News & Blogs Category: Partners in the News

One of the more positive Jewish communal stories at this time of communal disruption is of how hundreds of Jewish day schools, globally, have mobilized so that students can continue their education via distance learning platforms. We do not intend to re-tell the story of this important effort, nor do we propose to reflect on the outcomes created for teachers, students and students’ families. It is too early to say. We don’t yet have enough systematically collected data about these phenomena.

We turn, instead, to data gathered during easier times, just two years ago. We offer a research-informed perspective on the extent to which the shift to virtual schooling challenges the most distinctive feature – call it the beating heart – of day school education: its relational core. Appreciating the present upheaval in such terms can help educators focus on what is most important when there are so many claims on their attention.

CASJE, the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education, housed at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development, commissioned a study of leadership in Jewish day schools (with the support of the AVI CHAI Foundation and the Berman Family Foundation), conducted in 2017-2018. Over the past year, the team at Rosov Consulting has worked with CASJE to conduct a secondary analysis of the data gathered. The study involved surveys of teachers and students, and both interviews and surveys of professional leadership in schools. Secondary analysis has provided a chance to explore issues besides leadership.

In all of its strands, the study exposed just how much day school education is enriched by the interpersonal relationships of its main players – students, teachers, school leaders and parents. In fact, the study revealed how these relationships function as both means and ends. In their most successful renditions, these relationships both nurture and come to serve as expressions of covenantal community, what one might call an ultimate purpose of day school education.

To explain further: A study of time-use among Division Heads (second-in-command leaders in schools) revealed how in day schools (unlike public schools) these people function less as instructional leaders and more as harbor pilots. Through their conversations with parents, teachers and students, through their own personal modelling and by talking about the values at the heart of their schools, these leaders give teachers a sense of direction and they give students a sense of higher purpose. Through endless rounds of conversations and personal interactions, they help steer schools away from the rocks toward open water.

A survey of teachers, and an investigation of teacher satisfaction, revealed that those who work in day schools exhibit high levels of satisfaction with their work, at levels similar to their public education peers. It showed too how the greatest sources of teacher satisfaction are associated on the one hand with the joys and challenges that derive from being with students in the classroom, and on the other from supervision by professional leaders who convey and cultivate a vision for their schools.

A survey of student perspectives on school climate makes plain that the older students are, the more they associate a positive climate in their schools with the personal relationships they form with their peers and with the personal attention from and interaction with their teachers. For students, these relationships are the special sauce that accounts for why so few of them would prefer to go school elsewhere.

Woven together, these three research strands make it clear how so much of what teachers and students value about their day schools can be traced back to the quality of their relationships in the classroom and, really, in every other corner of their schools. This is a sobering insight when right now school is experienced most commonly through the medium of a computer screen.

Of course, we might want to devote as much as possible of that screen time to serious learning, to stretching students academically. These studies suggest it is no less important to use the time to ensure that the blood continues to reach the relational heart of schools. When our schools are physically dispersed, we should make especially sure to mobilize the undoubted potential of technology to continue nurturing these essential relationships.

Alex Pomson, PhD, is Principal and Managing Director of Rosov Consulting. Frayda Gonshor Cohen, EdD, is a Senior Project Leader at Rosov Consulting.

Source: eJewish Philanthropy

Families face multiple challenges as they shelter in place together for months and the busy lives of adolescent children are put on hold indefinitely

Sophie Riegel has started pulling her hair out again. The stress of the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a reversion to some unhealthy habits for the college freshman who suffers from trichotillomania and three other anxiety disorders.

Riegel, the author of two books on anxiety, was informed while home in New York for spring break that her university would be closed. She and her father immediately drove down to North Carolina and packed up her belongings with just hours to spare before the dorms were locked.

“I had no idea how long the wait would be until I could return to campus, and I didn’t have enough underwear,” explained Riegel about the determination to retrieve her things.

Riegel has been busy with online classes and virtual speaking engagements, but a planned lecture tour of summer camps has been cancelled.

Sophie Riegel (Courtesy)

“None of us can make plans. Everyone is uncertain about the future, and uncertainty is the root of anxiety,” she said.

Adolescents are angsty and moody in the best of times, and the pandemic and its restrictions have either caused or exacerbated genuine mental health challenges. Professionals in the Jewish community were quick to identify that teenagers and their parents needed extra support during this difficult period.

Local teen-focused Jewish organizations and programs have swung into action to provide guidance, and the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative launched a multifaceted, interactive online resource for Mental Health Awareness Month in May.  The collaborative is a philanthropic experiment sponsored by a variety of local and national funders anchored by the Jim Joseph Foundation, and involves 10  communities. Through its “Collective Compassion” initiative, it is offering 23 different virtual workshops, discussions, and hands-on activities for teens, parents and professionals.

“Although this monthlong series of events is new this year, well-being of teens has been a concern for us since our inception in 2013,” said the collaborative’s executive director Sara Allen.

“We had always wanted to do something for Mental Health Month, and COVID amplified the need for it now, and for it to be virtual,” she said.

Illustrative: Boston Jewish community teens. (Courtesy of Jewish Teen Initiative of Boston)

According to the collaborative’s wellness coordinator, licensed independent clinical social worker Margie Bogdanow, it was critical to include parents in the equation.

“There can be more friction between teens and parents now because of everyone being home together all the time. And in general, there isn’t a lot out there in terms of support for parents of teens. It’s important to provide this support to parents before their teens are in crisis,” Bogdanow noted.

The new non-taboo

Erica Hruby, executive director of the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Network (JTEEN), started a virtual support group for parents and teens in late March. Once a week, parents from different parts of the United States come together to share their struggles and successes.

Chicago Jewish teens participate in Springboard School Break Program Ski and Snowboard Adventure (Courtesy of Springboard)

“These parents look forward to our conversations and appreciate hearing that others are experiencing similar challenges. They look to each other for guidance and as a non-judgmental shoulder to lean on,” Hruby said.

Accustomed to overloaded academic and extracurricular schedules, daily face-to-face interaction with their friends, and burgeoning independence, teens sense that their lives are on pause — with no definite restart point in sight.

It is no longer taboo to talk about mental health

This uncertainty takes its toll on many young people, especially those with clinical anxiety or depression diagnoses. Fortunately, many members of Generation Z and their parents do not regard coping struggles as a sign of weakness, and are willing to seek help.

“It is no longer taboo to talk about mental health,” said Gail New, a mother of three — including 16-year-old twins — who sits on a key committee at her children’s school in Marblehead, Massachusetts. “The subject comes up at every meeting we have.”

Ryann Bloom (Paradise Photo & Video)

“My generation is so great about trying to break the stigma surrounding mental health,” said Ryann Bloom, an 18-year-old high school senior in Natick, Massachusetts, who has seen an uptick in anxiety and depression among her friends since the beginning of the pandemic.

Bloom finds going out into the world scary these days, afraid she could catch the virus. “I went to Target with my sister. She was okay, but I freaked out,” she said.

According to retired psychologist and adjunct lecturer at Hebrew Union College Betsy Stone, the best thing adults can do for teens is listen to them vent about how hard it is for them right now. She cautions that trying to impart perspective and reassurance to teens will backfire.

“They’ll perceive that as you not really wanting to listen to them,” she said. “Just listening to them express themselves is a huge act of love and holiness.”

Stuck together

There are definite downsides to families being cooped up at home for months at a time. Conflict should be expected as a result of this unprecedented forced intimacy, with a perceived lack of privacy and personal space.

However, Stone pointed out that this is a perfect opportunity for parents to help their teens build character and work on who they want to be as members of their family and individuals. Part of this involves insisting that teens do chores to help keep the household going. Stone suggests giving teens choice in terms of which jobs they take on so they maintain some control.

