News & Blogs Category: Partners in the News

Good preschool teachers don’t hesitate to get their hands dirty.

And that’s just what they did during a two-day conference on early childhood education and outdoor learning at the Osher Marin JCC in San Rafael on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1. Amid workshops on how to integrate natural objects into lesson plans and using a Japanese marbling art project to teach children about the Shehechiyanu blessing, teachers engaged in the old-fashioned pastime of playing in the mud.

Making cob out of mud, clay and straw photos/courtesy jcf

“We need to get into the spirit of the learning that we are hoping to share with our students,” said Ariela Ronay-Jinich, director of youth and family programs at Berkeley’s Urban Adamah, who taught a workshop on building with cob, a mixture of mud and straw, at the conference. Participants worked together to mix the cob, then formed bowls, sculptures and even a challah out of the earth. “We don’t need more PowerPoint,” she said.

The “Learning Environments From the Inside Out” conference, sponsored by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation, brought together 170 Jewish preschool teachers and directors from the Bay Area and across the country to learn techniques for integrating outdoor learning into early childhood education as well as creating environments that encourage child-led exploration inside the classroom.

“We used to talk about the teacher being the sage on the stage; now the teacher is the guide on the side,” said Janet Harris, director of the federation’s early childhood education initiative. “The teachers prepare fertile grounds for [children] to learn. They provide inspiration, provocations, stories and things that inspire children to grow.”

Learning Japanese “floating ink” art form

Cob building, for instance, is an open-ended activity that encourages children to interact with the natural world while using their imaginations. At Urban Adamah, an urban farm in Berkeley that hosts a summer camp and Jewish education programs for families, Ronay-Jinich has used cob in lessons on building a sukkah.

This type of inquiry-based education is now considered a “best practice” in early childhood education, according to Harris. Furthermore, at a time when screens increasingly demand children’s attention, parents are more attuned than ever to the need for their children to interact with the natural world, according to Rabbi Meir Muller, the principal of the Cutler Jewish Day School in Columbia, South Carolina, who gave the conference’s keynote address.

“In the [public school] district where I live, recess is only 12 minutes long,” said Muller, who holds a doctorate in early childhood education. “I think that society is at a point now where children are getting less and less outdoor experiences in their lives,” he said, adding that educators need to pay attention.

For Jewish educators, the opportunity is not only to encourage free play, but also to use outdoor learning as a way to impart Jewish lessons, according to Muller.

“How are we teaching Jewish values through the outdoors?” said Muller, citing lessons that connect stewardship of the earth to the value of tikkun olam. “I think many Jewish programs are being more intentional.”

The experiential conference was inspiring to both facilitators and participants, Harris said. “It was like a spiritual revival.”

Source: “Here’s mud in your class? A call for more nature time,” J Weekly, Feb. 4, 2016

What do a religious start-up, a spiritual cooperative and 570-plus households in a high school have in common?

They’re all part of the Jewish Emergent Network, comprised of seven communities that have been meeting together for two years to think about what the congregations of the future will look like, according to a Jan. 6 press release from Lab/Shul, an artist-driven, experimental community that’s also a member.

The network has worked together before, on a website about Chanukah, but now they’ve announced their existence more forcefully by also launching a long-term project: a rabbinic fellowship that will post new rabbis in each of the network’s seven members for a period of two years starting in June 2016.

“Many of the folks that engage in these communities were not engaged anywhere else in their adult lives,” said Dawne Bear Novicoff, an assistant director at the Jim Joseph Foundation, which is granting up to $3.2 million to fund the fellowship for four years. The Crown Family is also providing funding, and other organizations supported the network during its learning and discussion phase.

“The thing that captured our imagination was the network, the idea that innovation could be pushed out from there,” Novicoff added.

Synagogue membership outside the Orthodox community is declining; according to a 2012 report from the SK3 Synagogue Studies Institute, this is especially true among younger people. Their 2010 survey showed that young adults aged 18 to 34 made up only 8 percent of Conservative and Reform synagogue membership.

The foundation will formally grant the money to IKAR, the network member that has more than 570 households in its community. The religious start-up is The Kitchen in San Francisco; Kavana in Seattle calls itself a cooperative.

