Summer months at the Foundation and the Future of Jewish education

Work at the Jim Joseph Foundation this summer will be highly concentrated, as it has been these past ten summers. Immediately following the Foundation Board meeting in mid-July, we will begin preparing for another meeting with the Board of Directors in early September. At the moment, it appears that as many as a half dozen major grant proposals will be reviewed by Directors at these two meetings.

With transition occurring at both the professional and governance levels, active change management is necessary in order to seamlessly “hand off” responsibilities to the incoming President and CEO and new Directors. This activity adds a measure of complexity to the Foundation’s otherwise routine grantmaking processes; we rely on colleagues and technical assistance experts to guide the Foundation in this period of change and growth.

Against this backdrop, it is natural to reflect on a decade of Jim Joseph Foundation philanthropy. That the world is different than it was in 2006 obviously goes without saying. And that Jewish education–and philanthropy in support of Jewish education–has evolved is also manifestly apparent.

It is in this context that I confer with Foundation Directors and the professional team to share lessons we have learned as a basis to improve the Foundation’s future performance.  At the same time, as part of a multi-pronged CEO OnBoarding plan, Barry Finestone and I constantly converse with one another about the dynamic growth of the sector, accelerating trends in Jewish education, and potential ventures for the Foundation to pursue.

The Foundation is in the midst of clarifying and refining its strategic approach to numerous areas of its grantmaking. As part of this process, the professional team devotes hours to learning and research: studying Jewish young adult engagement and education; critically examining (uses of) educational technology and digital content (in Jewish educational contexts); exploring diversity issues (as related to education of young Jews, the organizations serving them, and the Foundation’s own forms of diversity); and updating our understanding of best practice professional development and training of Jewish educators.

We remain vigilant in surveying Israel education, routinely discussing with Directors potential mission-aligned grantmaking possibilities.  We have considerably deepened our study of formal programs in (educational) leadership.

This ongoing learning, studying of programs, and constant search for best practices is greatly aided by our foundation funding partners, who contribute meaningfully to these efforts.  Funding partners often direct us to seminal sources of expertise or inform us about an emerging initiative that builds on the initial findings of research we are conducting.

The past decade’s worth of grantmaking and learning combined with a prospective future filled with new opportunities and leadership changes—considered deliberately and in interaction with one another—make for charged moment in time at the Jim Joseph Foundation. I hope that as the Foundation’s intensive work continues in my final months as Executive Director, I will soon be able to describe a few new major initiatives that will help propel the Foundation—and the field of Jewish education—forward.

New iFellow Graduates

kosheroc-orange-lg-300x24Fifth Cohort of iCenter’s Master’s Concentration in Israel education represent spectrum of educators from different backgrounds and universities.

A new cohort of iFellows graduated from the iCenter’s iFellows Master’s Concentration in Israel Education (iFellows) with fresh approaches and skills to bring dynamic Israel experiences to their learners. Including students from eight leading academic institutions across 12 campuses, members of the fifth cohort work in varied settings, from camp, to university to day schools. Now certified as Israel educators, they employ a learner-focused approach to Israel education in which they help build authentic, personally meaningful connections between the learners and the land, the people and the State of Israel.

“The iCenter provided me a new set of tools, methodologies and ways to look at and explore Israel Education together with my students,” said Lihi Gordon, former Israel Fellow (Shlicha) to Hillel Foundation of Orange County. “Working with college students requires an educator to have an open mind, to ask the right questions that stimulate a conversation and to allow the students to think and form an opinion.”

She added, “As an Israeli, the iFellows program allowed me to expand my own horizons, and to go on a journey of my own and explore together with my peers what Israel is, what Israel Education means, and how we can continuously improve it. I believe Israel Education, like general education, is a very dynamic field that constantly changes. The iFellows seminar allowed me to experience and see this fluidity and equipped me to help my students, friends, and colleagues experience it as well.”

“Coming to this seminar to cap off the year of learning gave me not only the tools and the language that I was missing, but the power, confidence, and legitimacy to teach about Israel in a uniquely personal way,” says Nasya Milller, graduate of the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership. “The mentorship of the Master’s Concentration and ongoing application of the educational language of the iCenter has really helped shape my future path as an educator.”

5th Cohort of iCenter’s Master’s Concentration in Israel education represent spectrum of educators from different backgrounds and universities

5th Cohort of iCenter’s Master’s Concentration in Israel education represent spectrum of educators from different backgrounds and universities

The 37 students in the fifth cohort are in education, rabbinical and cantorial studies, representing the spectrum of Jewish denominations and a diversity of opinions. They come together as a cohesive group within this unique institutional collaboration, based on a shared commitment to and passion for Jewish education and to Israel. The program integrates rigorous academic study, ongoing mentorship, learning opportunities in Israel and creation of a final Israel education project, which students presented at the seminar. Throughout the year, over the course of three seminars, the students are given the opportunity to examine the core issues of the field, including various approaches to Israel education and its fundamental principles. There are now a total of 152 iFellows.

“Each year I am more and more impressed with the iFellows program and what our students are able to bring back to HUC as a result of their participation,” adds Michael Zeldin, senior national director of the schools of education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Director of the Rhea Hirsch School of Education and DeLeT. “Our students bring various passions to their work as Jewish educators. Some are passionate about social justice, some about camping, some about music. As a result of the year they spent at our Jerusalem campus, all of them bring a passion about Israel to their work. What the iCenter does so beautifully is to provide a forum for students to marry their personal passions to their passion for Israel.”

The program was initiated in 2010 and has been growing exponentially every year. Through the current creation of an alumni community, the iCenter is ensuring an ongoing framework in which graduates share ideas, resources, experiences and work in the field over the years to come. The iFellows program offers students unprecedented access to a national network of experts in the field. For students who have spent years studying the work of these leading thinkers—many of whom are pioneers in the field—the opportunity to engage with them directly is a key component of the educational experience.

“The iFellows Master’s Concentration in Israel Education opportunity has been a real game-changer in both my graduate education as well as my future career working for the Jewish community,” says Naomi Rosenfeld, a member of iFellows cohort 5 and a graduate student at the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership program at Brandeis University. “Through its creation and consistent enhancement of the field of Israel Education, the iCenter’s renowned faculty members provided us with knowledge, resources, a common language, a network, and confidence we can rely upon to both educate about and foster life-long relationships with Israel. I feel very fortunate to have participated in such an inspiring yet practical learning opportunity.”

“This collaboration brings together educators across denomination and political lines who now share a common language about Israel education,” says Anne Lanski, executive director of the iCenter. “The result is a broad community of empowered educators who create a deeper connection to Israel with their learners and help shape Jewish life for future generations.