Ben Suffel (courtesy)

“Parallel play” is also important as a way of spending quality time together as a family, and as a way for parents to be emotionally there for their children.

“Watch TV and movies together. Do puzzles. Play board games. Do stuff your teens like to do even if you don’t like it,” Stone said.

Ben Suffel, a high school junior in Owings Mills, Maryland, has enjoyed eating dinner every night with his parents and twin brother. The 17-year-old has also liked running with his dad and just hanging out on the front porch.

He misses seeing his track teammates and friends from his synagogue youth group, but he has found that keeping in regular touch with them online has been a good second-best alternative.

It’s been harder for Bloom, who has struggled with the forced social distancing from her friends.

“I’m a social person and crave in-person connection. I like physical contact and hugging as part of showing emotional ties to people,” said Bloom, who is a leader in the Boston Jewish teen community.

Spending so much time in her room has gotten Bloom a bit down. She has found herself hanging out on social media just to pass the time and quell her boredom. “I’ll be scrolling through TikTok for hours,” she said.

Teenage girls from the Atlanta Jewish community. (Courtesy of JumpSpark)

Riegel warned against overdoing the social media exposure and following the news excessively.

“Not everything circulated is accurate, nor are statistics necessarily relevant to where you live. You really have to contextualize so you don’t catastrophize,” Riegel said.

An opportunity for independence

Samantha Vinokor-Meinrath, associate director of adolescent initiatives for the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, has discovered that the COVID crisis has helped many teens become more independent and responsible about managing their time.

I’m seeing teens develop their own coping skills and new levels of self-awareness

“I’m seeing teens develop their own coping skills and new levels of self-awareness. I’m hearing teens describe going for daily runs, getting full nights of sleep because they’re able to set the agenda of the day according to their own rhythms, and realizing when their screens aren’t a substitute for the longing for human connection,” Vinokor-Meinrath said.

Boston Jewish community teens work on staying healthy. (Courtesy of Jewish Teen Initiative of Boston)

Suffel agreed about the benefit of setting his own schedule. He has been less stressed doing his school work at home, because he can do it at his own pace and not be distracted by the school environment.

The recent announcement by Jewish summer camps that they will not operate this summer has been a hard pill for teens to swallow. New’s twins’ trip to Israel with their Jewish camp has been cancelled.

“They’ve been commiserating with their friends, but I think they are still in a bit of a state of denial,” New said.

Bloom, who is set to begin studying criminal justice, criminology and psychology at the University of Maryland in the fall, feels robbed of her final semester of high school. There are tentative plans to hold her school’s graduation ceremony in August.

Boston Jewish teens participate in a community service project. (Courtesy of Jewish Teen Initiative of Boston)

For some teens, being introspective can help. Aaron Henne, artistic director of Theater Dybbuk in Los Angeles, is offering a “Storytelling for Sanity” workshop as part of “Collective Compassion.” Henne believes in the power of creative expression and the arts to help people navigate difficulty. For the workshop, he will focus on storytelling as a vehicle for connection, understanding, and healing, particularly in the Jewish tradition.

“The intended primary audience of my workshop is teens who are open to connecting with their own inner voices at this time. They’ll have the chance to write their own story so that they can keep it and refer to it in the future,” Henne said.

Sammy Ginsberg (courtesy)

It is also important for teens to look forward to things they can return to when it is safe to do so. If his plans to work at a local JCC day camp fall through due to COVID-19, Suffel is committed to being as active and busy as possible this summer. Bloom has already lined up a college roommate and has been coordinating with her about décor.

Allen has found that teens who have shown agency, turning to action, purpose and meaning, have exhibited resiliency. For instance, Houston brothers Matthew and Jeremy Jason took on a major project making protective face masks from kippahs for the homeless.

Toronto teen Sammy Ginsberg intends to grow his blossoming baking business this summer. The 15-year-old self-taught baker has seen the number of orders for his creatively decorated confections soar since mid-March. Sheltering at home with his parents and sister, Ginsberg has focused solely on his school work and his baking.

“I’ve been fulfilling an average of eight orders a week, and I have had to turn down a lot of orders,” he said.

A selection of cakes from Sam’s Sweet Creations. (courtesy of Sammy Ginsberg)

Ginsberg has been leading free instructional baking sessions over Zoom, and gives 20 percent of the profits from his cakes, which range for $55 to $300, to the Frontline Fund. He even lined up two matching donors to triple the impact of his gift.

Ginsberg’s baking has kept boredom at bay and helped him stay motivated toward the end of this usual school year.

“Most of all, it’s kept my mind off the scariness of this worldwide pandemic,” he said.

Source: “Virtual initiative promotes teen well-being, mental health in COVID-19 crisis,” Renee Ghert-Zand, Times of Israel, May 26, 2020

Makayla Wigder, a high school senior from Houston, had been looking forward to the prom, graduation and one last summer with her friends before leaving for college.

Then came the coronavirus pandemic. Now those plans appear highly unlikely to materialize.

“It’s just devastating,” Wigder lamented. “Graduation is something we’ve worked toward for the past 12 years. Finishing without a sense of closure is just really disappointing.”

With much of America under lockdown, the struggles of the sick, the elderly and those tasked with helping them are front and center. But even those with seemingly less urgent needs — such as teens, many of whom struggle with anxiety or depression in ordinary times — are also at greater risk of struggle during this epidemic, experts say.

“It was hard to be a teenager even before all of this, but COVID-19 is amplifying the most painful parts about adolescence,” said Sara Allen, executive director of Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative, a partnership between local federations and the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Allen is planning a webinar in May to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Month for a network of 800 Jewish professionals who work with teens.

Many teens are feeling a real sense of grief at the loss of the traditional rituals that close out high school, Allen said, but they don’t necessarily recognize the emotion as such.

“They feel they were robbed. But it doesn’t trigger as grief, so that makes it harder for them to move through the stages,” she said. “We’re trying to help them with the language, and perhaps some kind of Jewish ritual over this loss, so they can feel a sense of agency over it.”

At Jewish federations across the country, adults who work on teen programs are recasting what they do to reach out to teens and make sure they’re OK, help them build resilience and cope with the coronavirus crisis, and even engage them in projects to help the wider community during these extraordinary times.

In Texas, Katelyn Bleiweiss, the mental health programs coordinator at Jewish Family Service of Greater Houston, a federation partner, recently led a Zoom workshop with some 40 teens to talk about resilience. It was adapted to the pandemic from a suicide prevention program, Sources of Strength, that Jewish Family Service brought to the Jewish community in Texas.

“We talked about the strengths that we had before COVID-19 — like cooking or playing with your dog or playing soccer, and how can we modify these things for the present reality?” Bleiweiss said.

For example, if a soccer player can’t play with her team, she can still practice her technique at home, Bleiwiss said, focusing on a skill or something they enjoyed before can help reduce anxiety now.

In normal times, the Jewish Family Service of Greater Houston holds in-person resilience workshops for Jewish teens. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have been happening over Zoom. (Courtesy of JFS Houston)

“The primary focus is finding strength in your life by looking at true norms,” she said. “While there are a lot of negative stories in the media about the coronavirus, the majority of the population are healthy and most who get it actually recover, especially among young people. Resiliency to it is the true norm.”

Many Jewish community professionals who work with teens say that the crucial element of their work now isn’t so much the content of one particular program or another but connecting with teens during this time of social isolation.

Marna Meyer runs the Teen Israel Ambassador program through the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston. In ordinary circumstances, the program helps teens prepare for college and learn tools for college activism around Israel. But right now, she said, simply connecting with each other socially has become the highest priority.

