Foundation for Jewish Camp Specialty Camps Incubator III

featured_grantee_300x200_1Building on the success of Specialty Camps Incubator I and II, Foundation for Jewish Camp and the Jim Joseph Foundation announced Incubator III, which will create four new Jewish specialty camps and continue the effort to achieve the joint vision of both foundations: to increase experiential Jewish learning, strengthen Jewish continuity, and foster strong Jewish social networks among Jewish children and teens.

Specialty Camps Incubator offers a forum to pilot new educational models by integrating Jewish learning with activities that kids are passionate about – the environment, performing arts, sports, and outdoor adventure.  The Incubator also successfully establishes new sustainable business models for Jewish camps by not requiring burdensome capital investment since the camps are required to rent existing properties.

Incubator III will launch four new Jewish specialty camps, provide funding to the new camps during their planning, start-up and first three years of operation, and evaluate the progress of each camp’s development.  Each new camp will receive start-up investment and operational funding for three years of up to $1.4 million, pegged to performance goals.

The first two Specialty Camps Incubators, funded initially by the Jim Joseph Foundation and then later joined by The AVI CHAI Foundation, was modeled on a business incubator, formed to accelerate the launch of entrepreneurial ventures.  The camps launched through Incubator I and II have already served more than 5,000 unique campers in six years.

“The Specialty Camps Incubators have raised the profile of Jewish camp and has allowed the field to continue to expand, grow, and attract children and teens from all backgrounds,” explains Jeremy J. Fingerman, CEO, FJC.  “We are grateful for the Jim Joseph Foundation’s incredible investment in our field.”

featured_grantee_300x200_2FJC expects these four new specialty camps will serve annually, in aggregate, 1,200 campers and 160 college-aged counselors by the conclusion of the grant period (December 2020, after three summers).  The experienced Incubator team will provide expert training and mentoring to support the Specialty Camp Incubator III cohort as they plan and implement their vision for new models of Jewish specialty camps.

“Specialty camps continue to gain in popularity and have proven to be a very worthy investment,” adds Al Levitt, President of the Board of Directors of the Jim Joseph Foundation. “Now, we can apply previous lessons learned as we launch four new specialty camps with innovative ideas in underserved areas. With FJC’s leadership and expertise in the field, these camps will be positioned to incorporate experiential Jewish learning along with excellence in programming.”

FJC is now accepting proposals for four new specialty camps. The RFP can be found at:  www.JewishCamp.org/incubator.  


The Jim Joseph Foundation grant supporting Specialty Camps Incubator III is for up to $10 million.

The Yiddish Book Center’s Great Jewish Books Teacher Resources

A new resource from the Yiddish Book Center helps teachers make Jewish literature and culture more accessible for students of nearly all ages. Developed after the Center’s Great Jewish Books Teacher Workshop in 2015, the website www.teachgreatjewishbooks.org is an ever-growing collection of textual, audio, and visual materials designed to support those who teach modern Jewish literature and culture.

The resource kits were created by elementary, middle, and high school teachers, and by college professors, from across the U.S. and Canada. Each kit explores a thought-provoking text or theme and includes primary and secondary sources—poems, photographs, audio recordings, film excerpts, and songs—as well as a guide to using them in the classroom, making it easy for teachers to enrich and expand their curricula.

Visit the Website

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 The Yiddish Book Center also is accepting applications now through April 15, 2016 for its summer workshop, taking place July 17-22, 2016 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Join other teachers of Jewish secondary and supplementary schools interested in enriching their curricula with materials that reflect the variety and depth of modern Jewish literature and culture. Participants come from a wide range of schools and educational programs around the country and teach literature, history, Jewish studies, theater, film, and other subjects. The Workshop is fully subsidized for participants.

Before this program, I was feeling uninspired and not at all excited about teaching American Literature this coming year. I came away with a million new ideas and ways to present them! I will plan a short story unit, a poetry unit, and a research unit based on what I covered at this program. I will incorporate important Jewish literature into my curricula at every level and I also learned new ways to present multi­media and guide my students to present in a variety of formats.
                                                                                                                                                                       –   Educator after the 2015 Workshop

 The Jim Joseph Foundation grant to the Great Jewish Books Teacher Workshop was awarded in 2014 to support workshops in 2015 and 2016, along with follow-up programs.

 

 

 

CEO Onboarding Program

The first-ever national CEO Onboarding program designed for high-level organizational leaders in the American Jewish community is now accepting applications. Learn more at leadingedge.org/CEOonboarding or download the flier to the right.

Bay Area educators get new angles on how to teach Israel

jweekly_logoSome 250 Jewish educators, educational leaders and funders spent three days in Las Vegas last month discussing and learning new strategies for teaching the subject of Israel to Jews in North America.And, in this case, the hope is that what happened in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas.

“I had pages and pages of notes of how I will be able to implement some of the ideas” that came out of the conference, said attendee Heather Erez, director of youth and family education at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. “I’m looking forward to bringing them back to our teachers and, soon, to the students.”

Titled iCamp, the early December conference was hosted by the Illinois-based iCenter for Israel Education, with the S.F.-based Jewish LearningWorks involved in planning and leading sessions.

Bay Area Jewish educators Leeaht Segev (left) and Devra Aarons at the conference in Las Vegas photo/courtesy devra aarons

Moreover, Vavi Toran, Jewish LearningWorks’ arts and cultural specialist, contributed a chapter to the second edition of “Aleph Bet of Israel Education,” which was unveiled at the conference. The document covers a set of 12 core principles and approaches that together constitute the building blocks of how to teach about Israel. It’s also available for download athttp://www.theicenter.org.“It’s not a set of curriculum or a ‘truth,’ but a roadmap on which to journey down the road of Jewish and Israel education,” said Devra Aarons, executive director of Contra Costa Midrasha. “It’s a process that allows for multiple approaches that is also accessible for multiple types of learners — whatever age, community, sect or gender.”