Source: “New iFellow Graduates,” KosherOCMagazine, June 27, 2016

Program for Careers in Jewish Education Launched with $1.5M Foundation Grant

Jewish VoiceA new Early Career Fellowship Program will launch later this year to develop and position young leaders for careers in Jewish education. The pilot program is led by Gann Academy in Waltham, Massachusetts; Abraham Joshua Heschel School in New York, New York; and de Toledo High School in Los Angeles, California and is supported by a $1.5 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation. The grant is the latest example of the innovative high schools’ expanding leadership role in strengthening the Jewish community in their local communities and nationally.

The multi-year matching grant funds Gann hiring a national manager to form and oversee this first-of-its kind program and the recruiting of six national Fellows—new college graduates—at the three different Jewish high schools (beginning in 2017). These schools share a deep commitment to training the next generation of educational leadership.

As Rabbi Marc Baker, head of Gann Academy, notes, “The Jim Joseph Foundation grant is another example of the depth and breadth of our mission and impact. Along with Abraham Joshua Heschel School, and de Toledo, we are here to prepare our students for today’s world and to ensure that we are building a solid foundation for the next generation. Teaching the teachers is a critical component of that foundation.”

The three pilot schools will become an on-ramp for new talent, benefiting directly from the contributions of the fellows while learning what it takes to recruit, inspire and connect young professionals to a meaningful career.

“The Early Career Fellowship Program provides a unique path into Jewish day school education for our best and brightest college grads,” adds Bruce Powell, head of School at de Toledo High School in Los Angeles. “In essence, the program ensures that we develop quality professionals who will be the future of our schools and who will guarantee that we can continue with our sacred task at the highest level. The vision of the Jim Joseph Foundation and Gann Academy is transformative.”

In addition to the recruiting and assignment of the six Fellows, the matching grant enables the development of a robust curriculum for the Fellows, the annual convening of the Fellows to compare experiences and share learning, and the creation of formative and summative evaluations.

“With their records of educational success, these schools are natural partners for this innovative new program,” adds Chip Edelsberg, executive director of the Jim Joseph Foundation. “There is an urgent need to develop talented young leaders who possess skills and support necessary to deliver excellent Jewish education in a variety of settings. As the Fellowship evolves, we look forward to sharing findings and key lessons to help all who care about the future of Jewish life and learning.”

While the essence of the Fellows’ professional development will be their full-time work over two years as part of the schools’ Jewish and Student Life teams, they will also seek to engage with other constituents in their local communities. Those activities will include but not be limited to working with regional directors of teen youth organizations, adult education, and doing student recruitment work with local synagogues and day schools or other synergies, as determined by the Fellow and the school.

“This exciting partnership will offer our high school students a fabulous opportunity to learn from terrific role models as the Early Career Fellows simultaneously learn how to become leaders in the field of Jewish education,” adds Ariela Dubler, Head of School, The Abraham Joshua Heschel School. “We are thrilled to be a part of this innovative program.”

The grant also will support an independent evaluator to provide careful study of the program’s efforts on the Fellows and their school communities with an eye towards the scalability of the program and its capacity to increase a pipeline of expertly prepared Jewish educational leaders for the future.

Source: “Program for Careers in Jewish Education Launched with $1.5M Foundation Grant,” The Jewish Voice, June 22, 2016

CEO Onboarding: An investment in the Jewish Future

This blog appeared originally in eJewishPhilanthropy. 

How do we hire and fire?

What constitutes leadership? And what’s the difference between leadership and management?

What are the values of Jewish institutions? And how should their executives display them?

One of us (Dov) has been CEO of his Jewish Federation for slightly more than 18 months; the other (Abby) starts officially in her new role July 1. And together, with nine colleagues from across the nation, we form the first cohort in the innovative CEO Onboarding Pilot Program.

We come from a diverse collection of Jewish federations, public/community relations and service organizations that work to create robust, vibrant Jewish communities. At this time when our American Jewish community is refashioning how it facilitates expressions of Jewish life, this CEO Onboarding program is an invaluable support for the heads of leading Jewish nonprofits who will wrestle with these challenges. And, CEO Onboarding is a laboratory for exploring how such support might create a pipeline for and buoy future leadership of our communal organizations. Through independent evaluation of the program and feedback from current cohort members, program organizers and other stakeholders are gaining a deeper understanding about the specific leadership support and learning opportunities most helpful to current and future Jewish nonprofit heads. Subsequent cohorts thus will receive even more refined and focused professional development. Ultimately, tens of thousands of employees of Jewish organizations, and the hundreds of thousands of community members impacted by our work, all will benefit.

Stewarded by TBF Consulting and operated in partnership with Leading Edge, the program offers us the unique opportunity to learn from mentors, from experienced CEOs, and from other leadership experts; to analyze work-place scenarios and case studies; and to discuss best practices and strategies for success. The one-on-one professional coaching and the webinars and conferences with elite consultants throughout the year create a support system within the cohort that aids the development of a community of practice among participants.

The cohort’s first conference just concluded in Chicago. What were the highlights? For some, it was the opportunity to learn from thought-provoking authors in the areas of adaptive leadership and American Jewish history and politics. We explored a number of complex questions that any communal leader today must address: Do we have one community? What are the core messages that we deliver? How are the messages transmitted through our generations and across our geographies? For others in our cohort, the highlight was the guidance and toolkits offered by skilled practitioners in the fields of psychology of philanthropy, financial management, and nonprofit governance. For others still, the in-depth peer coaching or best practice materials brought the greatest insights. For each of us, the opportunity to discuss these issues with leading thinkers, along with the foundation leaders who host the program, was unprecedented.

But the impact of the program is not just in the practical guidance and support we receive. Impact also is felt through the spirit with which the program is being delivered. The organizers have, time and again, explained their intention to learn from this experiment with evaluation and feedback. And we are mindful of the way in which moral leadership has been articulated in the program implementation. Our second convening was slated to be held in North Carolina. But with the passage of that state legislature’s HB2, the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, reversing a Charlotte ordinance that had extended rights to gay and transgender people, and nullifying local ordinances that would have expanded protections for the LGBTQ community, the organizers determined that they would model what it means to exercise leadership. Our convening was moved to a different state as a result of this discriminatory legislation. We in the cohort, observing this shift, were made aware again of the sacred obligation to demonstrate Jewish values of inclusion and fair treatment for all through our stewardship of our organizations and work.

We are grateful for the incredible support of the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, and other generous funders. We’re grateful to our own Boards of Directors and organizations, who see the benefit of their new CEOs participating in a forum that shepherds our learning and growing together.

And we’re grateful for a Jewish community – here, in North America – that believes in the future of Jewish leadership, invests in that future, and commits to it.

We are:

Tami Baldinger, Jewish Women’s Foundation of the Greater Palm Beaches · Robert Bank, American Jewish World Service · Dov Ben-Shimon, Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ · Jodi Bromberg, InterfaithFamily · Marci Glazer, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco · Danny Grossman, Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco · Michael Hoffman, The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County · Abigail Porth, Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco · Stefanie Rhodes, Slingshot Fund · Todd Schenk, Jewish Social Service Agency of Greater Washington · Elana Silber, Sharsheret

Dov Ben-Shimon is the (fairly new) CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest, NJ; Abby Porth is the (brand new) CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the San Francisco Bay Area.