“They’re feeling lonely and isolated,” said Meyer, a therapist by training. “All the phone calls, texting and Zooming isn’t the same as being with each other.”

“We’ve been really conscientious in looking for red flags,” said Rabbi Dena Shaffer, executive director of 4Front, a program run by The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore, which serves as a gathering place for Baltimore’s Jewish teens to explore their Jewish identities and the issues that matter to them.

Shaffer and Meyer both said if they notice teens dropping off from programming, they make an extra effort to reach out to them.

The Big Apple Adventure is a trip to New York for teens from the Midwest Region of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth. The last such trip was in February 2020, right before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Courtesy of the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago)

Some teens have had a difficult time adjusting to living their lives almost completely online, said Margie Bogdanow, a Boston-based consultant who works as wellness coordinator for the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative.

The trauma of this experience should not be understated, Bogdanow warned.

“This is a trauma for everybody and a trauma for the teens,” she said. “Often when people are in a trauma, they don’t express it in that moment. You see it much later.”

At the same time, many of those who work with teens say they’ve been impressed with how quickly Jewish teens have adapted to this new reality.

Across the country, teens who are part of Diller Teen Fellows, an international program with 32 global communities, including one in Chicago, created a series of “fellow spotlights” where they present or lead an online conversation on a topic they are passionate about and engage their peers in discussion.

In Chicago, an April 30 event honoring 18 teens in a Jewish leadership program called 18 Under 18 was canceled. But the teens took their Jewish leadership initiatives online, or continued already existing remote collaborations, including projects on Holocaust education in public schools, the diversity of Jewish experiences and religious pluralism.

“We have some amazing leaders who are trying to figure out ways to give back, even if they can’t do so in person,” said Sarina Gerson, assistant vice president for community outreach and engagement at the Jewish United Fund of Chicago. “Many teens want to continue their involvement in volunteer projects and social action, even if it has to happen in their own homes. They’re looking for an outlet to channel their energy in productive ways.”

Gerson said the teens she works with who have leadership qualities see the pandemic as an opportunity to make a difference in the community.

“For Jewish Teens Struggling in the Coronavirus Era, Jewish Groups Extend a Lifeline,” Alix Wall, JTA, March 4, 2020

The challenges have affected every sector of Jewish communal life, including organizational closures, staff layoffs, canceled programs, a pivot to online education and an increase in financial-aid needs.

Seven Jewish foundations joined together to announce on Monday the launch of the Jewish Community Response and Impact Fund (JCRIF), which will provide more than $80 million in interest-free loans and grants as thousands of Jewish nonprofit organizations are experiencing unprecedented needs due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The challenges have affected every sector of Jewish communal life, including organizational closures, staff layoffs, canceled programs, a pivot to online education, an anticipated increase in financial-aid needs, a decrease in fundraising and and other operational interruptions.

“We recognize the dire health and economic needs that the pandemic has created and applaud the heroic efforts by so many to address them. We have also seen firsthand the acute challenges Jewish organizations across the country are facing,” said JCRIF’s funders, which include the Aviv Foundation, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation, the Jim Joseph Foundation, Maimonides Fund, the Paul E. Singer Foundation and the Wilf Family Foundation.

“While this fund alone cannot address all of those challenges, we believe that investing together in these vital pillars of Jewish life will help ensure a stronger future for American Jewry in the months and years to come,” they said.

JCRIF includes two components: a loan program and an aligned grant program. The loan program will provide short-term unsecured loans to alleviate cash flow challenges and to enable organizations to maintain services and/or make payroll in the coming three to six months.

The loan program will be based at the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF), which will act as the loan fund administrator and lender of record. It will also partner with the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), which will source and recommend loan applications. Shira Hutt, JFNA Chief of Staff and an experienced nonprofit and philanthropic professional, is serving as JFNA’s liaison to the program. JFNA will work with key national Jewish networks, including members of the National Emergency Coalition, as well as independent Jewish nonprofits, to source loan applicants.

The aligned grant program will provide a combination of emergency funding for immediate needs and strategic funding to address organizational and sector-wide shifts catalyzed by the crisis. The program seeks to provide an efficient, simplified and accelerated application and reporting system for both applicants and grant recipients. It will supplement each foundation’s current grantmaking to Jewish organizations.

To create an efficient process that ensures quick turnaround and deployment of resources, both programs will proactively source funding opportunities rather than accept unsolicited proposals. The fund welcomes additional investors.

Source: Jewish News Syndicate, April 20, 2020

The Jim Joseph Foundation is pleased to join with 18 other funders in sharing the following message:

Since biblical times, Judaism’s imperative has been to protect the most vulnerable members of society. Vulnerability has taken on new meaning in our communities today. It includes our friends and neighbors, teachers and rabbis, colleagues and family.

As COVID-19 drastically affects the world, our country and our community, we know that many of our grantee partners and other organizations face unprecedented challenges and concerns. We want you to know that we, your philanthropic partners, are in this together with you.

First, we wish a Refuah Shlemah to the many people in our community and around the world who have been directly affected by COVID-19.

We appreciate the ways in which so many organizations have stepped up in this moment to prioritize the health and wellbeing of individuals and the community, reminding all of us about how to live out our value of kol yisrael arevim zeh b’zeh (all of Israel are responsible for one another) with such care and intention. We are inspired by the many synagogues, schools, JCCs and other institutions that demonstrated creativity and flexibility as they adjusted Purim celebrations. This is a model for how all of us can respond quickly and work differently to continue to provide Jewish learning and community.

And yet, we know that you have had to cancel in-person and immersive travel programs, holiday celebrations, and convenings. You have had to close schools. Many of you have understandable concerns that raising funds, making payroll, and meeting grant benchmarks may be deeply impacted.

We want you to know that we hear these concerns—we have them as well, and we plan to act. As foundations and funders committed to klal yisrael, we have a responsibility to support our community and to help your organizations and the people who are part of your teams during this challenging period. We have been in touch with many of you—thank you for telling us about your immediate challenges and anticipated future needs. We welcome these conversations and know there will be many more.

We don’t have all the answers. We do, however, want to share some of the ways we are approaching our role as philanthropic funders who need and want to help our grantees.

• Maintaining our funding levels: Previously awarded grants will not be revoked if a program or conference is postponed. We understand you have sunk costs and need the latitude to repurpose money already received.
• Adjusting our expectations: Cancellations of in-person programs—professional development, convenings, retreats, trips and more—will adversely affect organizations’ participation and engagement numbers. We understand that these types of benchmarks often associated with grants will not be reached and will adjust our expectations to reflect the reality of the times.
• Giving you time to plan and respond to the crisis: We understand that normal grant reporting requirements, site visits, and other commitments to funders take away from the time you need to plan and respond appropriately to the current crisis. We will work with you and make adjustments to ensure your time can be used in the most effective ways necessary.
• Being nimble: As the situation evolves, and as we learn more about your needs, we will strive to offer support as quickly as possible. We will work with you and each other to help make funds available to address and respond to the coronavirus and global economic scenarios in strategic ways. This might include programmatic grants for new approaches to mission-driven work; interest-free loans; and other forms of technical non-financial assistance.
• Staying coordinated: Wherever possible, we will coordinate our efforts and communication. If you need to talk to more than one funder, we will try to speak with you at the same time. We are committed to streamlining the flow of information between your organization’s leadership and the multiple funder contacts many of you have. In short, we will make these communications easier and more efficient for you.

Our community has made it through challenging times before, and we will do so again. We are committed to being understanding, palpably supportive, strategic and flexible to help ease the way.

As we talk with you more over the coming days and months, we will take what we learn and do our very best to turn it into meaningful actions that support your organizations, professional teams, and your programs and initiatives. Jewish life, learning, and meaningful engagement will continue. And the people who do this work will be supported.

