing the pendulum in the other direction to correct for the mistakes of having let it go too quickly. Survivalism is not only a set of fears and the framework for a moral response; it also brings with it an economy of actors and institutions who benefit when the energy and attention of our community fixates on self-preservation and political solidarity. Sometimes, in my more heretical moments, I feel angrier at anti-semites for warping our communal priorities than I even am at them for hating us and trying to destroy us. I feel in these moments affirmed by the Haggadah’s brash assertion that Lavan the Aramean was ‘worse’ than Pharoah, as he sought not merely to eradicate us physically but also to extinguish our spirit. When we become fixated on threats against us – on the enemies at the gates rather than on the covenant in the center of the camp – are we unwittingly complicit in our own demise?

I suppose that one of my hopes for Jewish education and Jewish leadership today is to find a deeper epistemological humility inside this swinging pendulum, more seekers of Jewish moral meaning of our most existential fears, a community of interpreters of our biggest political questions – committed more to the complexity found in imperfect solutions to Jewish problems than to advocacy for this tendentious choice or its radical alternative. We have to find ways to work on identifying the redeeming moral arguments behind the survival of the Jewish people just for survival’s sake, even as we hold alongside them our moral and sociologically-informed instincts that those arguments that fueled the Jewish past may not be sufficient to anchor a Jewishness for the Jewish future. I am not convinced that the most innovative and visionary leaders of the Jewish people are those that are capable of transcending the constraints and limitations of those that came before us. Jewish continuity has always been made possible through a weird hybrid of being forward-looking, and informed by the choices and mistakes of the past, all at the same time. It is possible that the survivalism of the 20^thcentury – with its secular commitments to “Jewish peoplehood,” and the odd continuity for its own sake – have what to teach even those of us who are skeptical of their hegemony. To move beyond the crisis narrative – which I still believe we must urgently do – we may need to revisit it.

Yehuda Kurtzer is the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.

At Ayeka, we believe that Jewish education must be broadened to engage the whole student in his or her uniqueness: mind, body, heart, and imagination.  Only when students personally connect with the material will they find it truly meaningful. We partner with six day schools of different denominations across the country to train teachers in our unique pedagogy of Soulful Education.  Our goal is to nurture the inner lives of the teachers themselves and to provide them with the tools to personally, emotionally, and spiritually engage their students. As we near the end of year one, we have successes, challenges, and questions to share.

New Paradigm for Jewish Education
Ayeka shifts the paradigm of Jewish education; as a result, operative questions change. The student no longer asks, “What does this text mean?” but rather, “what does this text mean to me?” The teacher no longer asks, “Have the students mastered the material?” but rather, “Now that the students have mastered the material, how will it impact their lives?”  The role of the teacher also changes, from expert source of information to role model of a Jew on a life-long journey of growth, also learning and seeking to grow by engaging in Torah study.

At leading schools across the country, this paradigm shift is beginning to take hold. Seasoned educators are aware of the disconnect sometimes experienced between their students and the curriculum and want help engaging them. They appreciate the opportunity to step back from the frenetic pace of the school day to become learners again, to hone their skills and refocus their vision, and to renew and deepen their own spiritual connections. Some have been teaching for decades without a clearly articulated philosophy of education. Many tell us that it has been years, even decades, since they personally studied the texts they teach. Now they can approach it anew with fresh eyes. Moreover, students of all ages respond positively to the opportunities for personal reflection, and want more.

Overcoming Challenges of Shifting to Soulful Education
At the same time, we’ve discovered that a shift of this kind is difficult for many teachers, who associate Torah learning with purely intellectual discourse.  For some, this paradigm challenges what they long held as the goals of Jewish education, as the dominant school culture, or as the expectations of parents. We have learned that running immersive training programs is not enough to achieve the desired outcomes. We need to coach our teachers with 1:1 mentoring on a regular basis throughout the year.

For teachers to alter their pedagogy, and to both share more of themselves and invite students to do the same, feels risky. This requires teachers to step out of their comfort zones and to be vulnerable.  For this kind of change to succeed, program participants need the understanding and support of colleagues and the school administration. Ayeka works with at least two teachers within a school to help cultivate a peer-to-peer support system. We find that keeping the school administration “in the loop,”so they understand and support this new approach to learning is also critical. Ideally, at some point, an administrator participates fully in one of our training cohorts.

Site visits are invaluable, when we offer direct feedback to teachers after observing their lessons and meet administrators in person.  Moreover, each school is a universe unto itself.  The schools are vastly different sizes and in different geographic regions of the country. They serve different denominational communities, have diverse cultures, and operate in different educational systems.  Some schools are thriving and some are struggling.  Some buildings are decrepit and some are state-of-the-art.  When teachers gather from across the country to attend our training retreats, they are “homogenized” to some extent, and we see only the differences in them as individuals. Yet all of these variable factors and more influence what happens in the classroom, and we can best support our teachers by knowing the ecosystems in which they operate.

There are inherent challenges in trying to effect transformative change in an institution from the outside. We do not hire teachers, design curriculum, run staff meetings, or define school culture. Some schools, in their well-intentioned hurry to improve instruction, introduce multiple professional development initiatives at the same time, which can overwhelm its teachers. We need to teach our pedagogy in the most effective manner possible, while staying mindful of the limitations of our reach and the many factors influencing teachers and their capacity.

Big Questions to Consider Moving Forward
Ayeka partners with schools, but we train educators. We see a surprisingly high rate of transience in the day school workplace.  For instance, in our first year working with six schools, two Heads of School transitioned, and several teachers went on leave or are leaving the school.  This has led us to question the unit of change we are seeking and effecting.  If it is the individual educator, should we “follow” them to their new place of employment? If it is the school, how do we address the inconsistency and lost ground when participants leave?

Is a short-term partnership effective, or must the relationship be ongoing in order to have long-term impact?  How do we balance depth with breadth, rigorously training select educators while exposing the entire staff to core elements of our pedagogy and the paradigm shifts we are inviting?  How can we do this right and still keep it affordable?

At Ayeka, we believe we are all works-in-progress and on a lifelong journey of learning and growth. The first year of the Soulful Education Professional Development program yielded important insights and questions. We know there are more to come as we work with schools to make Jewish learning more personally meaningful for students and teachers alike.

Michal Fox Smart is Director of Ayeka North America

As part of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s investment in Leadership Development through ten grants following an open request for proposals, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is conducting a cross-portfolio research study to understand common outcomes, themes, and strategies in developing Jewish leaders. The Foundation is pleased to share CCL’s literature review exploring this space, along with this ongoing series from leaders in the fields of Jewish education and engagement sharing reflections on this research and questions and challenges related to leadership development.