According to organizers, iCamp is the only conference solely dedicated to Israel education. The only other time it was held was in 2011.

This year’s conference addressed strategies and skills that will help students to connect to Israel on a personal level when they are learning about the culture, history and politics of the Jewish state. Aarons said one of her takeaways was that educators need to work on “creating meaning with our learners that is centered around them.”

Merrill Alpert, director of youth activities for the Far West region of United Synagogue Youth, told the Los Angeles Jewish Journal that educators at Jewish day schools are getting “less and less time in the classroom” to teach Hebrew and about Israel. “Even though Israel education is relevant and important, it’s not as important as English, math or science education,” she told the Jewish Journal. “In order to teach these issues properly, we all need more time.”

The conference was held a week after Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies released a report showing major gaps in American Jewish college students’ knowledge about Israel. More than half of the 628 Birthright Israel program applicants who took a multiple-choice exam designed to assess Israel literacy had scores of 50 percent or lower, the report said, noting that the students are incapable of “contributing to discourse about Israel on campus in a meaningful way.”

“Effective Israel education reflects excellent education,” said Anne Lanski, the iCenter’s executive director. “It starts with talented educators — individuals who are knowledgeable and deft storytellers, who know how to tap into their students’ passions, and are able to bring Israel to life in nearly any educational environment, be it in a classroom, at a camp, on a bus or elsewhere.

Lev Reuven, a 25-year-old Israeli currently stationed in the Bay Area, was one of 20 Jewish Agency shlichim (emissaries) selected to take part in the conference. Reuven is working with Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael, Camp Newman in Santa Rosa and the Central West Region of NFTY, Reform Judaism’s teen program.

Vavi Toran at iCamp 2015

She said the conference made her realize “how hard it is to bring up the topic of Israel and how careful you need to be with it.”Added Aarons: “I heard a lot of people discuss the fear that comes with teaching about Israel — not just in the Bay Area but across North America and even in Israel. Many people talked about how — no matter their personal experience with living in Israel or having Israeli family or friends — if they don’t feel like ‘experts’ they don’t feel equipped to teach Israel, especially the conflict.

“But what was empowering was how the presenters really challenged each of us to be OK with not being experts. That it’s OK to say, ‘I don’t know’ to our learners and invite them to explore and discover with us to uncover the answers. To build relationships, we must invite curiosity, questions and discovery into our learning spaces.”

Other Bay Area attendees included Marla Kolman Antebi, education director at Chochmat HaLev in Berkeley; Leeaht Segev, co-interim director of education at Congregation B’nai Tikvah in Walnut Creek; and Lisa Kay Solomon, author of “Moments of Impact that Accelerate Change” and an adjunct professor of design strategy in the MBA program at the California College of the Arts.

Ilan Vitemberg, director of educational support services at Jewish LearningWorks, noted that “the iCenter considers the Bay Area community a leader in the field of Israel education, particularly in the arena of the use of arts and culture.” The chapter in the “Aleph Bet of Israel Education” on that topic was written by the S.F.-based agency’s Toran.

Aarons said she is a big fan of the “Aleph Bet,” and that she even used “Aleph Bet” cards at a board meeting and staff winter training session. But she also enjoyed being turned on to “Israel Story,” an Israeli-produced podcast that reminds many of NPR’s “This American Life.”

As soon as she got back from Las Vegas, Aarons forwarded links to “Israel Story” to her entire staff at Contra Costa Midrasha, “challenging them to find ways to use some of the stories in each of their classes, whether or not they ‘teach Israel.’ ”

She thinks the engaging stories of “Israel Story” can be used “to bring our teens directly into the world of Israelis and life in Israel.”

Source: “Bay Area educators get new angles on how to teach Israel,” J Weekly, December 31, 2015

Bringing Parents Along – A key to Life Centered Education

“When schools, families, and community groups work together to support learning, children tend to do better in school, stay in school longer, and like school more.[1]” This finding from a 2002 study affirmed a philosophy already held by many that guided significant national education policy and programs. Head Start, a program endorsed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, incorporated a family component[2]. Today, the idea is widely accepted that parental involvement in students’ educational pursuits provides lasting benefits for the students. Disparate competing programs such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top[3] incorporate this idea as a cornerstone.

While parental involvement in secular learning is almost a given, this has not been the case in religious education.  Former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of Great Britain describes this as sending “mixed messages” to our children about the value of education[4].  He noted that many parents expect their children to place importance on Jewish learning and practice for the sake of tradition even when the parents choose not to engage in particularly Jewish practice.

Strategies for Student Success

The Southwest Education Development laboratory lists the following two items as a subsection of recommended strategies to achieve student success:

  • “Engage [parents] at school so that they understand what their children are doing”
  • “Give [parents] a voice in what happens to their children”

While belonging to a booster club or even a Parent Teacher Association at school provides valuable connections, these affiliations do not offer opportunities for parents’ deep engagement and understanding about a child’s secular education.  Rather, meeting with individual teachers, working through homework problems with students, and even developing formal relationships between families and their schools can achieve more lasting success for the students and understanding for the parents. Moreover, these extra steps also show the value and importance of the education to both children and parents.

In a religious school context, parents might belong to a church or synagogue, but that membership does not inherently lead to their engagement in a child’s spiritual journey and education. Parents, instead, must be proactive and seek opportunities to be deeply involved in this learning.  Engaging children around their education both at the Jewish institution and at home is a core part of this process.

A Case Study on Parental Involvement in Education

In the field of Jewish education, Wilderness Torah—an organization committed to connecting individuals to Judaism through the environment—offers a case study on the importance, evolution, and potential of deep parental-child-teacher engagement in learning. Its B’naiture program for students in grades 6 and 7 was designed as a complement for religious education[5].  The ultimate objectives of Wilderness Torah’s program design and their early adaption to engage parents more deeply, provides profound insight into how parent involvement in children’s learning can entirely transform religious education.