Thank you for your commitment to our community.

Sincerely, your philanthropic partners:

Aviv Foundation

Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation

Crown Family Philanthropies

David S. and Karen A. Shapira Foundation

Jewish Funders Network

Jim Joseph Foundation

Joseph & Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds

Koret Foundation

Leichtag Foundation

Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah

Maimonides Fund

One8 Foundation

Righteous Persons Foundation

The Klarman Family Foundation

The Marcus Foundation

The Natan Fund

The Paul E. Singer Foundation

The Russell Berrie Foundation

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life

From June 18 – 20, 2020 in Los Angeles, the Jewish Emergent Network will gather with thought leaders from around North America for (RE)VISION20/20, a dynamic, content-rich, Shabbat-based conference held at IKAR and co-hosted by the Jewish Emergent Network organizations: IKAR in L.A., Kavana in Seattle, The Kitchen in San Francisco, Mishkan in Chicago, Sixth & I in Washington, D.C., and Lab/Shul and Romemu in New York. The conference is co-chaired by Rabbi Noa Kushner of The Kitchen and Rabbi Shira Stutman of Sixth & I.

“People can come choose-their-own adventure as we dig deep into ritual and prayer, a diverse spectrum of music, approaches to creating radically welcoming spaces and programs, and strategies for navigating moral leadership,” says Melissa Balaban, Chair of the Network and CEO of IKAR. “We also invite people into our processes: our best practices, yes, but also how we fail forward and iterate.”

The three days of content will feature laboratories, galleries, interactive experiments, panels, guest speakers and other creative learning modules, with time built in for networking, davening, singing and creating community. Registration is open to the public: rabbis, cantors, Jewish professionals, educators, lay leaders, academics, philanthropists, activists and interested-folks-at-large from across the spectrum of practice are invited to register at www.JewishEmergentNetwork.org. Spots are limited!

(RE)VISION20/20 will also be the capstone of the Network’s hallmark rabbinic fellowship, as the Network designs a leadership development program for rabbinical students, set to launch in 2021. The rabbinic fellowship helped shape 14 members of the next generation of entrepreneurial, risk-taking, change-making rabbis, and among the myriad opportunities at the conference will be the chance to learn with both cohorts of the Network’s fellows.

The communities in the Network do not represent any one denomination or set of religious practices. What they share is a devotion to revitalizing the field of Jewish engagement, a commitment to approaches both traditionally rooted and creative, and a demonstrated success in attracting unaffiliated and disengaged Jews to a rich and meaningful Jewish practice. While each community is different in form and organizational structure, all have taken an entrepreneurial approach to this shared vision, operating outside of conventional institutional models, rethinking basic assumptions about ritual and spiritual practice, membership models, staff structures, the religious/cultural divide and physical space.

Funding for the Jewish Emergent Network and its rabbinic fellowship program has been generously provided through a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation. Significant additional funding is provided by the Crown Family, the Charles H. Revson Foundation, Diane & Guilford Glazer Philanthropies, the William Davidson Foundation, the Righteous Persons Foundation, the Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, and Natan. The Network is working with current funders and cultivating prospective funders in connection with its next major project.

Source: eJewish Philanthropy

Is the leadership of major Jewish institutions too white?

The short answer is yes, according to a number of Jewish activists and nonprofit leaders, who are launching a new program designed to help change the status quo.

Project Shamash: Sparking the Leadership of East Bay Jews of Color, scheduled to begin later this year, will aim to propel more Jews of color into positions on Jewish boards of directors, into nonprofit executive suites and other influential staff positions within Jewish community institutions.

Announced in mid-January, the project will be part of the Bay Area chapter of Bend the Arc, a national organization advocating for progressive causes from a Jewish perspective. It will launch as a three-year pilot program and is funded in large part by the East Bay-based Rodan Family Foundation.

The program’s key grant is for “up to” $1 million over three years, Bend the Arc said. The Rodan foundation is continuing to seek other funding partners. Bend the Arc plans to hire a program director and a program assistant to help run the program out of the organization’s Bay Area branch offices.

The Bay Area “has one of the most diverse Jewish communities in the country,” said Ginna Green, chief strategy officer at Bend the Arc, a national organization that advocates for progressive causes from a Jewish perspective. “We want Jewish institutions to actually reflect the diversity and vibrancy of our community.”

Green said Jews of color, or “JOCs” in today’s parlance, often are “inundated with questions” or face “disbelief” in synagogues and other Jewish spaces. Many JOCs feel unwelcome in the Jewish community, and as a result have “retreated from Jewish life,” or never participated to begin with.

Naturally, “it’s hard to be a leader in a place where you don’t feel welcome,” Green said.

Project Shamash is slated to launch before the end of the year in the East Bay. It will run alongside the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative, a Berkeley-based program that also aims to build and advance the professional and communal aspirations of nonwhite Jews.

The JCFBI — founded in 2018 with support from the S.F.-based Jim Joseph Foundation, the Schusterman Family Foundation and a number of other organizations — makes grants, conducts research and runs community education events dedicated to supporting Jews of color.

Executive director Ilana Kaufman said JCFBI will serve as an “adviser and partner” of the Bend the Arc project.

“There is a constant need to see Jews of color in leadership roles, particularly in senior roles” within Jewish organizations, Kaufman said. “Any initiative trying to help develop Jews of color who want to be leaders in the community is wonderful.”

Headquartered in New York, Bend the Arc in recent years has been on the front lines of political debates and protests advancing progressive policy aims. In 2015, it launched a political action committee that last year raised about $209,000 mostly for Democratic candidates.

The organization also spearheads protests and mobilizes support against conservative policies and politicians. In October, for example, a group of activists that included Stosh Cotler, the CEO, were arrested in Pittsburgh for blocking the road during a visit by President Donald Trump, who was to speak at a pro-fracking energy conference.

Green said the new program will focus on the East Bay, but organizers hope it will become a national model. Part of the aim, Green said, is for Jewish institutions to “become places where Jews of color can actually work, lead and thrive.”

JOCs represent a growing percentage of the overall American Jewish population, but the exact number is hard to determine. That’s partly because demographers have not asked the right questions, according to some. Studies designed to learn about Jewish communities often leave out questions about race and ethnicity entirely, or ask them in confusing ways that are not uniform and do not lead to broad insights, according to a recent research paper commissioned by the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative and prepared by four Bay Area academics at Stanford and the University of San Francisco.

It’s hard to be a leader in a place where you don’t feel welcome.

Released in May, “Counting Inconsistencies” approximated that Jews of color (“anyone who identified as nonwhite”) represent “at least 12-15 percent of American Jews.” And since more younger Jews identify as nonwhite than do older Jews, the study found, American Jewry is expected to continue to change shades in the years ahead.

A 2015 demographic study by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University estimated that 11.2 percent of American Jews were nonwhite, compared with 35 percent nonwhite in the overall U.S. population.

The Bay Area’s Jewish population is particularly diverse. According to a landmark population study commissioned by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and published in 2018, 25 percent of Bay Area Jews said their household included a person of color, defined as “Hispanic, Asian American, African American, or of mixed or other ethnic or racial background (other than white).”

And, yet, many community leaders do not see the Bay Area’s diversity reflected in positions of leadership atop Jewish organizations — such as federations, day schools, synagogue boards and a patchwork of other Jewish institutions that hold sway in setting priorities for the Bay Area Jewish community at large.

“As a Jew of color myself, with four JOC children, I have had a tremendous experience in the Jewish community, with lots of options and opportunities made available for me,” Green said. “But I also know that’s not the norm for JOCs. The norm is for JOCs to feel excluded as participants in Jewish life. And if you feel excluded as a participant, there’s little chance you’re going to feel empowered to be a leader.”