A Look Back at Nadiv – What Have We Learned for the Future?

This blog appeared originally in eJewishPhilanthropy. 

Five years ago, the Nadiv program was launched as an innovative pilot program involving six camp-school partnerships whose primary objective was enhancing and deepening the quality of Jewish education at the camps and enriching experiential education at the schools while building a mutually beneficial and sustainable camp-school model. The Nadiv model created six new full-time positions for experiential Jewish educators, each shared by a camp and a school in geographic proximity to each other. The educators, whose responsibilities were defined by each camp and school based on its needs, toggled their responsibilities between them. In most cases, this meant spending four days in the school during the academic year with one day devoted to planning the camp program for the coming summer, with the entire camp season being spent in camp. The hope was to create a career path for select, talented educators. The program began with a preparatory year in 2011 and is concluding its active four-year phase this month.

You could say that the theme song of this pilot was “partnership,” since it involved not only camp-school partnerships but also a $3.3 million funding partnership of the Jim Joseph and AVI CHAI Foundations, which remained actively involved throughout the five years. In addition, the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), which operates three of the six participating camps and with which three of the schools are associated, was represented in the inception of the project. The entire project was directed by Ramie Arian under the auspices of the Foundation for Jewish Camp, with intensive involvement of two veteran experiential educators in the role of mentors. From the outset, Nadiv was an enterprise with “many moving parts.”

Each camp-school partnership was unique in character, structure, expectations and possibilities. Four of the schools were Jewish day schools and two were Reform congregational schools. In addition to the three URJ partnerships (Camp Coleman and Davis Academy in Georgia; Crane Lake Camp in Massachusetts and Temple Shaarey Tefila in New York; Camp Kalsman and Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Washington), there were two independent camp-school partnerships (Herzl Camp in Wisconsin and Heilicher Minneapolis Day School; Camp Mountain Chai and San Diego Jewish Academy in California) and a Young Judaea-Solomon Schechter partnership (Camp Young Judaea Sprout Lake in New York and Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County, New Jersey).

Each Nadiv educator was mentored by a veteran experiential educator. In addition, the group had periodic conference calls with the Nadiv director and the two mentors, and a yearly two-day seminar.

The Nadiv model was compelling in its potential for:

  • Improving the quality and consistency of experiential Jewish education in the camps and schools
  • Nurturing collaboration between two major approaches to Jewish education in North America: the formal and the experiential
  • Being an innovative experiment on behalf of engaging Jewish children through the intellect, the senses and the emotions.

On the other hand, it faced some daunting challenges such as:

  • Creating camp/school partnerships built on shared goals and visions rather than only on the relationship with the shared educator
  • Retaining Nadiv educators in the face of the heavy time demands of working in both school and camp settings
  • Juggling the sometimes conflicting expectations of two sets of supervisors
  • Handling the upheavals imposed by leadership changes in the schools and camps.

Nadiv was closely followed and its progress evaluated through its mid-point in December 2014 by the strategic consulting firm Informing Change. The executive summary of its report found gradual progress in improving Jewish education at the camps. A positive relationship of the Nadiv educator with camp staff influenced the extent to which change occurred in the camp’s Jewish program.

In the schools, the report found variance in the nature and scope of improvements in Jewish experiential education due to the differences in the roles of the Nadiv educators and in the schools’ priorities. In terms of the Nadiv camp-school partnerships, Informing Change reported communication between each partner camp and school, but little evidence of the kind of shared vision and mutual need that are characteristic of genuine collaborations. This last observation isn’t surprising, given that the original Nadiv vision was of a shared employee, not necessarily of a full collaboration.

In the final year of the Nadiv grant ending in June 2016, the three URJ partnerships remain intact. Of the three other partnerships, one of the schools appointed its Nadiv fellow as Judaic Studies Department Chair and Director of Jewish Life, and his new responsibilities made it impossible to continue in his camp position. The two other Nadiv fellows were dissatisfied with their school positions and took positions at other schools, which made continuation of the original camp-school partnership impossible.

What lessons can we share from Nadiv now that it’s approaching the end of its four-year active phase?

The Nadiv program resulted in positive results for the camps. Having a master’s level Jewish educator with camp experience (rather than an undergraduate or graduate student) overseeing and devoting time during the year to Jewish programming and education in camp raised the level and professionalism of Jewish programming in all six camps. It resulted in more creative and innovative educational programs and contributed to improving the preparation of teaching faculty in the camps. In addition, the Nadiv educator’s presence in the camp for a number of consecutive summers provided much needed continuity to the Jewish program that had often suffered from a high turnover of seasonal staff.

Depending on the educator’s role, Nadiv also resulted in enhanced experiential education in the schools, to an extent. The educators with responsibilities beyond the classroom, such as tefillah or “Jewish life,” were better positioned to introduce experiential elements into the life of the school than those who were primarily in the classroom.

Despite the heavy demands of switching between school and camp responsibilities, most of the Nadiv educators reported high job satisfaction and professional growth during their years in the program. The supervision provided by the partner organizations together with the intense mentoring and professional seminars provided by Nadiv added up to high-level, concentrated in-service training in both formal and experiential education.

There were nonetheless substantial challenges and obstacles to the goal of continued camp-school partnerships after the end of the philanthropic funding. None of the original partnerships will continue employing the same model after June 2016. The key challenges include:

  1. The difficulty in building true camp-school partnerships and establishing an overarching common goal and vision, along with the lack of conviction on the part of some of the schools that an experiential educator adds real value that would otherwise be absent. In the case of Nadiv, the camps were the primary drivers, searching for a school with which to partner. True collaborations call for each partner to see a compelling need for the partnership, and to spend time and energy on exploring areas of mutual interest. In addition, partnership goals have to be reviewed with an open mind over time and revised or even discarded.
  2. The high cost of the shared salary and of the ongoing mentoring and professional development. The budget limitations of camps and schools pose a serious challenge to an unsubsidized shared educator model accompanied by mentoring and professional development.
  3. This year-round employment model places heavy demands on the educator, especially in the high intensity planning times of late spring (for camps) and late summer (for schools). This raises the question of the price exacted from an educator in terms of having sufficient time to devote to camp and school responsibilities as well as to personal and family life.
  4. Leadership changes in the partnership organizations can, and usually do, have an impact on the work of a shared educator. The transition can disrupt lines of authority, and the new camp or school leader may not have the same buy-in to the model as the previous leader. Half the Nadiv partnerships experienced transitions in a camp or school leader.

