by Ilana Turetsky, EdD

The upcoming summer semester will mark my fourth semester teaching online courses at Azrieli Graduate School. I have found the experience to be enriching, broadening, and stimulating. While some may envision online teaching as a direct transfer from the live classroom to the virtual setting, I perceive online teaching as a categorically different enterprise. Allow me to share three brief thoughts on my experiences teaching online, highlighting some of the unique features that I believe online learning affords.

1. Student processing of information

Student processing of material learned in my online courses is, in certain ways, far richer than in a traditional face-to-face course. This is due to a simple reason: students are asked to generate some kind of product on every topic they learn.

The driving force behind constantly asking students to produce is twofold:

(a) Accountability: In a live setting, a student’s physical presence indicates some minimal form of engagement with the  course and thus serves as a basic form of accountability. By contrast, the lack of a physical presence in an online course necessitates creation of accountability in other ways. I can assign an array of rich and stimulating resources to explore. However, without asking students to do something with that material, I have no way of ascertaining whether students even looked at the material, let alone engaged richly with the ideas therein.

(b) Promoting active learning: My preparation for each online learning module, that is, weekly learning unit, involves a two-step process: (1) “What is the most important content that I want students to master this week?” Once I identify my primary learning goals, I consider (2) “What learning experiences can I create to help my students master that material?” More often than not, this step of crafting active, meaningful, and engaging learning experiences requires far more time, creativity, and effort on my part than the preparation of the actual content. Though in theory this focus on the process of learning should be no different in a traditional course, I find the online course setting to be more promotive of this two-step preparation process. Perhaps this is because the online context lends itself less naturally to the traditional lecture format or because presenting a written explanation of each week’s module forces the instructor to carefully and sharply think through all elements of that week’s learning process.

2. Student-Teacher interaction

Rarely in my live classes do I have the opportunity to hear from every single student on critical elements of every single lesson. In my online courses, because lessons are structured in such a way that each student submits weekly assignments on primary elements of that particular module, I have the opportunity to hear from and engage with each individual student. As a result, I get to know my students better and also engage with them one-on-one on a weekly basis, a frequency of direct interaction that would be impossible to achieve in a live course setting.

3. Feedback loop

Each weekly module in every single one of my online courses ends the same way, with a ‘One Minute Paper’. This One Minute Paper asks students to reflect on the most important thing that they learned that week and also on any unanswered questions they still have. I have found this brief assignment to be an invaluable tool in helping me understand how every single student experienced that week’s learning and also in creating a concrete, structured venue for students to voice their questions, even if the questions aren’t pressing enough that the student would have taken the initiative to email me. In this context, I respond to each student about the major or minor questions that are lingering in their minds in reaction to that week’s material. Furthermore, through this forum, I have received very valuable feedback that has driven subsequent adjustments to my courses. At this point, I can’t imagine conducting a class without the use of this assessment tool. My experiences with the One Minute Paper in my online course would likely lead me to incorporate this tool into any course that I would teach, traditional or online.

Conclusion

Though traditional and online courses both involve students, instructors, and course material to be learned, the learning process that occurs in each setting often looks very different. Through teaching in an online context, a setting that was not initially the most natural for me, I have been forced to think critically about the most basic components of effective teaching and how to implement those elements in the online context. While every model has its own set of strengths and weaknesses, and while the success of the model will inevitably be a function of how it is used, I believe that online learning has the potential to promote incredibly rich student learning, an increased degree of student-teacher interaction, and unique systems for feedback loops that empower both teacher and student with valuable information.

Ilana Turetsky, EdD is an instructor in Jewish Education at Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration.

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New questions have to be answered at every stage of the innovation cycle. Nine years ago, when we set out to transform the synagogue school from a place that teaches “about Judaism” to the headwaters for lived Judaism, we asked: “What capacities does a synagogue need to make change?” Since then The Jewish Education Project in partnership with The Experiment In Congregational Education has been uncovering answers to questions like “How do you break the mold? What’s it take for innovation to spread? How do you assess success?” Now that congregations have actually created innovative models of learning and assessment we have a new question. Over fifty synagogues in NY, known as the Coalition of Innovating Congregations, are asking: “How do we sustain innovation?”

