News & Blogs Category: Guest Blog

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 Elie Weinstock offers reflections from earlier this year on his experience in the American Jewish World Service Global Justice Fellowship.

I’m writing from 7,640 feet above sea level in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Yes, you read correctly. Here’s my hotel.

I’m here participating in the American Jewish World Service Global Justice Fellowship. I’m one of 13 rabbis in Guatemala to meet with and support advocates fighting for legal protections for human rights activists at risk of violence; midwives providing maternal health support for indigenous women; and members of an independent journalism collective seeking to expose abuses and corruption through a more open press.

It’s been quite an experience as I have encountered people, places, and issues that I really could never have imagined.

Presenting a certificate of appreciation to Bufete legal organization that represents victims of human rights violations.

Meeting in the home of a midwife in a very rural village on the outskirts of Salcaja. (It was up a steep hill in the middle of nowhere!)

We had the opportunity to discuss the state of affairs in Guatemala with a very receptive US Ambassador, Luis Arreaga. He noted that Americans, religious leaders, visiting Guatemala to encourage and support those trying to improve their own country represented what America is all about: sharing American values to improve the lives of those in need.

While spending hours on buses traversing winding mountainous roads, I’ve had the chance to ask myself, “Is there a Jewish lesson in all of this?”

In a word: Justice.

Justice is critical to society. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” We intuitively understand that society needs justice to function. Judaism also values justice. The Torah teaches (Devarim 16:20): “Tzedek tzedek tirdofe – Justice, justice shall you pursue.” This verse is often invoked as a call for Jewish participation in trying to address all sorts of injustice.

But what is justice and what is our role in pursuing it?

I believe the Torah repeats the word justice because there are many types of injustice that require our attention. Pick an issue, any issue. It may be something that challenges the Jewish community. Maybe it’s how Israel is treated at the UN. It may be the issue of racial or socioeconomic inequality or immigration in America. Or it may be corruption in Guatemala. There are, alas, many examples from which to choose.

There is a lot of tzedek needed today.

In addition to repeating the word “justice,” the Torah uses the word “tirdofe,” which literally means to run. The pursuit of a solution to injustice is a race we each need to run.

When it comes to running, people run at different paces and can run for different distances. The pursuit of justice is a different “race” for each issue and each person.

As long as everyone gets in the race.

Running isn’t always easy. It is strenuous, and it is sometimes cold outside. As the saying goes, “No pain, no gain.” There will be no justice unless WE run after it. It’s OK if it is hard or sometimes hurts. In a 1965 speech at Temple Israel in Hollywood, CA, Dr. King said, “We must always maintain a kind of divine discontent.”

There is justice to pursue everywhere. Whether in Guatemala or New York City, we need to be on the lookout for what is wrong and what we can do to make it right. The Torah doesn’t tell us to catch justice; we are commanded to pursue it and seek it even if we cannot achieve it.

It’s time for each of us to open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts, put on our justice shoes, and get in the race. The race for justice.

Rabbi Elie Weinstock is Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun (KJ) in New York, NY. He was a AJWS Global Justice Fellow in 2017-2018.

One of us is a Jew. One of us is a Muslim. And this is our story of building a genuine friendship through Jewish Student Connection (JSC) at South High School in Denver – the only Denver Public School with a Newcomer Center serving refugee students who have limited or interrupted formal education.[1] We share our story not to be patted on the back, but to serve as a model of what happens when teens are empowered to lead and are given the space to learn and grow together.

One of us, Eliana Goldberg, started JSC at South during her freshman year (four years ago). At first, the club wasn’t in high demand. We had about six students coming to most of our meetings. We knew we needed a different strategy to build momentum and gather members.

And so we took a different route. We reached out to the Muslim Culture Club and invited them to start coming to our meetings. In fact, we invited anyone we could talk to about our meetings. Each meeting started with a simple exercise: we asked everyone who attended what they wanted to know about Judaism, and that served as our topic for the next meeting. An especially popular area was learning about Torah numerology.

The club became a popular place for many students of all backgrounds to learn about Jewish life, culture, and more. We welcomed all students with open arms because that’s what our generation does. If we want people to see our best selves, and our best Jewish selves – as people who are respectful and embrace diversity – we have to live it.

And so, every couple of weeks since the club’s founding, we’ve gathered to share stories, share food, and to learn together. Over time, the club grew to be a platform for exploring and learning in an open, safe environment. We have 72 nationalities represented at our high school – with all kinds of questions.

Last year, the other one of us, Marwan Nassr, an Iraqi Muslim refugee who fled to Syria and then to Turkey, walked into the club. Where Marwan came from was completely devoid of friendly interactions with Jewish people. Marwan was told things about Jewish people that gave a certain impression about who Jews are and what they believe in. And then he met Eliana. He was skeptical when she invited me to JSC. But she offered free pizza.

And so even though he was worried and thought he would feel like a stranger, Marwan went. He never felt so welcomed before in his life. Marwan felt that he was one person before JSC, and another person after. He got to ask questions and do something so simple: meet people.

We’re the largest club on campus now. 65 students strong. We put people in an environment where there’s no judgment and ideas aren’t pushed on people. Our club is a place to relax. We don’t dictate how to do or how to be Jewish, or what to believe. We frame conversations with “This is what I think” and “If you want to learn.” Teens live in a world where so much is dictated to us. We don’t need to impose that on each other. We connect with each other in fun ways and then also delve into serious issues and explore even real divisions that may exist. No question is off limits.

We are blessed to have a diverse culture at our high school. People have had struggles. But all people should be met with the same respect. And our differences and similarities should be explored freely.

Our club is part of our high school’s culture of developing young people ready to lead and create positive change. So we want to be part of creating that change.

Because of JSC, we are now close friends. By taking time to meet and then to understand “the other,” we have built a wonderful friendship. We know we have differences, and we know what those differences are. And that’s great. We hope our experience can serve as an example during these times that feel incredibly divisive. Our goal is to show that it’s not hard to create these interpersonal connections. Start with a small connection or act of kindness to welcome people in and engage them. Give options, give freedom of choice, to learn and interact with people. Sharing beliefs builds genuine friendships.

The Jewish community has taken huge strides in breaking social stigmas, working with other cultures and really connecting. We think we can go even farther, to work with other people, and break down more barriers. If we can do this at our high school, we think it’s possible for everyone.