Even when the camp-school partnership model does not continue, however, a positive ripple effect can be seen. The Nadiv partner camps value the professional planning and expertise that have raised the bar over the past four years for their Jewish educational programming. They are looking for different ways to maintain that level of professionalism. One camp hired its Nadiv educator as its associate director with the intent of keeping Jewish education high on its leaders’ priority list; another camp arranged for its Nadiv educator to continue during the summer and on a part-time basis during the academic year even after she left the partner school.

Inspired by Nadiv and by the model of the Ramah-URJ Service Corps, URJ is now supporting the creation of employment partnerships between selected congregations and URJ camps. Each congregation-camp partnership hires a full-time staff member, who usually serves as youth director in the congregation and unit head (or other senior staff role) in the camp. The staff members are generally early-career professionals with a bachelor’s degree and extensive camp experience. URJ contributes significantly to their salaries, and it provides a one-year training program that includes a professional development retreat in the fall, and webinars every six weeks throughout the school year. URJ anticipates that 20 such joint positions will be in operation for 2016/17.

A second example is a program supported by the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago. “Springboard Teen Engagement Specialists” has engaged one professional this year in a year-round position to work with Jewish teens and will add one per year over the next four years. During the academic year, they work in the Chicago community providing teen programming for an array of Jewish youth groups, synagogues, and school clubs. During the summer, they will engage in outreach as part of the programming staff at a Jewish summer camp. The summer relationships they forge will help guide the subsequent year’s programming.

We owe thanks to all those whose dedicated efforts made the Nadiv pilot happen and to the talented Nadiv Fellows who pioneered this initiative, bringing their passion for experiential education into Jewish camps and schools. This pilot program enhanced Jewish educational programming in all six camps, brought camps and schools into working partnerships, and led others to consider what else can be accomplished by building bridges of collaboration between our educational organizations. We see Nadiv’s story as unfinished, and will wait and watch patiently to see what new collaborations it will inspire.

Rabbi Ramie Arian is a consultant working with Jewish camps and other programs of experiential education in the Jewish community. He serves as project manager for Nadiv.

Leah Nadich Meir is a Program Officer at The AVI CHAI Foundation.

Steven Green is Director of Grants Management/Program Officer for the Jim Joseph Foundation.

A Collaborative Investment to Build Shared Outcomes for Our Field

PND logoA couple of years ago, four foundations set out to find the answer to a critically important question: How do we measure the success of our Jewish teen engagement and education initiatives?

The question, while specific, also spoke to a real need. Our foundations recognized the importance of engaging the next generation of Jews in Jewish life as a way to ensure the vibrancy and longevity of our community. But there was a gap between what our community’s teen initiatives accomplished and what our actual long-term goals were — and are.

To address this need, we came together to invest in a significant way in research on Jewish teens. The result is a new report, Generation Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish Teens Today.

The research that informs the report was designed to identify a set of shared outcomes to be used across various programs when assessing Jewish teen education and engagement initiatives. Not only were we pleased with the clarity of that research, we were also pleased with the process. For example:

  • We found it very helpful to partner with a highly knowledgeable and trusted voice in the field — in this case, The Jewish Education Project‘s David Bryfman, who already had strong relationships with many of the parties involved in these efforts. Bryfman led the work in partnership with an experienced research team.
  • All parties involved — national and local funders, practitioners, and teens themselves —demonstrated a willingness to move away from old frameworks (both for teen programs and their evaluation) designed by adults to a new framework that takes into account the voices and interests of a new generation of teens.
  • We made sure the researchers conducted focus groups with teens and interviewed parents and practitioners. As a group, we then reviewed what was learned, proposed a set of outcomes, tested them with stakeholders, refined them based on that feedback, and then retested. We made sure that what we had developed through the process strongly reflected what we had heard from the teens themselves.
  • To help ensure that our efforts would lead to actual, positive change on the ground, toward the end of the process we brought in experts to “translate” the shared outcomes into draft survey questions for teens in communities across the country. The survey questions then went through an iterative review and refinement process with funders, practitioners, and teens.

We are now looking forward to putting the report to work and applying its lessons to the benefit of our field.

How We Leverage Outcomes to Advance a Field

While coming up with a shared set of outcomes was a primary goal of the process, an added bonus was the qualitative research that revealed some incredibly informative, insightful, and in some cases surprising aspects about Jewish teen life today — including how Jewish teens think about their lives, their families, their identities, and their social groups. In short, we learned that our community needs to work with teens to create experiences that address allaspects of their lives. Teens are ambitious, move fluidly between communities and identities, want to be challenged, and want programs that add meaning and value to their lives — and help them attain their long-term life goals.

Along with these valuable insights, Generation Now unveils fourteen outcomes that the research suggests Jewish teen initiatives and programs should strive to achieve in order to have the deepest, most meaningful impact.

Because of the collaborative nature of this investment — and the existence of a Jewish Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative comprised of multiple funders and national and local stakeholders from a range of communities — we are positioned to leverage the report and help further advance and align the field. Rosov Consulting, a leader in evaluating Jewish education initiatives, already is piloting the outcomes and measurement tools in multiple communities that are part of the collaborative. And we have been gratified by the strong interest from national organizations and other communities interested in putting the tools to use for their own assessment work. We’ve also been gratified by the interest from practitioners in the field of Jewish education who want to explore how other audiences (both younger and older) might be able to use these tools.

Moving forward, we want to encourage organizations to train their practitioners to design programs that achieve the outcomes presented in Generation Now. In addition, we want to aggregate data from multiple evaluations using a shared set of survey questions based on these outcomes in order to mine the results for cross-organizational learning. Developing this aggregated picture is critical for building a field with a set of uniform metrics premised on best practices and a culture of knowledge-sharing.

A report is only as useful as the degree to which its lessons are absorbed and applied. In the field of general education, for example, standardized tools are today used to both implement new practices and measure their results. But in the field of Jewish education, and religious education more generally, measuring one’s relationship to culture and faith is challenging. So, while we work to measure our community’s impact on Jewish teens’ life journeys, we also plan to refine the outcomes we would like to see and invest in the tools needed to achieve those outcomes as we learn more about their use in the field.

Advancements Lead to Smarter Investments

Generation Now catalyzes a significant shift in Jewish teen education and engagement. The field is moving beyond thinking about teens as passive recipients of Jewish learning experiences. Whereas before we would ask, “How can we influence the Jewish lives of teens?” we now ask: “How might we understand and engage the teen as a whole person? And how can Judaism enrich and deeply influence his or her life journey?” Equipped with this new understanding of Jewish teens, our organizations can make smarter investments in their success; evaluators have more strategic and accurate indicators and tools to determine whether our investments are having an impact; and teens themselves are more likely to be attracted to the offerings they and we create together. As we have learned, broad and deep research combined with a commitment to apply the findings of that research are an important way to advance a field.

Jon Woocher, Ph.D., is president of the Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. Josh Miller is program director at the Jim Joseph Foundation. The two foundations, along with theCharles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the Marcus Foundation, commissioned the report Generation Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish Teens Today.