The literature on sustaining innovation is depressing. According to business and educational studies, the majority of innovations sprout long enough to be seen as the next good thing only to be devoured by organizational stasis. To stave off the mighty lion, the status quo, we are learning to use a worthy weapon: Results. Have them. Share them. Hit the head and the heart.

To master the art of reaching the head and heart of stakeholders you have to work at the nexus of evaluation and marketing, a zone where most congregational leadership teams don’t dwell. I confess, neither do I; but we’re learning.

Stories to the Heart

This past week close to 150 clergy, educators, teachers and lay leaders from The Coalition of Innovating Congregations gathered at City Winery in New York City to sharpen their skills in communicating the results of educational innovations (e.g. models that are more camp than school, learning in the city and home instead of the classroom, Shabbat family celebration in real time).

Deborah Grayson Riegel, an international communications expert, helped us speak to the heart. “Know your audience,” she instructed, “think through what you want your stakeholders to do, to know, to value and connect with.” So, team members from Community Synagogue of Rye, for example, spoke about wanting financial support from their Board for their model of small group home learning, family holiday gatherings and Skype Hebrew. Temple Beth Sholom of Roslyn – who have an “everyone is a mentor and everyone is a mentee” model that includes regular family Shabbat celebration – talked about needing to impact prospective parents. “We ask a lot of families [to participate]. And for them to say they want to participate, they need to see what can result.”

To move Board members and prospective members to action, Grayson Riegel said stories told from the heart would go to the heart. Getting the punch in the punch line requires a certain kind of story telling. So each congregation used a template for storytelling highlighted in Jonah Sack’s book, Wining the Story Wars, called the Hero’s Journey.

The template helps the listener follow the learner through struggle and eventual triumph in a way that is memorable and deeply moving. The congregations also watched a three-minute video that illustrated the Hero’s Journey at one of our congregations, made using the template:

The video capture’s Zoe’s remarkable story, and showed how this young teen was able to overcome an immense challenge with the help of Kane Street Synagogue’s L’tzedek Model, where children turn learning into social action as a compass for their daily lives. Zoe’s story, one of many, goes right to the heart.

Headlines from The Coalition of Innovating Congregation’s Stories:

• security and relationships with a caring mentor
• helping others through social justice
• found a place to belong
• Noah blossomed into his own person
• Became a mentor to other youth
• Gained self confidence and a sense of responsibility
• They are always asking: what more can we do?
• He found a community
• He performs mitzvoth that speak to him and are relevant to his life
• Emily said she felt more like herself here

Data to the Head

When battling the status quo, stakeholders also want to see the cold hard facts. Congregations have needed to develop their ability to collect the facts and then beautifully and thoughtfully present them.

When congregations are putting energy into creating new models and using new methods of education design and assessment, it is easily understood why they wouldn’t have the energy for collecting data. And yet, we know it is essential. So we created tracking tools that congregations use to collect data over time. These tools then equip the congregations to mark over time things like how many children/families participate in an innovative model; how many hours of professional development educators participate in, and what percentage of children continue post b’nei mitzvah from an innovative model vs. the traditional Hebrew school model.

Our experience shows that it is very hard to get agreement on what data will satisfy stakeholders. However, maybe not surprisingly, one result that is shared by many congregations is how well a child and family will be connected to one another and to the congregation. To this end, we created a survey that measures this outcome. Over a dozen congregations, across movements, have administered a “connectedness survey” three times during the last two years. This survey measures the growth and change in families’ connections to one another, and to the congregation. Congregational teams analyze the results, with support from our staff, and are able to show stakeholders the difference between connections expressed by families in their new model vs. the traditional Hebrew school model.

What’s next?

Once you collect the data you need to present it powerfully. As of June 1, we are posting tools that enable congregations to use their stories and their numbers effectively. We are posting on innovatingcongregations.org a tool kit that includes ready made “press releases” and “presentations” that wrap around their hero’s journey stories and collected data. This tool kit includes a two-minute movie, ready for viewing now, used by Coalition Congregations to communicate the unique value of their innovations.

The work we face now is to sustain the innovations. Boards and lay leaders need to say yes to resources. Families and learners need to say yes to engagement. To do this Coalition congregations are innovating in one more area: Communicating Results to the Head and the Heart.