The group of seven congregations decided to create the fellowship because they heard from many younger rabbis and students who wanted to learn from them, and because the extra hands would help them more fully serve their own communities, said Rabbi Noa Kushner of The Kitchen.

“The bottleneck is around me,” she said. “I’m one rabbi. We are very blessed to have a full-time staff of four, but we’re serving thousands of people.”

The fellowship will accept applicants from any Jewish denomination, according to the press release. None of the member congregations officially affiliate with a denomination.

While receiving weekly supervision, the fellows will serve as rabbis. They will also travel as a group to each of the network organizations for conferences.

The network also includes Mishkan, a multi-site community, in Chicago; Sixth & I, a synagogue and cultural center in Washington, D.C. and in New York, Romemu, known for its Eastern-influenced services.

Source: “Non-Traditional Synagogue Network Launches, With Fellowship,” The Jewish Week, January 7, 2016

The San Francisco-based Jim Joseph Foundation has approved nearly $6.4 million in new grants for Jewish educational projects.

The grants announced this week benefit youth, teens and young adults in the United States.

Grants include up to $3.2 million for a rabbinic fellowship focusing on innovation and “emergent Jewish communities”; up to $1.5 million for Sefaria, a website offering free online access to hundreds of Hebrew and Aramaic texts, English translations and commentaries, and up to $487,500 for a pilot program developing academic workshops at Israeli universities for faculty and senior administrators of American universities.

Other beneficiaries include Mechon Hadar, a pluralistic yeshiva in New York City; the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, Mississippi; Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, a liberal Orthodox seminary in New York City, and the BBYO nondenominational youth group.

“The Foundation is deeply grateful to partner with these innovative grantees committed to Jewish learning,” Al Levitt, president of the Jim Joseph Foundation, said in a statement Tuesday.

Since making its first grants 10 years ago, the foundation has awarded nearly $400 million.

Source: “Jim Joseph Foundation awards $6.4M in grants for Jewish education,” JTA, January 5, 2016

Hot on the heels of a report showing major gaps in American-Jewish college students’ knowledge about the State of Israel, some 250 Jewish educators, funders and other stakeholders gathered in Las Vegas for a three-day conference on Israel education.

Hosted by the iCenter for Israel Education, the iCamp 2015 conference took place Dec. 1-3 and focused on new strategies for teaching students and campers about a range of issues, from Israeli culture to history to politics.

One local attendee, Evan Taksar, assistant director of Camp Alonim in Simi Valley, said the experience was invaluable: “I learned that there are a lot of new and exciting things going on in the field of Israel education. There was a great energy I got from being there, surrounded by more than 200 people who are deeply invested in this work.”

The conference came a week after Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies released a study showing that more than half of the 628 Birthright Israel applicants who took a multiple-choice exam designed to assess Israel literacy had scores of 50 percent or lower. It noted that students are incapable of “contributing to discourse about Israel on campus in a meaningful way.”

Merrill Alpert, director of youth activities for the Far West region of United Synagogue Youth, said that the recent conference was therapeutic and gave her a chance to vent her issues about Israel education with her peers.

“The frustration was that there is always a lack of time. The religious school educators get less and less time in the classroom to teach Hebrew school, [not to mention] about Israel,” she said. “Even though Israel education is relevant and important, it’s not as important as English, math or science education. In order to teach these issues properly, we all need more time.”

Because Israel has its own problems and, from afar, often seems like an intimidating place, Alpert said she has to balance discussing the violence and social concerns with being positive about the Jewish state.

“During the Second Intifada, we felt like all we were talking about was the conflict, and what that did was scare parents away from letting their kids go to Israel,” she said. “We’re caught in a major perplexing situation on how to deal with touching upon these issues. We [need to] look at education from all perspectives and make sure we’re not just focusing on the conflicts.”

Highlights of iCamp included a live version of “Israel Story,”an Israeli program based on the radio show “This American Life,” and an introduction to the second edition of the Aleph-Bet of Israel Education, a resource the iCenter puts out that is full of articles and essays on how best to teach students about Israel.