[1] The National Education Policy Center Schools of Opportunity Recognition Program has recognized the school as one of only eight in the nation creating remarkable learning opportunities for all students.

Eliana Goldberg is a senior at South High School in Denver. Marwan Nassr is a junior at South High School

Rose Community Foundation is helping JSC expand its presence in Greater Denver middle and high schools through support from the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Initiative. The initiative – a partnership between Rose Community Foundation, Jim Joseph Foundation and other donors – is designed to engage more Jewish teens in innovative Jewish experiences. Denver/Boulder is one of ten communities that are a part of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative.

Source: originally posted in eJewishPhilanthropy

Editor’s Note: Since 2012, The Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies (EDJS) at the Stanford School of Education has been a home for the creation and enhancement of research that spans the social sciences, humanities, and education. The Concentration is led by Professor Ari Kelman. In this Guest Blog series, “Shaping the field of Jewish education,” we hear from three current students in the program pursuing their PhDs. 

During my time at Stanford I have been fortunate to work with a group of scholars who have sharpened my skills as a listener to music. Through working on social science research as an assistant to Dr. Ari Kelman, coursework in musicology, performance studies and Yiddish folklore, I have come to understand music both as a creative discipline and as a discursive tradition with the potential to expose unique insights into historical and social questions. Furthermore, studying music from an education standpoint has clarified for me the way the world of sound serves as a primary aspect of enculturation, both for performers and listeners.

In education literature, the sensory and non-verbal facets of experience are undervalued and underexplored resources in the construction and reproduction of culture. I am especially concerned with studying the intersection of musical experience and the process of enculturation.

I came to Stanford with a vague sense that I wanted to study transmission of musical culture and that I wanted to delve even more deeply into the cantorial music tradition I was involved with as a creative musician. As I began my research I was surprised and delighted to find that there was a cantorial music revival taking place in Brooklyn, just around the corner from where I used to live, both figuratively and literally.

The past two decades have seen a remarkable revival of early 20^th century cantorial styles among Chassidic Jewish singers. Chassidic Brooklyn is a conservative and inward-looking community that is marked by an ambivalent attitude towards the importation of “art” aesthetics into prayer practice. A young cohort of Chassidic cantorial singers is achieving star status in the world of Jewish music. For Chassidic cantors the bi-cultural sound of cantorial music, rooted in folk prayer practice and Euroclassical music, offers an opportunity for achievement in the realm of aesthetics and self-expression. My thesis, tentatively titled Golden Ages, explores how young Chassidic cantors in Brooklyn have claimed the music and culture of the “Golden Age” of cantorial music as a touchstone for the formation of their own aesthetics. The guiding research question around which my current research is organized is: How do musicians address the challenges faced in reviving a largely forgotten music genre to forge a successful path as a professional artist?

This question will be approached from the specific vantage point of Chassidic singers and will draw into focus the advantages their cultural background gives and the unique challenges they face. While my project is not framed as a comparative study, the learning and career formation issues faced by young Chassidic cantors bare a close relationship to issues faced by artists in other music revivals. Like the blues revival of the 1960s, or the current avante garde jazz scene, the cantorial revival is organized around a recorded music legacy genre that it seeks to extend into the present.

My central research question provides room for discussion of the ways in which the culturally syncretic history of cantorial music provides sonic and emotional resources that are resonant for contemporary Chassidic artists. The history of bi-cultural expression that is written into the cannon of cantorial music is pungently relevant for Chassidic singers whose home culture is organized around opposition to the dominant non-Jewish culture. For the artists I am writing about, genre revival of cantorial music offers a platform from which to speak about deeply felt issues including: aspirations for personal self-expression; theological and anti-theological probing of religious ideas and emotions; defining a sonic aesthetic that is emotionally and intellectually satisfying and relevant; expressing ethnic and class identity.

As I begin to transition from doing research and taking graduate seminars to teaching and writing my thesis, I look back on the journey I have undertaken at the Stanford Graduate School of Education Concentration in Jewish Studies with a great deal of excitement and satisfaction. I can see now that the tentative questions I began my research with have solidified into a stream of ideas and research concerns that I am thrilled to be engaged with and look forward to addressing over the coming years. These interests include exploring the relationship of history and creative musical careers, the interweaving of “folk” and “institutional” transmission of musical traditions, and the connections and disjunctions between group identities and the individual paths of artists.

Jeremiah Lockwood is a PhD candidate in the Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies at Stanford University. While engaged in his scholarship, Jeremiah continues to pursue a busy career as composer and performer in the bands The Sway Machinery and Book of J.

Read the first blogs in the series, here and here.

Editor’s Note: Since 2012, The Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies (EDJS) at the Stanford School of Education has been a home for the creation and enhancement of research that spans the social sciences, humanities, and education. The Concentration is led by Professor Ari Kelman. In this Guest Blog series, “Shaping the field of Jewish education,” we hear from three current students in the program pursuing their PhDs. 

My experience as a PhD student in the Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies at Stanford University is exceeding my expectations in every possible way. The interdisciplinary nature of the concentration has been especially valuable because I have been able to take classes in, and learn methodologies from, the fields of sociology and education policy. As a result, I examine American Jews and their experiences with Jewish education within the broader social context in which they live. Through my interdisciplinary training and collaborations with scholars outside of Jewish studies, I hope to advance the theoretical and methodological rigor in the Jewish education field.

A particularly helpful part of my studies at Stanford is my fellowship from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) (part of the GSE Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA)). The IES Interdisciplinary Doctoral Training Program in Quantitative Education Policy Analysis provides doctoral students with advanced training in state-of-the-art quantitative methods of discipline-based education policy analysis. Through this program, I am participating in an interdisciplinary core curriculum consisting of coursework in education policy, discipline-based theory, and applied quantitative research methods. I hope to significantly improve the way scholars, funders and practitioners of Jewish education think about evaluating the effectiveness of their work.  There are ample opportunities to conduct more rigorous research and evaluation studies by improving our standards for what counts as rigorous research, and by adapting quasi-experimental methods used by scholars of public education.

As I work towards completing my Certificate in Quantitative Research Methods through the CEPA IES Program, I am exploring the interaction of religion and education in three populations: families, adolescents, and emerging adults. I think it is quite misleading to study American Jews separately from their social environments. Thus, in most of my research, I examine Jews in the non-Jewish contexts they inhabit to illuminate how social contexts and sociological phenomenon influence their lives and choices about Jewish engagement and Jewish education. 