At a time when our country—and world—feel so upside down, effective and transformative leadership has never been more needed. The Center for Creative Leadership study commissioned by the Jim Joseph Foundation helps us name and tackle perennial challenges in Jewish leadership with the profound urgency this political and spiritual moment demands.

Reading through the report, I stumbled upon my own words quoted from a talk I gave in 2014 titled “Discontinuing Jewish Continuity.” My central argument, then and now, is that our American Jewish community is not suffering from a crisis of Jewish continuity, but rather from a crisis of Jewish communal purpose. And, I would suggest, we need visionary and ordinary leaders—leading from a multiplicity of locations, identities, communities and platforms—to help us articulate that purpose and shape our future.

As the study describes, the challenges of leadership include the ability to manage polarities, to build inclusive and diverse communities, to develop Jewish education that is rigorous enough to transmit core Jewish principles while being accessible to an increasingly expansive Jewish population, to build Jewish organizations that attract and retain talent, and lastly to elevate our leadership game beyond our primary institutions in service to activating and aggregating the power of our networks for maximum impact.

In regard to the leadership practice of collaboration and the power of network-level leadership, I have seen firsthand the exponential and longitudinal benefit of this approach. In 2004 Bend the Arc (then Jewish Funds for Justice) launched The Selah Leadership Program in partnership with The Rockwood Leadership Institute, with initial funding provided by the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Rather than develop a leadership program that would primarily benefit our organization, we designed Selah to be a world-class leadership program that would also create the conditions necessary for a Jewish social justice sector to emerge and thrive. Selah was a deliberate intervention into the Jewish community, and the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable is one concrete manifestation of this network-level investment. Selah is now midway through our second Jewish communal intervention: to support the leadership of Jews of Color through four consecutive Selah Jewish Leaders of Color cohorts. By lifting up and fortifying the leadership of Jews of Color, Bend the Arc is playing one strategic role among many in helping our multiracial Jewish community live into a greater commitment to racial equity. We are deeply grateful for the partnership of the Jim Joseph Foundation, as well as the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the Jews of Color Field-Building Initiative in supporting this essential work.

And yet, on this question of network level leadership, I find myself grappling with some of the same questions that I articulated in that talk many years ago. When I think about the tremendous power of “network weavers”, the enormous resources spent on field-wide collaborations, or the well-meaning inclination for collective endeavors—all of which I support wholeheartedly—I come back to two questions: who has, de-facto, defined the parameters and actors that comprise the network, and when all is said and done “to what end”?

We know that most of our current Jewish institutions are not yet being led by Jews who represent the plurality and multiplicity of our community (including, but not limited to leadership by women, Jews of Color, and younger Jews), and we also know that many of our Jewish communal organizations are no longer feeling alive and relevant to a significant percentage of the [American] Jewish community. Given this reality, is it perhaps the strongest leadership move to pause before investing in the success of this iteration of our Jewish ecosystem? Or, if we choose to activate and harness the power of the networks we have, how can we be mindful of the perspectives, voices, practices and brilliance that is missing? What is our responsibility as leaders to mitigate this absence in our own institutions, and in our Jewish ecosystem as a whole?

And, as our Jewish community and communal ecosystems continue to transform, we will still need to answer the question: What is our shared vision, and why is it essential for us to reach for that vision together? How will we remain aligned and moving forward over time? When we work to elevate our own and other organizations in a networked system, the system itself is strengthened. Reinforcing an ill-defined system can create deeper challenges. I often wonder how much more powerful we could be if our networks had a conscious and explicit vision for our collective success.

Many Jewish social justice leaders are tackling versions of this problem together. Leaders and organizations from The Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, for example, have made a multi-year commitment to advance practices and policies of racial equity in our organizations and broader field. In moving together in formation towards our shared vision of making social justice a core expression of Jewish life, we are learning to share responsibility and accountability for the historic— and current—manifestations of racism inside the Jewish community.  This is network level leadership in action.

Developing the capacity of Jewish leaders to ask these bigger questions and skillfully lead our organizations—and broader community—is a critical need. We are grateful that the field is moving in this new direction and that the very nature of the ecosystem of leadership development is expanding and reshaping itself.

Stosh Cotler is the Chief Executive Officer of Bend the Arc

Parker Palmer – an educator who writes about social activism, values, and community engagement – has spent his life trying to convince teachers, civic leaders, and influencers that finding one’s inner truth is the first step in helping people achieve greater personal and professional fulfillment. The idea resonates well with Generations X and Y (millennials) and often informs the Jewish community’s next-gen engagement work. Hard-pressed to make decisions about what they want to do and who they want to be, today’s young adults struggle to understand what it means to be human in a world that constantly challenges their humanity. The result, according to Palmer, is a crisis of identity, which must be addressed.

The lesson for next-gen Jewish professionals is to address the complex issue of identity before presenting a pathway to communal engagement. Palmer’s ideas are prominently featured in an 18-month fellowship program developed by The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) in partnership with M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education and the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). He encourages an exploration of identity through truth – starting with one’s own truth – as a path to understanding where the most fruitful intersections with the world lie. It’s a version of the idea of “meeting people where they are,” but through Palmer’s lens, the success of “the meeting” can only be achieved through deep personal understanding. “Who is the self that teaches?” is the core question Palmer asks in his celebrated book The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, which has become a mainstay for Jewish educators since its release in 1997. His ideas, which are derived from his Quaker roots, impart important lessons.

The JFNA fellows, 20 of whom will graduate from the program’s inaugural cohort in November, are young adults hired by local Jewish federations to lead next-gen engagement work. As representatives of the market, they were directed to follow Palmer’s recommendation to explore their own identities as a first step. Their self-exploration was complemented by a rigorous set of leadership questionnaires administered by the research-based CCL in Greensboro. CCL provides fellows with analyses of their leadership competencies, communication preferences, and tolerance for change through a battery of assessment tools typically used for top corporate CEOs. The goal is to allow the fellows an opportunity to understand the values at the core of their identities and how these values affect their performances and success at work. At the end of the 18-month program, these young professionals will be more intentional about how they engage their peers and also better positioned to guide their local communities.

From the start, the initiative was experimental. Next-gen federation professionals tend to have small budgets and operate several concentric circles away from their most senior federation colleagues and local board leaders. This significant investment in their professional growth and development is supported by a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation. Also, each federation is giving their fellows time for training and learning as well as supervision and funding for an applied learning demonstration project. Taken together, this effort is unprecedented in the Jewish community and reflects the federation’s commitment to cultivating talent and finding new ways to address one of the community’s most pressing concerns: next-gen engagement with and commitment to Jewish communal life.