Some of the featured speakers were Zohar Raviv, Taglit-Birthright Israel international vice president of education; Sivan Zakai, director of Israel education initiatives at American Jewish University, and Barry Chazan, founding director of the Master of Arts in Jewish Professional Studies program at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.

Chazan’s session struck a chord with Yifat Mukades, who teaches fourth grade at Adat Ari El in Valley Village and is an iCenter fellow. She said Chazan spoke about creating a spark within the students to make them more curious about Israel.

“They should want to ask for more knowledge and education. Once they’re engaged with it, that’s the only way they will continue their search for knowledge after elementary and even high school,” Mukades said.

At Camp Alonim, Taksar said, she attempts to cultivate curiosity within her campers, who are in grades 3 to 11, by looking at their individual interests. There is a radio station on the campus that she will use to introduce her kids to “Israel Story,” and within the dance program, she’ll incorporate Israeli music.

“For us, it’s about finding ways to make Israel relevant and modern,” she said.

Mukades, who is from Israel, tells students about her personal experiences as a citizen of the country because, she said, they tend to perceive Israel primarily as a biblical place, not one that exists in the modern world.

At the conference, she learned there are many different topics she should be integrating into her classroom to fulfill her goals. “There is no one Israel,” she said. “It has many faces and stories. If you’re an Israeli educator, you have to know all of those and share them with your students.”

Now that she has attended iCamp, Mukades said she is more motivated than ever to share insights about Israel and give her students a taste of what it’s really like.

“I want to come up with new and innovative ideas on how to educate about Israel,” she said. “And I don’t need to wait for a lot of money or research to do so.”

JTA contributed to this report. 

Source: “Improving education about Israel,” Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, December 9, 2015

I recently got a call from a friend who graduated from a top business school and was considering three great job offers: one doing marketing with a professional sports team; one as an account manager with a tech start up; and, one doing development with a Jewish Federation. He was seeking my advice about which position to accept.

I asked him the questions my father had always asked me when faced with such choices: “Which job would you enjoy the most? Which would really allow you to grow? Which boss would make the best mentor?”

It was a no brainer. “I want to be around smart people. I want to be proud of what I do. I want to make the world a better place,” he said. Today, he’s doing exactly that at a Jewish Federation.

We need more outstanding young leaders, like my friend, who choose to build their careers in our sector because they view Jewish organizations in a positive light – filled with opportunity and support.

There has been a lot of talk over the past few years – on these very digital pages, in particular – about the dearth of emerging leaders in the Jewish nonprofit sector. Following extensive research identifying the causes of this leadership deficit, 15 foundations and federations founded the Jewish Leadership Pipelines Alliance, recently renamed Leading Edge. The research laid out our path. First, we need to do more to support and nurture talented emerging leaders who are already employed at Jewish nonprofits. Second, we have to create workplaces that attract the many talented young Jews who consider a career in our sector, but ultimately choose a different path because they perceive a lack of value in working at Jewish nonprofits.

The need is urgent. A large majority of Jewish nonprofit organizations – 75 to 90 percent – will need to hire new senior leaders in the next five to seven years.

To address both the immediate and long-term leadership gap facing the Jewish nonprofit sector, Leading Edge will launch three initiatives in 2016:

First, our Leading Places to Work Initiative will guide Jewish nonprofits in creating organizational cultures that attract and retain top professional talent – cultures that emphasize connectivity, open communication, and collaboration.

Second, our Lay Leadership Commission for Professional Recruitment & Retention will engage donors in learning about the leadership deficit, understanding the best practices for closing the leadership gap, and developing recommendations they can use in grant making to ensure a vibrant and solvent Jewish nonprofit sector.

Third, in partnership with the Jim Joseph Foundation and other funders, we will launch a CEO Onboarding Program. This program will provide new CEOs – and the board members responsible for their on boarding – with the skills and support they need to be effective leaders over the long-term and promote the overall health, impact, and stability of their organizations.

These programs are only the beginning. Leading Edge is looking at best practices from both within and beyond the Jewish community. We are listening and learning and actively partnering with those who already are exploring these issues. By creating outstanding workplaces and empowering talent to achieve their full potential, the institutions that represent the backbone of our community will be increasingly dynamic, with cutting edge programs to nurture generations to come.