Acknowledging that the program is still in the planning stages, Green was able to disclose that it will have three prongs.

The first will be to organize “JOC-led programming” and events. The second will involve a “fellowship” or a “cohort” of Jews of color who are determined to be a good fit for the program.

“Where are they in their career path? What are the skills and talents they bring to the table?” Green said, of how potential participants would be assessed. “We’ll make sure we are putting JOCs in situations where they can succeed.”

The third prong likely will involve working with Jewish organizations to make them more hospitable to Jews of color. In other words, Green said, “preparing historically white-led Jewish institutions to be places where JOCs can thrive.”

The Rodan Family Foundation doesn’t give exclusively to Jewish organizations, but does make significant contributions to the East Bay’s Jewish community. Since its establishment in 2018, it has made grants to dozens of Jewish nonprofits including the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative, PJ Library (a children’s book and reading program) and Moishe House (communal living for young, Jewish adults).

The foundation was started by Katie and Amnon Rodan; Katie is a dermatologist and entrepreneur who co-founded Rodan + Fields and the acne product Proactiv, one of the most popular skin-care brands of all time.

Elana Rodan Schuldt, president and CEO, said the foundation wants to fund programs that “strengthen the East Bay Jewish community for the next generation.” Saying that Jews of color continue to be overlooked by some Jewish organizations, Schuldt added, “We just felt like this is long overdue.”

Source: “Coming soon: A new leadership pipeline for Jews of color,” Gabe Stutman, The Jewish News of Northern California, February 3, 2020

Along with its increasing popularity come some significant challenges, such as finding qualified educators to run classes and programs.

 For many students, taking a second language used to mean choosing between French and Spanish, and even then not until high school. These days, however, more students have been signing up for Hebrew in public and charter schools—and at much younger ages.

More than 6,600 students were learning Hebrew in a public-school or charter-school setting in 2018, according to a report issued by CASJE, the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education, and George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

The report, “Mapping Hebrew Education in Public Schools: A Resource for Hebrew Educators,” further noted that 35 schools were offering Hebrew-language classes. Of that number, 17 schools serve students in either elementary or middle school, while 18 serve grades nine through 12. And, according to the survey, 19 of the schools reported increased enrollment in Hebrew classes with only 1 school reporting a decline in the last five to 10 years.

“We really had no idea what we would find; we just had a sense that there were schools out there,” said Sharon Avni, who co-wrote the report with Avital Karpman. “I think the biggest surprise is that there are 2,000 students in traditional public schools studying Hebrew language.”

“It’s sort of a startup experiment, it’s so diverse,” added Karpman. “You do have some charter-school networks,” like Ben Gamla Charter Schools in Southeast Florida and the Hebrew Public Charter Schools for Global Citizens, but, otherwise, “every individual community we spoke to had different reasons and different communities of students. There isn’t a thread running through all these Hebrew programs.”

There are the Hebrew charter schools in cities like New York and Washington, where parents aren’t necessarily looking for Hebrew-language education, but are drawn to the perceived higher quality of education offered than in inner-city public schools. The student populations of these schools are often different than those run by the Ben Gamla Charter School Foundation in Florida or the Hatikvah International Academy Charter School in East Brunswick, N.J., both in areas with a significant Jewish populations.

Children at the Kavod Charter School in San Diego, which started seven years ago with just 55 students, has since grown to 350 students. Most of the day’s classes are taught in Hebrew. Source: Kavod Charter School via Facebook.

The enrollment increase in Hebrew classes is being felt at the Kavod Charter School in San Diego, which started seven years ago with just 55 students and has grown to 350 students. This year the school added two sixth-grade classes. Some students are from Israeli families now working and living in Southern California, and others are there because they want their child to learn a second language.

“It’s a public school with the mentality of a private school,” said Ronit Ron-Yerushalmi, language and global-studies director at Kavod. “Our classes are smaller, and we have more resources.”

While math, reading and writing are taught in English, much of the rest of the school day—from morning meeting to art class to physical education and even recess are conducted in Hebrew.

‘It creates opportunities in the future’

Ron-Yerushalmi spoke with JNS during the seventh annual “Hebrew in North America Conference,” which was held in mid-November in Newark, N.J., and sponsored by the World Zionist Organization’s Department of Education and the Council for Hebrew Language and Culture in North America. As many as 400 people attended the two-day conference.

Ronit Ron-Yerushalmi, language and global-studies director at Kavod. Credit: Courtesy.

While the interest in Hebrew-language classes and charter schools definitely benefit Jewish communal interests, plenty of academic research suggests that learning a second language is beneficial to children’s cognitive growth, results in higher testing skills and makes them more empathetic to others, as language and related concepts allow them to see people from a different perspective.

“I think this is one of the main marketing points that Hebrew charter schools make to non-Jewish families—that it’s good for your children to learn another language, that it’s good for the brain development, and it creates opportunities in the future,” suggested Rabbi Andrew Ergas, chair of the Council for Hebrew Language and Culture in North America.

For Jewish families, he continued, having Hebrew in public schools meets the students where they are. It gives them a connection to their heritage and, oftentimes, other Jewish students while aligning with their educational needs.

“It’s not religious, not political,” said Ergas. “Instead of Spanish, you are taking Hebrew.”

The academic and cognitive benefits of Hebrew, as with other languages, is why the focus is shifting to growing a population of Hebrew-language educators who cannot merely speak the language, as has been the case before, but who are experts in teaching a second language and ensuring that students met recognized standards of understanding as they would if they were taking Spanish.

Rabbi Andrew Ergas, chair of the Council for Hebrew Language and Culture in North America. Credit: The Council for Hebrew Language and Culture.

“We are in a moment in American society,” said Avni. “People think we are less inclusive, but multilingual and bilingual are seen as a great thing … and families are interested in having their children learn more languages.”

Finding teachers ‘is the hardest challenge’

Despite the increase in interest, the total number of schools and students with Hebrew education remains relatively small compared to the number of Jewish students in the public-school sphere. Experts believe that could change if one deficiency was rectified: the lack of qualified, accredited Hebrew-language teachers.

For years, say those in the field, Jewish schools relied on people who were simply fluent Hebrew speakers to teach Hebrew-language lessons, regardless of whether or not they were experienced teachers; understood educational pedagogy surrounding teaching as a second language; or even knew about classroom management and assessments. Such ad hoc education would not be welcome in most public-school systems.

“I get calls all the time from schools in all different areas of the country that say, ‘We can’t continue our Hebrew program’ or ‘Our students want a [Hebrew] program,’ ” reported Karpman, noting that it’s difficult to staff these programs, especially if they are in smaller communities. “There’s a need out there, but we don’t have people going there.”

She noted that in some cases, teachers who could be retiring are staying because there is no one qualified to take over. In other cases, such as in Closter, N.J., where there is a strong Israeli ex-patriate community, families asked for a Hebrew-language class in the public schools, but the district reportedly couldn’t find a certified teacher to staff it.

Finding teachers is “the hardest and biggest challenge,” declared Ron-Yerushalmi, who noted that even experienced teachers from Israel may not succeed as Hebrew teachers in U.S. public or charter schools. “What is expected as teachers in Israel is very different than what is expected here.”

Those expectations include communication with parents and writing lesson plans, along with cultural differences and a language barrier.

To ensure that teachers of Hebrew language have the proper tools to be effective educators, the School of Hebrew at Middlebury College in Vermont offers a master’s degree in teaching Hebrew as a second language.