Commitment, including its connection to values and identity, was also discussed. What does it mean to be committed to the Jewish people? How much of myself and my individualism am I willing to give up in order to be part of a community? These questions are central to the identity of next-gen Jewish professionals and their peers.

Presented with an endless number of ways in which to express themselves, every decision they make is riddled with complexities of who they truly are. That amorphous reality often provokes indecision and inaction. The fellows are learning to interpret and address these questions head-on in their next-gen work. They are learning to think like educators and leaders by practicing various methods that will enable them to elevate conversations about Judaism, Jewish identity, and Jewish commitment through an exploration of values.

The fellows are learning that people only make lasting commitments after they have wrestled with difficult ideas or experienced conflict. They must fall and then rise, get pushed and push back. Yet, conflict often involves risk and possible dissention – ideas not always embraced by federations that pride themselves on representing a community that speaks in one harmonious voice. To be successful, the fellows will have to counter these entrenched behaviors and solicit buy-in for new engagement tools from federation leaders.

Palmer also wrestled with similar issues related to cultural reform. He recognized that, on their own, his wisdom and passion were insufficient to ignite change. Part of the challenge he accepted was to communicate his ideas in a way that others can understand, spread, and scale. For example, he often used the word spirituality, which is loaded with various meanings and assumptions. However, Palmer reasoned, “When I actually did get around to talking about spirituality, I would say to people, before you stop listening, let me explain what that word means to me: spirituality is any way you have of responding to the eternal human yearning to be connected with something larger than yourself.” Once he provided this definition, people seemed more at ease.

The JFNA next-gen fellows aim to address an audacious and timeless question: How do we make Judaism matter for the new generation? The answer, they are being taught, can be found only by looking inside and discovering what they truly believe, for once they truly believe, they can convince others to believe as well. It’s a journey few in the Jewish communal space have had the luxury of experiencing with such intensity and commitment, and JFNA has high expectations for this group. As one fellow explained, “Ever since I came to understand the value proposition, I have not been able to stop talking about it. I have trained my colleagues, members of our federation board, and, of course, the young professionals with whom I work. Perhaps finding ways to engage the next generation in Jewish life may be just the beginning.”

Rabbi David M. Kessel is the Associate Vice President of Young Leadership and Next Gen Engagement for The Jewish Federations of North America. The second cohort of JFNA’s NextGen Fellows began in May, 2019.

Learn more about the Next Gen Jewish Federation Fellowship program here.
cross-posted in eJewishPhilanthropy

It starts simple. One problem. One need. One idea.

At Sefaria, we take that simple start and grow it collaboratively into robust and sometimes game-changing solutions. This is the heart of our approach to research and development: we listen to our users, we study the potential impact of implementing new tools and features, and then we innovate. We have an ambitious vision to make Torah more accessible and we balance a long list of new product ideas and everyday maintenance needs along with a constant stream of user feedback. This vision is best pursued when our funders view themselves as partners in this journey—ready to celebrate successes and to learn from failures with us—and when they understand why and how this approach yields the innovations that the field embraces.

The Winding Journey to Innovation
As a fast-moving organization, one that is committed to launching early and often, and pivoting when necessary, long-term plans can be tricky. We release a new feature about every three weeks. Some of them you’ve seen, because they’ve gained traction, while others quietly morph into other features, getting redesigned and redeployed later on. Like most tech companies, our product roadmaps primarily exist to help us prioritize the most important work at that moment, and plan the sequence in which we’ll release features as they relate to our strategic goals.

Estimating how long it will take to create an entirely new tool or feature is always a challenge. We do, however, use a quarterly planning process adopted from a technique made famous by Intel and Google measuring objectives and key results–or OKRs. This approach allows us to remain flexible and open to new opportunities while also holding ourselves accountable to internal deadlines and benchmarks. As we grade the previous quarter and plan for the next one, we can adjust to new circumstances, adapt to changes in the broader world of technology, and allow our small but mighty engineering team the opportunity to support the needs of our audience. Furthermore, some of the most successful tools, products and interfaces pioneered by Sefaria – including our Source Sheet Builder – were not initially on any product roadmap.

Source Sheets have long been a fixture in Jewish education. For decades, rabbis, teachers and professors would physically cut and paste these sheets together so that students could learn together in a classroom setting. For a long time, this tool served its purpose.

When Sefaria was first building its library, our team repeatedly heard requests from users: Can I build a source sheet on your site? Given the importance of this pedagogical tool and how inextricably linked it is to the way we study Jewish texts, we knew that our users were onto something. So we listened and responded, building a product that digitized the source sheet.

At first, that’s all it was: just a direct digitization of a once-analog product. Of course even that was a giant leap forward, allowing users to pull from texts without scissors, a glue stick and a copy machine. This new life for the traditional source sheet quickly evolved as we learned from our users.

Soon, we upgraded the ability to add multimedia. A community educator could add video classes to a sheet. Or a teacher could add an image of a Marc Chagall painting to illustrate how a text inspired a piece of art. Or perhaps a singer-songwriter would write music based on female characters in the Bible and upload the recordings with links to the texts that inspired her.

But because Sefaria is an ever-evolving platform, we kept reaching. Again, we turned to our users to listen, learn and grow. We soon realized that we needed a way for educators to reach an eager audience. It wasn’t enough just to host their source sheets–even in their new upgraded form. Now, we needed a method to connect users to the type of content they were seeking.

To this challenge, we responded by developing our Groups feature. Now, organizations and schools, as well as individual artists and thinkers, could launch their curriculum, classes, resources and ideas in a low-risk, high-reward environment. This evolving feature already hosts more than 45 groups including Moishe House, One Table, ELI Talks, various synagogues, schools, Hillels and more.

And it doesn’t end here. As you read this, our team is working around the clock on enhancements for the Groups feature, for the Source Sheet Builder and new tools we have yet to even announce.

Funding the Unknown and Embracing Change Together
For some funders, our approach is unconventional, and the nature of the work can be unsettling. One problem begets one solution—and the work takes off from there. Truly innovating often means embarking on the unknown, including not knowing when—or if—a new project will be completed.

As a software platform that will succeed or fail based on its utility, we are wary of making promises—whether it’s a new feature or an engagement tactic—before anything has been tested by users. If we were to make specific commitments simply to satisfy a funder looking for a detailed project plan and timeline, we could end up building products that are not adaptive and don’t work for the majority of Sefaria’s users.

