Widening the Frame: Rethinking How We Understand Impact in Jewish Learning

In recent years, the Jim Joseph Foundation has invited the field to reconsider how we think about Jewish identity and Jewish learning. We’ve resisted easier, but less helpful, binary categories — like affiliated vs. unaffiliated or in vs. out — and encouraged more nuanced language that reflects the complexity of how people relate to their Jewish selves. We’ve asked how educators and institutions can better understand learners in context, not as blank slates but as individuals who bring many parts of themselves to their learning experience: personal histories, emotions and experiences. And we’ve looked to research in the learning sciences to better understand how people actually learn — not just what they’re taught or what we want them to know.

As more programs reach more diverse audiences in more expansive ways, one insight has become increasingly clear: impact is relative.

The same experience that might feel like a light touch to one person may open an entirely new possibility of connection or meaning for someone else. What feels familiar to one learner might feel disorienting, expansive or deeply personal to another. These differences reflect the richness of Jewish life today — and the need for evaluation frameworks that can capture the range of outcomes appropriate for different learners.

This doesn’t mean content, fluency or frequency no longer matter. But if we’re serious about engaging the full diversity of Jewish learners, we need to ask different questions that factor in a learner’s orientation, their own schemas. What are we paying attention to? What are we missing? And how might we widen the frame of what counts as success?

Rachel Heiligman is the strategy advisor and senior portfolio lead of R&D at the Jim Joseph Foundation. 

Stacie Cherner is the director of research and learning at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Read the entire piece in eJewish Philanthropy