“We want to professionalize the skills of teachers, and a way to do it is for them to learn more about second-language acquisition,” said Vardit Ringvald, director of the School of Hebrew at Middlebury. “Teaching language is a discipline, and we need to professionalize that discipline. … I had adults in their 40s and 50s who have come to my classes and were crying because they saw that they weren’t doing things right—and they are frustrated.”

To recruit new students to the teachers’ program, she and her colleagues set up an information table at the Hebrew conference in Newark in November; more than two-dozen people applied for the program on the spot.

‘It’s a language people are using’

Veteran Hebrew teacher Binnie Swislow knows there are great educators out there who are passionate about the language, but that it’s important they also have the pedagogical tools to meet the needs of today’s schools and students.

“I’m not fighting the battle of ‘Can you be an excellent teacher?’ That’s not what this is about,” said Swislow, who taught in Chicago-area public schools and is a founding member of the Council for Hebrew Language and co-founder of the National Association of Hebrew Teachers. “This is about a system. It is about following the same methods that all the other languages that are being taught.”

A collection of some of the materials available for educators at the Hebrew conference in Newark. N.J.

Swislow is a consultant at The iCenter for Israel Education in Northbrook, Ill., which bills itself as the North American hub for Israel education. It’s located at what may be considered the epicenter of Hebrew education in the public-school sphere, as more than 600 students in Chicago-area schools are enrolled in Hebrew classes.

One of those previous students is Dan Tatar, director of communications and outreach at iCenter. He knows firsthand how impactful Hebrew-language classes can be, especially with the right teacher.

Yes, Tatar learned how to conjugate words in Hebrew, but that wasn’t what brought the language to life for him. Rather, it was how their teacher connected them to Israel, he said, “through news stories and video or events.”

“It became real,” he said. “It’s a language people are using, and it connected me to something deeper. We see that with students today.”

For educators of Hebrew in the public sphere, communal concerns about the role of religion seem to come up more frequently than in other languages, though experts say teachers know not endorse Judaism.

Charter schools, reported Avni, “have demonstrated that it is possible to have Hebrew in public schools. They are the proof of concept. They’ve shown you can do it and not run afoul of constitutional issues, and that there’s a demand for it.”

She went on to say that “language is never devoid from culture.” In a Spanish class, students might learn about Catholic holidays because most Spanish countries are primarily Catholic. “It is a spoken language, and in schools is part of world-culture curriculums. Hebrew is a bit more complicated because there’s only one place with native Hebrew speakers,” and that is Israel.

“But what we saw in our observations and what teachers tell us is that they teach Hebrew, and also about Israel and Jewish culture, but not in a way that’s promoting or proselytizing,” she continued. “They find a space to teach about the language and the people who speak that language without crossing the line of separation between church and state.”

Source: “Hebrew becomes hip in American schools as a boon for kids and communities,” Faygie Holt, Jewish News Syndicate, February 4, 2020

The Wexner Foundation, in partnership with the Jim Joseph Foundation, is pleased to announce Class 4 of the Wexner Field Fellowship. Fifteen outstanding professionals were selected through a highly competitive process for this three-year intensive program. Utilizing the diverse, cohort-based learning that is the hallmark of The Wexner Foundation programs, Field Fellows will be exposed to different approaches to leadership and tools for addressing pressing issues in the Jewish community, while being integrated into The Wexner Foundation’s vast network of more than 3,000 professional and volunteer leaders in North America and Israel, including the 30 outstanding professionals who are currently in the Field Fellowship Program, as well as 25 alumni.

Complete list of Class 4 Fellows:

• Ari Brickman, Senior Philanthropic Officer, Key Relationships for The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, North Bethesda, MD
• Yehuda Chanales, Director of Educational Advancement for the Fuchs Mizrachi School, Beachwood, OH
• Keren Fraiman, Dean and Chief Academic Officer for the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, Chicago, IL
• Rachael Fried, Executive Director for JQY (Jewish Queer Youth), New York, NY
• Gavi Geller, Executive Director for the Jewish Community Relations Bureau, AJC, Overland Park, KS
• Addie Klein, Director of Community Engagement for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
• Stephanie Levin, Chief Engagement and Innovation Officer for the Peninsula Jewish Community Center, Foster City, CA
• Evan Majzner, VP, Development and Strategic Initiatives for itrek, New York, NY
• Janu Mendel, Executive Director for Repair the World, Miami, FL
• Harry Pell, Associate Head of School for The Leffell School, Hartsdale, NY
• Hillel Rapp, Director of Education for Bnei Akiva Schools, Toronto, Ontario
• Lani Santo, Executive Director for Footsteps, New York, NY
• Yaffi Scheinberg, Executive Director and Head of School for Kayla’s Children Centre, Toronto, Ontario
• Matt Weintraub, Executive Director for Valley Beth Shalom, Encino, CA
• Ari Weiss, Executive Director for Cornell Hillel, Ithaca, NY

The Wexner Foundation has more than 30 years of experience developing excellence in Jewish professionals and volunteer leaders in North America. The Wexner Field Fellowship was created in 2013 in partnership with the Jim Joseph Foundation to focus on developing promising Jewish professionals’ leadership skills while enveloping them in a rich network of Jewish colleagues. Wexner Field Fellows engage in a diverse, cohort-based leadership learning program. Fellows are selected based on their past accomplishments, current motivation and engagement, and exceptional attributes they’ll contribute to the cohort of 15 diverse Jewish professionals of which they will be a part. Through in-person, intensive conferences and virtual meetings, Wexner Field Fellows are exposed to Jewish educational and professional growth opportunities while addressing their unique needs of career and personal progress.

“We faced the tremendous challenge of selecting our new class from a deep and talented pool of candidates. The field is richly blessed. I am excited about the ways in which these 15 mid-career Jewish professionals will contribute to the Wexner Field Fellowship and more importantly to the Jewish organizations and communities they will lead,” said Rabbi B. Elka Abrahamson, President of The Wexner Foundation. “This new cohort of transformational leaders will add mightily to the community of Wexner Fellows and Alumni shaping the Jewish future.”

As with the first three cohorts of Field Fellows, Class 4 is comprised of dynamic Jewish professionals at pivotal moments in their careers. Fellows work in Jewish federations, summer camps, advocacy and social justice organizations, day and supplementary schools, national organizations and local institutions across North America. To get more info about each Fellow, please click here.

“The Wexner Foundation continues to shape our field in deeply profound ways,” said Barry Finestone, President and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation. “Their programs for Jewish leaders and educators provide the highest quality learning and coaching and enable cohort members to develop such important and supportive peer networks. These thousands of leaders and educators engage directly with Jewish youth and ultimately help shape the Jewish community. We are very pleased to continue to support the Wexner Foundation’s important work and congratulate the newest cohort of Wexner Field Fellows.”

As part of this three-year intensive professional development program, Wexner Field Fellows:

• Become part of a selective cohort of lifelong professional learners.
• Learn with amazing leadership teachers and Jewish educators.
• Receive one-on-one professional coaching and Jewish learning, along with access to funds toward customized professional development opportunities.
• Develop a nuanced appreciation for the diversity of the North American Jewish community.
• Focus on developing strengths in adaptive leadership, storytelling, difficult conversations, negotiation and other crucial leadership skills.

Source: The Wexner Foundation, January 7, 2020

DEERFIELD, Ill. (JTA) — Nathan Rosen’s favorite day in Hebrew class is culture day.

Every Friday, the students learn about one aspect of Israeli culture. Earlier this year Rosen, 13, did a presentation about Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Syrian military in the 1960s.

On a recent Friday, Rosen and two friends were working on a short Hebrew screenplay about a dysfunctional family that visits a cafe in Israel. The three eighth-graders huddled around a table, intermittently acting out the scene in loud voices and cracking up.