Please share your thoughts on the approaches Leading Edge should consider as we work to strengthen the talent pipeline of our sector. For example, what do you value most about where you work? Do you feel supported in your own leadership development? Let us know in the comments section below.

Gali Cooks is the Executive Director of Leading Edge, a partnership between Jewish foundations and federations to build a robust talent pipeline for Jewish organizations.

Source: “Building the Talent Pipeline for Jewish Nonprofits, eJewishPhilanthropy, November 22, 2015

With the support of a more than $4 million matching grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, along with financial assistance from the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles is developing the Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative as part of an extensive outreach effort to Jewish teens who otherwise would not be involved in Jewish life.

“The goal is to engage 2,000 to 3,000 local Jewish teens in meaningful Jewish experiences,” Josh Miller, senior program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation, said in a phone interview.

The L.A. grant, which was announced last February, represents a ramped-up effort by the Jim Joseph Foundation to fund youth organizations. According to the foundation’s website, it has awarded more than $37.3 million in seven communities for community-based Jewish teen education initiatives.

Miller said the foundation hopes to help Jewish teens explore “what it means to be Jewish today, and what it means to be Jewish in the future.”

Many share Miller’s enthusiasm. Ben Schillmoeller, 25, the program coordinator at the Shalom Institute, was among approximately 30 people representing various nonprofit organizations who attended a Nov. 2-3 retreat held at American Jewish University’s Brandeis-Bardin Campus in Simi Valley, which focused on developing ways of engaging youth. The Federation organized the retreat.

After a morning spent brainstorming under the guidance of a representative of Upstart, a San Francisco Bay Area-based consulting service, Schillmoeller told the Journal he believes outdoor trips are one way to make teenagers excited about being Jewish.

“Teens don’t really get the chance to go out and see the wilderness as much as they used to,” Schillmoeller said in an interview.

Ronnie Conn, assistant executive director at the Westside JCC, said he thinks expanding the popular Maccabi Games program for youth is also important for teen engagement.

Although the majority of teen programs are still being developed, one is already underway: Federation launched a community internship program for high school students last summer as part of the initiative. Twenty-seven teenagers worked at various Jewish organizations across Los Angeles, including at the Jewish Journal, in internships that not only offered work experience for their résumés, but also were intended to help engage them in Jewish life. The program will continue next year.

Representatives of BBYO, formerly B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, Camp JCA Shalom, Moving Traditions, JQ International, Shalom Institute, Stephen S. Wise Temple Freedom School, Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles and the Westside Jewish Community Center are among the first organizations included in this effort. The Federation will have worked with more than 20 organizations by the time the entire initiative concludes in nearly five years.

“We were looking for diversity,” Shari Davis, director of Jewish education and engagement at Federation, told the Journal. “We were looking for diversity of organizations.”

Each of the organizations will receive between $25,000 and $50,000 from the Jim Joseph Foundation matching grant, according to Jessica Green, director of the L.A. Jewish Teen Initiative.

“The ultimate goal of everything we are doing is to engage as many under-engaged teenagers in some form of Jewish life [as possible],” she said. “And we are doing this from a variety of different tactics. One is expanding the programmatic landscape for teens. … Another is working with teen educators, ensuring they are as highly resourced and trained as possible to meet the diverse needs of teens themselves, and the third is nurturing the L.A. ecosystem, attempting to bridge existing gaps that exist in a city as geographically wide and culturally diverse as this is.”

Shira Rosenblatt, senior vice president of Jewish education and engagement at Federation, said the initiative hopes to counteract the drop-off in Jewish engagement that so often follows a teen’s b’nai mitzvah experience.

“Many of them see the bar and bat mitzvah as an opportunity for a perfect exit out, and we lose them,” she said. “And we really do believe that a connection to Jewish life — in the broader sense, a connection to community — can offer resources and insights and support for teens in a way that can be tremendously beneficial to them.”

The funds also are being used to train leaders in Jewish organizations to become more effective teen educators and to engage the teens themselves to become participants in the conversations about Jewish life.

