Support from Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw’s Hearthland Foundation will expand the group’s programming with multi-faith leaders and the entertainment industry
As the associate vice president for campus affairs at the Jewish United Fund of Chicago and executive director of the Hillels of Illinois, Emily Briskman oversees nearly 60 Hillel professionals, many of whom spend significant time dealing with on-campus expressions of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Through her work with Hillels, Briskman has participated in programs run by Resetting the Table, an organization dedicated to building dialogue and deliberation across political divides.
Read the full story: “Resetting the Table Aims to Shift ‘Rigidity into Receptivity,’” Esther D. Kustanowitz, eJewish Philanthropy, August 11, 2022
The approach involves creating workshops that encourage collaborative discussions when arguments regarding Israel’s complexities arise.
Innovative Jewish educators Abi Dauber Sterne and Robbie Gringas have taken on a new approach to learning about Israel: Argument circles.
Now, with the help of a $1.1 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, For the Sake of Argument (FSA)’s pilot program will give Dauber Sterne and Gringas the opportunity to achieve successful execution of the program among Jewish community groups across the world.
read the full story in the Jerusalem Post.
Idit Klein has been at the helm of Keshet, the Jewish LGBTQ+ organization, since 2001. Over the course of her tenure, she has been able to carve out time for two sabbaticals — July-September 2013 and July-August 2021 — and each time returned to what she described as a “more resilient and sustainable” organization.
“My colleagues had the opportunity to step up in new ways in my absence, stretch in new directions and explore new capacities,” she said. “I believe sabbaticals are vital, not only to give the CEO the opportunity to rest, re-energize, and renew but to strengthen the leadership of others in the organization.”
The reenergizing potential of sabbaticals, especially at a time of rising concern over pandemic burnout, is the guiding motivation of R&R: The Rest of Our Lives, a new organization offering three-month paid sabbatical grants to a handful of CEOs and directors of Jewish nonprofits.
Read the full story in eJewish Philanthropy
The $1.8 million, four-year grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation to CASJE, also seeks to broaden what counts as Jewish education and who it serves.
What does the phrase “Jewish education” bring to mind?
Perhaps it conjures an image of a Jewish day school, a Hebrew school or a synagogue program. And odds are the people sitting in it are children. Starting next year, a new research fellowship will aim to change that image — or at least add texture to it, eJewishPhilanthropy has learned. The two-year fellowship for six people with doctorates in education or related fields will be run by the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE) and funded by a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation.
Read the full story in eJewish Philanthropy
The new paper from CASJE analyzes the supply and demand of Jewish educators
A growing industry of academic degree and training providers is helping the field of Jewish education meet its staffing needs, but supplemental schools, such as those in synagogues, face shortages, according to a new paper from the Collaborative of Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE).
“It’s the supplementary school sector that has shaped the narrative around a shortage. The personnel needs are immense there,” Alex Pomson, a researcher involved in the project, told eJewishPhilanthropy.
Prepared by Rosov Consulting, where Pomson is the managing director, “Mapping the Marketplace,” is part of CASJE’s “Career Trajectories of Jewish Educators,” the first such study of the entire field since the 2006 “Educators in Jewish Schools” study.
Read the full story in eJewish Philanthropy.
For the past few years, Jews of color in the United States have been counted and recounted. They’ve been argued over and used as props in ideological battles.
Now their own voices have emerged as hard data with the release Thursday of the most comprehensive survey of Jews of color ever carried out.
The movement fighting racism within the Jewish community is heralding the study as a watershed moment.
Read the full story: “Researchers unveil massive study on Jews of color, boosting fight for racial justice with hard data,” Asaf Shalev, JTA, August 12, 2021
Online Jewish content has the potential to meet a wide range of needs
By Ami Eden
The pandemic may be receding, but the continuing expansion of Jewish life online — from classes to family activities to prayer services — will continue. As a result, it has never been more important to understand the nature and depth of the impact that digital experiences can have on people’s Jewish lives, identities and practices.