For Rosen, parts of the class feel similar to his former school, a private Conservative Jewish day school. But now he attends Alan B. Shepard Middle School, a public school in this Chicago suburb on the North Shore. Rosen plans to keep taking the language at a public high school in Deerfield next year.

More than anything, he loves the bonds it creates with his Hebrew classmates, all of whom are Jewish.

“We built a whole little community in the school,” Rosen said. “In the hallway sometimes, we’ll call each other by our Hebrew names, and it’s like no one else knows what we’re saying, but, like, we kind of feel like we have our own little relationships.”

Rosen is one of 680 students in the Chicago area studying Hebrew in public schools, according to the iCenter, a Chicago-based group that promotes Israel education. Excluding Hebrew language charter schools, approximately 1,400 students nationwide are studying Hebrew in public schools — and nearly half of them are in Chicago. Nine of the 22 American public schools that offer Hebrew are located in the Chicago area, according to a new report from the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education. Others are in Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, New York and elsewhere.

Most American students who study Hebrew daily do so in Jewish day schools. A substantial number — in New York, Florida and elsewhere — also attend Hebrew-language charter schools that integrate Hebrew throughout the day. But a growing number of students are studying the language in traditional public schools.

Chicago’s public school Hebrew enrollment has jumped by more than a third in three years, from some 500 in 2016 to 680 today, according to the local Jewish federation. CASJE — a group of academics, teachers and donors working to improve the quality of Jewish education — says the numbers of public school Hebrew students are growing nationwide as well.

Public school Hebrew classes are broadly similar to other public school foreign language instruction. But Jewish parents and local Jewish community leaders appreciate them because they provide students with another link to their Jewish identity. The vast majority of students in the Chicago programs are Jewish, teachers say.

“Here they get to be with Jewish students one period every day,” said Helene Herbstman, whose daughter studied Hebrew in public school and who helped recruit other parents to the Hebrew programs on behalf of the local Jewish federation. “The content was more about Israel. You’re learning how to speak conversational Hebrew. You come out of these bar mitzvah programs [at synagogues], you’re not speaking Hebrew.”

Chicagoland high schools have had Hebrew programs since at least the 1970s, but the number of schools has increased in recent decades thanks largely to the efforts of Peter Friedman, a longtime local Jewish federation executive who died earlier this year. Friedman and Herbstman surveyed area synagogues asking whether parents would support Hebrew programs at their local schools and then encouraged those parents to lobby their school boards for the programs.

Now seven high schools in Chicago suburbs with large Jewish communities offer Hebrew, the largest being Deerfield High with approximately 180 Hebrew students. Last year, two Deerfield middle schools also began offering Hebrew. One high school appears to be phasing out the program.

Anne Lanski, founder and CEO of the iCenter, which holds professional development classes for Hebrew teachers, said public school Hebrew took off in the area because the vast majority of the city’s Jewish high schools are Orthodox, leaving much of the Jewish community looking elsewhere for Jewish enrichment.

“We didn’t have a high school that wasn’t Orthodox for most of our time,” Lanski said. “So the kids who wanted to continue with some engagement provided an audience” for Hebrew classes.

In addition to reading, writing and speaking, classes teach about Israel. In Rosen’s class at Shepard Middle School, students play Taki, an Israeli version of the card game Uno, and learn Krav Maga, the Israeli martial art. Niles North High School, in the historically Jewish suburb of Skokie, has an exchange program where students go to Israel for 10 days and welcome a visiting Israeli contingent to their school.

“It’s not just about a language — it has to be connected to a land and people,” said Yaffa Berman, who has taught Hebrew at Deerfield High for eight years. “We have to invigorate the language in a way that makes it cultural. It has to have an experiential part to it. It has to tell a story.”

Teacher Osnat Lichtenfeld, center, guides students in an eighth-grade Hebrew class at Shepard Middle School, Dec. 13, 2019. (Ben Sales)

Teachers avoid addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict directly, though they do discuss the Israel Defense Forces and Israel’s domestic politics. This year, the Shepard class learned about Israeli elections and the two leading candidates. They have also learned about the standard IDF uniform and the force’s different divisions. One high school class studied Israel’s 1976 hostage rescue operation at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

“[After Yitzhak] Rabin’s assassination, every kid came to class just waiting, and knowing that there was nowhere else” to discuss the news, said Lanski, who used to teach Hebrew in a Chicago public school. “They knew when they got to Hebrew, they could talk about it and learn about it.”

Since Hebrew is the official language of Israel and Israel is the Jewish state, teaching the language inevitably involves broaching Judaism, which requires something of a balancing act in a public school. To abide by public school guidelines, teachers keep the discussions focused on the cultural. Berman, for example, gave her students sufganiyot, the jelly doughnuts traditionally eaten on Hanukkah, but did not light the menorah or say a blessing. Osnat Lichtenfeld, the Shepard Hebrew teacher, has to remind kids not to ask questions about their bar mitzvahs or bat mitzvahs in class.

But Sharon Avni, who co-wrote the CASJE study with Avital Karpman, said that every language class encounters some kind of cultural-religious tension.

“Religion happens in public school all the time,” said Avni, a language and literacy professor at the City University of New York. “If you go into Spanish class, they might talk about a holiday that’s celebrated, and it’s very much related to the Catholic Church. I’m not necessarily saying they’re doing Jewish [in Hebrew class], but it’s not like religion doesn’t happen in public schooling.”

Advocates of public school Hebrew aren’t worried about the lack of explicitly religious content. For them, it’s enough that students have one period a day where they’re connecting to the language — and each other.

“What’s important about Hebrew is, you’re staying connected to the Jewish community,” Herbstman said. “With less and less people belonging to synagogue, and more and more families dropping out of synagogue after bar mitzvah, this is the one connection your child will still have with Israel.”

“Hebrew language classes in public schools are rare — but they’re on the rise in Chicago’s suburbs,” Ben Sales, JTA, December 23, 2019

Boston, along with several other communities, is making adolescent wellness a priority.

Today, teens and young people are struggling. More than 3 million adolescents, representing over 13% of the population, have experienced a major depressive episode, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. The numbers are equally high for adolescents experiencing eating disorders, substance abuse and a variety of other mental health challenges. Attempted and completed suicide rates continue to rise. Jewish teens are not immune. As we learn in the Talmud, “He who has saved one life, it is as if he has saved an entire world.” This is why Boston, along with several other communities, is making adolescent wellness a priority, and I am thrilled to be part of this initiative.

I was introduced to Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) a few years ago and became a certified trainer 18 months ago. YMHFA, which was first developed in Australia, teaches participants to better understand typical adolescent development, spot signs and symptoms of mental health challenges, and respond to a youth experiencing a crisis. Similar to certified medical first aid/CPR responders, adults trained in youth mental health first aid are equipped to give assistance in a crisis until appropriate professional help is received.

After becoming certified, as a Jewish educator and licensed social worker, I found myself exploring ways to make the course more relevant to our Jewish community. Last year, I partnered with The Jewish Education Project in New York and Jewish Teen Engagement and Education Funder Collaborative, a group made up of representatives from 10 communities who have received funding from the Jim Joseph Foundation to engage teens in meaningful ways, to explore ways to infuse the course with Jewish wisdom. Through that work, The Jewish Education Project created a companion guide for YMHFA facilitators, and the Funder Collaborative created a wellness resource guide highlighting Jewish texts, sources and wisdom for educators to draw on in their work.

In September, I traveled with representatives from the 10 communities to Nashville to participate in a three-day “train-the-trainer” program led by the National Council of Behavioral Health and supplemented by the work we did last year.