Source: A Collaboartive Investment to Build Shared Outcomes for Our Field,” Jon Woocher and Josh Miller, PhilanthropyNewsDigest, June 9, 2016

A Personal Approach to Israel Education

E-Jewish-philanthropyAs an experiential Jewish educator with core beliefs in a constructivist education, I search for ways to help my learners develop a deep, meaningful connection to Israel. Like many educators, I have grown to understand that this is easier said than done, and that the path of Israel education is fraught with challenges. However, these challenges can be overcome if educators are able to adopt principles that put the focus on the learner, the curriculum, and diverse narratives of Israel – three of the iCenter’s 12 principles of the Aleph Bet of Israel Education – 2nd Edition that have helped me professionally and in fact make teaching methodology relatable and achievable in any educational environment.

The principles espoused within the Aleph Bet of Israel Education collectively constitute a framework of experiential learning alongside values for meaningful education – applicable to educators of all backgrounds. As the Assistant Director of Youth and Family Engagement at Beth El Synagogue Center in New Rochelle, NY, I spend much of my time working with middle and high school students as they navigate their personal identity development at a very transitional time in their lives. Already, I have incorporated certain Aleph Bet principles into my educational approach with my learners, utilizing techniques of experiential education in my everyday interactions.

I experimented with these techniques specifically while creating and implementing an Israel curriculum with seventh graders at Beth El Synagogue, crossing over diverse narratives and multiple landscapes of Israel; the focus was on people, history, land, technology, innovation, and more; all topics that the learners in this class specifically asked to better understand. The multiple entry points I provided in learning about these topics and assessing the growth of the learners in this environment further created a space of interest, engagement, and dialogue for my learners. I hope my experiences in this regard are helpful to other practitioners and researchers in the fields of Jewish education and Israel education.

Meeting Learners Where They Are

As David Bryfman of The Jewish Education Project discusses in the chapter, “A Learner-Centered Approach,” one of the main focuses of our teaching should be our learner; this makes our approach to education holistic and allows us to meet our learners where they need to be met. In these experiential educational settings, Bryfman talks about “a learner becom[ing] an active agent in the learning process” (p. 31). When tying these principles of a learner-centered environment to Israel education, he notes that the reason this information is relevant to Israel education is because of the way “it is meaningful and relevant to the lives of the individual learners” (p. 32). Although of course the content is important, if it is not relevant and meaningful to our learners or put forth to them in an experiential, tangible way, then it may not be successful Israel education.

When working with my seventh grade students at Beth El, I not only made sure to be open with them about what topics we were going to cover in order to give them a say in our content, but included differentiated learning opportunities in each part of the curriculum. Differentiation allowed for each of the learners to find a place in the curriculum that felt comfortable, yet challenging and interesting at the same time. Keeping learners at the forefront of our thoughts helps educators recognize the importance of every individual. Moreover, keeping learners connected to an Israel education that is grounded in educational techniques used in general education settings helps concretize the field of Israel education in the field.

Curricularizing Israel

In addition to a learner-centered education, Rabbi Jan Katzew, Ph.D., of HUC-JIR explains how we can bring education to life for our learners and our educators through a thematic curriculum instead of a chronological one. Katzew discusses the breadth and depth to an Israel education environment that focuses on both the needs of the learner and the intentions of the educator with the learners. With these thoughts in mind, themes of the land, the people, the history, and personal connections with Israel can help create a space where learners and educators are able to explore Israel together.

When I began thinking about the curriculum for my seventh grade class, I wanted to make sure there were clear touch points in multiple landscapes of Israel education in order to begin to heighten the learners’ interest in a variety of areas within Israel. Spending significant chunks of time on the biblical land of Israel, modern Israel, the people of modern Israel, immigration, and innovation gave the learners exposure to the breadth and depth of Israel. Depending on our learners, the thematic curriculum can have a more significant impact than a timeline on how our learners internalize their educational experiences. This is especially true if educators have the space to create and explore their curriculum in a way that is meaningful to them as well.

Diverse Narratives

The above ideals tie seamlessly into the importance of diverse narratives within Israel education, which are presented in such a coherent way through the iCenter that complex conversations genuinely seem achievable. Dr. Barry Chazan states in his chapter “Diverse Narratives” that we have three tasks as educators when it comes to expressing the diverse narratives of Israel education: 1) to help our youth feel fluent in the major narratives that are accepted as Jewish history, 2) to recognize that “openness to diverse narrations and narrators” is relevant when it comes to our Jewish values, as is teaching, learning, and debating l’shem shamayim, for the sake of Heaven, and 3) to help our youth feel fluent enough in their own narratives and beliefs that they can become the narrators themselves and find their own voice to express their own thoughts and opinions (p. 91). Creating a truly safe space for experiential education, where diverse learners can find their own way to learn, discuss, question, and grow in a supportive environment is critical. In these spaces, learners and educators are engaged together in order to find some live, mutual understandings of the land of Israel, modern Israel, complexities of Israel, and what a personal relationship with Israel can look like today.

I regularly think about the way we can make Israel alive for our learners, no matter how far in proximity they may be from Israel itself. Through my experience with Israel education in my seventh grade classroom, the times in which many opinions and stories were shared led to the most critical and important conversations in our class setting. These conversations allowed for the learners to learn about a multitude of perspectives on certain subjects pertaining to Israel, listen to one another, and find a way for their personal voice to be heard.

Through these experiences, I also realize that I too am allowed to have an evolving view of Israel, alongside an openness to teach diverse narratives of Israel education to diverse learners. By modeling that we, as educators, are continuing to learn and grow in our relationships with Israel, we help our learners feel similar freedom as we cultivate these experiences with them.

Israel Education is Demanding

Dr. Lee S. Shulman of Stanford University states in the Aleph Bet Postlude:

…learning does not occur in a vacuum. Israel education makes substantial demands on teachers and their pedagogical skill. Because the goals of Israel education are so multi-dimensional, teachers must be competent to teach for the understanding of subtle and challenging ideas. They must also be engaging role models and masters if the emotional and personal aspects of Israel education are to be addressed successfully (p. 129).

At such a critical time in Israel’s life and in the life of Diaspora Jews, educators have the capacity to facilitate the creation of meaningful relationships with many facets of Judaism. Israel is one facet of Judaism that can be alive in a variety of environments for every individual learner; individualizing our Israel education programs can only further enhance the way in which knowledge and understanding of diverse narratives can strengthen the constructive conversations we have, despite our disagreements. Finding a way to build these environments and make them age-appropriate in our educational settings, as I have tried to do at Beth El Synagogue, can really be done through openness and collaboration with others in the educational environment.