Currently, I am looking at how being religious affects how adolescents and college students from all religious denominations in the U.S. perform in school. Central to this work is my dissertation entitled, The Long Arm of God: How Religiousness Shapes Educational Outcomes. Based on secondary analyses of longitudinal surveys and interviews from the National Study of Youth and Religion, I find that more religious students consistently report better grades than their less religious peers, even after accounting for social class, gender, and race. I find that religious adolescents are more conscientious and agreeable, traits that are linked with academic success. Being religious helps adolescents in middle/high school because they are rewarded for being obedient, respectful, disciplined, and cooperative. Next, I will examine whether the traits that help religious adolescents in high school continue to help them in college.

As I progress in my studies, I look to further hone my interests, build relationships with colleagues, and continue exploring new areas of research. I am particularly excited about my collaboration with five Stanford scholars, including Abiya Ahmed, to conduct longitudinal surveys and interviews with 150 Muslim, Jewish, Mormon, and Christian college freshmen over their first year. Our goal is to understand how they form social networks and construct their identities from the time they set foot on campus. We focus on how identity construction occurs through social networks by building on earlier research I did with Dr. Ari Kelman and my colleagues to examine how American Jews construct, negotiate, and reaffirm their Jewishness through ongoing social interactions. This research serves as a counter narrative to literature that conceives of Jewish identity as something that inheres in individuals, and can be cultivated, strengthened, or enhanced. Two papers resulting from this study are published in Contemporary Jewry and Jewish Social Studies.

I also want to note two key opportunities that would help strengthen the Jewish education field. First, we would greatly benefit from stronger researcher-practitioner partnerships (although this is not a problem solely in the Jewish education field). It is a shame that scholars conduct research that never reaches the hands of our educators and decision-makers. And, it is a shame that Jewish organizations don’t have more opportunities to collaborate with researchers to build their knowledge and to improve their work. With help from The AVI CHAI Foundation, Jim Joseph Foundation, The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life, and The Crown Family, among others, CASJE (whose Board I recently joined) is bringing together researchers, practitioners, and philanthropic leaders to strengthen our field.

Second, we need to do a better job designing studies to identify strategies and practices that predict learning and engagement. This means better evidence using regression techniques, which allow for deeper analysis and understanding of associations between variables. Our field needs to raise the standards for what counts as quality research and to incorporate decades of knowledge from the general education field. Of course, none of this can happen without stellar graduate programs to train future scholars.

Ilana M. Horwitz is a PhD Candidate in Sociology of Education & Jewish Studies at the Stanford School of Education

Read the first piece in the series from Abiya Ahmed.

Editor’s Note: Since 2012, The Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies (EDJS) at the Stanford School of Education has been a home for the creation and enhancement of research that spans the social sciences, humanities, and education. The Concentration is led by Professor Ari Kelman. In this Guest Blog series, “Shaping the field of Jewish education,” we hear from three current students in the program pursuing their PhDs. 

Before I started my Stanford doctoral program, I was a middle school English teacher at a Bay Area Islamic school. My experience there formed my research interests, which led me to a search for suitable doctoral programs that would allow me to research the intersection of religion and education. Few schools of education in the country offer such a program, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Stanford had an Education and Jewish Studies (EDJS) concentration that could possibly fit my own academic pursuits. I met with Ari Kelman, the Jim Joseph Chair in Education and Jewish Studies, to indicate my research interests regarding Islamic and Jewish education specifically as well as religion and education broadly. He encouraged me to apply, and here I am three years later, a doctoral candidate now halfway through my program.

My experience thus far has exceeded my expectations in that I’ve been able to not only pursue my research interests but also expand them, while exploring opportunities I had not expected. I have learned significantly from being part of research teams and working on projects like exploring Jewish students’ experiences in relation to political activism on campus, or how people learn to be religious and develop religious commitments. For my own research, I have done long-term ethnography of an Islamic high school to explore what makes it Islamic, and I am currently developing my dissertation proposal around how Muslim college students negotiate traditional religious authority with their lived experience of being Muslim at various higher education institutions. In attempting to understand how Jewish students might navigate similar terrain, this is an important comparison case.

In terms of opportunities, being in this program at Stanford has exposed me via conferences to other academics and graduate students exploring issues of religion and education, as well as the chance to apply for related grants. This year, Ilana Horwitz (another Jim Joseph Foundation awardee and my colleague) and I received the IDEALS grant from Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), through which we are examining the role of social class in students’ interfaith engagement. While all of these projects are distinct in some ways, they are also interconnected in ways that I had not imagined, drawing on sociological and anthropological literature related to religion, religious practices, belief, belonging, and associated issues of identity, power, authenticity, and authority.

In this way, working on religion and education broadly, per the EDJS concentration’s approach, allows me to consider both universals and particulars within categories of religion and education and within their intersection. For instance, examining Jewish education / Jewish students highlights issues specific to the American Jewish experience, while exploring other traditions such as Islamic education / Muslim students, or examining other American religions and religious communities (including those who identfty as atheists, agnostics, or as religious Nones) allows for comparability across various traditions in terms of both historical trajectories and current realities. Additionally, bringing in other variables such as race, gender, and class and their intersection with religion nuances the research to offer perspectives that might not have been considered before.

Perhaps this is one of the most fruitful outcomes of being part of the EDJS concentration: acquiring the knowledge and skills to be able to examine a tradition or phenomenon in its own terms while also comparing it with significant others to draw nuanced conclusions and say something about each of those. My work has thus far been interdisciplinary cutting across sociology, anthropology, but also religious studies and education. In future I hope to continue researching and writing across these fields and exploring issues of religion and education, construing them both broadly in terms of institutional and non-institutional settings, and across various kinds of religious communities. Needless to say, I have come a long way from being a middle school English teacher: in that setting, my “on-the-ground” reality surely set the tone for my future work, but it’s only after exploring religion and education in terms of historical and contemporary factors and via various disciplinary lenses have I been able to better grasp those realities.

For all that I’ve been able to learn so far, I can say this with enthusiastic confidence: there’s so much more where that’s coming from, and I find myself at the cusp of more exciting personal opportunities as well as (hopefully) meaningful contributions to academia and practice.

Abiya Ahmed is a doctoral candidate at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she studies the intersection of religion and education from anthropological and sociological perspectives. Her work addresses various American religions and religious communities, with a focus on the American Jewish and the American Muslim experience. 