Conn, for his part, said that the mere convening of Jewish leaders is important for the larger effort of engaging youth.

“It is creating in L.A. a network like we have never seen, in terms of how we can better serve teens across the city.”

Source: “$4 million matching grant aims to engage L.A. Jewish teens,” Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, November 11, 2015

As an educator and a parent, I know my task is not only to provide answers. I know that allowing children the opportunity to discover, question, challenge, and struggle is just as valuable, if not much more. But in times of crisis, in times where the news from Israel breaks my heart, I find it hard to remember that.

In these times, I find myself alternating between trying to shield them from the ugly reality outside and struggling not to explain it away with charts and maps and impassioned pleas. But I work on doing better. Here’s how:

READ: Why My Family Chooses to Live in Israel Despite the Violence

1. I need to listen better. My children are not worried about the same things I am. They have fears that are sometimes simpler and sometimes far more complicated. Our conversations about the current situation in Israel are most successful when they begin with what my children want to know, not what I want to tell them.

2. I need to take their questions at face value and not make assumptions. When my son was 4, he saw a picture in a children’s bible about the moment when Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac. He made us tell him the story. When we got to the part where Abraham raised the knife, about to sacrifice Isaac, he stopped us in horror. “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” he barged in. And we cringed, terrified to explain to him the unexplainable. “Where did he get the knife?” While my husband and I had expected him to ask the adult question, “How could Abraham kill his son?” Jonah’s 4-year-old mind was focused on a much more concrete question.

3. Sometimes my job is to help them care about what’s going on halfway around the world. Not to scare them, but to help them connect to their cousins and relatives in Israel, as well as to the people they don’t know who make up the Jewish people, the ordinary people of the area.

4. I need to be a model for them of caring and action. Truthfully, sometimes my kids are not interested by what’s going on in Israel. They are at school or at camp, hanging out with their friends, unbothered by ominous events across the ocean, and that’s not a bad thing. Sometimes my job is to help them care about what’s going on halfway around the world. By showing them that I care, they learn to care. They see me emailing friends and calling family members, and they learn it’s important. We talk about the organizations we send aid to, the way we lend our support. This goes far beyond any moment in time. Israel is always a part of our lives in America, and therefore it’s a part of theirs too.

READ: How to Go About Your Daily Life in Israel in the Midst of a ‘Stabbing Intifada’

5. I need to reassure them. My kids have Israeli aunts and uncles, first cousins, some of whom serve in the IDF, and friends whose families are all there. They want to make sure they are OK. Letting them talk to their cousins, write notes, and see that despite current challenges, Israelis make a concerted effort to go about their daily routines. Israel is not just a country on a map. It’s a land filled with people and stories, and often I turn to the stories of real people to help them understand why I’m concerned, why this is important to us as a family, as a community, and as the Jewish people.

6. I need to do a better job of controlling what they see and hear on the media. My children watch TV and go onto the computer on their own, and they have a lot of freedom in those areas. I’m not interested in hiding information from them, but much of what they may see, particularly online and on the news, is both disturbing and often not accurate. For that reason, I’ve asked them to allow me to be their curator for information they are looking for and to come to me when they have questions about the situation. Together we can find information they are curious about and I can show them how I look for stories on various news sources to get a fuller picture.

READ: What It’s Like to Be a Parent in Israel Right Now

However you choose to approach talking with your children and teens, if you’re committed to listening and keeping an open channel of communication, you will make an important impression. And while some conversations will go better than others, these moments are part of a long timeline of conversations, and there’ll always be bumps in the road. I find every time I admit I don’t know an answer, every time I commit to my children to do the best to find the answers they’re looking for, they come back with more questions.

This excerpt is courtesy of the iCenter for Israel Education. To read more, click here.

Natalie Blitt is an educational consultant for the iCenter, and the author of THE DISTANCE FROM A TO Z (forthcoming from HarperTeen Epic Reads). Prior to the iCenter, she spent five years working for The PJ Library®, where she created and led the book and manuscript selection process. She lives in the Chicago area with her husband Josh and their three sons.