That’s why we particularly value our relationship with funding partners who learn with us and remain open to flexibility and change throughout the grant period. These partners also understand that risk-taking is a critical part of innovation. And because traditional, “transactional” grant reports sometimes fail to capture progress made and valuable information learned in any period, we appreciate the opportunity for regular check-ins. Our ongoing conversations give us the opportunity to build trust, share honest feedback, learn from each other and, ultimately, better support the Jewish community together.

We’ve been very lucky to work with several major foundations and individual investors who have been willing to take this journey with us. And while we have made a lot of progress making the Jewish library more accessible, we still have a lot of work to do!

Annie Lumerman is Chief Operating Officer of Sefaria.

As educators working to engage teens in meaningful Jewish experiences, all of us in the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative know the facts surrounding teen angst and concerns about young people’s mental health. We wring our hands over the impact of social media on our teens, providing “connections” yet ultimately often leading to loneliness and self-loathing. We have read countless articles, watched documentaries, and spoken with mental health professionals. We brainstorm with each other about workshop ideas, potential speakers, and ways to frame the conversation through a Jewish lens.

And then we saw Dear Evan Hansen together. Along with 25 Bay Area teen educators and 50 teens, members of the Funder Collaborative sat in the intimacy of a darkened theater and watched the statistics come to life. We forced ourselves to not look away when Evan Hansen struggled to get through the first day of school while harboring a painful secret. We watched as he tried to fill the holes in his life in unhealthy ways. We shared the gut-wrenching experience of listening to the sobs and sniffles of audience members all around us. We walked out of this experience with a shared sense of empathy for both our teens and their parents — along with a renewed sense of commitment to dig our heels deeper into this complex challenge.

As members of the Funder Collaborative, each of us strives to meet the needs of our unique communities. While there are shared goals and measures of success, the on-the-ground work in each community looks and feels quite different, as one would expect from 10 cities of various sizes and cultures. With this experience of Dear Evan Hansen, however, the differences fell away. Sitting side by side watching the drama unfold, we were empowered knowing we are connected in the sacred work of helping teens feel a sense of belonging.

Margie Bogdanow, Senior Consultant, Teen Education and Engagement in Boston, expressed:

The play touched on so many of the issues that we are addressing in our communities. By viewing it together we could connect to the universality of the issues.  I think we all felt like it represented things happening in our communities.  There are times when what we are doing (in the Funder Collaborative) feels very separate and different, and other times when it all ties together. This was one of those ties-together times.

Experiencing Dear Evan Hansen was a gift I wish I could bestow on all teen educators. One powerful element is the insight it provides into not just the lives of teens, but also of their parents. Audience members gain the valuable perspective of parents trying the best they can, aware of their inadequacies while feeling frustrated and scared. In the opening song, “Does Anybody Have a Map?” Evan’s mom captures the desperation of parents everywhere who are searching for something akin to Waze to help them navigate an unpredictable journey.

Another stumble as I’m reaching for the right thing to say
I’m kinda coming up empty
Can’t find my way to you

 

Does anybody have a map?
Anybody maybe happen to know how the hell to do this?
I don’t know if you can tell
But this is me just pretending to know

 

So where’s the map?
I need a clue
‘Cause the scary truth is
I’m flying blind
And I’m making this up as I go

It offers a strong reminder that often the role of our youth professionals includes guiding and inspiring the parents as well.

My colleague Melanie Schneider, Senior Planning Executive, Jewish Life at UJA Federation of New York, captured what many of us were feeling:

Indeed, Dear Evan Hansen was both incredible and a truly moving and enlightening experience, both professionally and personally. As the mother of young adults, with the teen years not too far back in my rear view mirror, I resonated with Evan Hanson’s portrayal of the needs and struggles of parents and teens in juggling full work and academic lives, parenting expectations, as well as the occasional fear of shame, isolation and just plain overwhelm. So while I joined my colleagues in some teary moments, and also laughed….the end result is that Evan Hanson is a piece of theater that will stay with me always and exposes a wide-spread American challenge.

Many of the Funder Collaborative communities are already immersed in addressing the challenges depicted in the show, with an emphasis on supporting the diverse adults who support our teens. Last spring, the Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles hosted Building Resilience in Teens: A Wellness Conference for Parents and Educators. Over 200 parents, educators, and mental health professionals attended the full-day conference, which offered expert-led workshops and presentations on critical issues regarding parents, teens, and their relationships. San Francisco is hosting the February 2019 Teens Thrive Un-Conference, where, over the course of four days, diverse educators, clergy, and community stakeholders will experience workshops and keynotes from experts in the field on different angles of teen health — spiritual, emotional, mental, and sexual. Youth professionals across the communities are offered in-service programs with clinicians and experts that provide training and resources to guide their work with teens and their parents. And, inspired by the experience we shared, the Boston Teen Initiative is planning to take their educators to see Dear Evan Hansen this summer, with pre-show and post-show dialogues designed to maximize the impact.

Many communities also provide engagement opportunities for parents who are seeking strategies, practical tools, and support to know they are not alone facing the challenges of raising teens. As summer drew to a close, the Chicago Teen Initiative screened the film “Eighth Grade,” helping parents and youth professionals navigate the feelings it raised and prepare their children and themselves for the start of a new school year. In Los Angeles, our Federation offered Starting the Conversation: Talking to Your Teens about Vaping and Marijuana Use, where participants learned the current language around drug trends and gained tools to communicate effectively with their teens about the sensitive topic of substance use.

Following the convening and the Dear Evan Hansen experience, we all returned to our home communities fortified and reinvigorated. We are grateful to be able to engage in this critical, timely work and for this meaningful theater event that reminded us that we are not alone. Our 10 communities are in this together — supporting teens, parents, and ourselves.

Jessica Green is VP, Jewish Education and Engagement (former Director, Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative), The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles

The Jim Joseph Foundation is one of many funders invested in the Collaborative. 

“Diversity” might not be the first word that comes to mind when we think about living a Jewish life—but it should be. Our heritage’s creation story—human beings created in the image of the Divine—makes an unequivocal statement that all people, whatever our race, ethnicity, class, culture, language, ability or identity, are infinitely valuable and equal. Our history of oppression teaches us to stand up for—rather than exclude or marginalize—minorities. And even the tradition of reading the Torah aloud, with one voice and many listeners, began with a commitment to embracing the unique differences in how each and every one of us views the world.