Against the backdrop of a nation strained by senseless race-based police killings and the most serious wave of racial injustice seen in fifty years, more and more Jewish community leaders have been awakened – moved to both wonder about their role in advancing racial justice, and to deeply reflect about how daily and institutional expressions of racism affect Jews, specifically Jews of Color who navigate the world in brown and black skin.

Out loud, leaders have begun to wonder about our lives – are we, Jews of Color safe? Do we feel welcome? Are we treated with fairness? Are we able to move though our Jewish community without obstacle – with comfort and ease? Do we feel valued? Are we seen? Are we heard? And beyond the immediate they wonder about our community network. How do we connect and plug-in to the community infrastructures in ways that are purposeful and powerful? Do we feel like this is our Jewish community, too?

To answer these questions, in September 2016, the Leichtag Foundation in partnership with other funders and organizational leaders convened 12 Jewish, African American community leaders for a two-day, bring your whole self, let’s get into proximity, then relationship, then problem-solving partnership for serious think tanking, strategic conversing, teaching, learning and ultimately activating!

The think-tank was not without its awkward and intensely uncomfortable moments. We barely made it through developing ground rules for the convening as “assume good will” fell flat when a Black colleague very gently explained that Black people in the United States have no reason to assume good will of White people given the institutionalized racism that is endured on a daily and pervasive basis – Jewish community most definitely included. And I think we were all uncertain if we’d make it to the end of the two days when, the funders were challenged to respond to questions about how racism plays out in Jewish funding efforts and decisions. However, what could have been a difficult and fruitless gathering did not go bust. Everyone involved met the awkwardness and discomfort with warmth, humor, an inquiry posture, (cautious) openness and optimism and collaboration. In fact, when the entire collective decided our experience together needed to be more like graduate school than a retreat, we developed mini-courses in real time on African American History, Jewish History, and the History of Jewish Philanthropy taught by the leaders in the room. We also had seminar-style discussions on topics like, What’s in the Way of Jewish Funders Funding Jews of Color? You can imagine the conversation was robust.

In retrospect, the gathering was such a gutsy thing for funders to initiate and for Jewish leaders of Color to say yes to. And it proved to be a watershed collaboration moment for both the Jews of Color and the Jewish Philanthropic leaders resulting in the nation’s first ever philanthropic fund and grant activity expressly dedicated to responding to racial injustice through helping further establish, fortify and build-out the Field for Jews of Color.

In Winter 2017, infused with pooled-resources from the Think-Tank anchors – the Leichtag Foundation, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, and the Jim Joseph Foundation – the Fund for Jews of Color Field Building released an initial request for proposals. Six grants were awarded, and today the Fund for Jews of Color Field Building is excited to support:

• Bend the Arc, Seleh Cohort 15 a best-in-class leadership program for Jews of Color that provides training for leaders, new tools to enhance personal vision and facilitate organizational change, and the opportunity to learn with innovative and inspiring Jewish social change leaders.
• Dimensions, a national nonprofit training and consulting organization specializing in diversity and inclusion led by Yavilah McCoy, focusing on leadership development – facilitating a cohort of Jews of Color working at the intersection of critical conversations, racial justice and working with Allies.
• Courtney Parker, a national educational leader and program designer partnering with Dimensions to develop program modules supporting the training of a cohort of leaders who are Jews of Color.
• Jews in All Hues led by Founder and Executive Director Jared Jackson, focusing on organizational development.
• The Jewish Multiracial Network (JMN) represented by Board Chair Tamara Fish, bringing together more than 100 Jews of Color for the Second National Jews of Color Convening, with a focus on deepening leadership skills and building institutional capacity.
• The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) with April Baskin, and their 2018 JewV’Nation Fellowship Jews of Color Cohort focused on a successful leadership development program for visionary Jewish leaders that includes educational seminars, cohort relationship building, individualized coaching, and intensive in-person retreats.

We are half-way through the current grant round, and it’s stunning to hear back from the grantees about their work and experience so far with the resources provided by the nascent Fund for Jews of Color Field Building. As a result of the six grants made, right this very moment there are three separate cohorts of Jews of Color Leaders being developed. By the fall, more than 100 Jews of Color connected to the Jewish organizational ecosystem will have gained new leadership skills and their organizations will have additional capacities developed. By the close of the grant round, vital organizations led by Jews of Color and their leaders will be stronger, and better positioned to continue and to amplify their already excellent work.

And this work really matters. By 2042 the United States will be at least half people of color. And 71% of non-Orthodox Jews marry non-Jews. And that’s within a context in which we know that way back in 2003 the US-based Jewish community was somewhere between 13%-20% Jews of Color. The next generation of baby Jews is going hued.

Racial diversity is all around us. And US-based Jewish racial diversity is not a dilemma or a challenge to be solved. It’s simply a fact. The challenge to be solved is how to successfully build the bridges, pathways and highways needed to more meaningfully, purposefully and effectively connect together the diversity of our community. The Fund for Jews of Color Field Building is taking on some of that challenge. Inspired by a team of racially diverse Jewish community leaders, and anchored by the voices and experience of Jews of Color, The Fund is one example of partnership-based, equity and reality-informed philanthropic activity that is strengthening our Jewish community for today, and building and reinforcing our community for tomorrow.

Ilana Kaufman is a Berkeley-based community relations professional. She is a Schusterman Fellow, public speaker, occasional author, strategic designer, planner and problem solver. Ilana works with Jewish organizations and philanthropic entities navigating the intersection of Jewish community, Jewish identity and racial justice.

originally posted in eJewishPhilanthropy

A new program is knocking down hurdles to Jewish teen engagement.

No matter your organization, mission or audience, there are hurdles to teen engagement, and success in today’s world requires new models of engagement to confront obstacles facing teens, including overextended schedules, academic pressure, the feeling of not fitting into existing programs, and a lack of relevance of the Jewish community and its teachings.

We know that effective Jewish programming needs to engage teens through their interests and speak to their passions. Teen program providers should recognize the obstacles to participation while offering a range of ways for teens to connect and stay connected within the Jewish community.

With this in mind, a new platform has been conceived by the Atlanta Jewish Teen Initiative, the ninth city in the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative. This bold experiment targets Jewish teens not fully engaged in Jewish life through a new program, JumpSpark, which offers interest-based intensives for Jewish teens during school breaks.

Teens have diverse interests and talents, so there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach. The goal and methodology of JumpSpark addresses the gap between the pursuit of areas of interest and Jewish involvement.