Source: “6 Ways I talk to My Kids About the Political Climate in Israel,” Natalie Blitt, Kveller, October 22, 2015

Entwine’s unique combination of service, educational and leadership opportunities is becoming a model for re-charging the Jewish identities of hard-to-reach young adults.

“We all have a responsibility for the other. Through JDC Entwine, we are able to live that and inspire other people to be able to do that,” says Perry Teicher, co-chair of the JDC Entwine Steering Committee.

“More and more of our generation understands that what’s happening in India can affect me. We understand that we are all interconnected. Entwine is the only Jewish organization that really taps into that concept of a global Jewish community,” says Raquel Benquiat, founder and former co-chair of Entwine’s San Diego planning committee.

A Cornell Hillel student and local Jewish peer help repaint a Hesed social welfare building in Ukraine as part of a JDC Entwine Short Term Service trip; courtesy JDC.

Benquiat, a 32-year-old San Diego resident originally from Mexico City, says that many of her peers are disconnected from their Jewish identities. But when they leave home and see the global Jewish perspective through Entwine they often connect – Judaism becomes less threatening.

A JDC Entwine service volunteer facilitating activities with villagers in rural Gondar, Ethiopia; courtesy JDC.

“You open up to Judaism and that never leaves you. You feel, ‘Oh, God! I am Jewish and there is tradition behind me and all these people around the world are doing similar things that I do, as a Jew. I should do more, make Judaism a stronger part of me,’” says Benquiat.

JDC Entwine – the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s young adult engagement platform – has engaged more than 12,000 young Jewish adults, more than 50 percent whom fit the description that Benquiat provides, according to Executive Director Sarah Eisenman. An awardee of Slingshot’s 2014-2015 Washington DC innovator’s guide and a recipient of a $3 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, Entwine is quickly growing. Its unique combination of service, educational and leadership opportunities is becoming a model for re-charging the Jewish identities of hard-to-reach young adults.

Eisenman – who utilized her experience and interests as a passionate, but largely unaffiliated, young Jewish adult to create Entwine – says the organization is “catalyzing a generation of young Jews to live a life of action with global Jewish responsibility at the core.”

Students from Tufts University Hillel on a JDC Entwine trip working on a craft project with Jewish children who attend the Baby Help program in Buenos Aires; courtesy JDC.

Most unique are Entwine’s strategic partnerships, which enable it to collaborate to reach more – and a more diverse group – of future Jewish leaders.

For example, in June 2015, Entwine announced a partnership with Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG), to launch the first global Jewish service program uniquely crafted for Russian-speaking Jewish young people. The cohort, once accepted, travels together on service trips and then return to their communities to plan programs that appeal to a Russian-speaking audience. Eisenman says, “The program has taken off in a significant way.”

Twenty-four-year-old Lizzy Solovey of Baltimore is one of the participants. She recently traveled to Argentina with a group of Russian-speaking peers.

A crowd of young Jewish professionals gather for “Young Jewish Europe: East Meets West,” a JDC Entwine Learning Network-Genesis Philanthropy Group event at NYC’s City Winery; courtesy JDC.

“It was so amazing to see how resilient the Jewish community is there after the economic crisis. It was even more powerful to go to Argentina with a Russian group, because our story resonates with theirs. They are not immigrants, but they are rebuilding their lives in the same way our parents and we did,” says Solovey, who now works as a Jewish communal professional. “We had wonderful discussions about what it means to be Jewish and Russian. Coming back, I realized how important it is that I stay involved – to be proud of where I come from and of where I am and to keep giving back.”

A second $4 million partnership between Entwine and BBYO – which includes lead funding from the Schusterman and William Davidson Foundations – is enabling young adults who were formerly involved in the BBYO youth movement to take part in service fellowships, using the skills they learned as teen leaders. It is estimated that as many as 80 percent of teens disengage from the Jewish community after their bar/bat mitzvah. Almost as many drop out during the college years.