(Courtesy photo)

After the training, everyone returned to their home communities energized, dedicated and prepared to work closely with their local teen initiatives to offer YMHFA trainings for a variety of audiences. In addition, I have the privilege of facilitating that group, which has become a community of practice and will gather virtually to learn with and support each other as we offer this course and as we continue to identify other opportunities for helping the teens in our communities.

We are so fortunate to be in a community that cares about our young people and understands that one of the most effective ways of helping our young people is to ensure that our professionals are equipped with the tools necessary to help our teens thrive. Last week, in collaboration with Gateways, 30 educators from day schools, synagogues and local community organizations became certified. As we look toward 2020, and as the world around our teens becomes possibly even more scary and unpredictable, we are committed to offering more opportunities for certification so that the Jewish community can do our part in providing our teens with the support they need to thrive.

Source: “Greater Boston Makes Youth Mental Health a Priority,” Margie Bogdanow, JewishBoston Teens, December 13, 2019

Margie Bogdanow, LICSW, is an educator, coach and consultant in the Greater Boston area. Her professional work focuses on impacting adults to make a difference in the lives of young people. Among other projects, she currently serves as a senior consultant at CJP, holding a leadership role in the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Initiative, a partnership between CJP and Jim Joseph Foundation. In addition, she is the Youth Mental Health First Aid Community of Practice coordinator for the Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative. She is on the Parenting Through a Jewish Lens faculty at Hebrew College and was a co-creator of the Grandparenting Through A Jewish Lens and Parenting Teens Through a Jewish Lens curricula. Previously, she served as co-founder and executive director of Parenting Resource Associates in Lexington, associate director of the Early Childhood Institute at Hebrew College and has held a variety of other professional and volunteer positions in the community. She has been involved in the leadership at Temple Isaiah in Lexington and served as president for two years. She is committed to finding ways to make Judaism meaningful and accessible to all members of the community.

“As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together.” (Parker Palmer). As educators, we are driven by questions – some of which we cannot easily answer. Whether a teacher in a classroom, a youth engagement professional, a parent or a rabbi, we all play a role in the education of our children and how we think about these questions and our ability to achieve Palmer’s “authentic self” plays out in our support and development of our youth.

Two years ago, as an initiative of the Cincinnati Jewish Teen Collective, a new cohort for Strategic Israel Engagement Development (SIED) formed to answer one of these ultimate questions: what does the future of Israel engagement and education look like in Cincinnati? This new cohort consists of thirteen senior professionals and educators, representing nine different educational institutions and four denominations – from a seminary to a university to synagogues to a day school. Committing countless hours, our cohort met monthly from January 2018 through August 2019, working on a phenomenally exciting and potentially groundbreaking development of our community’s approach to Israel education and engagement. As one of the ten communities in North America who are a part of the Teen Funder Collaborative, we were able to lead this conversation thanks to our close work and meaningful alignment with the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati. The Foundation’s work over the past 20 years to establish Israel travel and experiences as a key opportunity for our teens made it possible for us to reflect on our experience and pursue this with initial communal buy in.

Four months ago, we met with the leadership at the Jewish Foundation to discuss the most recent progress of our work. As we met to check in on the upcoming launch of the third phase of our endeavor, one of its directors asked us directly: “Is not one of our goals for Israel education that our teens, for example, foster a positive relationship with Israel?” He raised this question, undoubtedly, as a direct response to our own dancing around the word “positive.”

Interestingly, in the Teen Funder Collaborative, one of the newly identified outcomes for Jewish teens and tweens is that “Jewish teens develop a positive relationship to the land, people and State of Israel.” It may not come as a surprise to you that no word has driven more questions and discussion in Cincinnati, and more broadly, than “positive.”

In the context of Israel education, the questions around the word “positive” can be difficult to answer because of their seemingly political nature. Or, they can be difficult to answer because the word “positive” itself requires some further understanding.

Here is one way to come to an understanding of what “positive” means: Positive, as an adjective, is defined as consisting in or characterized by the presence or possession of features or qualities rather than their absence. Alternatively, it can be defined as constructive, optimistic, or confident. Additionally, if we look at the Hebrew, there are arguably two ways in which to say positive – chiuvi and dargat hapashut. Both are instructive when we consider their etymology. First, chiuvi derives from chiuv, which means “to be obligated by.” As Am Yisrael (the people of Israel), we are indeed obligated to have an ongoing relationship with Israel. In this way, “a positive” relationship similarly means “an existing” relationship. Second, dargat hapashut literally means “a degree of simplicity.” With this explanation, we understand “positive” to mean “more than zero,” such as we might think of positive when we encounter this term in the realm of science or mathematics. One of our great goals, indeed, is to spark, facilitate, and expect some engagement with Israel.

To return to the question, “Is one of our goals for Israel education that our teens, foster a positive relationship with Israel?” For us, the answer wasn’t initially obvious. To understand why, we must describe the evolution of our community’s approach to Israel education and engagement. Six months ago, the SIED Cohort, after a year of thoughtful study that included multiple seminars and a life-changing eleven-day trip to Israel, proposed to our community’s institutional stakeholders (schools, congregations, youth groups, camps and community centers) a list of six guiding principles to inform our work on the ground. Two months ago, our community adopted these principles in a moving ceremony. One of the principles reads: “A healthy environment for Israel engagement contains space for diverse and divergent social, cultural, and political narratives, and is especially essential for productive engagement beyond our community.” If we hold true to our principle, would it not be the case that some of our teens might have a challenging relationship to Israel?

To answer this question, we go back to the text. “Positive” is immediately followed by “relationship.” We looked at what it means to feel positively about one’s own relationship – not the content thereof necessarily, but the existence of a relationship in the first place and a sense of confidence in that relationship.

In one of our recent high school classes, a student expressed her concern about sharing her ambivalence about Israel in a Jewish context. She challenged us to recognize that her ability to express her Jewish self was compromised. How could she participate fully if she isn’t given the tools to feel confident, safe and supported to develop her own relationship to Israel? As educators, we honor her ambivalence, are learning about Israel with her and her peers, and as a result see that she has a relationship with Israel – that is what we mean by positive.

Moreover, another principle reads: “The Cincinnati Jewish community is committed to developing lifelong personal relationships with Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael, Medinat Yisrael, and Torat Yisrael – the Jewish people, the land of Israel, the State of Israel, and the Torah of Israel.” Taken together, these principles express our belief that the young person who struggles with his or her or their relationship to Israel may become the young adult who continues to struggle with elements of their relationship to Israel – but whose relationship is nuanced and sophisticated enough that they find comfort in their views and might routinely visit and even engage in a leadership program and eventually teach about Israel to children. Would that be indicative of a “positive” relationship with Israel? We think so – but we came to this conclusion only after giving much thought to this concept of having a positive relationship.

We share this story and the evolution of our principles because we know that nearly every community is looking for “answers” around Israel education and engagement. The answers and the “right” steps to take may be different everywhere you look. As we enter the third phase of our endeavor toward renewed and reinvigorated Israel education in Cincinnati, our next step is to establish a cadre of coaches who will guide our teens toward their authentic Israel engagement.

So yes, we unabashedly want our children to develop their positive relationship to Israel. We now have a lot of work ahead of us to make this objective a reality. After all, as educators, we believe it is our obligation to do so.

Jeff Blumental is Director of the Cincinnati Jewish Teen Collective. Rabbi Karen Thomashow serves as an Associate Rabbi at Isaac M. Wise Temple in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Cincinnati Jewish Teen Collective is funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation and Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati in partnership with the Mayerson JCC. With gratitude to The iCenter, which has been our partner in the important work of the SIED Cohort.

Source: eJewish Philanthropy