The Aleph Bet of Israel Education – 2nd edition provides tools for successful, experiential education to be conveyed in our Jewish communities today. Without this framework, we as Jewish educators living in the Diaspora would be further from dialogue and from finding open and personal understandings of Israel. Instead, I continuously find ways to further build our community at Beth El Synagogue Center and our conversations surrounding Israel by expanding our communal knowledge and basing those ideals in these principles of Israel education. These principles relate to all good education, no matter the subject, and are modeled through Israel education in a very specific, necessary, and legitimate manner that promotes meaningful dialogue and relationships in our communities. I hope that my experiences at Beth El and utilization of the iCenter and Israel education network help show what productive Israel education looks like in the Diaspora, and reflects the vast potential of the field in the years to come.

Rebekkah Gold is the Assistant Director of Youth and Family Engagement at Beth El Synagogue Center in New Rochelle, NY. She was a member of Cohort 4 of the iCenter’s iFellows Master’s Concentration in Israel Education and received her Master’s degree in Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Cohort 5 of the iFellows Master’s Concentration in Israel Education concluded at the end of May.

Source: “A Personal Approach to Israel Education,” Rebekkah Gold, eJewishPhilanthropy, June 1, 2016

Counting All Educators, and Learning as We Count

E-Jewish-philanthropyIn San Francisco, the school year is about to end. Teachers and children (mine included!) are counting down the final days to summer. In the Jewish calendar, we are counting, too, but upwards rather than down as we mark the days of the Omer.

The end of the school year is a special time – one of marking accomplishments and celebration of learning. It is also a time to celebrate educators. We bring them gifts, make cards and take a moment to acknowledge their centrality to the process and cycle of learning.

At the Jim Joseph Foundation we do this daily. Since the Foundation’s inception, educating Jewish educators has been the first of three Foundation strategic priorities. To date, the Board has awarded more than $120 million to organizations that support educators’ professional credentialing and development, investing in programs that benefit thousands of educators. Consistent with our understanding that effective education occurs in myriad settings and at different life stages, this funding supports a variety of professional development and training opportunities engaging educators of all shapes and sizes – experiential educators, day school educators, Israel educators, peer-to-peer educators, early childhood educators. And these programs support educators at various stages of development, whether they are pre-service, early career, or veteran.

An obvious question is what compels the Foundation to award this amount of funding. There are many reasons. 1) there is a high demand for trained Jewish educators; 2) investments in educator training achieve a long-term multiplier effect through the large numbers of students and colleagues each trained educator ultimately influences; 3) investing in professional development and training programs provides peripheral benefits for advancing the field of Jewish education by contributing to the development and dissemination of knowledge and practice and enhancing the status of Jewish educators; and 4) even with this need and the benefits mentioned here, we still see asystemic under-investment in educator training at all levels, including both in-service and pre-service opportunities.

For the Foundation, another value of these investments (as is true for many of ours) is that the learnings from each have informed subsequent educator training grants. This enables the Foundation to continually experiment with new ways to structure investments to best support the field. Foundation professionals speak frequently both with the partners that conduct the educator training programs – such as the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, the iCenter, and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah – and the many grantees that employee these educators, such as BBYO, the Foundation for Jewish Camp, Hillel, and many more. Through these conversations we gain a deeper understanding of supply and demand for these programs and the types of professional experiences that are most helpful to educators in different settings.

Certainly the seminal investment for the Foundation in this area of strategic priority is the Education Initiative – $45 million in grants for educator professional development and training programs at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, The Jewish Theological Seminary and Yeshiva University. Launched in 2010, 18 new certificate and degree programs were developed as a result of this investment focused on expanding educator preparation programs and building capacity to place and support currently practicing and newly trained educators.

This fall, the fifth and final evaluation report of the Education Initiative commissioned from American Institutes for Research (AIR) will be released. With more than 1,500 Jewish educators now part of the data set – including at least a third currently in middle or senior management positions in Jewish education – we are eager to share this summative report and substantial key findings with the field. Among many other areas, we anticipate the report will build on key lessons already learned from the Foundation’s work in the field, including:

1)     Working in partnership with prospective employers at the outset provides opportunity for strategic educator placements and increases the relevance of the learning offered through training programs.

2)     Cohort-based learning experiences establish strong networks for learning and endure well beyond the duration of the program itself, leading to greater alumni engagement and ongoing learning after the formal program conclusion. The exciting development of the Experiential Jewish Educators Alumni Network (about which we will share more soon) is indicative of this.

3)     Effective programs include ongoing and intensive mix of face-to-face, online and ongoing mentoring.

A decade into many of the Foundation’s educator training investments, it is rewarding to see their impact on the field, in action. Last week, for example, some colleagues and I went on a site visit to Stanford University. We met with talented professionals at Hillel working to educate, engage and nurture Jewish students on campus. We discussed the tools and training they need to do their work. We also met with Professor Ari Kelman, Jim Joseph Foundation Chair, and three of Ari’s current graduate students in the Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies – all of whom are engaged in applied research that will help build the field and help to shape the future of Jewish education and Jewish educators.

A healthy educational eco-system requires a mix of investments with varying target audiences and areas of focus. But undoubtedly, high quality educators are necessary for almost any initiative to be successful. They come from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and interests, each bringing something special to their learners. We continue to hold them in high regard, with the deep belief that all of these educators count – just as we at the Jim Joseph Foundation count on all of these educators.

Dawne Bear Novicoff is Assistant Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation

Source: “Counting All Educators, and Learning as We Count,” Dawn Bear Novicoff, eJewishPhilanthropy, May 31, 2016

New York University’s Dual Master’s and Doctoral Programs in Education and Jewish Studies

The doctoral and dual master’s programs in Education and Jewish Studies are a collaboration between the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University (NYU). The Jim Joseph Foundation awarded a grant of $4.96 million to NYU during the period 2009–2015 to improve the infrastructure of the two programs and to attract outstanding prospective students (Jim Joseph Foundation fellows).

American Institutes for Research (AIR) conducted an independent evaluation of this grant that assessed the extent to which the doctoral and dual master’s programs have provided what students need to become successful educators and educational leaders in Jewish education. This evaluation addressed three questions:

  1. According to fellows, to what extent did their programs promote applicable knowledge,
    attitudes, and networking?
  2. To what extent have fellows engaged in leadership roles in the field of Jewish education
    after graduation?
  3. To what extent do fellows attribute engaging in thought leadership to their doctoral and
    dual master’s programs?

Moving Jewish Educators to the Next Stage in Their Career: An Evaluation of New York University’s Dual Master’s and Doctoral Programs in Education and Jewish Studies

No Success without Learning to Fail

RRC“Fail Forward” is the mantra of entrepreneurs. Take risks. You will fail, guaranteed. Learn from it.  Once a little smarter, boldly launch again. Instead of meeting failure with crimson shame and pink slips, entrepreneurs believe, as Robert Kennedy did, “to achieve greatness, you have to fail greatly.”