The innovation in our platform is adaptable and can be replicated in any community across the country with four guiding principles:

• Don’t make teens choose.

We know students’ lives are complex and busy. Successful teen models will find topics that students are already interested in and meet them there. Jewish values are part of our everyday lives, and, as educators, it’s our role to help build those bridges for our teens.

As an example, our pilot intensive, JumpSpark Sports, will run from Jan. 2 to 5, the final week of the holiday break for many Atlanta school districts, and will engage students through a behind-the-scenes look at the sports industry.

This intensive program offers stadium tours, speakers, hands-on skill-building clinics and exposure to the business of sports. The intensive will couch those experiences in the language of Jewish wisdom and learning.

A trip to the College Football Hall of Fame will culminate in a discussion of Jewish models of heroes and how those values translate to modern sports heroes in a partnership with Beit Hatfutsot. A clinic with associate director of referee development for the NBA, Scott Bolnick, will be a lesson in tochecha, the Jewish laws of giving rebuke, with a larger focus on giving and receiving feedback.

• Help teens build their résumé of life.

Teens prioritize activities that they feel are valuable, engaging and exceptional and are more likely to participate in activities that they think will help them get into college or assist their career path.

Every JumpSpark intensive will bring together a small cohort of teens who will use the unique features and people of Atlanta to learn, work and give back to the community together. Our participants will increase their knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, build Jewish identity and develop the capacity to contribute to the Jewish community and the world at large.

• Partnership, partnership, partnership.

From its inception, the Atlanta Jewish Teen Initiative is rooted in collaboration. We cultivate partnerships with community professionals, educational institutions and other organizations, enabling us to use Atlanta as our classroom. However, AJTI is also the first programmatic partnership among the Marcus JCC, the Federation of Greater Atlanta and the Atlanta Rabbinical Association.

• Meet teens where they are and show them how their interests are meaningful using a Jewish lens.

Programs need to be offered during a time that works for students today. The Atlanta Jewish Teen Initiative’s educational vision is to engage Jewish teens in growth opportunities through exceptional educational, community-building programs.

Motivated by the words of Isaac Luria, the 16th century master of Kabbalah, who said, “There is no sphere of existence that is not full of holy sparks,” the Atlanta Jewish Teen Initiative will guide teens to uncover meaning in their areas of interest and empower them to lift those “sparks” through engagement with Jewish wisdom, texts and values in accessible and relevant ways.

JumpSpark was inspired by a Brandeis University study, “Engaging Jewish Teens: A Study of New York Teens, Parents and Practitioners,” which said: “Virtually every teen is engaged in at least one extracurricular activity and over half hold at least one leadership position. Sports appear at the top of the list and Jewish activities at the bottom. The main reasons teens choose these activities are that they are fun and give them opportunities to learn new things and develop skills.”

Students should not have to choose between extracurriculars and Jewish involvement. Our goal, thus, is to ignite a spark in teens and to lower at least one hurdle to engagement. In the months ahead, JumpSpark will offer intensives on culinary arts, music, esports, dramatic arts, fashion, and writing and publishing, just to name a few. We are planning a weeklong program discussing civil rights in collaboration with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and Etgar 36.

When electricity jumps across a gap, a spark, called a jump-spark, is produced. This is the inspiration behind our program name and reflects our mission to help ignite sparks within individual teens and within the Jewish teen community.

To learn more about our teen program and to join our mailing list, visit JumpSparkATL.org. Registration for JumpSpark programs is open. Contact [email protected] for more information.

Hope Chernak is the executive director of the Atlanta Jewish Teen Initiative. Kelly Cohen is the education director of the Atlanta Jewish Teen Initiative. 

Originally published in Atlanta Jewish Times

Editor’s Note: More than four years ago, Mechon Hadar—an educational institution that empowers Jews to create and sustain vibrant, practicing, egalitarian communities of Torah learning, prayer, and service—received an infusion of investments that helped catapult it from “start-up to second-stage.” Since that time, Mechon Hadar experienced dramatic increases in programming, impact, and organizational sustainability, with an expanded donor base and number of students. As a result, it is a leading institution in the Jewish non-denominational educational space.

Earlier this year, Mechon Hadar completed a strategic planning process to outline a growth plan moving forward. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, President and CEO of Mechon Hadar, offers reflections and lessons learned from that process:

If infancy was about surviving, and second-stage was about growing, what comes next? What do we do with investments in our organizational growth? Create more programs? Reach more students? Add more staff? While we certainly strive to answer affirmatively to these questions, the most important part of our current growth has been a focus on long-term strategic planning, a first for our organization.

Our experiences, lessons learned, and subsequent paths forward we believe offer important insights for any organization considering, or about to undergo, a similar process.

How We Arrived at This Point

Mechon Hadar was founded in 2006 to empower a generation of Jews to create and sustain vibrant, practicing, egalitarian communities of Torah learning, prayer, and service. In the first three years, Mechon Hadar’s budget grew from $240,000 to $660,000. In its third year, Hadar received four multi-year grants: a three-year signature Covenant grant ($153,000), a three-year AVI CHAI Fellowship award ($225,000), a renewable $150,000 grant from the UJA-Federation of New York, and, most significantly, a five-year $1,375,000 challenge grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation. Following a 3-year renewal from Jim Joseph totaling $600,000, Hadar received a $150,000 grant from the Foundation for the explicit purpose of strategic planning in 2015.

At the time, most of the start-ups emerging into second-stage space had not invested significant dollars in strategic planning, and Hadar was no exception (The newly launched Project Accelerate, of which Mechon Hadar was a grantee, is starting to change that trend). Without the Jim Joseph Foundation grant, Hadar’s board would never have approved such a large (relative to our budget) expenditure for planning. But the significant investment allowed Hadar to work with top-tier consultants from TCC Group, and the impact was significant. Following the plan adoption, board members started to increase their gifts significantly—not just in terms of dollars, but also length of time. They finally felt excited and confident enough about the organization’s future to make multi-year gifts, often for the life of the four-year plan.