At 70 Faces Media, the largest Jewish digital publisher in the U.S., we’ve been fielding questions about digital impact for years, especially in talks with funders. Are online Jewish experiences “real”? Is there really any lasting value in visiting a website, opening an email or interacting on social media? How can online activity influence Jewish choices?
Luckily, to paraphrase a great (or, at least, a “big”) sage: New data has come to light. And the underlying message is a powerful one — not only does digital media have the ability to reach unprecedented levels of people in a highly cost effective manner (in our case: 3 million+ monthly web visitors, 1 million+ social followers and 300,000 email subscribers), but online Jewish content has the potential to meet a wide range of needs and impact people in many different ways.
Ami Eden is the CEO and Executive Editor of 70 Faces Media. Those looking for more information about the study and opportunities to enhance your organization’s digital reach and capabilities should send an email to aeden@70facesmedia.org.
Read the full article in eJewish Philanthropy
One of the ways in which funding partners can make the biggest impact is by recognizing and supporting ideas and efforts worth scaling. But how can well-intentioned funders realize the potential to help grantees grow and export relevant solutions far and wide? We’d like to share some recent lessons learned from a funding collaborative’s efforts to scale meaningful programs for teens in the Jewish community.
Although mental health has always been a concern for the teen population, 2020 and 2021 have seen increasing and alarming rates of stress, anxiety, and depression in teens and young adults. In response to these times, the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative and other partners have thought critically about how they might reach more teens in today’s climate.
Through 2019, the Funder Collaborative—in which national and local funders work together to develop, nurture, and scale new approaches to teen engagement—had delivered mental health training to 400 professionals. But this scale wasn’t enough. Guided by their ongoing work with Spring Impact, founded in 2011 to help mission-driven organizations create change at a greater scale, the Funder Collaborative decided to offer a virtual certification course for professionals, caregivers, and parents to train as Youth Mental Health First Aiders. The Funder Collaborative is now offering this course at no cost to nearly 1,000 professionals, caregivers, and parents, equipping them with a hands-on, five-step action plan for helping young people in both crisis and non-crisis situations. Each of the ten communities within the Funder Collaborative has integrated mental health wellness into their unique programming.
Dan Berelowitz (he/him) is CEO and Founder, Spring Impact. Sara Allen (she/her) is Executive Director of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative
Read the full piece in Grantcraft
There were more than 72,000 Jewish educators working in the United States in 2019, according to a new study from the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE) that aims to better understand and support the Jewish educational workforce.
“Any mature and specific field needs a knowledge base for policy makers and funders to make decisions, respond to needs and take advantage of opportunities,” said Stacie Cherner, director of learning and evaluation at the Jim Joseph Foundation, which funded the research for the report, along with the William Davidson Foundation. The study’s authors and backers say this research is the first of its kind.
Researchers have in the past studied Jewish day schools and yeshiva teachers, as in the Educators in Jewish Schools Study of 2006 by the Jewish Education Center of North America, said Arielle Levites, CASJE’s managing director.
This study uses a much broader definition of “educator”: Someone who educates or “engages” in a Jewish setting, regardless of the subject taught or whether the educator identifies as Jewish. This includes full-time, part-time and seasonal workers, but no pulpit rabbis, people who work solely in operations or administration or those who have a non-educational expertise, such as school psychologist or therapist.
Read the full story in eJewish Philanthropy.
The web portal currently connects users to around 70 collecting projects. However, the list of collections will expand as the project goes larger.
A new web portal has been launched to help American Jews and Jewish institutions gather and preserve materials on Jewish life during the coronavirus pandemic.
Called “Collecting These Times: American Jewish Experiences of the Pandemic,” the portal was developed by George Mason University’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, in partnership with the Berman Museum, Hebrew Theological College, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Capital Jewish Museum, Council of American Jewish Museums and Prizma: Center for Jewish Day Schools.
Read the full story in the Jerusalem Post