Cyd B. Weissman, Director of Innovation in Congregational Learning, The Jewish Education Project works to reshape the landscape of Jewish Education in New York. Generous funding by UJA Federation of New York enables the groundbreaking work of The Coalition of Innovating Congregations. Cyd teaches Curriculum and Assessment and Organizational Change at Hebrew Union College’s School of Education in New York. Follow her blog at livinglomed.blogspot.com.

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by Beth Cousens

When I interviewed twenty-seven year old Charlie as part of research on adults in their twenties and thirties and their Jewishness, we sat under a poster of a scene from Ulysses that he found in Ireland while exploring his mother’s family’s roots. I asked him about his relationship with the non-Jewish parts of his identity, and in response he raised Philip Roth’s ideas about Jews and otherness: “You know, American Jews driving themselves to neuroses with their otherness or their conflicts. … It’s something I can’t identity with.” Why Philip Roth, I asked? “Him envying that non-Jewishness and seeing that as something totally different than you are. I mean, I realize there are differences but … his characters seem to perceive non-Jews as alien in a way that I definitely never have…. There is a difference … but … it’s a difference you can talk about, it’s a difference you can deal with.” To Charlie, non-Jews are not that dissimilar from him. “Us” and “them” doesn’t exist for Charlie; by extension, he also explained, Jews are not inherently aligned with him. If peoplehood is a sense of “underlying unity,” a sense of “us” that “transcends time and personal acquaintance,”[1] peoplehood is not something that feels intuitive or sensical to Charlie.

Charlie is not unusual among his peers. Raised without occupational, social, or structural segregation, with all professions, neighborhoods, and social opportunities open to them, in a socio-cultural environment that privileges multiculturalism, and in a socio-political environment with increasing diversity due to immigration, many younger (Jewish and other) adults see no dividers between “us” and “them” and, as a result, nothing that ties “us” uniquely together. A sense that each Jew stood at Sinai, that we each contribute to and are part of the collective memory of the Jewish people, is, without intervention, lost to many younger Jews.

This is in large part because many younger Jews are not comfortable with ideas about inherent loyalties and unities, to Israel, to the Jewish people, or to any community or country.[2] But it is also because younger Jews were raised in the American Jewish world described in Jack Wertheimer’s A People Divided,[3] a world where the Jewish people is inherently fractured. For younger Jews, a pluralistic Judaism is not part of the modern condition; instead, Judaism comes in fragments, with infighting and radical differences between sub-communities. For some, this Jewish pluralism leads to feelings of inadequacy, to feeling judged by other Jews – which exacerbates feelings of distance from the Jewish people writ large.

Yet, younger Jews do develop relationships with Jewish communities and with Jews different from them. They find Jewish communities to which they can belong, rooted in personal attachments. In their attachments, they provide a new understanding of peoplehood, suited to the pluralistic Jewish condition and to the world that younger Jews will lead.

At Home and In Exile

At Anytown Hillel, I interviewed four college seniors about their experiences with Hillel and with Jewish life during their years on campus. These seniors are more Jewishly connected and experienced than typical Jewish students: Among them, they have years in day school, family Shabbat dinners, and trips to Israel. In exploring how Hillel has influenced their feelings of peoplehood, I asked them about their sense of belonging to Jewish community on campus, to Jewish communities more generally, and to the Jewish people as an entity. As they answered, they began to bring nuance to my questions.

First, they noted, “There are two ways of seeing Jewish community: my communities and the larger Jewish community.” “Jewish community,” to them, is their own Jewish community; one student mentioned her high school, her home synagogue, as her places of belonging. She contrasted these communities with the larger Jewish community, where she feels less comfortable.

Another student continued this idea,“[Jewish community is] the one place I know I will always belong. But it also can make me more mad than anything else in the world. and it does on a daily basis.” She suggested:

There are different parts. You sort of have to find a place where you belong. I have, but what makes me upset is when the different groups within the larger community don’t accept each other. We can be worse to each other than we are to any other community.

Another student added:

Yeah. I feel the most distance from this community when I feel like I’m refusing to choose a certain group that will put distance between me and the community ….

I asked, Will you ever feel a sense of belonging to the larger people? A student answered: Well, when you say the Jewish people, there’s so many versions of that. I don’t think anyone can be fully connected to the Jewish community. Even the most “ultra-othodox” person…. they’re not connected to the 98% of Jews who are living full Jewish lives but who don’t subscribe to that.