“This is a unique collaboration because it leverages the best of what Entwine, JDC and BBYO have to offer,” explains Eisenman, who notes the unique nature of Jewish young adults creating pluralistic teen programming through Entwine’s one-year Global Jewish Service Corps in Jewish communities where there is a need to develop teen programming. The volunteers use their preexisting skill sets to work with teens from around the world, which leads to more young adults serving and members of teen movements staying involved, and brings a pluralistic Jewish perspective to more traditionally-minded communities.

Moishe House has also partnered with JDC Entwine for several years. The collaboration has benefitted both organization in a number of ways with residents on service experiences, Moishe Houses serving as platforms for Entwine educational events, and often Entwine participants get involved in Moishe Houses on their return from overseas. This partnership has fostered a larger cooperation between Moishe House and JDC globally, whereby the two organizations develop Moishe Houses in overseas Jewish communities.

While JDC is known for regularly reinventing itself based on historical norms of that time and being able to reorient itself to respond to pressing challenge in the Jewish world – and Entwine is certainly a part of that mindset and mission – Entwine is conversely impacting JDC. For example, JDC changed it bylaws to create a two-year board position for young adults in their 20’s and 30’s, which now bring a new perspective to the organization’s strategy.

“People talk about experiential learning. This will be experiential leadership,” Eisenman quips, noting that among the goals of JDC Board inclusion of young adults is to put them in substantive leadership roles now while also exposes them to high-level learning on global leadership and interventions.

Entwine’s Teicher says he is focused on helping determine in what cities JDC Entwine should have larger networks, new ways to engage people, creative events, and how social media can impact the work JDC and its Entwine initiative do.

“The opportunity to work within such an amazing organization that has done such outstanding work for so long is really meaningful personally,” Teicher explains.

Benquiat expressed similar sentiments, highlighting what she feels is JDC Entwine’s secret sauce: entrepreneurialism.

“Entwine is not a pet project for the larger organization. No one dictates what we can and should do. We own what we do and we feel responsible for our own programs,” Benquiat says.

Will it last? That is something that Eisenman says she is shouldering. As part of the Jim Joseph grant, Entwine will embark on a long-term data mining project to evaluate the short-term and long-term success of its current initiatives and help inform future offerings.

“We care deeply about evaluation and data. We know the model is good; Entwine has done internal surveys,” says Dawne Bear Novicoff, assistant director of the Jim Joseph Foundation. “But Entwine has not had the resources to evaluate it. … Entwine will hire a new staff person to focus on measurement and outcomes to track and analyze the data it is already collecting.”

Powerful. Authentic.

Says Eisenman: “We have built. Now, we are taking everything we built and putting it on a whole new level.”

Source: “JDC Entwine’s Entrepreneurialism is Secret Sauce for Engaging Next Generation,” Maayan Jaffe, eJewishPhilanthropy, October 16, 2015

Two grants totaling $300,000 from the Jim Joseph Foundation and The AVI CHAI Foundation have provided scholarships for Jewish day schools, early childhood programs, and overnight camps to Houston-area families affected by May’s flood in America’s fourth-largest city.

The funds—awarded to the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and allocated by the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston—were distributed to the schools and camps and designated for families who applied for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) support as a result of the flood. It is estimated that 500 Jewish homes (among more than 2,500 homes overall in Houston) were damaged by the flood, which also wreaked havoc on three local synagogues.

“The Memorial Day flood hit neighborhoods with large Jewish populations especially hard,” Lee Wunsch, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston, said Oct. 8. “The support of JFNA, the Jim Joseph Foundation, and The AVI CHAI Foundation helps ensure that children continue the Jewish learning so important to their families’ lives.”

Mem Bernstein, board chairman of The AVI CHAI Foundation, said the foundation is “pleased to be able to offer this support to families affected by the flood to ensure their ongoing access to Jewish education,” stressing the importance of “the continuity of the Jewish people” through education.

“After a disaster, families need a range of assistance and support to return to normalcy,” said Al Levitt, president of the Jim Joseph Foundation. “We can help families continue to access Jewish education that comprise such meaningful and important parts of their lives.”

Source: “$300K in Jewish education funding aids Houston families affected by flood,” JNS, October 9, 2015

(JTA) — Hillel International: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life has received a $16 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, the largest grant ever awarded by the foundation.