The book of Nehemiah tells how Ezra the scribe brought the whole Jewish community together to hear the Torah for the first time, and while the people listened, 13 “interpreters” fanned out into the crowd to interpret the text and make it meaningful to each. From the very beginning, this tale teaches us, the Torah was not meant to have just one meaning; it was intended to be adapted, interpreted and transformed for each listener’s worldview.

I was blessed to learn this deeply moving teaching from Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, founder of Lab/Shul and a Global Justice Fellow of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), at a thought-provoking gathering with leaders of 26 organizations convened by the Jim Joseph Foundation. We were a diverse group representing organizations from across the Jewish community: There were fellow social justice organizations like Bend the Arc and Hazon. Youth and young adult engagement organizations like BBYO, Hillel and Moishe House. Foundations like Wexner and Schusterman. And religious institutions like Union for Reform Judaism, Jewish Theological Seminary, and IKAR.

Like the Torah interpreters of Ezra’s day, each of our organizations was interpreting the stories and lessons of our tradition and applying them to respond to the particular challenges of our day. To take just one example, some of the groups represented at this gathering are using the lessons of Jewish history to inspire solidarity with others seeking freedom—from the Rohingya Muslims of Burma who are being subject to crimes against humanity, to the thousands of asylum seekers crossing our southern border in the hope of a safe life in the U.S. Other organizations are engaging youth to connect with Jewish text, or creating new rituals for observing Jewish holidays in the 21st century.

While the gathering celebrated the beauty of this rainbow of Jewish organizations working on a multitude of different goals, it also highlighted the ways in which we are falling short of our obligation to respect and embrace the diversity among us.

In a powerful session lead by Stosh Cotler, Yavilah McCoy, April Baskin and Cheryl Cook, we heard about the devastating experiences many Jews of color have within our institutions and communities. They recounted people asking Jews of color, “how are you Jewish?” or arriving at synagogues only to be mistaken as janitorial staff because of the color of their skin. Some described their yearning to have Jewish role models who look like them. And others shared a desire to hear more music of their own heritage—from gospel music to Sephardi or Mizrahi Jewish tunes—sung in synagogue and other spaces of Jewish life. We were reminded of the racial and ethnic diversity of the American Jewish community, and the continued work we have to do to embrace our full spectrum of lived experience.

Crucially, we also focused on how we, as Jewish leaders, can promote diversity in our own organizations and programs, first by understanding the various ways—personal, cultural and structural—that people are being marginalized; and then by creating initiatives that foster diversity and proactively work to transform our organizational cultures to address these problems.

Since I’ve returned from this gathering of American Jewish leaders, I’ve been thinking more and more about what it means to embrace the pluralism and diversity within the American Jewish community, in light of my organization’s work to create a truly pluralistic world in which all people of every race, faith, gender, identity, ethnicity and ability can live with dignity and human rights.

In our work at AJWS to promote human rights in 19 countries in the developing world, we work with grantee partners of diverse races, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds worldwide—Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, secular intellectuals, feminists, and many others. This is fundamental to our mission, since AJWS is inspired by the core Jewish notion that all people were created b’tselem Elohim—in the image of God. To create a world in which every person’s dignity is upheld, we promote gender equality in India, supporting girls and young women to make their own choices about marriage, careers and futures. In Kenya, we defend the rights of LGBTI people, supporting organizations that combat homophobia and violence, ensuring that people of all sexual orientations and gender identities can live with dignity. In Mexico, we support a movement of indigenous farmers working to stop discrimination against indigenous people and halt land grabs that rob them of the farms and resources they need for survival.

Just as we work with diverse partners around the world, we are blessed with a relatively diverse staff, with members of our staff from many cultures, faiths, intellectual traditions, and sexual and gender identities. We believe that diversity is not just about who is on our team, but how we tap the talents and different experiences they bring to our mission and work.

To do this, we have begun a diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative to continue to build and sustain a diverse, just and inclusive work environment where all employees—of all races, religions and identities—feel safe and respected. We are celebrating the ways in which we are succeeding, and taking a hard look at the ways in which we are falling short, in order to be a community truly rooted in our core values.

As we work to achieve a diverse, pluralistic and respectful world for all people, we must do the same in the Jewish community. This means we must understand the wide scope and respect the full diversity of diaspora Jewish cultural groups—from the many Ashkenazi traditions, to Mizrahi Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, to Sephardi Jews of Spain—as well those in multi-faith, diverse and hybrid families. That also means respecting religious and secular Jews in their many varieties, and Jews of various world views and ideologies.

To create the kind of pluralistic world we want to live in, we must include those who have never been fully included before, in every society, including the Jewish community. We must challenge restrictive norms that oppress women and foster violence against them. We must take on institutional racism, conscious or not, that affects how we look at (and too often limit) people of every background. We must embrace the dignity of LBGTI people. We must be truly open to “the other” and “welcoming the stranger” in our community and in the broader world.

Just as we are learning, in this authoritarian age, that one authoritarian abets another, we understand that diversity anywhere can catalyze diversity everywhere. That’s our work. Those are our values. That’s who we are. In fact, part of creating a diverse and pluralistic world is creating a diverse and pluralistic Jewish community. And to create a diverse and open Jewish community, we must be situated in a diverse and open world community. These goals cannot be separated and cordoned off from one another. They are one.

The Jim Joseph Foundation gathering provided a significant opportunity for these conversations to take root. I left thinking how powerful it would be if each of the 26 organizations in attendance would take up this mandate, together and in our own communities in real and authentic ways, and to challenge our colleagues throughout the Jewish world to do the same. This would mean a stronger Jewish community for ourselves and a better world for all.

Robert Bank is President and CEO of American Jewish World Service

A rabbi, an activist, and a researcher walk into a bar.  It’s not the beginning of a joke, but the makings of the late summer Jim Joseph Foundation convening, that brought together lead staff from across the Foundation’s leadership development grantees.

As the Executive Director of Avodah, I have the privilege and pleasure of getting invited to many convenings, and I treasure them all.  Convenings such as this, especially if they are designed well, have the ability to build deep and lasting relationships that can have great outcomes.   I’ve been thinking about the deep work and value of relationship-building and want to offer a few thoughts about why I think it is worth spending time and money to pull people together.