David Bryfman, Chief Innovation Officer at The Jewish Education Project, introduced the concept of “fail forward” at a Jewish Futures Conference in New York City.

“I’m quite proud the community has embraced the idea. I hear the phrase ‘fail forward’ repeated more than anything else I’ve put out there.” An innovation guru who keynotes from London to Jerusalem to Sydney, David confesses it is a lot easier to teach fail forward than to enact it.

David recounts his own journey of learning to fail forward. It takes time to embrace the idea “that you can both have high standards and recognize we are not going to get everything right.” David says, “I try to let people I work with know that we are all in this together. If they fail, we all fail.” To ensure his team feels safe enough to take risks, including the risk of failure, David applies lessons he learned from a very unexpected teacher—a funder.

The Jim Joseph Foundation, a national grant maker committed to fostering compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews, has been David’s mentor in learning to fail forward. As Foundation professionals work with him to reshape teen engagement, David notes, they consistently model this best practice of failing forward. David strives to replicate lessons learned from the Foundation with his own team.

Lessons learned:

1. Earn Trust

As the Foundation began working with David, they sought information not easily discerned from a grant proposal or a resume. They wanted to know David as a person. They also wanted him to get to know them. “A couple of years ago, I was at a conference in Florida,” recalls David. “A senior program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation said ‘let’s go for a walk. We are not going to talk about business. We are going to talk about our lives.’” Skill alone doesn’t earn the trust needed to navigate unchartered territory. Character matters. Anyone who knows David, affectionately referred to as Bryfy, knows he is a principled man.

“Trust goes both ways,” remarks David. “I know the Foundation is not trying to catch me. We have mutuality and respect. Once you experience that, there is not a long jump to say we are in this together.”

David works to build mutual trust with his own staff. Despite working at a “million miles an hour like all entrepreneurs do,” David says he forces himself to slow down to spend time with his team. When he doesn’t, the team suffers. Without that time, “you don’t really get to know someone to build the trust.” Despite his best intentions, the day to day sometimes leaves him wishing for more relationship time.

  1. Kill Blame, Enliven Inquiry

Too often, non-profit leaders fear retribution for failing to meet funders’ expectations. The Jim Joseph Foundation, says David, understands that innovation only happens through learning from successes and failures that naturally occur on the innovation path. “We have not been worried about our failures when we have tried something that has never been done before. The Foundation has stood behind its multi-year commitment to work with us to keep improving.”

Post-mortems on data follow the Foundation’s agenda of inquiry:

  • What did we learn this week?
  • How could we have done things differently?
  • What can we do from our side to make success even more likely?

David works with the executive team at The Jewish Education Project to create a culture of inquiry and learning. By providing regular professional development, David ensures his team has the time and the skills to collect data, analyze it, learn from it and be agile enough to re-direct strategy based on what is learned. Learning to fail forward is a long-term commitment. Removing blame and replacing it with inquiry and learning enables The Jewish Education Project to be a national leader in educational innovation.

  1. Be Accountable

Failure is an engine of innovation only when it is accompanied by accountability. Holding people responsible for assigned work, deadlines and outputs is imperative. David is happy to do the required reporting to the Foundation. Accountability is a practice he experiences with the Foundation through formal channels like regular reports, and through more informal but regular communication.

David strives to replicate the “just right” balance of failure and accountability with his team. “I have high expectations and high standards,” David notes. “We try new things all the time. If we don’t do it right the first time, I don’t care. The second time it is slightly clearer what has to be adjusted. But by the third time, I have some serious issues.” David says his message is “There is room for learning over time. Together, we have a fail forward mindset. And you have to be held to the highest standards.”

There is no success without learning to fail. David is learning, teaching and enacting this key entrepreneurial mantra. He is willing to reveal honestly how hard it is to instill the practice of fail forward. He also insists it is necessary to earn trust, enable inquiry and hold people accountable so they can take risks, learn from failure and innovate for our changing world. David is willing to do the hard work of failing, because not succeeding has cosmic ramifications.

“What keeps me up at night?” he tells me, is the question.  “How will this work make the Jewish people better off?”

Source: “No Success Without Learning to Fail,” Reconstructionist Rabbinical College Blog, May 13, 2016

Congregational and early childhood educators talk innovation, recognize innovators

JUF News“What are we hearing from families about choosing Jewish early childhood education?” “What are common challenges and opportunities in congregational education?” “How do macro trends impact Jewish learning/life programming and choices?”

Some 150 educators, clergy, lay leaders, administrators and other stakeholders gathered May 10 to tackle these and other big questions, hear about innovation approaches from national experts, stimulate one another’s thinking, and empower each other to effect change.

Convened by JUF’s Community Foundation for Jewish Education, “Thinking Together: Communal Conversations about  Jewish Congregational and Early Childhood Education in Chicago” focused on national ideas and local challenges in the field, which engages nearly 8,000 students enrolled in 40 schools in the metropolitan area.

The participants began their day of learning and idea exchange with an overview of key data points relating to enrollment trends, capacity utilization, teacher compensation and professional development, funding and costs, and other vital information.

 

CFJE symposium 2016

(From left) Rabbi Scott Aaron, CFJE executive director; Buddy Schreiber, recipient of the CFJE-Grinspoon Foundation Award for Excellence in Jewish Congregational Education; Claudine Guralnick, recipient of the Sue Pinsky Award for Excellence in Jewish Education; and Sue Pinsky. (Photo by Robert F. Kusel)

“2015-2016 was the first year Chicago’s Jewish early childhood programs participated in a community wide, systematic data collection. The results offer a first view of the landscape and serve as a baseline for future tracking,” said CFJE Executive Director Rabbi Scott Aaron.

The data study was facilitated by CFJE and conducted by JData, a research program operated by Brandeis University with generous support from the Jim Joseph Foundation.

With information in hand, the conference participants broke into two interest groups, one focusing on early childhood education and another centering on congregational education. Both sessions offered case studies of innovative approaches and programs designed to address the challenges of engaging families and youth in Jewish education.

“The passion and energy in the room was unstoppable,” said one participant of the interaction with other professionals.  “Although we have a long way to go [in advancing the field,” said another, yet another educator stressed how “empowering [it is] being in the room with passionate Jewish educators.”

Guralnick, Schreiber receive Jewish education awards

Following informal conversations during lunch, CFJE presented its second annual Sue Pinsky Award for Excellence in Jewish Education to Claudine Guralnick, of Oak Park, an educator at West Suburban Temple Har Zion in River Forest.

Members of her congregational community described Guralnick as “understanding, perceptive, patient, and fun… Her support [for children and families] is unwavering, and her engagement with the children is constant and active.”

The Pinsky Award honors Sue Pinsky, a Jewish educator who was instrumental in the founding of the North Suburban JCC. Her son, Mark Pinsky, and his wife, Lisa, generously established an endowment fund in Sue’s honor to ensure the award in perpetuity through JUF’s Agency Endowment Program.