B’naiture 1.0 – Taking Youth on Journey

Wilderness Torah created B’naiture as a response to the call for “life-centered” youth education— experiences that deal with the whole person and her or his set of human concerns, as Jonathan Woocher explained in “Redesigning Jewish Education for the 21st Century” (2008). The desire for these experiences often comes in the early teen years, during that critical phase between childhood and adolescence, when youth need help building confidence in themselves as unique individuals. Wilderness Torah developed B’naiture with this guiding principle and the understanding that focusing on soul-development at this time of passage in life is essential. Thus, the program prioritizes self-awareness, self-responsibility, and the discovery and empowerment of one’s own inherent gifts.

This all plays out over the course of the two-year program in—as the name implies—nature. Participants embark on a journey during which they learn hands-on survival skills such as fire-making, and do-it-yourself skills such as making shofars and mezuzahs from raw materials. It also challenges them to face fears, expand their beliefs of what’s possible and share their hearts around the fire with peers and adult mentors. All of this is framed and woven together by designing the experience according to the Hebrew calendar throughout the year and framing all the activities with Jewish stories, teachings from the Torah and Pirkeh Avot, and Jewish prayers and song.

While after seven years, B’naiture’s life-centered model has proven successful—parents consistently report their B’naiture graduate teens demonstrate high levels of newfound confidence, respect, accountability around the house and at school, and self-responsibility—Wilderness Torah faced an unexpected challenge at the program’s inception. Some parents were not ready for the changes their children exhibited during program participation. As a result, over the program’s first two years, B’naiture had nearly a 30% dropout rate, in many cases because of parent resistance.

B’naiture 2.0 – Parents Join the Journey

Wilderness Torah inevitably wanted to know why parents held this sentiment and what, if anything, could be done to overcome the challenge. The answer to both questions affirms the theory that parents and children together are part of the education process.

Historically, in traditional societies “rites of passage” were all-family, often all-community events because the passage out of childhood is not just experienced by the child. It is also experienced by the parents and the community. Parents need to feel that they are supporting the transformation of their child into adolescence. This is part of their process of embracing their own “loss” of their child to adolescence. For a variety of reasons, if parents feel left out of this critical stage, they may unconsciously “sabotage” this life experience for their child process.

After absorbing this information, Wilderness Torah conceptualized its solution—a parent track that takes parents on the B’naiture journey. Now, parents participate in an opening 3-day camping trip where they learn about rites of passage, what changes to expect in their child, learn skills and reflect upon their own experience when they were their child’s age. How were they met or not met at this life transition? What do they need to be able to fully support a healthy transition for their child? Parents form a supportive parent group that meets periodically throughout the year to learn some skills B’naiture teaches their children, to learn Torah relevant to the rite of passage, and to provide on-going parent-group to understand how to support their child.

The creation of this parents’ track has been a game changer. The B’naiture drop-out rate has shrunk to a nominal number each year and parents’ involvement has made this work even more transformative. Children feel fully supported and parents feel a part of this important developmental stage of their children’s lives. As one parent, Jenn Rader, commented:

The parent track was an invaluable part of our family’s experience in B’naiture. At an age when young people’s activities often separate them from their families, the B’naiture program sets out a model for a young person’s development that is closely held in family and community. B’naiture found the sweet spot in their capacity to create an experience that both young people and parents can really own on their own terms and have those experiences infuse a shared family culture and set of values.

 The opportunity to share with and hear from other parents passing through this same portal offered a lot of support and insight to my partner and I as we navigated this stage with our two boys. We also felt a sense of partnership with the Wilderness Torah mentors in supporting our boys, which was powerful.

For Wilderness Torah and the Jim Joseph Foundation (one of its supporters), the evolution of B’naiture has been a learning process offering many insights we believe are helpful to both the secular and Jewish education fields. Incorporating parents into their child’s education in meaningful and substantial ways is an effective strategy for all involved.

[1] A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement A. T. Henderson & K. L. Mapp. (Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 2002) Report Conclusion.

[2] National Head Start Association http://www.nhsa.org/about-us/mission-vision-history

[3] No Child Left Behind was an initiative introduced by George W. Bush and Race to the Top was introduced by Barack Obama

[4] “Four Ways to Look at the Wicked Child” The Wexner Foundation http://www.wexnerfoundation.org/blog/four-ways-to-look-at-the-wicked-child

[5] Turns out that around 50% of the families engaged chose B’naiture as their primary B’nai Mitzvah experience.

This blog appeared originally in eJewishPhilanthropy. Zelig Golden Is Founding Director of Wilderness Torah, which reawakens and celebrates the earth-based traditions of Judaism, including a focus on life-centered mentorship of youth kindergarten through teen years. Beginning summer of 2016, Wilderness Torah will offer training and consulting in its nature-based curricula and Jewish mentorship model.

Camp, to Last a Lifetime

Reshet Ramah, Camp Ramah’s alumni and community engagement network, is poised to expand the role that camp playsCJ Voices in building Jewish community.

When Gabe Scott-Dicker, 30, lost his mother last year, he found him-self wondering where he was going to say Kaddish.

Like most in his generation, he does not belong to a synagogue. Raised in West Caldwell, New Jersey, and now living in Manhattan, he visited many and felt welcomed by all. But none of them felt quite right. “What I really wanted was that feeling you get at camp,” he realized. “I wanted that Friday night Camp Ramah experience again.” Out of that realization was born the Ramah Minyan, started by Gabe and fellow Camp Ramah in New England alumni Jenna Silverman and Allison Moser. They reached out to friends hailing from all the Ramah camps, and held their first service last February in a space provided by Park Avenue Synagogue. That Shabbat, 165 young adults in their 20s and 30s attended; on weeks when dinner is served, more than 200 come. While a core of regulars is emerging, the number of newcomers continues to climb as the Ramah Minyan meets every other Friday night.

“What’s amazing is that many of these are not people you’d ever see going to Shabbat services otherwise,” said Rabbi Ed Gelb, director of Camp Ramah in New England, looking at the list of his former campers on the Ramah Minyan roster.

Meanwhile, 23- year old Talia Spitzer moved to Dallas for a new job. She knew no one, but soon discovered that as she met new people, the ones she felt the most immediate connection to all had one thing in common: Ramah. An alumna of Camp Ramah in California, she organized an after work evening at a lounge for young adult Ramah alumni and their friends. “I hope that Ramah alumni know that now there is a community for them in Dallas,” she said. “And that if you ever end up in a city in which you have never stepped foot, as I did, chances are there will be a Ramah network there to support you.”

That is Reshet Ramah’s mission: to use the power and passion of the existing Ramah alumni network to increase adult Jewish engagement and create stronger, more vibrant Jewish communities. (Reshet in Hebrew means “network.”) Funded by a grant from The AVI CHAI Foundation and the Maimonides Fund, with additional sup-port from the Jim Joseph Foundation and a number of local funders in various cities, it is a grand experiment, one that stands to make a real impact on the fabric of the Conservative movement and the North American Jewish community as a whole.

 

Reshet Ramah - Hanukkah 2

More than 270 alumni of Ramah, USY, JTS and Schechter students filled a New York nightclub to celebrate Chanukah last December.

It is a bold step for the 68 -year-old Ramah system. Ramah, the camping arm of Conservative Judaism, boasts eight overnight camps, five day camps, the Tichon Ramah Yerushalayim (TRY) high school semester in Israel, the Ramah Seminar summer experience in Israel, and the Ramah Israel Institute travel program for schools, synagogues and family groups. Last summer more than 10,500 individuals (counting both campers and staff) participated in Ramah programs. This number is on the upswing: Camp Ramah in New England recently added two new bunks to accommodate increased demand, Camp Ramah in California will add a new edah (age division) next summer, Camp Ramah in the Rockies has grown to full capacity after only five years of operation, and the newest Ramah overnight camp is set to open next summer in northern California.

Clearly Ramah knows how to run great camps. But what does that have to do with stepping into the current trend of Jewish engagement work?

We estimate that there are approximately 250,000 “Ramahniks,” as alumni like to call themselves. When the 2013 Pew Survey of Jewish Americans was published and quantified what every rabbi and Jewish educator could have told you – that affiliation rates are plummeting, that millennials don’t want to belong to institutions built by previous generations, that only 33 percent of American Jews between the ages of 18 to 29 state that being Jewish is “very important” to them – the time seemed ripe for Ramah to leverage the positive emotional impact of its brand and augment the good work being done by synagogues and so many in the community.

To be sure, Reshet Ramah is still in the entrepreneurial, experimental stage, and its mission is not limited solely to millen-nials. As Joel Einleger, Director of Strat-egy, Camp Programs, at The AVI CHAI Foundation observed when the project was announced, “Reshet Ramah will seize the opportunity to build a stronger movement from the huge numbers of alumni of the Ramah camps across North America…that will in effect extend the experience begun in a Ramah camp years or even decades earlier.” In other words, the bonds built at camp really do last a lifetime, and the hope is that through Reshet Ramah those bonds will be nur-tured at various stages of life beyond the camper years.

The initial start-up phase was about building infrastructure, such as the creation of the Find Alumni Directory, and the Reshet Ramah website, www.reshetramah.org with stories of alumni marriages, reflections, accounts from olim, and news of upcoming events. The camps needed time to think through the impact of a national-level alumni initiative and how their own individual alumni associations would connect to that. And then there were people to galvanize, a board to establish, and programs to begin to imagine and build. Two years into the endeavor, we feel that Reshet Ramah is starting to see real traction.

What we are finding is that there is nothing cookie-cutter about this work. As we seed garinim, councils of alumni in cities across North America and Israel, each group is empowered to create its own programs with its own ideas. In San Francisco, the garin has leaned toward “boutique” events: Shabbat dinner at an art gallery, a kosher wine tour. In Washington, DC, the kick-off was a Chanukah party at someone’s home. In New York, the garin has created a mix of social and religious programming. For example, last Purim, 120 people attended a Reshet Ramah megillah reading and open mic night at a stand-up comedy club, and the following Saturday night 240 turned out for a Purim-themed costume party at a club downtown.

Other initiatives, like the launch last spring of RamahDate in partnership with JDate, Reshet Ramah trips to Poland for adults or the Israel Bike Ride and Hiking Trip to support special needs programs at Ramah, are staff-driven and marketed to the Ramah alumni community. Partnerships are crucial, especially with synagogues and other community organizations also involved in this work. Since its launch, Reshet Ramah has sponsored more than 70 events in 30 cities involving nearly 2,000 unique individuals.

“One of the real gems of the Conservative movement is our camps,” said Sheldon Disenhouse, president of the National Ramah Commission and a member of the Reshet Ramah board. “Ramah is well-poised to harness the Jewish joy and connection that comes from camp and can bring it back to people well after the camp years.”

“If we are successful,” added Rabbi Mitchell Cohen, National Ramah Director, “we will have changed the fabric of the community, offering another layer of options for Jews, young and old, looking for meaningful Jewish connection at various stages of their lives.”

Rabbi Abigail Treu is Director of Community Outreach and Young Adult Engagement at the National Ramah Commission. She previously served as a Rabbinic Fellow and National Director of the Women’s League Torah Fund Campaign at The Jewish Theological Seminary.

Source: CJ: Voices of Conservative/Masorti Judaism, September 1, 2015

CASJE’s Brand New Website

featured_grantee_300x200CASJE, the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education, has rapidly evolved into a dynamic community of researchers, practitioners, and philanthropic leaders dedicated to improving the quality of knowledge to guide the work of Jewish Education.

CASJE’s new website—www.casje.org—is part of this exciting evolution.

Casje.org is an integral part of CASJE’s commitment to discovering, generating, and sharing useable knowledge about significant issues in Jewish education. Visit the site to learn about CASJE’s work, current areas of focus, and collaborative communities. Casje.org is now a hub for news and events about Jewish education in general — with a focus on applied research.

Over the next five years, CASJE will offer an environment for scholars—new and veteran alike—to think creatively about questions and topics that can help shape Jewish education. CASJE provides the structure to not only search for the answers, but to disseminate this critical learning to the entire field.

The purpose of CASJE is to connect Jewish education researchers, practitioners, and funders. In fields like law and medicine, research informs and improves practice. We believe that research in Jewish education can and should do the same, by better drawing on what we already know about Jewish education and being more thoughtful about what we might learn.

-Lee Shulman, Stanford University

The Jim Joseph Foundation has awarded three grants for CASJE totaling more than $1.7 million. Please see Chip Edelsberg’s guest blog about CASJE’s contributions to the field of Jewish education.

Making Jewish My Own: Gleanings from Reboot

Editor’s Note: The Jim Joseph Foundation has awarded three grants to Reboot totaling up to $6,547,490 beginning in 2008. The following guest blog from Reboot’s Robin Kramer and Amelia Klein ran originally in eJewishPhilanthropy. 

“Reboot showed me that if community wasn’t there
then the best thing to do was to get up and make it happen.”

This is the sentiment of a Rebooter, a member of the network launched by Reboot, the young nonprofit now just past its bar/bat mitzvah year. Reboot affirms the value of Jewish traditions and creates new ways for people to make them their own, principally through the doors of creative culture. Inspired by Jewish ritual and embracing the arts, humor, food, philosophy, and social justice, Reboot creates highly imaginative projects that spark the interest of young adult Jews and the larger community through live gatherings and events large and intimate, and through exhibitions, recordings, books, films, DIY activity toolkits, and apps – a distinctive blend of digital, analogue and the bridge between.

Reboot recently commissioned Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQRR) to study its impact and effectiveness in creating opportunities for members of the Reboot network to explore their Jewishness and what, if any, changes in their Jewish lives have emerged as a result. Since Reboot’s creation in 2002, the network of Jewish cultural creatives in their late 20s to early 40s, has grown to 480, and who live primarily in the hub communities of LA, SF and NY, with smaller cohorts in DC and London. The network is self-organizing and created via nomination by existing members. A critical point is that a vast majority of the network say they were un or disconnected from Jewish life prior to Reboot. The GQRR research engaged 42% of the network and encompassed an online forum, an opt-in web survey and in-depth interviews.

The results of the GQRR study are instructive, offering lessons for us and other organizations to draw upon. The findings are particularly illuminating, as they run counter to the headline narratives of a spiraling dismal future for Jewish connection and identity among younger generations.

In our view, there is no “secret sauce” here but many transferable notions to draw upon from Reboot’s design – authentic open space methodology, welcoming ways, great questions and low barriers of entry that invite exploration of Jewishness; creative peers and support from amazing teachers, all combined with a hip contemporary sensibility of style, beauty and experimentation, and importantly, a do-it-yourself mindset with support coming over time, not just one time. The emergent big “ah-ha” is at once forward-looking and ancient: that Judaism is malleable, mine to shape and share.

Opening Up Judaism

“Reboot has made me feel as though I can claim the label of Jewish even though I didn’t have a typical Jewish upbringing nor do I live a very Jewish (religious or traditional) life.”

“Reboot puts Judaism in play, makes it active and alive. It presents the same big question, but from dozens of angles a year: What am I going to do with my Jewishness? It asks questions that beg answers. Questions that cannot be ignored. Dozens of times a year, those questions put me in play, and those questions pull me toward interacting with Jewishness.”

The research show that Rebooters feel a greater sense of ownership over their Jewishness, and have a new found confidence around rituals, practice and spirituality. Just over three-quarters (77 percent) said they have a strengthened connection to being Jewish. 92% attach importance to Reboot as a forum to explore Jewishness that fits with their values and lifestyle. The organization’s local programming model encourages members of the network to design and create their own Jewish experiences, fromShabbat dinner gatherings to text study salons to reinterpretation of holidays and rituals. The flexibility in both programming and creative brainstorming opportunities fosters ongoing, open and fluid pathways for exploration and collaboration.

Engaging and Participating in Jewish Life

“The Jewish rituals I know… are largely, my parents’ traditions. The twist Reboot has enabled/inspired in me is the process of figuring out how to make them my own (and, more broadly, that of my generation).”

For many members, being part of Reboot has raised their consciousness of being Jewish and Jewishness, and led them to take a greater interest in Jewish themes (64% in Jewish culture or history, and 61% in Jewish religion or ritual). Nearly half (47%) say they have more Friday night Shabbat dinners and over half (55%) say they are doing more to celebrate Jewish holidays.

Though involvement with Reboot does not, for many, translate into an embrace of conventional Jewish institutions, just under a fifth (19%) have joined a Jewish congregation and 22% have joined other Jewish groups. A quarter have taken a leadership or board position within the Jewish community.

The study offers further impetus about how best to impart Jewish identity and knowledge and to raise a Jewish family. Nearly half (49 percent) of Rebooters with children indicate that they do more to raise their kids Jewish and many asked for further exploration and assistance. One member noted: “One thing Reboot has done for me in this regard is approaching my children’s interaction with Judaism in a different light. I’m thinking about what a Jewish education means in relation to their lives (and how that Jewish education should look) and weighing meaningful experiences differently within that context (the embrace and execution of Jewish values vs. rote Jewish learning, for example).”

Welcome and creativity at the core

Reboot’s program methodology places Rebooters at the center of the design process whereby projects are generated by the network for the network. The emphasis is placed on an invitation to create (or not), on member-generated content rather than a top-down approach. The peer-to-peer learning, creativity, idea generation, incubation and piloting of ideas feeds back to the network in the form of programs, events, gatherings and listserv conversations. These projects and products then are grown to become tools and resources for Reboot’s 700+ community organization partners who utilize the ideas, content and DIY materials to engage their own audiences and constituencies. Hundreds of thousands have now participated in Reboot and such Reboot-inspired programs as the Sabbath Manifesto/National Day of Unplugging, 10Q for the Ten Days of Awe, forSukkot, Six Word Memoirs on Jewish Life, etc. through this inventive process.

The key to “making Jewish my own/our own” starts with creating a welcoming, flexible space to explore Jewishness on the terms of participants, enabling young Jews to take ownership of their Jewish lives and inspiring them to think about their families, careers and communities through a Jewish lens. Simultaneously the project ideas generated by the network are making Judaism relevant and accessible, translating ancient traditions into modern language for current and future generations. The findings from this research are instructive for all who care vibrantly, and optimistically, about the future of Jewish life.

The executive summary of this study is available at: www.rebooters.net/impact. For further inquiry, please contact Graeme Trayner, principal investigator from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research: [email protected], or Amelia Klein: [email protected].

Robin Kramer is Reboot’s executive director; Amelia Klein is Associate Director. 

iCenter for Israel Education

iCenter for Israel Education
Blending superb Israel content with high quality educator development has been the iCenter’s M.O. since its founding. When the iCenter launched the Aleph Bet of Israel Education in 2011, it was the first attempt to introduce common language and principles into the field of Israel education. Representative of the ever-maturing field, the iCenter’s new Aleph Bet 2.0 is a refined and extended version of the original, designed to keep the guiding principles relevant and to advance the conversation about creating the best Israel education experiences.

Every community, every school, every synagogue, and every teacher now has the ability look at their programs, their classes, and their teaching to determine if they offer exceptional Israel education. Are we reaching our goals? Can we share what we’re doing in Israel education with others in a way that is understandable? Suddenly when you have a shared language it becomes much easier to collaborate.
– Michael Emerson, Educator, SAR High School, Cohort 1 member of the MA Concentration in Israel Education

Now, thousands of educators in day schools, at camps, on Birthright buses, and in so many other settings bring Israel to life for their learners. They form a cadre of talented, dynamic individuals who have gained an expertise in Israel education through iCenter initiatives, programs, and partnerships. But without the Aleph Bet—and now the Aleph Bet 2.0—the field’s evolution would have stagnated.

Israel has always been a focal point for us, but over the last few years, Israel has been infused in all the spaces in camp. From the dining hall, to the cabins, to the sports fields, to arts and culture, Israel is all around our campers. The Goodman initiative has been a driving force behind this change, giving us exciting tools and ideas to bring Israel to life at camp.
– Ellen Felcher, director of Camp Pembroke, part of the Goodman Camping Initiative and winner of the inaugural Goodman Prize for Excellence in Israel Education at Camp

Working with partners like Taglit-Birthright Israel, Foundation for Jewish Camp, and universities across the country, the iCenter uniquely taps into the personally meaningful connections to Israel. Whether focusing on Israel’s remarkable history or modern day innovations, the iCenter helps educators and their students go beyond a textbook or lecture.

…when we see students as partners in the educational process, the ability for all of us to learn grows exponentially.  We have learned that Israel Educators must first explore their own personal relationship with Israel and be able to articulate “their Israel story.
– Michael Soberman is a Senior Educational Consultant at the iCenter for Israel Education and the Director of the iFellows Masters Concentration in Israel Education.

featured_grantee_200x300_july2015iCenter opportunities and initiatives continue to grow and expand. Its “Conflict Toolkit” is a sophisticated and nuanced approach to learning, discussing, and understanding Israel in conflict. The Master’s Concentration in Israel Education just launched its 5th cohort and is on its way to certifying 120 educators. And, in December 2015, the iCenter will hosts its second iCamp Conference, bringing together dynamic educators, leaders, and thinkers from across North America and Israel to explore new ideas in Israel education.
 The Jim Joseph Foundation has awarded more than $7,360,500 in grants to the iCenter. For more information on iCenter opportunities—and to pre-register for iCamp 2015—visit www.theiCenter.org.

‘It’s a Girl Thing!’ helping to develop Jewish pride, identity

LA Jewish JournalIt’s a precarious world for Jewish girls — in addition to the angst of adolescence, they are at risk for depression, eating disorders and risky behavior. And Jewish girls, post-bat mitzvah, also often drop out of Jewish life.

But, for 3,500 Jewish girls across North America, a program called “Rosh Hodesh: It’s a Girl Thing!” is helping. An experiential program developed during the past decade, it uses Jewish teachings and practices and offers 11- to 18-year-old girls a place to feel safe, articulate concerns and consider the impact of gender on their daily lives, as well as have fun and be “real” with their peers.

According to a newly released report, celebrated at a panel at The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, Rosh Hodesh is demonstrably impacting how these emerging teens see themselves, through both the lens of gender and Jewish identity.

“We knew there were problems that girls had to deal with,” said Deborah Meyer, executive director of Moving Traditions, the nonprofit that created and oversees the program. “We shouldn’t wait for girls to be in crisis and drop out; we should use Jewish teaching and values to help them develop into healthy young adults and give them a reason to stay connected.”

Currently, Rosh Hodesh groups are running in 26 states; Moving Traditions has regional directors operating in six cities (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles). Groups meet monthly in age cohorts that can last through the end of high school; leaders explore with the girls issues such as body image, friendship, relationships, family, competition and stress.

At the L.A. Federation program, California Director Beth Tigay and Chief of Education and Program Rabbi Daniel Brenner presented the data, gathered from participants, group leaders and community partners, to determine long-term impact. “We were looking for proof of concept, but also to improve the concept, to think about how we might work more effectively,” Meyer said.

“Every group is different,” said Rabbi Yechiel Hoffman, who supervises Moving Tradition programs at Temple Beth Am. “Sometimes it’s ritual-based, sometimes it’s a processing space.” Bette Alkazian, group leader at Temple Adat Elohim, said her aim was to create an environment that was “the antithesis of school.” Shira Landau, speaking as leader of groups for Temple Beth Am and IKAR, noted that the “key component is the space and time to share, to feel like you’re not alone.”

Lyla Birnbaum, a past participant who has just finished her first year of college, credited Rosh Hodesh for developing her leadership skills. And high school junior Frankie Alchanati confessed that her mom had originally forced her to go, but the program was life changing. “I’ve made lifelong friends. It’s my own little ‘Dr. Phil’ show — whatever I need, they’re there for me.”

A group of 450 former Rosh Hodesh participants, with a median age of 18, responded to the survey administered by researchers Tobin Belzer in Los Angeles and Pearl Beck in New York City. Also surveyed were 160 group leaders and 50 professionals from partner organizations, and interviews were conducted with select alumni and professionals. The researchers learned that the program significantly strengthened girls’ self-esteem; empowered them to believe they can become agents of change for themselves, other women and other communities; and encouraged retention post-bat mitzvah.

“This project really crystallized for me how Jewish identity happens,” said Belzer, an applied sociologist of American Jews. “It happens in the articulation of what being Jewish means, so when you provide an opportunity for girls to think together about their Jewishness in the context of their lives and in contrast with their peers, you provide a powerful space for the cultivation of Jewish identity. Rosh Hodesh does this beautifully.”

Additionally, they found that most local participants weren’t aware that they were part of a national network. “The research gives Moving Traditions the opportunity to create a more vibrant national network of Rosh Hodesh participants and alumni,” Belzer said.

Rosh Hodesh has traditionally operated through community partnerships with synagogues, schools and community centers. But, in the fall, Moving Traditions is piloting a community group model in Los Angeles and Denver, aimed at the under-affiliated.

Since Tigay was hired last year, she said, she has “met everyone I can possibly meet in the Jewish community working with teens outside of institutions” to build the community group model. “I’m finding excited parents who may not want institutionalized Judaism or connection to a synagogue, but they do care about their children’s well-being, self-esteem and self-confidence.”

Tigay, an educator, teacher and administrator for 18 years, reported that, as of this year, L.A. proper has 58 Moving Traditions groups — 39 Rosh Hodesh groups and 19 groups of Shevet Achim: The Brotherhood, the Moving Traditions program that engages Jewish boys.

“L.A. is such a rich and robust community,” Tigay said, noting that one of her roles is to see “how we could fit our mission and goals into the needs of the city.”

Moving Traditions is part of the Jewish Teen Program Accelerator, supported through Federation’s Community-Based Jewish Teen Education Initiative, funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation and meant to support dramatic scaling of the region’s most innovative teen education programs. “The accelerator will open opportunities to collaborate with other organizations that we haven’t thought of yet,” said Tigay. “It’s a blast of innovative, creative people looking forward to exploring how to collaborate.”

Sixty percent of group leaders were in active contact with participants even five years after the program had ended, the research showed. “Choosing someone to create a safe space [and] have authentic conversations with teen issues often relating to gender is a critical component,” Meyer said, indicating that future research will explore the group leader’s role as mentor.

Although group leaders often are educators and teachers, Tigay said, social workers, lawyers, chefs, doctors, artists and actors also serve in this role. “Even though they’re not ‘in the business of teens,’ they want to help reach the teens. And it’s the adult in the room who can make or break it.

“I wish I had this as a teen,” said Tigay, who has two daughters. “It’s a gift to know that I’m doing something in an organization I love that’s making a difference.”

Download of report is here.

Source: “‘It’s a Girl Thing!’ helping to develop Jewish pride, identity,” June 3, 2015, Jewish Journal of Los Angeles

A 5-Point Plan to Build Your Local Engager Network

Since 2012, we have witnessed the growth of local networks for Jewish engagement professionals – “engagers” who are responsible for Jewish millennial engagement and programming – in cities across the country, including Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Philadelphia, and more. These networks serve as local engager hubs, complementing a national network such as the NEXTwork. They also uniquely further engagement efforts by:

  • Increasing trust, mutual respect, and transparency among local engagers;
  • Accelerating knowledge, skill-sharing, collaborations, and connectional intelligence – a term coined by business/leadership consultants Erica Dhawan and Saj-nicole Joni that emphasizes “driving innovation and breakthrough results by harnessing the power of [our] relationships and networks”;
  • Diving deep into the nuances and needs of Jewish millennials and engagement issues; and
  • Serving as local platforms for professional development and peer mentoring and support.
NEXTwork

For engagers – most of whom are millennials – working connected “to get things done and develop creative solutions to challenges” is a natural concept that supersedes any organizational politics and related barriers to collegial partnerships and collaboration. In successful local networks, we’ve seen engagers and their organizations move past perceived differences, and into mutual respect, trust and openness, leading to the creation of new, innovative engagement strategies and programs. After some time, we’ve seen these outcomes lead engagers – and their communities as a whole – to better engage young Jews by building more integrated and cooperative landscapes.

We realize others may seek to create networks in their own communities, so, from our experiences, here are the key steps to get a local engager network off the ground:

Step 1: Determine if you are well-positioned to convene a network. A well-positioned organization and leader needs to convene the network. This means an organization with a solid grasp on the local Jewish landscape, strong collegial connections, and the bandwidth to coordinate the group. We’ve seen JCCs, Hillels, Federations, and others take on the convenor role in different communities. It’s a great opportunity to collaborate!