1. It pushes us to learn about better practices, especially practices that take more courage and intention. I loved learning from Yavillah McCoy, April Baskin, and Stosh Cotler about how they are embracing racial justice practices to transform their organizations, and how this work can help set a path to creating a more inclusive and reflective Jewish community.  I’ve been working on integrating racial justice into the core of our goals and values at Avodah, and this conversation helped me see how others have done this work, and also some of the challenges they have hit.  I want to continue this conversation to learn from those who are doing this work better than me, and also to support and possibly inspire those who are ready to step into strengthening their own racial justice practices in their organizations.
2. They can counter loneliness at the top. While I feel very privileged to be a CEO, it can be exceedingly lonely at times, and building and strengthening a network of CEOs means I’m just a phone call away from advice and support from someone who is juggling many of the same things as me.
3. They plant the seeds for members to see each other more as collaborators, and less as competitors, and to identify ways to cross-pollinate each other’s work. There’s sometimes a tendency in our work to feel resource scarcity rather than resource abundance. I have spoken to funders who get similar sounding proposals from different organizations, and have to figure out how to sort through those proposals, and try to understand who is best suited to do that work.  When those of us in the field are brought together to build relationships, it allows us to see up close what other leaders and organizations have to offer.  On a personal note, it reminds and inspires me to think deeply about ways that other organizations can enhance our work, and how Avodah can enhance the work of other organizations.  I also want to note that I am rarely in shared spaces with organizations that are traditional Jewish educational institutions, and I found that this specific convening sparked some new thinking for me about ways that I can learn from the larger field of Jewish education.
4. Funders and people in the field need to know and trust each other for all of us to succeed. Creating a space where leaders from the funding world and leaders from the not-for-profit world can have a level playing field and talk about how to create a stronger and more vibrant Jewish community is rare, and feels so vital for our future. This convening was one of those exceptional spaces, where we had the opportunity to talk about issues that are beyond our own organizational or funder vantage point, where we could begin to share our hopes and dreams for the larger field of Jewish education, and think together about how we can get there.

A convening like this summer’s convening is a piece of the puzzle in building a lasting network that can move the field of Jewish leadership forward.  I hope that there will be continued opportunities to collaborate and I am excited that Avodah is part of this learning cohort.

Cheryl Cook is Executive Director of Avodah.

There was something a little uncanny about my last trip to Chicago.

Let me explain: I’ve spent much of the last eight years planning and executing residential education programs as the Academic Director of the Yiddish Book Center. In these programs, different sorts of participants—high school students, college students, writers, media professionals, and, most recently, through a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, high school and middle school teachers—gather at the Center to learn Yiddish, study modern Jewish literature, and connect with one another.

Overseeing and teaching in dozens of these programs over the years, for more than eight hundred participants, I’ve figured out a lot about what makes them work.

So, what was unusual about my trip in August for a Jim Joseph Foundation gathering was not just that, for a change, I was in the role of participant rather than organizer (that happens, from time to time), but that all the other participants, themselves directors of Jewish professional development programs of one sort or another, have similar experiences to me. It’s funny to do an icebreaker when you know that all the people doing it are, like you, people whose job it is to lead icebreakers.

That, of course, was what ultimately made the gathering meaningful. As different as our organizations and programs are, so many of the issues we face on a regular basis are uncannily similar. All of us are trying, in one way or another, to educate Jewish educators. Both in the substance of what it means to do that—how do you help an educator to do their job more effectively?—and in the methods we use to accomplish our goals (retreats, seminars, websites, and so on), we found a whole lot to discuss and debate.

Rosov Consulting, which facilitated the convening, created many different kinds of opportunities for us to share challenges and experiences, and to brainstorm and be creative. One moment stands out to me in this regard in particular. I casually spoke with a couple of the other participants about an aspect of our work I always find challenging: connecting with program participants virtually, after a workshop or retreat has ended.

As we talked about this, someone raised the idea of holding regular e-conferences, using platforms like Zoom, GoToMeeting, or Google Hangouts. One of the participants responded emphatically: “Those really don’t work for us. No matter how we do them, and even if the technology cooperates, it’s just never really satisfying.”

That was important for me to hear because I also feel those platforms don’t fully work for the Yiddish Book Center’s programs either. I’ve always wondered why we don’t see stronger results when we try to use those with our participants. Were we doing something wrong, choosing the wrong platform, or not approaching an e-conference in the right way? Why was it that in-person gatherings were always so much more intense and meaningful, in so many of our programs? It’s certainly possible that we can still find ways to make this kind of post-program virtual meeting work for us; but it was, frankly, a relief for me to hear that it’s not just us who find that modality mostly lackluster. I began to feel less anxious about trying to make that particular approach to alumni engagement work, and it inspired me to put more energy into exploring other methods for connecting with our participants once they’re home.

And, of course, one of the most useful outcomes of this Chicago gathering was that I now have a diverse and enthusiastic group of program directors to whom I can turn with questions about what works for them, and what doesn’t.  This is exactly the type of community that will help support me as I pursue my goals and look to advance our alumni engagement in new and meaningful ways.

Josh Lambert is Academic Director at the Yiddish Book Center

The Foundation is pleased to share reflections from participants at its recent convening of directors of Jewish educator training programs.

Pulling up to The Publishing House Bed and Breakfast in what appeared to be an old, deserted part of Chicago’s near West Side did not particularly allay my trepidation about the upcoming couple of days with my fellow grantees of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s Professional Development Initiative (PDI).  I walked around the building trying to figure out how to enter, eventually found the B & B’s small door and went inside.  No one was in the small foyer to greet me and it took me a while to determine that I needed to call someone’s cell phone who would then come to take care of check-in.  As I waited, I couldn’t help but wonder what I had gotten myself into – an inauspicious beginning to be sure.

And then I met the inn keeper and climbed the stairs into a magnificent, refurbished space that embodied the elegance and beauty of 110 years ago while reflecting the comforts and innovations of 2018.  I soon learned (and experienced for myself) that the near West Side of Chicago is far from deserted.  Rather, it is a quickly growing hotspot for Gen Z and Millennials, with housing construction on every street, restaurants, fragrant coffee shops and more.

These initial impressions of The Publishing House are a fitting metaphor for the experience we shared.  The ten PDI project directors represented a broadly diverse group, both in terms of settings served, roles and ages.  When considered individually each one of these characteristics opens up a world of difference between the participants, whether it be in how we work, our independence within our respective organizations and our generational experience of the world around us.  Taken together, they might have led to an insurmountable stumbling block.

Thanks to outstanding framing by the event organizers from Rosov Consulting, early on in the proceedings I began to understand the import and power of the experience, both in building relationships with colleagues who are engaged in the same, yet different, work and in gaining insight into the nature of the field of Jewish education in 2018.  These two pieces are inextricably connected: the directors of the ten PDI projects are playing an important role in shaping the field in the image of their vision and aspirations for Jewish learning in our time and in the future.