But the planning process was far from smooth, and we want to offer three ways in which the production of the plan and its eventual adoption was surprising:

1. We told the consultants that a large part of the visioning around strategic planning was done before they arrived. Indeed, we had devoted multiple board sessions, plus focus groups with staff and alumni, on what (we thought) was a very clear choice of three distinct pathways. The original goal of the plan was to flesh out the path on which we had settled. But after a few weeks of working with the consultants, we learned that our key stakeholders— both lay and professional—did not have clear buy-in on this direction. Our prior planning efforts did not mean we could bypass any of the stages with the consultants. This was a bitter pill to swallow, as it meant going back to the drawing board on practical decisions, and forced us to question our own perceptions of our leadership prior to the formal planning process. The consultants were not overly surprised about this development, and they were willing to re-formulate the engagement (while keeping the cost constant) to retread some of the bigger picture work. Once we finished the plan, our key stakeholders really understood the decisions we made—what was left on the table, and what we decided to press forward with. For other organizations embarking on a strategic planning process, consider engaging all stakeholders from the beginning and be open to wherever the planning process may take you.
2. Our second learning was about staff involvement. Often, strategic planning is done at the highest staff levels (with perhaps a single representative from non-senior staff, if that), and the rest of the staff is interviewed but not brought along in the process fully. This is how we began the engagement as well. But soon after a full-staff focus group (without senior staff present), it became clear that the larger staff needed to be more involved in the process. This is true to our culture, where staff—especially faculty—have shaped the development of our growth over the previous ten years. We expanded our planning group to include more staff, effectively doubling staff representation. This made for a large (sometimes unwieldy) group of 20. But the consultant was masterful at facilitating such a large group, and when it came time to adopt the plan, the staff had significant buy-in because they had been involved in the process.
3. Related, senior leadership, many of whom had been with Hadar from inception, realized in this process that not all of their ideas—especially the most aggressive (some said: unrealistic) gambles—would be a part of Hadar’s plan moving forward. The experience with this reality was generally positive: senior staff accepted this, understanding that the decision-making process in 2016 was far different than it was in 2006—and this was a sign of progress made. The flip side is that the board really found its voice in this process.
4. Finally, one of the most significant unintended outcomes of this process was the space it offered for some staff members to shine. Individuals who would not have normally stepped forward to play a role in organizational direction exhibited creativity, foresight, and, of course, strategic thinking. This is especially important because, as we learned, even with expert consultants, board and staff still have to do much of the heavy lifting. Moving forward, Hadar will look to utilize individuals in ways that both advance their careers and add value to the organization as it implements the strategic plan.Following the passage of the strategic plan last summer, Mechon Hadar attracted additional multi-year investments, including a $2.15 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, and, more recently, a $900,000 grant from the Maimonides Fund, both through 2020. These investments are two examples of the power that real strategic planning can have on the possibility of growth.

Final Thoughts

Of course we recognize that the success of a strategic planning process is not the quality of the report but the degree to which its recommendations and insights can be put into action. It is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. And so, while these reflections share some of the deeply valuable lessons learned and insights we gained through this process, the real test begins now. Can we build on these lessons? Can we effectively implement our plans? We hope—and are confident—that our actions will answer these questions with a resounding “Yes.”

Rabbi Elie Kaunfer is President and CEO of Mechon Hadar

In the year 5778, the future, it seems, is now. If someone 50 years ago time-traveled to today and saw the myriad technologies and devices that make possible working virtually, she would be amazed, to say the least. She would see a professional environment for many where video conference, shared screens (of all kinds), emails, texts, and other virtual communication are the norm. Wow.

In many regards, we are fortunate to operate with these options. Geography, and sometimes even budgets, suddenly become nearly irrelevant as people around the world can collaborate, learn from each other, and trouble-shoot challenges either in real-time or as soon as they’re able to check their smart phone. The timing and place is entirely up to the individual.

Yet, with this flexibility and the advantages that come with it, we also have experienced its limitations. The value of traditional in-person workspaces that provide face-to-face interactions remains an important balance to today’s technologies. In our capacities as implementers of Jewish teen initiatives at Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston and The JCC of Greater Baltimore, supported by The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, we’ve taken steps to facilitate opportunities for youth and teen professionals to come together in communal spaces. We’re doing this on limited budgets, so thinking strategically, and creatively is a must, as is experiencing the genuine impact in-person work environments have on these professionals, the teens with whom they work, and each of our communities’ landscape of teen Jewish experiences.

Going Against the Virtual Workplace Norm

Economics combined with the nature of responsibilities of a “regional” position means that many Jewish professionals, especially those who serve youth and teens, work out of their homes or are constantly on the road. They don’t have the traditional office and the natural interactions and environment that come with that. We know how common it is for these professionals to work remotely, floating from their home to coffee shops and elsewhere.

As anyone who has worked like this knows, it can be a lonely experience. Beyond that, there are elements of support systems, creative brainstorming, and knowledge-sharing that are lacking from the face-to-face, office workspace.

With this premise, we each looked for ways to create a communal workplace for professionals serving Jewish teens in our communities. We went about this in different ways, but have both seen positive results.

What’s Old is New: How to Bring People Together Today

In Boston, Margie regularly opens her home as a work space for anyone who is a youth or teen professional. It’s not surprising that professionals who have no offices come. What has been more surprising is that professionals who work in an office but not with others serving youth or teens come too. Why? Because we are building a community of youth professionals of which they want to be a part.

In fact, a collaborative grant proposal between local synagogues, a camp, a day school, and a community organization emerged directly from talks in this communal work environment.  This proposal, which recently received funding from CJP, includes a teen engagement professional who shares her time with several of these organizations.  Moreover, when people are together in this house, they help each other with marketing and publicity–both developing materials and simply knowing what other organizations are offering—troubleshooting challenges, brainstorming for programs, and simply turning to one another for professional development advice.

In Baltimore, 4Front—the name of the Jewish teen initiative—has office space that has become a hub of teen-focused activity. It’s a physical gathering space for teens and for the adults who care about them, which has strengthened relationships among professional colleagues and fostered collaboration. BBYO, for instance, has historically had an office at the JCC.  It now sits intentionally in the same space as the 4Front staff in order to spark conversation and collaboration. A summer camp that needed to conduct teen interviews also has been invited to set up shop in 4Front, while part of the office is designated as a “swing space” for any youth or teen professional to come in and have a place to work. Additionally, one day a month, beginning this October, will be designated as an open and collaborative day where professionals know they can come to the office and interact with peers working there that same day.

From In-Person to Real Results

We’ve heard from the professionals themselves how much they look forward to these in-person opportunities. They recognize that building a community of peers working in their field contributes to their professional growth. And while professional development is an integral part of all of the community initiatives within the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative these interactions are different than learning a specific new approach or skill. These interactions offer support and foster connections that lead to professional success and positive feelings about one’s choice of work.