The grant, which will be paid out over five years, will assist Hillel in implementing its Drive to Excellence strategic plan, which is designed to help campuses and communities implement best practices for supporting Jewish student life.

“The Drive to Excellence is a strategic, deeply thoughtful initiative that can expand Hillel’s already effective efforts,” Al Levitt, president of the Jim Joseph Foundation, said in a statement issued Thursday. “This campaign warrants a grant of this magnitude, and we hope others are moved by the exciting possibilities too.”

The main pillars of the plan are recruiting and developing talent, student engagement and resource development.

“This grant will allow us to experiment with new fundraising models to grow the revenue of local Hillels and help recruit more talent throughout the Hillel movement,” said Eric Fingerhut, the president and CEO of Hillel.

In 2008, a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, helped Hillel launched its Senior Jewish Educator/Campus Entrepreneur Initiative pilot program. The grant announced Thursday will build on this initial Jim Joseph Foundation-Hillel partnership, the groups said in a statement.

Source: “Hillel gets $16M grant from Jim Joseph Foundation,” JTA, September 10, 2015

Three local Jewish day schools have started the second year of an initiative that aims to improve Israel experiences and education in Jewish day schools.

Last year, the iCenter, a national Israel education organization, launched “iNfuse: Israel Education in Day Schools,” at six day schools from across North America. The local schools are Donna Klein Jewish Academy in Boca Raton and Jacobson Sinai Academy and Hochberg Preparatory School, both in North Miami Beach. The purpose of this initiative has been for each school to create a plan to make Israel education and experiences a more significant part of all aspects of school life.

The IDF visited Jacobson Sinai Academy, one of the local schools that was selected for “iNfuse: Israel Education in Day Schools.” (Submitted photo)

Lesley Litman, one of the initiative’s designers and iCenter educational consultant, said that all the schools are moving forward. She noted that there are three phases to the program.

“Our plan was that in the first year, the schools would do the first two phases and in the second year they would do the third phase, which is designing and implementing curriculum projects,” Litman said. “The schools are all more or less on track, which is really pretty remarkable because they each went through the first year, through phases 1 and 2, in their own unique ways. We provided them with tools and they navigated it in a way that was unique to them.”

Litman also said “We have a set of online tools for every phase that will enable the schools to actually design curricula online and access resources for teachers and students from the iCenter and other Israel education sources. In turn, they will be able to implement the curriculum that they’re designing as a result of their work with iNfuse.”

In the first year of the program, Donna Klein Jewish Academy created a survey monkey.

“The survey included questions that required a little bit of looking at the curriculum and finding out in each discipline where there is or where there is not any relation to Israel education,” said Sammy Chukran-Lontok, the school’s director of Middle School Judaic Studies and director of Middle and High School Hebrew Studies. “We took this information and we summarized it and with that we came out up with our standards, mission statement, core assumption and vision.”

Jacobson Sinai Academy developed a mission statement as part of iNfuse that states, “The relationship of our learners with Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael is a priority for the JSA community. JSA promotes knowledge and appreciation of Israel through academic studies and cultural experiences. This learning enhances students’ connection to and knowledge of Israel and strengthens their Jewish identity.”

Laura Pachter, a co-chair for inFuse at JSA, said “I think everyone embraced the idea of focusing more on Israel’s geography, history, innovation and diversity and we’ve been addressing the Jewish connection all along.”

Pachter also mentioned that through this program, everyone in the school is starting to make their own connections in their subject areas.

Dayna Wald, principal of Judaics at Hochberg Preparatory School, said that over the summer, the school worked on connecting the standards it identified in the program’s first year to things it was already doing and developed connections between its existing curriculum and its newly identified Israel education standards.

“I met with our curriculum director to review the standards and identify areas for cross-curricular collaboration,” Wald added. “Our next step is to identify areas of focus for the first half of the year and provide our teachers with resources to make these connections in the classrooms with their students.”

Wald added “We are focusing first on the standard of People, Nation, State and Land of Israel. Teachers are working on aligning their current curriculum to this theme and identifying areas for integration.”

Source: “Local Jewish day schools continuing to integrate Israel education through iNfuse,” Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 8, 2015