As someone well into the second half of my career, I spend a great deal of time considering how the field is changing in response to our changing world and how I can best leverage my experience in service of the future (much like The Publishing House has seamlessly woven the past into the present and future).  Indeed, I often wonder how I might gain more understanding of and insight into the realities and dreams of the next generation.  And so, the gift of two days with colleagues from multiple generations and settings, allowed me (and all of us) to more deeply understand each other’s realities and the contours of the field of Jewish education as it is emerging. 

During the gathering, four project directors (myself included) presented their projects.  The presentations by Laynie Solomon of Svara: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva and Dr. Josh Lambert of the Yiddish Book Center’s project crystalized in my mind the dramatic generational shifts in the field and the power of the learning and dialogue we were experiencing.  The PDI/Svara project seeks to raise up a generation of teachers who are “bold and courageous teachers, transformers, and transmitters of Jewish tradition.” while the Yiddish Book Center’s Great Books project uses 2018 technological capacities to bring literature of a very different time and place to a new generation of middle and high school teachers in Jewish day schools.  Robbie Gringras of Makom brought into focus in a particularly profound way the joys and challenges of marrying the ongoing work of Israel education with the world of Moishe House, serving young people in their 20’s.  Perhaps more than any project, Robbie is charged with adapting and shifting not only the nature of the learning to meet the needs of this age group but also the expectations of the fluid and often unpredictable engagement that typifies Millennials and Gen X.

As the director of HUC-JIR’s Executive MA program in Jewish education, a hybrid online/face-to-face learning experience for Jewish educators working in all aspects of the field, I, along with my HUC-JIR colleagues, am continuously trying to understand the evolving nature of the field, the people whom we educate and the leaders we prepare.  As I listened to and experienced the work of my colleagues and engaged in sustained conversations with other project directors not mentioned here, I felt a profound shift in my grasp of the world Jewish educators and learners inhabit today and will inhabit in the years ahead.  During the time of the gathering, our current HUC-JIR Executive MA students were beginning a sequence of courses entitled Educational Practices. The sequence begins by asking students to delve into the question of “who are our learners.”  The next set of questions they will be addressing ask, “What matters to our learners?” and “What does learning look like today?”  The PDI gathering in Chicago, without question, brought home for me just how dramatically our field is changing and the consequent demands made upon current and future leaders to respond to these changes while remaining firmly rooted in an ancient tradition and the successes of our past which in turn will have an impact on the content and framing of the course sequence.

In the years ahead, as Jim Joseph Foundation PDI program directors continue to collaborate and learn from one another, and as the world around us continues to change at what some would say is a breakneck pace, my hope is that we will not only understand but also be able to articulate with greater clarity the nature and concrete work entailed in ensuring a vibrant and ever-evolving field of Jewish education

Dr. Lesley Litman is the Director of the Executive MA program in Jewish Education at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion

The Jim Joseph Foundation is pleased to share a series of reflections from beneficiaries of some of its newly-supported programs in leadership development and educator training. Rabbi Jeff Amshalem reflects on his experience working with educators as part of Ayeka’s Soulful Education program.

What will you be trying to do teshuvah for this year? Raise your hand if it is the same as last year. Raise the other hand if it was the same as the year before that. Raise the other hand if…

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got all my hands up. But was there anything you have succeeded in changing? Based on my own experience and my time as a teacher, I would guess that when real change happened, some combination of the following things was present for you: an emotional investment in changing, a deep and sustained process of reflection, and/or a personal model of the way you wanted to be.

Ayeka Soulful Education tries to provide these things for educators and the students they serve, so that education becomes not only about information but transformation. Most educators already share this goal; sometimes, however, our educational environments can do more to support this work as well. “Covering material,” for example, can take precedent over transformation. Reminiscent of Ramban’s famous claim that one can be “a scoundrel within the limits of the law,” a student can be a star without ever actually becoming one bit more of a mensch. Worse, they may not even realize that Jewish learning was supposed to be so much more. Is such a student really a success? Were his or her teachers?

At Ayeka, we like to think of our methodology as a paradigm shift. To achieve that shift, we began by offering intensive workshops for schools to help teachers create a classroom culture and facilitate lessons that would use the content being taught to inspire personal reflection and growth. We were moderately successful – teachers reported increased student engagement, more supportive student culture, and satisfaction in everyone knowing that the purpose of learning was to change and grow – but we did not achieve the paradigm shift we were looking for. Ayeka still felt like a technique, like something teachers did, not an approach, not something they were becoming.

We realized that we had skipped the most important step – the teacher’s own learning for growth. Like most (if not all) day school educators, our teachers were pressed for time, spent much of their development and teaching time alone, and approached the material by immediately asking what the students would take from it (which was usually answered in the form of content and skills). So now, when we partner with schools, whether in 18 month or 3 year programs, we devote our first three-day retreat and the entire first semester to helping the teachers reconnect to Torah themselves, as learners, as Jews with souls of their own that need nourishing, and not teachers. We build an intimate cohort of teachers and administrators from all the partner schools and create an environment built on honesty, openness, and room for failure. We stress seeing ourselves as works in progress, with Torah as a guide, and each other as fellows on the way. We give the gift of time and a supportive space that teachers generally lack, to reinvest in the kind of learning that attracted so many teachers to Jewish education in the first place. We learn together, asking just one simple question – what does this have to say to you, right now? It is staggering to hear teachers say, time and again, “Wow, I never get to learn like this anymore” (or even “I’ve never learned like this before”).

It’s only in the second semester that we begin bringing this methodology into the classroom, and only gradually, because the teachers have to be authentic models themselves of this kind of soulful learning if they hope to inspire their students to learn in the same way. The focus is still on the teacher, though, as we try to cultivate the necessary dispositions for this kind of teaching, such as humility, being a generous listener, and the willingness to be vulnerable. We also work on creating classroom environments that mirror the learning culture we create in our cohorts, so that students can feel supported, heard, and accepted. Only then do we move on to teaching techniques that will help move the learning from the brain down into the heart and out into students’ lives.

This is the place for me to stress that that learning is a key part of the Ayeka approach. Ayeka is not an add-on to content learning, and it certainly does not come to replace the learning of content and skills; as an approach to Jewish education that comes from lives spent in the beit midrash and that is based first and foremost on the teachings of Rav Kook, it would be heresy to suggest such a thing. On the contrary, we find that the more integrated the affective and content learning are, the more the learning spurs growth.