Importantly, there also are tangible results. Here’s how the teen Jewish landscape, and the professionals within it, have been positively influenced by working in the same physical space:

• Professional collaborations have developed around programs, marketing, and more—all efforts that occurred because professionals built trust and discussed their plans in ways that only happen in person.
• When these teen professionals come together around the table, literally and figuratively, the conversation is very congenial and collegial. This hasn’t always been the case. But being together and establishing some basic ground rules makes a real difference.  One rule in Baltimore, for example, is that, when we gather together, no one can use the term “my teens.” This helps set the tone that every organization is in the same boat and reinforces the idea that we are collectively responsible for the welfare and engagement of all local Jewish teens.
• By bringing people together, professionals gain a better understanding of the entire landscape of teen Jewish experiences. They are able to help teens connect with the experiences and programs that best fit them and their interests.
• 4Front actually has entered into organizational relationships because it shares space with specific organizations. For example, it is hosting a NFTY event at the JCC, and NFTY is making use of 4Front’s staff and Jewish educators so they can interface with their teens as well. Soon 4Front also will begin a peer consultancy, where professionals can present a challenge they have in their work to the group, which then consults on that issue. Clearly this model only will work if each professional views peers as trusted, informed, and valued resources.

Traditional Models in a New Age

We are excited by these results and the relationships and collaborations created. Moving forward, we want to strengthen more of our community organizations so they can provide the highest quality and deeply meaningful Jewish experiences for teens. We do that by strengthening professionals and the connections between them. And while technology has a large role to play to that end in today’s work environments, it’s important not to lose sight of the value of face-to-face interactions. We have learned and already seen results that come from sharing space and engaging in-person. It’s simple, but powerful. Trust and sense of unity among professionals goes a long way.

Margie Bogdanow, LICSW, is a Senior Consultant for Teen Education and Engagement at Combined Jewish Philanthropies. Rabbi Dena Shaffer is Executive Director of 4Front Baltimore, the Teen Engagement Initiative at JCC Baltimore, which is supported by The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore.

This is the final piece of the series in eJewishPhilanthropy, Continuing Conversations on Leveraging Educational Technology to Advance Jewish Learning. The series is a project of Jewish Funders Network, the Jim Joseph Foundation, and the William Davidson Foundation. For an in-depth look at opportunities in Jewish Ed Tech and digital engagement, read Smart Money: Recommendations for an Educational Technology and Digital Engagement Investment Strategy.

In an age where everyone has ready access to what would have recently been considered to be a supercomputer, how can an industrial–age educational system adapt to an abundance of knowledge and tools?

We live in a time of a great abundance of knowledge, what technology thinker Clay Shirky termed a Cognitive Surplus. A student with an idea and readily available resources can create almost anything and reach a worldwide audience.

For example, students at my school, The Frisch School, were recently awarded first prize at an engineering conference attended by over a thousand people sponsored by the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education. Using microprocessors, coding, and 3D printing, four sophomore girls designed a device for individuals with physical disabilities to communicate by blinking their eyes for a fraction of the cost of similar, commercially available assistive technologies.

Another student has created his own gaming studio, MidnightCoffeeInc, in which he has already published three retro-style games on Steam, the most popular gaming platform in the industry, and on the Android app store. He developed his games using graphic design software and drag and drop programs. His creative pursuits have received so much acclaim that he was chosen to present at the ISTE educational technology conference, the largest educational technology conference in North America with over 15,000 participants.

A recent alumnus who is now an electrical engineering student at The Cooper Union, created a fully operational version of the Enigma Machine, the electro-mechanical machine the Nazis used to create their “unbreakable” code in World War II. When I asked him if he would now design the program pathbreaking British computer scientist Alan Turing developed to crack the Enigma code, made famous by the film The Imitation Game, he looked at me quizzically and responded that anyone could write the program to crack this code nowadays even using a $35 Raspberry Pi microprocessor. Note, Alan Turing had to invent the first modern computer which filled an entire house in order to perform the calculations to crack the Enigma Code.

We have reached an age where everyone has ready access to what would have recently been considered to be a supercomputer. The smartphone, a device in the pockets of almost every teenager and adult, has millions of times more processing power than the combined power of all the computers used to power the Apollo moon landing mission in 1969.

The overarching question then becomes how can our current educational system designed using the factory model for the industrial age adapt to an an information age with such an abundance of knowledge and tools.

Addressing this question is the goal of the report commissioned by the Jim Joseph and William Davidson Foundation Smart Money: Recommendations for an Educational Technology and Digital Engagement Investment Strategy and the Continuing Conversations on Leveraging Educational Technology to Advance Jewish Learning blog series published on the Jewish Funders Network and eJewish Philanthropy.

In this series, educators have discussed how to adapt trends in educational technology to Jewish education like the Maker Movement in which individuals create using both hi-tech and low-tech tools and Augmented Reality, a trend made popular by the Pokemon Go game and now embedded into the latest iPhone. They have described how ubiquitous mobile technology can be used as a tool for creative and ingenious approaches to Jewish learning and skill development. The importance of proper teacher training to help teachers grapple with the brave new world of educational technology has been emphasized both from the perspective of a funder and a provider of professional development.

The promise of online learning as a means to create high quality Jewish educational instruction for any student, anywhere has been discussed as well as the need to think carefully and adhere to a protocol of tried and true recommendations before following every new technology trend. Developers have illustrated how they utilize research-based best practices to maximize the educational value of their videos and argued for the importance of supporting open source technology allowing future programmers to build on knowledge created by others.

Finally, a series of questions and strategies for impactful investing has been carefully presented to utilize in planning funding for our scale-up nation.

This is only the beginning of a continuing conversation between funders, developers, educators, parents, and students. A new online space is being planned to further this important discussion as funders and other stakeholders in Jewish education seek to find ways to fulfill the promise of the cognitive surplus facilitated by technology in order to enhance Jewish education for all.

Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky is the Director of Educational Technology at The Frisch School, a Modern Orthodox Yeshiva High School in Paramus, NJ. In this capacity, he works with the faculty to integrate technology into every aspect of teaching and learning at Frisch.