CFJE also awarded its first annual CFJE-Grinspoon Foundation Award for Excellence in Jewish Congregational Education to Buddy Schreiber, who teaches at Am Shalom in Glencoe.

The award celebrates successful innovation in Jewish education and was awarded to Schreiber, in part for “the quiet way [he] impacts students…[and] his determined presence and desire to bring them a high level discussion about higher level ideas.”

To learn more about the groundbreaking work of JUF’s Community Foundation for Jewish Education of Metropolitan Chicago, visit www.cfje.org. 

Source: “Congregational and early childhood educators talk innovation, recognize innovators,” JUF News, May 12, 2016

 

Hiddur: Deepening Jewish Experiences at Summer Camp

This blog on Hiddur ran originally in eJewishPhilanthropy

Think for a moment of nearly any activity you associate with Jewish camp. Whatever comes to mind, chances are that the experience is communal, engaging, and fun. Now, more camps increasingly recognize that any camp experience can also be a quality Jewish experience for their campers and staff – if designed in a thoughtful, intentional way.

Over the last decade, multiple investments by different funders have focused on developing the Jewish experience at camp, and camps now have a wide range of professional development and training opportunities with this focus available to their seasonal and year-round staff. The field’s enthusiastic reception of these offerings has shown a steady appetite for learning how to deliver a better Jewish program. Now, our three foundations – AVI CHAI, Jim Joseph, and the Maimonides Fund – are advancing this vision even further by helping camps look comprehensively and systematically at where and how they are delivering the Jewish experience, and introducing ways to do it better.

The result is Hiddur, a new program of Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC). Camps work one-on-one with coaches who are highly experienced Jewish educators to develop specific Jewish experiential learning outcomes for their campers, staff, and camp community. Camps can choose to address a number of different areas, including Jewish peoplehood, connections to Israel, Jewish perspectives on nature and environment, Hebrew language, social justice (tikkun olam), marking sacred time through Shabbat and Jewish holidays, spirituality and mindfulness, and personal ethics (middot).

Hiddur is our attempt to answer critical questions, as explained by Michelle Shapiro Abraham, a Hiddur coach: “When children leave camp, what five or six Jewish components from the summer will the camp want them to retain? What outcomes from these summer experiences would we hope to achieve? How do we train our staff to support those outcomes? Jewish camp experiences shouldn’t be siloed – how do we bring the camp’s Jewish values to life, in every aspect of the camp experience, blended with that camp’s overall culture? Hiddur is like holding up a mirror and giving the opportunity for camp leadership to think about what’s important to them.”

The first Hiddur cohort is comprised of eight camps across the U.S., representing geographical, denominational, and mission diversity: Camp Daisy & Harry Stein (Arizona), Herzl Camp (Wisconsin), Camp Judaea (North Carolina), B’nai B’rith Camp (Oregon), Camp Sabra (Missouri), Emma Kaufmann Camp (West Virginia), B’nai B’rith Perlman Camp (Pennsylvania), and Camp Tel Noar (New Hampshire). These camps have committed to a three-year process and each has formed a Hiddur team – including professional and lay leadership – to work with their coach. The pilot camps also are participating in a Community of Practice to share their progress and challenges, as well as to further develop their skills to effectively implement Jewish experiential learning. Additionally, camps will have access to Ignition Grants to fund new Jewish initiatives during the summer.

Camps want to grow and evolve their Jewish experiences for a variety of reasons. Hiddur offers space to learn, experiment, and analyze regardless of why camps are driven to do this. Tom Rosenberg, a 27-year veteran of the Jewish camp field and current executive director of Camp Judaea, says Hiddur “provides the opportunity to increase the camp’s intentionality about the type of Jewish education being provided in camp. It does it in a systemic way, weaving together enrichment of diverse components of camp, from Ivritand Israeli music to daily middot and tefillah. As a pluralistic camp serving a pretty diverse Jewish population, we want staff to demonstrate that diversity so all our campers can learn the many flavors of Jewish life and practices of Judaism in the world. We want to reinforce that we’re all Jewish, and to create a stronger Jewish community worldwide.”

Another director, Efraim Yudewitz of Camp Tel Noar, explains how he sees Hiddur helping to integrate Judaism further into the camp experience. “Our campers love Shabbat. They love Israel Day. These are things we do Jewishly that we love. Then there are things they love about camp that happen more on a routine basis, that are actually also Jewish things, but we haven’t talked about them in a Jewish context. For example, what kids love the most, what keeps them coming back next summer, are the relationships – community, friends, role models. There’s lots of things we do to help foster those relationships. The way we treat and relate to each other in Jewish law – ben adam l’chavero – is a language we talk about in camp, but campers don’t understand it as a ‘Jewish’ concept. I want to help our kids understand and feel like the regular routine camp stuff is Jewish too.”

The Hiddur model is an unprecedented endeavor in our field – in terms of the length of the initiative, its collaborative funding structure, and who it involves. Hiddur involves camp directors, as well as the inner circle of camp leadership, both lay and professional. This makes it more likely that all of the camps’ desired changes will be implemented regardless of staff turnover, new priorities that arise, and other extenuating circumstances. Joe Reimer, Professor of Jewish Education at Brandeis University and a longtime consultant in the field serving as a mentor to Hiddur coaches, makes the argument, “When you bring the broader camp community, including staff, parents, and lay leadership, into the discussion, everyone can see how the enhanced Jewish mission of the camp is an asset to the overall vitality of the camp.”

We recognize that implementing this type of change effectively and sustaining it for the long-term takes proper planning. That’s why our foundations made Hiddur a three year investment, offering ample time for the coaches to work with the camp’s Hiddur team to assess strengths and weaknesses and plan for change. The cohort of camps and coaches will grow together, benefiting all involved. Yudewitz explains the important cohort dynamic: “We’re not doing it in our own bubble, but getting the guidance to be really reflective over a longer period of time about what’s working and what isn’t. It helps us stay on task, be productive, and also do it much better.” And the coaches themselves will be able to collaborate and learn from each other over this time period as well, helping to ensure that each Hiddur team receives the highest quality level of training.

As foundations that already have invested in Jewish camp, we believe deeply in the power of the immersive experiences it offers. FJC’s strategy of focusing intently on the Jewishness of camp experiences is potentially game-changing – for the pilot camps andfor the entire field. Learnings and strategies that come out of this initiative will be shared with the broader camp community.

Our three foundations now are working with FJC to help the pilot group with strategy and execution, and we again are reminded that there is much to be celebrated in the world of Jewish camping. We hope this program will drive success one step further by advancing the ability of Jewish camps to enhance and more effectively execute their Jewish missions.

Joel Einleger is a senior program officer at the AVI CHAI Foundation.
Aaron Saxe is a program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.
Aimee Weiss is a program officer at the Maimonides Fund