Perhaps I can best illustrate this with an example. Let’s return to teshuvah. How do you teach it? That’s easy, right? You could teach Rambam’s Four Steps. You could teach the story of King David, or Moses’ plea after Het haEigel. So far, though, we’re only talking about content – no matter how well the students learn this material, nothing is likely to change. So let’s make it relevant. We could ask them to identify something in their life they need to do teshuvah for; we could look for parallels between ourselves and King David, or ask what the big sin of today is. All good ideas, except that…still, nothing is likely to change, because it hasn’t moved out of their heads and into their hearts. And here’s where Ayeka comes in. We believe that if a young person is going to open up his or her heart to allow the Torah learning in, they have to feel emotionally safe and supported by their teacher and their classmates, they have to be given the time and the tools to reflect personally on what the learning has to say to them, and they need a model of what being a work in progress looks like. Providing these things is the real hard work of an Ayeka educator, and its what we educate towards in our own training. It takes a long time; it takes commitment; it takes guts. But we’ve seen, time and again, that when mentors, administrators, and teachers work together to provide them, the results are truly transformative.

Rabbi Jeff Amshalem is a Senior Ayeka Educator

The Jim Joseph Foundation is pleased to share a series of reflections from beneficiaries of some of its newly-supported programs in leadership development and educator training. Leili Davari reflects on her experience in the Selah Leadership Program for Jews of Color who are social justice leaders working in Jewish and secular organizations.

I’ve lost count to how many times people make assumptions about my ethnicity and what type of Jew I am. This is usually how it starts off: “Leili, that’s an interesting name, are you Hawaiian?”  “No, my name is Persian, my father is Iranian.” “Oh, that’s interesting. So he must be Jewish?” “Nope, he was born Muslim.” “Oh, so is your mother Jewish? “Nope, she is a Mexican Catholic.” “I converted to Judaism in my late 20s.”

Additionally, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been introduced as, “Leili, the Mexican/Iranian Jew,” which is not correct at all. I am not a Mexican Jew, I am not an Iranian Jew. I am all those truths: Mexican, Iranian and Jewish. And it has become exhausting to have to always educate people on what this means.

From there, the responses to me being Mexican, Iranian, and Jewish range from disbelief, to being exoticized. “Wow, you are so exotic – you’ve got a little bit of everything in you!”

Not to mention the countless questions I get about converting, particularly from Jews.  I am shocked at how much I have had to educate other Jews on conversion — answering the million dollar question, “What made you decide to be Jewish?” Some days I just want to respond, “None of your business!” But what kind of person would I be if I responded that way? So instead, with a smile, I answer all the questions about how I am Jewish, my parents, and finally, my personal identity politics.

Being the target of so many questions at Shabbat dinners stifles my willingness to participate fully in Jewish life. I’ve wondered to myself: If I were White, would I receive the same interrogation? Or would it be easier to pass as a White Ashkenazi Jew? The isolation I feel is painful and holds me back from reaching my full potential as a confident Jewish Woman of Color. This isolation stops me at times from building community within Jewish spaces. And without a doubt, this isolation shows up in my public life as a Jewish professional working in a particular Jewish community that is almost entirely White. I convinced myself that this isolation was my reality and nothing would change.

An opportunity that would turn out to be a life changing experience appeared in late 2017, when I was selected to be in Cohort 15 of the Selah Leadership Program, a cohort specifically for Jews of Color who are social justice leaders working in Jewish and secular organizations. I was excited to be a part of this community and unsure of what I would get out of this experience. This excitement I felt was rooted in the possibility of building relationships with fellow Jewish People of Color and finding support as I navigated difficult life and work circumstances.

Our opening retreat in January proved to be a transformative event. Meeting my fellow JOC ‘family’ was more than I anticipated. I can still remember our opening retreat activity — our facilitator, Yavilah McCoy, had us raise our arms in the air and say “I am powerful!” My arm was halfway up, my voice just barely over a whisper. I had a long way to go before I came fully into my power as a Jewish Woman of Color,  but I knew Selah was a step in the right direction.

Meeting and building relationships with other JOCs with both similar and different lived experiences was instrumental to my growth. I was able to share my stories of pain and challenges and receive comfort and validation from fellow JOCs. This validation was mind-blowing for me. It was the first time I could be fully vulnerable about both personal and work challenges in the majority White Jewish community. At our opening retreat, I realized that I had been holding myself back in my work because of my fear of not wanting to be the employee who causes conflict in the workplace. This realization of how much I was holding back at work, and how much my work was affected by this fear, led to me make a crucial decision. As we say in Spanish, “¡Basta!” Enough. Knowing that I had the support and validation from my JOC family was what I needed to lean into my full potential as a Jewish organizer and woman. Once I made this decision, “la vida dio muchas vueltas” — life took many turns.

After Selah’s opening retreat, it was clear that in order to come into my full-power Jewish Woman of Color self in my professional life, I actually needed to start with my personal life. This required that I take a deep look into my personal relationships and end those that were not emotionally nourishing to my development and growth. As heartbreaking as it has been, this was necessary in order for me to prioritize my livelihood and emotional well-being. Since then, I have learned how to live my life in a way that prioritizes myself and what it means to not only survive, but thrive as a Jewish Woman of Color. And thrive I have!

The next step I needed to take was to apply what I learned from Selah, my coming into my full power, into my professional life. This meant that I had to lean into difficult conversations with colleagues and other staff in positions of power. It meant that I needed to face my fears of being the dissenting voice in some conversations, and most importantly, of not allowing race and positions of power to intimidate me. While I can not say that I have yet fully reached the level of confidence to be the Jewish Professional I aspire to be, I know I have made significant progress and more lies ahead in my future.

In closing, the Selah Leadership Program proved to be a turning point both in my personal as well as professional life. I look back at the Leili I was two years ago when I first started working at Bend the Arc, and I don’t recognize that woman at all. After Selah, I feel more prepared at Shabbat dinners to call out when I feel I am being scrutinized with inappropriate “How are you Jewish?” questions. I feel better equipped with tools to handle challenges at work when my colleagues’ race and power dynamics are having negative impacts on me. And not to mention the confidence I feel at calling out White Jews who exoticize me for being Mexican and Iranian. The relationships I’ve made through Selah are ones that will last a lifetime — our commitment  to one another’s resilience and success as Jewish People of Color did not end at our closing retreat, but will continue throughout our lives. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to have participated in Selah and look forward to the continuation of Jewish programs, including Selah, dedicating cohorts that are exclusive to Jewish People of Color. No doubt there are many more Jewish People of Color who want and need this fellowship in their lives. I know I did.

Leili Davari is the Bay Area Regional Organizer of Bend the Arc.