Rabbi Pittinsky is also a professor for MOFET’s International Online Academy, an educational consultant for the Jewish Funders Network and a Smart Board Certified Teacher Trainer. He is an active blogger on topics related to the intersection of technology and Jewish education and an avid user of social media. You can read his blog at:http://techrav.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @techrav.

Rabbi Pittinsky leads professional development workshops throughout North America, Israel, and South Africa on a broad range of educational technology related topics and presents at various educational conferences, most recently at the The International Society for Technology in Education Conference (ISTE), the largest educational technology conference in the world and at The Jewish Funders Network Conference.

Five years ago, Foundation for Jewish Camp, with the support of the Jim Joseph and AVI CHAI Foundations, launched the second cohort of Jewish Specialty Camp Incubator. With the conclusion of the grant period late last year, an independent evaluation (viewable as Executive Summary and Full Report), conducted by Informing Change, shows many of the same important, positive outcomes as were seen in the first incubator: Incubator camps attract middle and high school youth who wouldn’t otherwise attend Jewish camp; The camps’ specialties drive camp enrollment and help keep campers coming back; With Incubator staff guidance, the four camps quickly developed the infrastructure necessary for organizational growth and stability; Incubator camps infuse Jewish content into the camp experience in many ways and shape the lives of campers regarding their Jewish growth, specialty growth, and personal growth; among other outcomes.

We don’t want to focus on these positive outcomes here, as excited as we continue to be about them. Rather, we want to share some of the insights from the evaluation that are relevant not just to the incubator camps, but to the broader field of Jewish camping, and even to the overall field of Jewish education and engagement.

1. The Importance of “New”

The opportunity for a “new” experience is especially appealing to Jewish teens. Teens have many competing interests for their summer time: school, work, internships, spending time with family and friends. To make camp appealing to them, Incubator camps need to continue marketing their newness, both to first-time campers and returning campers who want to do something different from last summer – what we call an “aspirational arc.” As an example, URJ Sci-Tech Academy not only has added new specialty tracks each year – such as Forensics; Bio-Zone: SciTech MD; and Earth and Sky: Astronomy and the World Above” – but also builds in new elements to its existing specialty tracks as campers progress from youth to teen sessions. These strategies help to counter an attitude of “been there, done that” that returning campers may have as they age and run out of summers to have new experiences before they leave home for college or to start their careers. This challenge is as present for camps as it is for any organization engaging this audience.

2. The Value of Data

Similar to existing organizations, new organizations (camps included) need data of many types to inform strategic decisions and monitor early activities to identify strengths and weaknesses for course correction. And while start-up organizations have many demands pulling on their time, data collection should be prioritized. The Incubator provided camps with data from their campers and families, benchmarked against the other Incubator I and II camps, as well as other Jewish camps in the field. In addition, Incubator staff and camp stakeholders measured each camp’s organizational capacity semi-annually to ensure that progress was being made, so the camps are on track to exit the Incubator out of the startup stage, on a path to sustainability.

3. The Importance of Filling Out Staff

Directors need staff support, especially from a strong assistant director, early on. Starting any business can be a lonely (even with the support of a cohort) and challenging endeavor; bringing together a professional team early in the process provides a much needed support system. Incubator II camps benefitted from having an assistant director selected well before the first camp summer so both the director and assistant director could participate in Incubator activities as they developed the camp concept into reality. This support was invaluable to the directors and facilitated many of the organizational development achievements in the early years.

4. Get the Campers

Any organization with an earned income model must make recruitment among its top priorities even when the program is not fully developed. Focusing on enrolling campers in early years allows for quick and efficient testing of the program elements and operations; this focus also is the best path to quicker sustainability. Camps with lower enrollment in the first year never quite caught up with their own initial goals and with the other camps. Campers from the first year or two also help with word-of-mouth recruitment, as seen with many parents deciding in later years to send their children to camp after hearing about it from a friend or family member.

5. Integrated Jewish Learning

Nearly all Incubator campers and their parents say that camp had a positive influence on campers’ Jewish lives. The way Incubator camps approach integrating Jewish learning,values, and reflections into their programming is working, regardless of whether the Jewish content is fully integrated with the specialty throughout the entire day, or partially integrated at select times. What is most important is to find a model and tailor the Jewish curriculum to meet the end user at their level so they better engage with it.

6. A Business Model Designed for Sustainability

For long-term sustainability, a new Jewish camp – specialty or not – needs to enroll, at a bare minimum, an average of 80 campers per week during their summer season. Camp leaders need to be mindful that giving away camp for free – or at deeply discounted rates – is not the way to reach this enrollment goal. Scholarships and discounts may help bring campers early on, but can also set the camp back on its journey toward financial sustainability. Finding the right balance of enrolling campers and making a profit is crucial for new camps and organizations.

7. Location Matters

Location affects recruitment and the camp experience. Incubator camp directors identified locations to support their specialty and fit their budgets. The financial implications of location include the facility costs, operating costs of running that site, and recruitment costs of traveling from that site to meet with new families. Simply, the location needs to be attractive and accessible to enough of the target market that they enroll.

With these positive outcomes and insights, specialty camps have created an exciting spark in the Jewish camping field, pushing all Jewish camps to think creatively and to maximize their reach and Jewish learning. In fact, traditional camps are beginning to create and implement specialty tracks within their regular offerings in an effort to retain older campers and to attract campers who may want to specialize in a particular activity. Some traditional camps also are rethinking session length influenced by the Incubator camps’ models, recognizing that shorter sessions may attract campers who have a “packed” summer. And more and more camps of all kinds are beginning to gather data to inform their marketing and fundraising strategies.

Already, the experiential Jewish education curriculum and training protocols designed by the Incubator team are the basis of and being used by FJC’s Hiddur initiative – which helps camps become more effective at delivering Jewish educational experiences to their campers and staff – and by the Jewish Coaching Project targeting day camps funded by UJA-Federation of NY. We are confident that other funders and organizations in the field will make use of these and other resources emanating from the Specialty Camps Incubator, and the insights and learnings presented here. With Incubator III underway, the structure of the initiative continues to be fine-tuned, taking an already strong and proven model to even greater heights. We will continue to be transparent in our learnings and outcomes, with the heartfelt belief that the entire field of Jewish education and engagement will benefit.

Michele Friedman is Director of New Camp Initiatives at Foundation for Jewish Camp. Ellen Irie is Principal at Informing Change, a strategic learning firm dedicated to increasing the effectiveness and impact of people who are working to make the world a better place.

originally appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy