CASJE Now Conducting National Jewish Educator Census

A second round of the National Jewish Educator Census conducted by CASJE at George Washington University is an opportunity to learn more about the size of and changes to the Jewish education workforce in 2021, collect more demographic data about Jewish educators, and refine the research team’s methods and estimates.

If your Jewish educational organization was not included in the 2020 Census please complete this Contact Information Form.

Results from the first year of the census provides an estimate of the number of Jewish educators across multiple sectors of American Jewish life, changes to the workforce due to Covid 19, and other information that will help leaders and stakeholders in Jewish education understand the state of the field as they prepare for a post-Covid world.

The CASJE Census is the first extensive data collection of its kind, and we took it out of the ivy tower into the real world. We created enthusiasm and recruited participation during a very strenuous time for everyone. Even during the pandemic, we partnered with many Jewish educator sectors and affiliations who understood the importance of collecting these data. Now, we know more about the size of the field and the changes that occurred during the pandemic. We look forward to learning more in the 2021 round of the CASJE Census and using the data to inform the field. – Dr. Ariela Greenberg, founder of The Greenberg Team and lead researcher for the Census

CASJE (Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education) is an evolving community of researchers, practitioners, and philanthropic leaders dedicated to improving the quality of knowledge that can be used to guide the work of Jewish Education. The Census is part of the CASJE Career Trajectories Study, a multi-year, national research effort addressing the recruitment, retention, and development of educators working in Jewish settings in North America. Ensuring that a strong and high-quality pipeline of educators exists is one of CASJE’s primary objectives.

Census Year 1 Key Findings:

In the early months of the Covid pandemic (March – September 2020) the overall size of the Jewish education workforce shrank. In this period, layoffs affected up to 11% of all roles; furloughs affected up to 9% of all roles. We estimate that the largest numbers of layoffs and furloughs were in camping and the Jewish early childhood workforce.

 

  • In the Jewish community in 2019, as many as 71,000 Jewish educators filled over 93,000 educational positions.
  • In the Jewish community in 2019, we estimate there were 28,483 full-time roles; 26,681 part-time roles; 38,624 seasonal roles
  • Camps, day schools and yeshivas, supplementary schools, and early childhood programs had the most positions for Jewish educators, including full-time, part-time and seasonal positions in 2019.
  • Day schools and yeshivas offered the most full-time positions for Jewish educators, followed by early childhood, camp and supplementary schools in 2019.

The success of Jewish educational programs depends, in large part, on the expertise, talent, and professionalism of the Jewish education workforce. Our field needs to know who Jewish educators are and what they need to succeed in their work. Then, organizations will be able to design training and support programs to help educators effectively and meaningfully engage with their learners. – Dr. Arielle Levites, managing director of CASJE.

CASJE’s multi-year research project examining the career trajectories of Jewish educators is generously funded by the William Davidson Foundation and Jim Joseph Foundation.

The SVARA Teaching Kollel: Constructing a “Place” of Learning, Teaching, and Transformation

The words in the image on the left—among them “community,” “supportive,” “Talmud,” “queer,” “learning,” “teaching,” and “practice”—are a distillation of SVARA’s Teaching Kollel, a two-year, cohort-based learning and teacher training fellowship. The word cloud was created by SVARA, which asked the Teaching Fellows to share their hopes and expectations for the Kollel experience and the community they would build together. At the center is “place”—not really itself a descriptor of the Kollel, but rather a container for the evocative concepts that surround it in the word cloud and follow it in the text that generated the graphic. As they shared with each other, Fellows wish the Kollel to be:

  • A place to experiment
  • A place to have fun
  • A place to build skills and confidence
  • A place of growth and stretch
  • A place to be held in learning
  • A place of reciprocity
  • A place of friendship
  • A place where I (we) can frolic in text
  • A place to develop long term relationships with colleagues
  • A place of deep curiosity and co-nerding
  • A place where each of us can bring questions, doubts, challenges to think about together
  • A place to support each other in cultivating/practicing liberatory pedagogy and support/hold one another accountable in that practice
  • A place where each of us can show up as exactly who we are, and that will be enough

There is a particular poignancy in the prominence of “place” in these aspirations given that, like nearly all such programs, the Teaching Kollel became entirely virtual with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. While SVARA did offer some pre-pandemic online programming, one of the unique impacts of its signature programs has long been the opportunity for participants to gather together with so many queer co-learners, often for the first time ever, and the joyous energy that created. This cohort of the Teaching Kollel experienced this in their Year One retreat and anticipated the same for Year Two. Having this opportunity taken away so unexpectedly was a profound disruption and disappointment.

In 2018, SVARA received funding along with nine other educator training programs from the Jim Joseph Foundation to create professional development opportunities. As part of the evaluation work for the initiative, Rosov Consulting is producing a series of case studies of the peak moments–some form of intensive, residential, or retreat component–of each program. This case study explores the aspirations and goals of SVARA’s Teaching Kollel, a two-year, cohort-based learning and teaching fellowship.

“The SVARA Teaching Kollel: Constructing a ‘Place’ of Learning, Teaching, and Transformation,” Rosov Consulting, June 2021

Learning with Maharat: A Series on Insights from Leaders in the Field

As a Foundation that wants to always learn—one of our internal values is Hitlamdoot—we need to hear directly from leaders and practitioners in the field. Particularly at this moment, understanding what these individuals are experiencing, thinking, doing, and planning is integral to building our team’s knowledge base about the many subfields that makeup the broader world of Jewish education and engagement.

In this vein, representatives from different grantee-partners are speaking with the Foundation each month in Learning Sessions. While initially we planned for these sessions to be entirely internal, the insights and perspectives we are hearing from grantee-partners will be interesting and informative for others as well. We continue to approach our work with Kavanah, intention, to always elevate the efforts of others who help us pursue our mission. And we look forward to sharing brief recaps of each Learning Session. Read previous recaps on learning sessions with Daniel Septimus, CEO of Sefaria, Deborah Meyer, founder and CEO, and Rabbi Tamara Cohen, VP of Program Strategy, Moving Traditions,  Sarah Levin, CEO of JIMENA  Rabbi Benjamin Berger, Vice President of Jewish Education, Hillel International, and Mike Wise and Avi Rubel, Co-CEOs of Honeymoon Israel.

Learning Session Guest: Rabba Sara Hurwitz , Co-Founder and President of Maharat

Introduction
Rabba Sara Hurwitz is Co-Founder and President of Maharat, the first institution to ordain Orthodox women as clergy, and she is the first orthodox woman ordained as a Rabba.  She has received numerous awards and recognition for her knowledge, leadership, and vision.

Maharat’s mission is to educate, ordain, and invest in passionate and committed orthodox women who model a dynamic Judaism to inspire and support individuals and communities.

The ordination of orthodox women is imperative to changing the conversation about women and women’s power. The unique value female clergy bring to the table is the same unique value female CEOs, producers, senators, mayors, and governors bring to the table.  They force an overdue shift in our communal norms and standards.  A female rabbinic presence can change the conversation around numerous intimate subjects such as sexuality and fertility; issues of Jewish law such as mourning and Shabbat and even difficult topics surrounding divorce.  Moreover, the ordination of women is a step towards ending gender inequality in a community where the greatest power, pay and prestige is reserved for rabbis. – Rabba Sara Hurwitz

From Small Beginnings to Major Impact
Maharat opened in 2009 with just three students, two employees and a $100,000 budget. Today Maharat has 36 students, 19 employees, and a $2.6 million budget. In just 12 years, Maharat has graduated 49 women who are serving as clergy across the Jewish community in synagogues, schools, hospitals, universities, and Jewish communal institutions.

Rabba Sara shared her thoughts on what it means to be an orthodox rabbinic leader today and how Maharat plays a central role in the Jewish education landscape:

So much has changed in just 12 years. I think that I can mark my journey by the reaction of the orthodox community and the community at large. When I was first ordained there was actually very little pushback. It wasn’t until the change in nomenclature, the change in title, that sparked a lot of controversy in 2010. That was very lonely, except outside of the orthodox movement I felt a lot of support and excitement, because the time had come. But within the orthodox movement beyond my own community there was a lot of skepticism and pushback.

Growth and Culture Change
Rabba Sara believes the next flashpoint was after the first class of Maharat students graduated and people were waiting and watching to see what would happen. All graduates found jobs, which of course was cause for celebration but also caused the next round of pushback in the orthodox community. Still, by this time sentiments had begun to change and Rabba Sara says it was not as lonely as in 2009 and 2010 when she was ordained.

She also found genuine support at this time. Others began explaining the importance of having a woman’s voice as part of the fabric of their community. Since then, two or three other times there has been a “bubbling up” in the orthodox community questioning whether women can serve as clergy, she said, and each time it feels less and less relevant.

There are always going to be detractors in communities and in the world, she says. What is important to Rabba Sara is to have a base ofMaharat rabba support. Maharat asks their program interviewees about their support network because “to do this work you have to have a good support network.” Why?  Change is hard. Maharat’s strategy is simply “feet on the ground”—having women occupy positions of leadership to show and prove what they can do.

Rabba Sara believes that even if everyone in the orthodox community does not accept women as part of their clergy team or leader, it is clear that nobody is going backwards:

We’re only going forward.  The amount of support and change in our community is beyond my imagination.  Even in the right wing of the orthodox community, women are searching and seeking for more professional roles and titles within the Jewish community.  I think that has a lot to do with Maharat — even if not all those women are part of Maharat’s academic curriculum.

The Impact of Maharat Beyond Gender
Women’s voices are necessary and important, as is being able to interpret text through the lens of our experiences. That is the gender piece of what we’re offering, she says.

Maharat students studyingBeyond gender, Maharat is trying to open up Jewish culture—by giving women access to authority, to being teachers, and to being authorities on rabbinic texts.  She highlights that they are sending the message that leadership—the structure and power of dynamic leadership—should be more decentralized with more voices:

We are interested in trying to present a Judaism that meets people where they’re at, that is really relevant to 21st century Jews wherever they are.

Maharat students are successful chaplains in hospitals, teachers in schools, and have congregational pulpits; some have started their own communities and some are becoming rabbis in small communities. There are now 49 women out in the field impacting the thousands and thousands of people who they reach and engage.

Maharat’s Vision for the Future
Rabba Sara envisions a future where women as leaders in the orthodox community is normative. As rabbinic leaders of diverse and vibrant communities, it’s important for alumni not only to focus and elevate issues and areas that are important to women without apology but also to ground their expertise in issues and areas that are important for everyone.

Maharat is excited to launch its strategic plan, with a focus on:

  • Leaning in and focusing more on excellence and innovation to ensure Maharat graduates consistently meet the needs of the community.
  • Empowering new audiences with a focus on:
    • Their pipeline to give access to younger audiences.
    • Platforms in which alumnae are working. By supporting alumnae, they are also building their new audiences.
    • Investment in lay leadership, professionals, and educators, which began more intently this year through the Foundation supported “Mind the Gap” project. To build on that success, Maharat wants to develop fellowships and leadership workshops focused on specific cohorts, such as female heads of school or chaplains, offering them support along with skills, leadership training, and a place to be with like-minded individuals.
  • Helping graduates create innovative projects and launch more programs about how tradition is dynamic and translates into dynamic world.
  • Leveraging what it means to be a global Yeshiva. Maharat’s offerings and programs support Maharat alumni globally, in Israel, France, South Africa, Australia, and beyond.

Maharat’s trailblazing history now blends with a growing alumni network of like-minded people who support each other and their fellow graduates. Because of Maharat, every time a graduate goes into a new community they have to “blaze the trail” – but they no longer do it alone.

Visit Maharat.org to learn more.

 

 

 

 

New Research on High Holiday Participation Illuminates Critical Themes for Future Design

Jewish communities are constantly changing, and in the U.S. we have had a few decades of creative entrepreneurship to build on during the pandemic.

Among the many ways that the pandemic profoundly changed Jewish engagement, the High Holidays of 2020 stands out as a particularly fascinating case study. It was a kind of controlled experiment; essentially no one was able to celebrate or observe the holidays in the ways they were used to, so everyone was doing something different than usual. Institutions of all kinds innovated to adapt to the restrictions, and new ways of engaging emerged and spread more broadly than could have been previously imagined.

In an effort to understand the ways in which people’s engagement with the High Holidays changed during this past year, and what it might reveal about Jewish engagement more broadly, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Jim Joseph Foundation and Aviv Foundation funded research through the Jewish Community Response and Impact Fund (JCRIF) to illuminate new patterns of participation and motivations. In the winter of 2020-2021, Benenson Strategy Group surveyed 1,414 American Jews nationwide about their experiences of the High Holidays and the ways that those experiences compared to previous years. The research explored not only what people did in 2020, but also compared it to what they had been doing before and explored what they might do in the future. The results provide important insights that have meaningful design implications not only for the upcoming High Holidays, but also for engagement efforts much more broadly.

Infrequent vs. Regular High Holiday Observers 

One of the most interesting findings focuses on those who are less consistent or comprehensive in their participation in a typical year (for example, participating sporadically or only in one of the holidays). This group, Infrequent High Holidays Observers, clearly have interest in participating in the High Holidays, but choose to not participate some of the time. This year, not only did they participate at high rates, they also had markedly different patterns of participation and motivations when compared to Regular Observers, who generally participate in both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (and who this year largely tried to get as close as possible to “normal”). We want to highlight the findings about the Infrequent Observers as they have important implications beyond the pandemic.  (A link to the full research report is available below.)

Remarkably, approximately half of the Infrequent Observers participated in High Holidays this year, when it would have been very easy to opt out. Furthermore, they were more likely than Regular Observers to report sharing their High Holidays experiences with others in their lives, more likely to be considering new ways to engage in the future, and they are looking differently at what Jewishness means to them. There are three major lessons from these positive experiences that can serve as building blocks as we plan for the future:

  1. Lowering Real and Perceived Barriers to Entry. A large segment of Infrequent Observers (47%) reported that “it was easy and straightforward” as a major motivation for participating this past year, more than any other single reason. By dissolving real and perceived barriers to participation, those who were previously opting out of the High Holidays some of the time leaned in this year. It behooves us to understand what people really mean by “easy and straightforward.” For example: less social anxiety or insecurity about Jewish or Hebrew knowledge, less intimidation about hours of commitment sitting in a pew, no stress about managing fidgety kids, and/or less confusion about if or how to include a partner who isn’t Jewish. Yes, cost and geography also fell away this year, but so did many other factors that have been getting in the way for many people. These lessons can be front of mind even as we design for in-person or hybrid experiences. When these real and perceived barriers fell to (almost) zero, those who are sometimes hesitant to commit their time and attention leaned in.
  1. Relationships were a major motivator for the Infrequent Observers, with 42% citing recommendations from friends or family members and 41% citing the desire to connect with “other people like me” as key reasons for participation. It was through relationships that Infrequent Observers found unprecedented access to high-quality experiences, a plethora of niche ways to participate that they may not have known about or had access to, and the ability to authentically celebrate with non-local family and friends. Not only did they learn about opportunities from friends and family, they were also more likely than Regular Observers to share their experiences afterward: 35% of them reported that they told someone in their life about their High Holidays experiences and 25% posted on social media about their experiences, creating a virtuous cycle to engage more of their networks in additional High Holiday programming. Those designing for future High Holidays may want to consider inviting their participants to extend invitations to their friends and family to catalyze even more of this peer-to-peer engagement.
  1. A Diverse Marketplace of Options. Infrequent Observers sought out a wide variety of ways to participate in the High Holidays, ranging from traditional rituals and services to mindfulness practice, volunteer or philanthropic activities, and informal celebrations with loved ones. Over 75% reported that they’d consider doing some or all of the experiences they did this year again, and 78% reported that they would consider or definitely try new ways to observe Jewish holidays in the future. These surprisingly high numbers indicate that the new levels of accessibility and exposure to creative options for engaging with the holidays supported positive, meaningful experiences that will continue to pay dividends for participants, their families and friends in the future.

Implications for Design

Because these past High Holidays required nearly everyone to reengineer their experiences, they offered a controlled experiment to test new attributes of design and accessibility. Many of the insights this data offers are not radically new. Rather, the data validates theories and design criteria that have been widely known in other fields for years, confirming that these design principles are important for Jewish leaders and educators too. These include:

  1. People are looking for a “just right fit,” not a “one size fits all” approach. The wide range of accessible, specific options, spread via recommendations through personal networks, helped people discover the plethora of interesting, nuanced programming and communities available across the Jewish world. People could be more confident and motivated to lean into these experiences, recommend them to others, and come back for more. There was no specific modality that was universally more attractive than any other. Depending on the individual, an ideal experience might have been a highly-produced event or a very intimate gathering, a group to meditate with, or a Rosh Hashanah cooking class (i.e. we couldn’t rely on the family brisket this year, but we could learn to make it ourselves).
  1. The “just right fit” is as much about the people as the content. Marketing expert Seth Godin says the bottom line of belonging is being able to say, “people like us do things like this.” Peer-to-peer recommendations and opportunities that are specific enough for a casual seeker to think “Ah! That’s where I belong!” can draw in those who are “looking for their people,” whether they slice that by life stage, creative ritual or specific areas of interest. This year, people who “found their people” actively recommended experiences and communities to others, and we saw many Infrequent Observers in turn share their experiences, too. Designing for “fit” matters.
  1. This year participants felt there was a diversity of valid ways to mark the holidays, beyond sitting in an hours-long service. The recent Pew data reinforces this, noting the diverse ways people engage in being Jewish (55% of those who don’t attend services often said it’s because they express their Jewishness in other ways, and of those, 77% engage through Jewish food, 74% by sharing Jewish culture or holidays with non-Jewish friends). Whereas in the past some Infrequent Observers may have perceived a binary choice (go to services or do nothing), this year they leaned into a wide range of options.

Embracing Productive Disruption

Nearly every industry in our economy has faced major disruption in the past few decades. While Encyclopedia Britannica was the gold standard of knowledge management for hundreds of years, the Wikipedia model disrupted it in the blink of an eye. Disruption is often a catalyst for a kind of systemic change that is hard to adopt voluntarily when you believe that the status quo is acceptable.

Jewish communities are constantly changing, and in the U.S. we have had a few decades of creative entrepreneurship to build on during the pandemic. But the pandemic affected everyone: it was a disruption that forced us all to design differently. In doing so, we were able to test theories and learn from the data. Now our challenge is to integrate these bold lessons into our future design, rather than returning passively to the comfortable (but not optimized) status quo. Listening empathetically and attentively to the feelings, attitudes, motivations and behaviors of Infrequent Observers will help us design effectively for greater engagement in the future.

It is hugely encouraging that half of those who haven’t been regularly participating in High Holidays are in fact seeking meaningful, well-calibrated experiences. It’s even more exciting that the vast majority of those who did participate this year want to do more, and that they are recommending their experiences to their friends. Many of these insights are also likely to apply to a subset of Regular Observers who may have the activation energy to participate every year, but for whom their experiences aren’t as positive. Let’s use this opportunity to build on this positive feedback loop.

These insights about Infrequent Observers are just one of many lessons that can be gleaned from this research effort. Curious to dive in further to the data report? The research is available at Collecting These Times: American Jewish experiences of the Pandemic.

Lisa Colton is the president of Darim Online, and a consultant working on this research and its implications. Tobin Marcus is a senior vice president at Benenson Strategy Group, which conducted the research. Felicia Herman is the director of the JCRIF Aligned Grant Program. 

Source: eJewish Philanthropy

Collecting These Times Seeks Materials to Document Jewish Experiences of the Pandemic

As the Jewish community and the country begins to reenter life, a new web portal is dedicated to gathering and preserving materials related to Jewish life during the pandemic. The interactive website, Collecting These Times: American Jewish Experiences of the Pandemic (CollectingTheseTimes.org), was developed by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) at George Mason University in partnership with the Council of American Jewish Museums.

The Center asks individuals and organizations to share photographs, videos, documents, and memories about Jewish life from the last year and a half so that these materials can be collected and preserved.

Share your materials HERE.

Jewish community

During the pandemic, many communities drastically changed the ways in which they experienced and offered Jewish life—how they celebrated, gathered communally, prayed, and mourned. Today’s digital age poses unique challenges. On the one hand, a Tweet might circulate long after its author has disavowed it. On the other hand, media files and webpages are ephemeral. Much of this material will be lost if a record of it is not retained.

Collecting These Times offers an easy way for people to find collecting projects and upload images, videos, audio recordings, documents, and oral histories to be preserved by institutions in different parts of the U.S. Users can also browse curated contributions from different Jewish communities, covering everything from Jewish ritual practices to schools, summer camps, businesses, and many other aspects of Jewish life during Covid. Communities and individuals can participate in a variety of ways:

  • Migrate any institutional media (e.g., digital sermons, congregational bulletins, photographs) that illustrate your community’s response to and experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Rosenzweig Center has a 27-year track record of preserving digital materials for the long term.
  • Share the portal with other people and communities. Individuals and families can contribute photographs, narratives, videos, audio recordings, documents, newsletters, Tik Toks—almost anything.
  • Possibilities of what to share include communal and individual responses to social needs and injustices; stories of grief, loss, and hope; adaptation to new circumstances; regathering; reopenings, and vaccination drives.

We have much to learn about how individuals, families, and communities used creativity and tenacity to reimagine so many Jewish experiences during the pandemic, and we hope that the Collecting These Times site will be an educational resource both now and in the future. Future Jewish community researchers and leaders will be able to view these collections and learn about the rapid transformation of Jewish life during this time. We hope that the collections will continue to grow as more people contribute content and tell their stories.
– Jessica Mack of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University

Efforts to elevate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are integral to this project. Its organizers seek to engage communities that are less often included in this type of collecting and interpretation, lending valuable insights into a diverse range of Jewish pandemic experiences. The project partners will be working with DEI consultants and an advisory board to approach this work with an inclusive lens and strategy.

To learn more about the project, visit collectingthesetimes.org or email [email protected].

Collecting These Times is supported by Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Jim Joseph Foundation, Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, and The Russell Berrie Foundation.

Mentoring towards growth

Questions are the mentor’s super-tool

In the first act of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1.3.84 Folger), Polonius sends his son, Laertes off to school with a quick rat-tat-tat of paternal advice on fashion, finances and interpersonal relationships. He ends his loving speech with a mentoring doozy, “This above all: to thine own self be true.”

In the first book of the Torah, after Adam and Eve disobey God by eating the fruit of Good and Evil and hide in the Garden of Eden, God seeks them out with this powerful mentoring question, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9)

Polonius’ great wisdom was that one’s own guidance has to come from within – he could give his son advice but, in the end, Laertes’ own life’s compass is found in his own natural resourcefulness. The same is true with God’s powerful question to Adam and Eve: Medieval commentator Rashi writes, “God knew where Adam and Eve were, but God asked this question in order to open up a conversation,” (Rashi on Genesis 3:9). God wanted Adam and Eve to answer the question for themselves.

Being a great mentee starts with the premise that with enough reflection and remaining true to ourselves, which is far more easily said than done, we each will be able to locate ourselves in this world. Being a great mentor means serving as the guiding hand that supports a growth-based relationship, based not in fixing problems, but rather in opening up conversations. By “opening up the conversation,” mentees are invited to see where they are (point A) and imagine where they want to be (point B). Mentors help mentees get from point A (as defined by the mentee) to Point B (also defined by the mentee), often by helping mentees gain a broader perspective on themselves and their situation.

The Wexner Graduate Fellowship/Davidson Scholars Alumni Mentoring Program (created in partnership with the Jim Joseph Foundation) matches Jewish professionals with mentors for a year-long process to support their ongoing professional and personal growth. The mentoring relationship’s positive impact on both mentees and mentors is significant and serves as an important strategy for improving professionals’ leadership skills.

Now in its eighth year, we have gleaned some wisdom about the importance of Jewish professionals being true to themselves and knowing where they are at (and where they want to be) that we would like to briefly sample here.

For Mentees: Maintain a Growth Mindset 

Your mentoring experience will be helpful to you only if you really want to grow. Your mentor may give you pro tips along the way, but it is your job to use your mentor as a catalyst for your own reflection, growth and change. You are the one that needs to do the work. You need to come to each session prepared with an agenda and to ask for what you need – some days it will be gentle support and other days you will need constructive feedback. Sometimes your growth will entail facing some difficult truths about yourself as a professional. That’s okay – this work is hard and often woven into our souls. A mentor believes in the mentee’s inherent creativity and resourcefulness while encouraging them to go deeper and further in their leadership. Zen master Shunryu Suzuki says, “you…are perfect the way you are … and you can use a little improvement.” Singer/Songwriter of Jewish songs Dan Nichols uses this idea as commentary on the blessing for the body when he sings: “I’m perfect the way I am and a little broken too.” As an engaged mentee, you are responsible for your growth and improvement.

Since mentoring is about growth and change, it’s natural for you to use conversations with your mentor as a place to share frustrations and challenges. While having your mentor’s compassionate ear is a wonderful thing, to make the most of mentoring you really want to find pathways to action. When you find yourself complaining, Rae Ringel (co-creator of this mentoring program) suggests remembering that underneath every complaint is an unmade request. That is to say, when you are feeling disgruntled, instead of wallowing in the kvetch, work with your mentor to identify a clear, time-bound request that you can make. It will help you get what you want (or understand why you can’t) and allow your mentor to help you deepen your learning and forward your action. Focusing on requests, rather than complaints, will allow you to discover opportunities where you might previously have only seen challenges.

For Mentors: Prioritize being, doing and asking

For a satisfying and successful career, Cindy Chazan (the other co-creator of this mentoring program) recommends to Jewish professionals to “swap your to-do list with your to-be list.” This advice is not only beneficial for your mentee’s growth, but in your growth as a mentor. While your mentee is seeking you out (in part) due to your professional accomplishments, the success of the relationship will ultimately depend on how you show up and model that to your mentee. Strive to authentically and candidly model how you have been true to yourself, with all of the requisite difficult choices that has entailed, over the course of your career. This means sharing your accomplishments and your missteps, and what you learned from both. Your mentee will be impressed with your achievements but will be impacted by how you show up: with intention, candor and compassion.

On the other hand, just as leadership is an activity and not a position, mentoring is also an activity – it is about what you do with who you are. Sometimes people say that they had a mentor, but it wasn’t someone with whom they had an actual relationship that fostered growth. Instead, it was someone they admired, or looked to as a role model. When we think about mentoring as an activity, we focus on the verbs, not the nouns. That means that to mentor well, you don’t have to be an expert or a role model 100 percent of the time. But you do need to be real and intentional. The actions you take – the questions you ask, the listening you do, the new perspective you offer – are what make you a mentor.

Questions are the mentor’s super-tool, but it’s not because of the information mentors get from the answers. The questions’ power resides in the transformation, clarity or commitment that the mentee experiences when considering and answering the question; it’s not about what you (the mentor) need to know, but about what the mentee needs to learn. Coaching pioneer Henry Kimsey-House writes, “Powerful questions invite introspection, present additional solutions, and lead to greater creativity and insight.” Asking powerful questions requires deep listening and gives rise to new perspectives for the mentee – and honors their unique ability to be resourceful and creative.

Both Shakespeare and God really know how to turn a phrase. In just six words (“To thine own self be true,”) Polonius modeled the core of mentoring. God bested Shakespeare by doing it in only three words! (And only one word in Hebrew – “Ayekah?”). In “Where are you?” God asks a powerful question that undergirds Shakespeare’s advice. By asking this question, God opens an eternal mentoring conversation – one that can inspire any mentoring relationship that we are lucky to be part of.

Dr. Michelle Lynn-Sachs is a leadership coach and organizational consultant with the practice she founded, Spotlight Consulting & Coaching, and she is chair of the Wexner Field Fellows and a co-coordinator of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship/Davidson Scholars Program Alumni Mentoring Program.

Or Mars is a vice president of The Wexner Foundation and a co-coordinator of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship/Davidson Scholars Program Alumni Mentoring Program.

Source: eJewish Philanthropy

Walking the Tightrope of Work and Play: Insights on Designing Professional Development Experiences

When’s the last time you played, not simply to recover from your work, but to enhance your work? When we think of work and play, we often see them as two distinctive and opposite sides of a spectrum. How can we bring work and play closer together and why is it important to do this in the context of training educators?

This was one of the questions that ten Jewish organizations, including M2: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education, explored during a three-year community of practice called the Professional Development Initiative (PDI). Facilitated by Rosov Consulting with support from the Jim Joseph Foundation, the PDI uncovered core principles for design that led to powerful professional development for Jewish educators across diverse initiatives and audiences.

In the culminating report that tracked ten professional development initiatives, five dichotomies emerged that are worth considering when designing any cohort learning experience: aiming to provide utility and ultimate meaning, focusing on personal growth and professional belonging, fostering diversity and commonality, offering space and structure, and emphasizing work and play. All ten aims are desirable, but many are in opposition with another. The imagery that comes to mind is a seesaw – each side of the spectrum is polarized, and favoring one is at the direct expense of the other.

Signature Frameworks for PD: Insights from Our Work

 

Of the ten considerations, that last word – “play” – stuck out the most for me. Play can be an unstructured period of down time that offers relief from an intense experience. It can also be more structured, aiming to enrich social opportunities in order to foster a solid group dynamic. Alternatively, it can supplement the central focus of a program in the form of recreation, such as morning yoga or a game night. If work has gone on too long or has become too intense, or if foundations need to be laid for work that is yet to come, the seesaw imagery comes back to mind. Prioritize play now, so we can prioritize work in the future.

M2 stands for Malechet Machshevet – a deliberate craft. We try to live up to our name in how we craft educational experiences, and one of our guiding principles is to make the work engaging. To best explore values, ideas, and content, we immerse leaders in experiences that offer space for them to actively play with those values, ideas, and content, as opposed to merely thinking about them. In other words, we aim to move out of the abstract and into the concrete.

Jewish EducatorsFor example, in one seminar that explored the value of partnership, 40 seasoned educators unconventionally began their morning by boarding a “Partner-Ship” bus. At their assigned seat, each participant found a discussion prompt to help them get to know their partner. They arrived at the beach and competed to build sand castles and moats in pairs, experiencing firsthand how they work with someone else. The day continued with chavruta-style learning, and by early afternoon, each participant had a better understanding of what they offer as a partner – and what they seek in a partner. And all of this was done through a playful, dynamic, energizing, and challenging experience.

Work and play – not recovery from the work, but play as the work itself – are not on opposite sides of a spectrum, seesawing back and forth but never coming together. A more accurate metaphor is a tightrope, where both forces are present at all times. Each side gets pulled and each offers support in different proportions, depending on where the acrobat stands. Regardless of where that may be, the two sides are in constant consideration of one another, even if one is carrying more weight. In this frame, the work of the educator is a balancing act, always aware of the dichotomies involved and attempting to integrate these forces in relation to each other.

As part of the PDI, a case study was written and analyzed about an M2 seminar called “The Architecture of Immersive Experiences.” In an attempt to draw a parallel between architectural principles in the built world and design principles in the world of educational experiences, learners spent five days in the heart of New York City, where a significant portion of the program was spent touring landmarks around Manhattan, guided by an architect, to see the principles firsthand. This is play at its best.

However, the temptations that play offers mean that we don’t always get the balance right. When we analyzed this case study in a PDIJewish educator training roundtable, questions surfaced about the prominence that play was given. Would a one-day tour of Manhattan have done the trick? Did too much play detract from the work that learners had come to do? Hearing questions and advice from our PDI colleagues offered valuable perspective that was taken to heart: it’s likely that while the approach may have been correct, the work-play balance was off.

It is with this valuable insight and feedback that M² is able to continue the work – playfully of course! – of designing powerful, compelling experiences for and with Jewish educators. We are also able to rediscover, over and over again, that they do not need to be opposites. Instead, work and play – and all other design principles for powerful professional development – can, and often should, exist in a state of creative tension that makes each polarity more powerful and meaningful.

Kiva Rabinsky is the Chief Program Officer at M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education, and lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Deb, and children, Nava and Yonah. Prior to working at M², he directed a range of Jewish Service Learning initiatives and developed and taught in a series of Experiential Jewish Education training programs through his role at Yeshiva University. Kiva holds an MPA in Nonprofit Management, and an undergraduate degree in Education and Archeology. Kiva can be reached at [email protected].

 

 

 

 

Learning with Honeymoon Israel: A Series on Insights from Leaders in the Field

As a Foundation that wants to always learn—one of our internal values is Hitlamdoot—we need to hear directly from leaders and practitioners in the field. Particularly at this moment, understanding what these individuals are experiencing, thinking, doing, and planning is integral to building our team’s knowledge base about the many subfields that makeup the broader world of Jewish education and engagement.

In this vein, representatives from different grantee-partners are speaking with the Foundation each month in Learning Sessions. While initially we planned for these sessions to be entirely internal, the insights and perspectives we are hearing from grantee-partners will be interesting and informative for others as well. We continue to approach our work with Kavanah, intention, to always elevate the efforts of others who help us pursue our mission. And we look forward to sharing brief recaps of each Learning Session. Read previous recaps on learning sessions with Daniel Septimus, CEO of Sefaria, Deborah Meyer, founder and CEO, and Rabbi Tamara Cohen, VP of Program Strategy, Moving Traditions,  Sarah Levin, CEO of JIMENA and Rabbi Benjamin Berger, Vice President of Jewish Education, Hillel International.

Learning Session Guests: Mike Wise and Avi Rubel, Co-CEOs, Honeymoon Israel (HMI)

Honeymoon Israel’s vision is that every committed couple with at least one Jewish partner will possess the knowledge, inspiration, support system, and sense of belonging to build a family with meaningful connections to Jewish life and the Jewish people, thereby enhancing and strengthening the Jewish community.

For many young couples, there’s no easy way into Jewish life, especially during those critical years when they’re in permanent relationships and deciding how to shape their lives and family.

Honeymoon Israel (HMI) offers a way in through immersive group travel to Israel that lets couples encounter and explore history, tradition, and identity on their own terms. HMI engages couples in an open-ended inquiry into how they connect to Jewish life and how they’ll incorporate Jewish values and traditions into their families. Couples are offered space to explore for themselves how they can develop and experience community.

How It All Began

Learning with Honeymoon IsraelMike Wise and Avi Rubel conceptualized HMI after the 2013 Pew report on the American Jewish population, which noted the high rate of interfaith marriage and was often defined as a problem in the Jewish community. Mike and Avi wanted to define it as an opportunity to engage young couples by creating a welcoming community for them. Many couples in this life stage do not yet have other couple friends; rather, they often have individual friends from other life experiences. HMI wanted to engage couples while they were still making decisions about their families and their futures—and whether they envisioned a connection to the Jewish community as being a part of that.

In selecting the first cities with which HMI would engage, Mike and Avi were deliberate. They mapped the population, paying close attention to the age range, local Jewish community, and other facts on the ground. They wanted to make sure there was a community to support the couples after the trip. As Avi and Mike explained:

HMI’s primary audience is what we call ‘roamers,’ those on the edge of Jewish life who are not necessarily involved, but have questions about their faith and future. We seek them out and look to create a feeling within these couples that ‘we need this; this is for us.’

Importantly, HMI wants its cohort of trips to mirror the communities from where the trips emanate. On most tips this means that 60-75 percent of couples are interfaith. HMI brings all couples together for the Israel experience, creating a sense of community and welcome that some of the couples have not previously experiences.

Why Co-CEOs?

Just like a marriage or any serious relationship, Mike and Avi both put a great deal of work into this partnership.  They trust each other and like each other “most of the time.” They point out that with a trusted co-CEO they:

  • Are less likely to make mistakes.
  • Are able to bring different perspectives from different backgrounds.
  • Challenge each other to be part of the success.
  • Are a stronger organization because of it.
  • Push and challenge each other and do it with great respect.

While they recognize this is not ideal for every individual, they encourage people to consider the benefits that come with this leadership structure.

What about DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion)?

Diversity of all kinds is important to HMI, which has an external consultant helping the organization pursue DEI-related goals. HMI worksMike and Avi with Honeymoon Israel to ensure that anyone is able to travel on their trips. They are also expanding their board and their staff to include more people of color and working towards increasing the diversity of the couples who travel with HMI.

HMI wants people to bring their “whole selves” into this Jewish community, and make people feel that, with the HMI experience, they “don’t need to check any part of themselves at the door.”  They continue to gauge whether this message is being received.

The Pandemic

Mike and Avi share that one silver lining of the pandemic is the newly formed Israel Travel Alliance, which includes over 40 similar Israel trip organizations that first focused on how to maintain their organizations when travel ceased. Today, the group continues to meet and learn from each other in important areas including training, staff, guides and other key elements of travel.  HMI sees the light at the end of the tunnel and hopes to offer 32-36 groups next year; it is cautiously and optimistically planning to restart trips in November (for social dynamics, it is important that trips have 15-20 couples).

Another silver lining of the pandemic was that HMI could focus exclusively on community engagement post-trip. They reflect:

Our virtual events attract many group alumni who say that their ‘Honeymoon friends are my community.’ In Chicago, one of HMI’s rabbis led a virtual baby naming for a young family and their HMI friends; the new parents said this would not have happened without HMI. Another couple told us they “felt lucky” that their HMI trip happened just before the pandemic as the couple friends made on their trip became part of their “Covid community.” 

The Future for HMI

Honeymoon Israel GroupHMI is focused on controlled, intentional growth and ensuring they can deliver the trips and programs that best serve their groups. Currently HMI says no to three couples for every one they accept nationally; they don’t want to add more trips unless they’re set up for meaningful post-trip follow-up, which includes staffing and support on the ground. HMI also has more communities that want to partner, but HMI continues to be deliberate in the communities they select to ensure that the trip is not just an empty experience, but fulfills their goal:

…to make young couples of all backgrounds feel welcome in the Jewish community and inspire them to incorporate Jewish values and traditions into their lives in their own way.

Having more demand than supply is a good thing, according to Avi. He notes that is does raise important questions about the population being neglected.  Why haven’t other startups launched to focus on these couples that HMI can’t take? Teens and parents with young kids are engaged in the Jewish community, but what about this population?  He wonders why other start-ups haven’t launched to handle the couples that HMI can’t take—and believes this is an important area for focus in the future.

Visit HoneymoonIsrael.org

 

Key Learnings on Designing and Measuring High-Quality Educator Training Programs

In 2017, the Jim Joseph Foundation experimented with a grantmaking method that was new to the Foundation – two open requests for proposals (RFPs). The Foundation wanted to hear from the field, especially from organizations with which we were not already in close relationship, and about potential programs that reflected the field’s best and forward thinking. Ultimately, 12 organizations (out of 21 total) were funded by the Foundation for the very first time.

There were two areas of particular interest to the Foundation in that moment, Jewish educator professional development (PD) and Jewish leadership development. The Foundation believed there were opportunities to leverage in both. Whereas educator training and PD was essentially infused into the Foundation’s DNA from inception, leadership development was a newer arena of investment. Eleven existing programs with strong reputations across the field of Jewish leadership development were funded from that part of the open RFP. While the boundaries, definitions and required skills of “leaders” vs. “educators” can be grey at times, the Foundation’s goal was to build relationships with these eleven organizations so that it could learn more about what makes a Jewish leadership development program effective and why. The Center for Creative Leadership documented these learnings, and those reports and findings will be shared in the coming months.

The Foundation had been deeply involved in Jewish educator training and professional development for a decade and had clear goals for the next phase of investments in this arena: infusing the field with high quality programming that was cohort-based, creative, immersive, and measurably effective. The ten programs that were funded through the Educator Professional Development Initiative were each led by people whom the Foundation trusted for their reputations as field leaders with critical expertise. Many of the programs were new and included experimental components that were often seen before as “nice to haves” but too luxurious to include in many programs. But the Foundation believed that the highest quality programming, equal to any secular educator training program, was essential to the outcome of professionalizing the field. The initiative reached almost 500 Jewish educators over three years, providing experiences that were professionally and personally impactful, even despite the tumult of 2020.

The Educator Professional Development Initiative also included a learning aspect. Rosov Consulting designed and implemented an emergent learning framework in which the ten program directors were convened to form a cohort of their own, a professional learning community that guided the evaluation with timely and relevant questions. These questions, for example, asked about the pacing and content of their programs and about the mix of participants they tried to include in cohorts. The learning community also provided space for them to network (many of them had never met each other before). They connected and strengthened their network by sharing common challenges and themes of program design, recruitment, and unfortunately, navigating the pandemic. Being in a learning cohort also gave the program directors a window into the experiences of their program’s participants and enabled them to see themselves as part of the field of Jewish education.

The evaluation has proven fruitful for the field of Jewish educator professional development (see here for full reports and case studies). Common instruments such as a participant audit to explore the demographics and motivations of incoming educators and a shared outcomes survey were developed with the input of the program directors. These instruments will be introduced to the broader field this summer. The instruments are noteworthy because the ten programs were intentionally diverse in their topics and intended audiences. The fact that a set of shared outcomes could be distilled and measured across the programs compelled the Foundation to begin thinking about common outcomes to measure across the Jewish educator professional development programs it supports.

Evaluation work with ten very different programs over a three-year period also revealed the extent to which powerful professional development involves designing experiences that take shape around a series of productive tensions: creating experiences with utility and ultimate meaning, space and structure, and a balance of work and play; and providing opportunities for personal growth and professional belonging in groups that include participants with both sufficient diversity and commonality.

The outcomes yielded by such experiences are strongly related to the professional profiles and personal goals with which participants arrive. Those outcomes gain significance over time, sometimes many months after a program’s conclusion, as participants gain opportunities to apply their learnings and newfound understandings in their places of work.

Lastly, professional development is not synonymous with professional advancement. It is possible to embark on a meaningful journey of professional development without moving up, or seeking to move up, the career ladder; “staying at home” was an especially appropriate metaphor for this process offered by one participant given how most people have experienced the past 14 months.

These learnings and instruments can benefit all in the field who want to create and implement effective educator training programs, whether virtual or in person. With these new resources, we can continue this learning journey together.

Stacie Cherner is Director of Learning and Evaluation at the Jim Joseph Foundation. Alex Pomson is Principal and Managing Director at Rosov Consulting. Click here to access all of the reports and case studies related to the professional development initiatives. Click here to go directly to The Jim Joseph Foundation Professional Development Initiative: A Picture of Learning Coming Together: Year 3 Learnings

originally published in eJewish Philanthropy 

Here are the first 10 Jewish documentaries funded through Jewish Story Partners

The Jewish Story Partners foundation, which Steven Spielberg and wife Kate Capshaw helped found to fund Jewish-themed documentary films, announced its first slate of grantees on Wednesday.

The 10 projects received a total of $225,000 from Jewish Story Partners, which has received its initial funding from Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation, the Maimonides Fund and the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Here are the films, first reported by Deadline:

“Coexistence My Ass!” – Directed by Amber Fares

The film follows Israeli comedian Noam Schuster, who is bent on using her standup routine to get Israelis to question their biases.

“The Conspiracy” – Directed by Maxim Pozdorovkin

The film looks at the history behind the lie “that a dangerous cabal of powerful Jews controls the world.”

“Meredith Monk: Dancing Voice, Singing Body” – Directed by Billy Shebar and David Roberts

The groundbreaking composer and choreographer, who has won the National Medal of Arts and a MacArthur grant, gets her own film. The pop legend Bjork is a co-producer.

“Rabbi” – Directed by Sandi DuBowski

“Rabbi” chronicles the story of pioneering Rabbi Amichau Lau-Lavie “from drag queen rebel to rabbinical student to founder of Lab/Shul, an everybody-friendly, God-optional, artist-driven, pop-up experimental congregation.”

“South Commons” – Directed by Joey Soloway

The Jewish creator of “Transparent” takes a hard look at the racial tensions in the Chicago community in which they grew up.

“Untitled Spiritual Care Documentary” – Directed by Luke Lorentzen

Mount Sinai hospitals in New York appoint interfaith chaplain residents each year — this film follows four of them.

“The Wild One” – Directed by Tessa Louise Salomé

It’s the story of Jack Garfein, an Auschwitz survivor who went on to play a key role in the Actors’ Studio group and taught the craft to some of the last century’s biggest stars.

“Heroes” – Directed by Avishai Mekonen and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen

The tale of a group of Ethiopian-Jewish activists who fought to keep their community alive in the 1970s to 1990s, a time of harsh dictatorship.

“Joyva” – Directed by Josh Freund and Sam Radutzky

The 100-plus-year-old Joyva company is among the most recognized Jewish-American candy companies, whose delicacies often end up at holiday celebrations such as Passover. The film focuses on the founder’s great-grandchildren, who are fighting to keep the business afloat.

“Walk With Me” – Directed by Heidi Levitt

Levitt tracks her husband’s battle with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Source: JTA

Focus Versus Experimentation: Reflections from a Chapter of Organizational Renewal

With the Jim Joseph Foundation’s capacity building grant to JPRO Network now concluded, we are pleased to share learnings and a look ahead from Dr. Laura Herman, Program and Evaluation Manager at JPRO Network.

Most nonprofits go through predictable stages of development: Invention, Incubation, Growing, Sustainability, Stagnation & Renewal, and Decline. JPRO Network playfully referred to itself as a “120-year-old startup” from 2017 through 2020; in reality, we were in the renewal phase. JPRO is a legacy organization that embarked on a period of renewal and experimentation over this four-year period. As JPRO enters its next chapter, one of strengthening and expansion, we are reflecting on the lessons learned over the last four years. Our work included:

  • Quadrupling annual reach from fewer than 500 professionals to over 2,000;
  • Launching programs and initiatives including WellAdvised, Master Classes, JPRO Online, and Rise; and
  • Tripling membership from 95 to over 300 organizational affiliates.

To accomplish this, JPRO’s touchstones were focus and experimentation. These two forces are often in conflict; how can one both narrow in and think expansively? Like hot and cold fronts that meet to form a storm, we learned that our most complex yet productive work emerged from the generative tension between these two seemingly opposite forces.

JPRO focused on two complementary objectives:

  • Provide programming that addressed the immediate pain points and greatest desires of our workforce, and
  • Triple the number of organizations affiliated with JPRO from 95 in 2016 to 300 in 2019.

On the other hand, we needed (and wanted!) to experiment, which required us to:

  • Have rapid cycles of trial → success/failure → learning → next trial
  • Think creatively and be prepared to be unconventional, and
  • Constantly discern when to be responsive to opportunities outside our areas of focus.

Even though they were sometimes in tension, experimentation and focus also fueled each other in these years of reinvention. Two examples speak best to the way that JPRO applied these forces: WellAdvised and JPRO19: What Connects Us.

WellAdvised, a free one-hour advising program that provides personalized professional advice from seasoned colleagues, was a completely new model. JPRO learned from a survey of over 1,000 people that professionals were eager for access to advising. We wanted to tap into the “well” of wisdom that exists in our field and to provide valuable opportunities for connection, without the long-term commitment of extant mentoring programs. (JPRO plans to add traditional mentoring to its offerings in the future.) Nothing like this had been done before and we were not sure how people would respond – would seasoned professionals be willing to volunteer their time? Could a limited engagement be useful to the professionals JPRO was trying to serve? How would employers respond to a program that, in part, supports individuals considering next steps in their careers? These and other questions guided the design of the program, and we went through several iterations before arriving at a system JPRO was ready to share with the field. Since WellAdvised piloted in 2018, advisors have provided close to 300 hours of advising and 90% of respondents report having taken an action step after their session.

JPRO19: What Connects Us, JPRO’s first conference after entering the renewal phase of development, was a different type of experiment. We sought to create a new conference experience. The primary goal was to build an atmosphere that would foster connections across many dimensions of diversity, where participants could build their professionals skills and deepen their relationship to the field. We leaned into an unconventional idea: the professional development amusement park. This immersive concept guided decisions about the Connect Lounge, a central atrium that featured activities such as a headshot booth, a meditation space, and a Connect Four tournament. To present the Young Professional awards, we hosted a conversation between the winners rather than the past norm of acceptance speeches. Instead of a traditional plenary, participants learned texts together in havruta, study partners. While these and other elements of JPRO19 were highly experimental, they were guided by JPRO’s desire to build layers of connection, the focus of the conference.

All of JPRO’s experiments have required us to have our eyes open to opportunities that would help us reach our goals. JPRO needed to remain flexible to respond to the changing needs of our audience, but sometimes our desire to be responsive distracted us from our two core objectives. There was occasional tension within the staff team – how much to stay true to our original focus and how much to be nimble and draw outside of those lines? It was a challenge to discern which opportunities would build sufficient momentum to be worthwhile. This was particularly pronounced as JPRO moved quickly in March 2020 to respond to the impact of the pandemic on our professional community. Trying to skillfully determine when to lean into focus and when to lean into experimentation taught us some lessons:

  1. A rubric for decision-making can support discernment about when to focus and when to experiment. Experimentation can accelerate growth and impact; it also involves risk and can create workflow challenges and difficulty managing expectations with partners.
  2. Organizational renewal requires a major infusion of energy. JPRO’s small staff team and committed Board work on a big goal: to serve professionals who work in all roles at Jewish nonprofit organizations. While this goal helped focus the work, it also meant that we were frequently playing in a bigger arena than our capacity allowed.

The early part of our “120-year-old start-up” renewal phase bolstered our ability to be responsive and nimble in our work style. While no one was prepared for the rapid changes to every element of our lives when COVID hit, JPRO had already strengthened the muscles required to respond to our audience quickly and with compassion. JPRO was equipped with tools to bring together the field remotely for inspiration and connection. We rallied to feature organizations who could teach others how to pivot in the face of a crisis and to provide resources to professionals that would help them cope, both personally and professionally.

JPRO is now entering a period of expansion and strengthening during which we will work on three priorities: Excellence, Reach, and Access. Each of these areas will enable JPRO to increase opportunities for professional development, networking, and career growth, so that the Jewish nonprofit sector can reach its full potential. Our last chapter taught us to harness the energy that comes from leveraging the tension between experimentation and focus; we learned how to feed (and manage) our appetite for creativity. Equipped with these skills and experiences, JPRO is ready for the next chapter.

 

How Jewish Organizations Respond to Racism and Racial Violence? Spoiler: Doing Internal Work

With the Jim Joseph Foundation’s racial justice mini-grants to the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable’s (JSJR) now concluded, we are pleased to share learnings, first-person accounts, and a look ahead from Abby Levine, Executive Director, and Roberta Ritvo, Deputy Director, of the JSJR.

In the wake of the racially motivated brutal shootings in Georgia that claimed the lives of eight people, six of whom were Asian women, we believe that our work for racial justice is more urgent than ever before.

When moments like these happen, Jewish organizations that have already had internal conversations about racial justice are well positioned to respond. In 2017, the leaders of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable collectively acknowledged the work we needed—and still need—to do to make our organizations more racially diverse, equitable, inclusive and just places for staff, board, and lay leaders.

As part of this commitment to racial justice, the Roundtable awarded nearly $100,000 in matching grants to 21 Jewish social justice organizations for projects that address racism and promote racial equity.

These grants, made with support from the Jim Joseph Foundation and Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, offer critical resources to embed practices of racial equity in organizational systems and cultures, and to honor the multiracial realities of the U.S. Jewish community.

And then the world changed.

One unprecedented year later after a global pandemic emerged, after racial justice protests sparked a national reckoning, and after an election season unlike any other, we checked in with a few organizations to learn about their work for racial equity during a tumultuous time in the world. Their experiences can inform how others in the field prioritize and approach similar efforts moving forward.

We caught up with Rebecca Eisen, Human Resources Manager at Hazon; Judy Levey, Executive Director at Jewish Council on Urban Affairs; SooJi Min-Maranda, Executive Director at ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal; and Liz Sweet, Chief of Staff at HIAS.

What made you decide to undertake racial equity work?

Judy Levey, Jewish Council on Urban Affairs: People refer to this past year as being a “moment of reckoning” in the consciousness of our nation. However, this has been the work of JCUA for the past 57 years. As a social justice organization with the longstanding mission of combating poverty, racism, and antisemitism and rooted in the civil rights movement, we have a keen understanding of systemic racism.

What we understood less was how much personal work we have to do as individuals and as an organization to dismantle those systems and embody our highest Jewish values. Our aspirations to change the world around us go hand-in-hand with the need to look within our own community and within ourselves. That is the transformative work that needs to take place in order to ultimately transform institutions.

Rebecca Eisen, Hazon: Hazon is the largest faith-based environmental organization in the US and is building a movement to strengthen Jewish life and contribute to an environmentally sustainable world for all. The climate movement and the movement for racial equity are inherently interconnected because environmental disasters and climate change disproportionately impact communities of color. Hazon cannot work to address the climate crisis, to strengthen Jewish life, or to advocate for systemic change without working towards racial equity with accountability.

Our staff was clear that one crisis did not erase another and we had to talk about racial justice even as a pandemic raged. There was and remains a dramatic hunger to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion in light of upsetting incidents of police violence and other chronic incidents of racism.

SooJi Min-Maranda, ALEPH: There was interest in our communities in thinking about cultural appropriation in the context of renewal Judaism. Renewal Judaism draws heavily from all cultures/traditions and also has a strong orientation towards religious ecumenism. As we were launching an earth-based Judaism certification program, the timing was right for looking specifically at Indigenous religions. Our trainings provided a Jewish, anti-colonialist framework for understanding how cultural appropriation operates and the kinds of harm it does to both perpetrating and victimized communities.

Brag a little: What’s something you’re proud of that came out of the racial equity work supported by this grant?

Liz Sweet, HIAS: Through our work to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ), we’ve delved into how we, as a staff team, respect each other across all of the differences and vulnerabilities that each person brings to every interaction and meeting. We are more aware, respectful, and understanding of how an individual’s life circumstances may be affecting their work in a way that may not have been as obvious in the pre-Covid era.

When the racial justice reckoning of last summer came to the forefront, our diversity trainings in partnership with the Raben Group were well underway. We felt grateful to already have a container to discuss what was happening out in the world.

Our conversations and learnings inspired a number of different changes to ensure that we are living our organizational values, including:

  • establishing a workplace issues resolution process;
  • implementing a new quarterly performance management system;
  • prioritizing internal recruitment to promote career growth within HIAS;
  • mandating training for all managers through The Management Center;
  • significantly revising our core values statement to promote a less hierarchical organizational culture, so all staff feel encouraged and welcome to step up and speak up; and,
  • most excitingly, creating a new DEIJ manager position to lead training and policy development

Judy Levey, JCUA: I’m proud that we have a much clearer sense of what it means to say we are aspiring to be an anti-racist organization. Our organizing on police accountability has strong leadership by Jews of Color, who serve as public spokespeople, represent JCUA in Chicago-wide coalitions, and help lead our member working group.

JCUA leaders started our Kol Or Jews of Color Caucus in 2017, and in 2019, we started our White Racial Justice Working Group, an eight-month learning cohort. In 2020, we hired Beckee Birger. As our Director of Education & Movement Building, she will lead this work forward.

SooJi Min-Maranda, ALEPH: Our cultural appropriation training, while specific to indigenous culture/colonization, taught concepts that apply to other types of cultural appropriation and issues of erasure, oppression, and colonization. This training helps us step into teaching, living, and engaging in the world through an anti-racist, anti-oppressive framework. Our work is just beginning. 

Were there any a-ha moments or learnings that this process sparked?

Liz Sweet, HIAS: The big a-ha moment came from our organizational self assessment. We learned that our staff were having very different work experiences depending on their different identities and where they work within HIAS.

Rebecca Eisen, Hazon: In one exercise, Yavilah McCoy at Dimensions helped Hazon staff explore different “isms” within their affinity group and what that meant for us as an organizational team. One participant shared that this activity “pries open doors to empathy and self-knowledge. It gave us a common framework for thinking about insiders and outsiders across multiple factors that are relevant to our organization and work.”

SooJi Min-Maranda, ALEPH: One realization was the necessity to understand and learn the history of whiteness for Ashkenazi Jews in the United States, so that our white Ashkenazi constituents can safely share their perspectives, based on their life experiences, without defensiveness. Interrogating whiteness in the context of Jewish identity is a complex, nuanced discussion that needs dedicated time and space.

Judy Levey, JCUA: In the past two years, we hired two Kol Or leaders as staff members to lead this work. Our staff is now composed of nearly 25% People of Color and we are working to increase the racial diversity of our board of directors. We realized that in order to grow this pillar of our work, we must invest organizational resources in bringing in the expertise and experience needed to continue to learn and train our members.

If you had the opportunity to press rewind and do it all over again, what do you wish you had known or done differently (other than anticipating a global pandemic)?

Liz Sweet, HIAS: I wish we had started doing the work sooner!

Rebecca Eisen, Hazon: We originally applied for this funding to make Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center more inclusive, to be a hub for Jewish life where thousands of guests of diverse identities can feel as though they belong. Though it was tragic that the pandemic prevented us from focusing there, I am, in the end, deeply grateful that we could use the funds for a training we could apply across the entire organization.

The Roundtable thanks each of these leaders for sharing their insights and even more than that, for the work they are doing each day to promote racial justice. Our work to realize racial justice will continue to evolve against a national backdrop of racist violence and brutality. We know that our work will take time, effort, and ongoing investments. There will surely be setbacks and challenges. Together, we will exercise resilience and value our relationships because we’re in it for the long haul.