Step 2: Create a list of local professional engagers and meet with them individually. If you already meet and communicate regularly with fellow engagers, that is a good start. If not, now is the time to open those lines of communication, which will help you understand their specific interests and needs. Practice active listening in these conversations: find out what each person wants to achieve, what they value, and what frustrates them. In order to create a supportive network, you’ll first need to deeply understand the needs of the local landscape.

Step 3: Meet up! Convene the group to increase everyone’s understanding of the local landscape and to establish a shared purpose for the network. This meeting should be led by you or another strong facilitator in your community. Elise Peizner, Director ofJconnect in Seattle, told us that having a “third-party facilitator [NEXT] helped level the playing field – it made people feel equal which was an important goal for us.” Regardless of who facilitates, be sure to:

  • Communicate the meeting’s purpose in advance.
  • Use safe space guidelines to encourage open conversation among participants.
  • Start with a relationship-building activity to establish new professional relationships and strengthen existing ones.
  • Map out the community, identifying areas of both engagement saturation (overserved geographic and/or program areas) and opportunity (underserved areas).
  • Determine meeting frequency, duration, and focus through consensus, to set expectations and keep the group focused moving forward.

Step 4: Define priorities. Let the network’s shared purpose and core values, which should be discussed and agreed upon in a subsequent meeting, be your “true north.” Evaluate the network’s effectiveness in responding to engager needs periodically through individual and whole-group check-ins and surveys. Be sure to capture and track this data, as it tells the network’s growing story and can highlight successes and where additional progress is needed.

Step 5: Continue cultivating relationships. Utilize your individual check-ins as a method to monitor participants’ feelings on their involvement (is it meeting their needs?) and continue building the participant list (who else should be at the table?).

As your network continues to meet, additional needs and questions will emerge (such as, “can we create a forum for our volunteer leaders?”) and your role as network convenor will continue to evolve. But these steps build the foundation for strong networks in which new communication lines between organizations have opened, deeper collaborative relationships have blossomed, and most importantly, young Jews find it easier to navigate the Jewish life landscape and get involved!

If you run a local engager network, what advice would you give to a new network convenor? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Adam Pollack is the Senior Western Regional Director at NEXT: A Division of Birthright Israel Foundation and can be reached at [email protected]. Dan Fast is the outgoing Senior Northeast Regional Director at NEXT and can be reached at [email protected].

 

Taglit Fellows Now Accepting Applications For Cohort 3

Jewish Scene Magazine   Professional development program trains exceptional staff for Taglit-Birthright Israel trips

Taglit-Birthright Israel opened registration earlier this week for Cohort 3 of Taglit Fellows, the professional development program launched in 2014 in partnership with the iCenter for Israel Education as an educational intensive for exceptional Jewish leaders and aspiring Jewish educators looking to staff Taglit-Birthright Israel trips. The first two cohorts were comprised of nearly 200 Fellows who were selected from over 1,000 applicants. The program will welcome in another group of highly motivated and talented individuals to increase the quality of the Taglit-Birthright Israel experience and to play significant roles in the ongoing Jewish journeys of young adults. Registration is at www.taglitfellows.com and is open through May 15, 2015.

“We are excited to build on the successful Taglit Fellows model and the great momentum of cohorts 1 and 2,” said Anne Lanski, Executive Director of the iCenter. “Through the program, Fellows gain new skills that help them leave a lasting impact on Birthright Israel participants and on Jewish youth in their home communities. Now a new cohort will learn directly with leading Israel and Jewish educators to create meaningful Israel experiences that help young Jews develop personal connections to the country and people.”

The Taglit Fellows program includes a four-day in-person seminar of interactive trainings and in-depth conversations with master Israel educators focusing on a range of areas, including how effective storytelling is a tool for education and engagement; how to create ritual moments with personal meaning; and what experiential education might look like at a range of sites in Israel. In addition to the seminar, Fellows engage in online learning and workshops in experiential Jewish education, and over time, form a close network of peers.

Naomi Karp, Director of Student Life at UCLA Hillel and a member of Cohort 2, reflected on her training seminar from earlier this year: “Not only did the Taglit Fellows seminar give me a number of new tools and activities to use when staffing future trips, it also provided me with an incredible community of 100 other Fellows. It was inspiring to learn from the experience of the facilitators and my peers, and I feel empowered with the responsibility of creating more intentional and meaningful experiences for Taglit-Birthright Israel participants rooted in Jewish content and Israel education.”

The program, funded by the Maimonides Fund, accepts 100 participants aged 22 and above every six months, with the majority of Fellows either professionally or personally serving as leaders, educators, and connectors in their Jewish communities. The first Fellows staffed Winter 2014/2015 trips, and Cohort 2 Fellows will begin staffing this summer.

“The bottom line is that the strength of the educational staff is a key factor that influences the quality of the trip,” says Taglit-Birthright Israel CEO Gidi Mark. “So we want to continue to raise that quality with more Fellows who are trained to impact the Taglit-Birthright Israel experience.”

Taglit-Birthright Israel has sent close to 500,000 young Jewish adults to Israel from more than 66 countries and from all 50 U.S. states, including students from nearly 1,000 North American college campuses accompanied by more than 70,000 Israelis.

Taglit Fellows enhances both Taglit-Birthright Israel experiences as well as the broader field of Israel and Jewish education by cultivating emerging Jewish professionals as role models and educators. Taglit-Birthright Israel has a unique, historical and innovative partnership with the Government of Israel, thousands of individual donors and private philanthropists, and Jewish communities around the world through Jewish Federations of North America, Keren Hayesod and the Jewish Agency of Israel. Visit taglitfellows.com and follow #TaglitFellows for more information.

Source: “Taglit Fellows Now Accepting Applications for Cohort 3,” Jewish Scene Magazine, April 16, 2015