These students demonstrate the extent to which Judaism and Jewish community, for them, are multifaceted. They are angry at some parts of the community, but that does not mean they feel that they do not belong wholesale; at the same time, they see parts of the community as not belonging to them, and, in turn, they do not seek to feel a part of the entire community. For these students, Jews comprise a community of communities, or, more accurately, a series of groups overlapping and distinct, to which Jews simultaneously belong and feel excluded. Like Charlie, “us” does not exist – or, “us” does not exist for the entire Jewish people, but each student feels part of a community, one in which they feel comfortable and that they can call their own. Significantly, a sense of belonging to the Jewish people does not extend from this sense of belonging to one community. In these students’ minds, Jews are too different to allow this.

Being in Relationship

As part of a larger research project on Jews in their twenties and thirties,[4] I spent ten days in Israel with a group of Boston-based adults, participants in a Temple Israel outreach and education project for this population. Most had not been to Israel before. As a group, they were often inquisitive of their surroundings and even skeptical. They critiqued Independence Hall for being too focused on the story of the Jews at the time and leaving out any details of 1920s Arab Israel; similarly, they cringed when the group’s guide made assumptions about their relationship to Israel or to the Jewish people (saying, for example, “This is your country, too.”) They were reflective skeptics: Before internalizing something said to them or something they saw, they often asked themselves, Does this feel true to me? What is there to be curious about here? What will I accept, and what will I examine?[5]

On the almost-last night of the trip, participants spent Shabbat with Temple Israel’s sister synagogue in Haifa. We went to prayer services and were hosted for dinner and general socializing by some of the younger adults in the congregation and community. Boston trip participants mixed happily with Haifa residents, in groups of two and three, packed into the apartment, the noise level growing throughout the evening. Ultimately, later, participants would say that their time in Haifa was one of the best parts of the trip. Dena commented that she “had never met an Israeli who was like her” before, who she wanted to “hang out” with. The participants thought they could live in Haifa; it seemed to them like where they belonged.

Despite or alongside their skepticism, in Haifa, participants saw themselves in Israel; they came to be able to envision themselves in the country. They felt truly comfortable in that living room and had a mirror in their Haifa peers. This personal, peer encounter helped them begin to see a place for themselves within a construct of Jewish community. After this experience, like their counterparts in Anytown Hillel, they still would feel uncomfortable in some Jewish spaces or with Israel’s decisions. But their feelings of being at home helped them make a commitment to Israel being a part of them, personally and emotionally. Their connection to Israel became rooted in the entirety of their experience, their debate and their comfort, and the contrast between the two. In this contrast, their feelings of peoplehood became both/ and – discomfort and attachment – rather than either/ or.

Peoplehood as Process

Participants in this Israel trip demonstrate the importance of localized Jewish community that Anytown Hillel students raise. It may be that in a disunified Jewish world, we cannot expect that all Jews will feel responsibility for the other. Belonging requires too much comfort, and Jews can be too different from each other to allow that comfort. But through localized connections, commonalities can be identified, and feelings of peoplehood can grow out of relationships that are built.

Participants in this Israel trip also demonstrate that while younger Jews push against “us,” they are willing to be in a place to push. Discomfort is the corollary to attachment. Relationships grow within a larger context of debate, of personal struggle to find one’s place, with the present Jewish people and with the Jewish past and future. Peoplehood, then, becomes an ongoing dialogue – even a tense dialogue – with Israel, the Jewish people, and the Jewish narrative. This is the essence of being in relationship, unity aside: Peoplehood is a process, not an outcome, and it involves being present, showing up. The project of peoplehood is to be in the middle.

Beth Cousens, PhD, is a consultant to Jewish educational organizations.

[1]  Shlomi Ravid. “What is Jewish Peoplehood? And is it the Right Question? From Defining Peoplehood to Creating Peoplehood Capital.” The Peoplehood Papers (United Jewish Communities, 2007).
[2] Kleinman, Max L., Terrill, Marc B., Cousens, Beth, Levine, Eric. “Confronting the Tensions: Jewish Community Building in the 21st Century.” Journal of Jewish Communal Service vol 83 no 2-3 (Spring 2008): 125-139; Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman. Beyond Distancing: Young Adult American Jews and Their Alienation from Israel (The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, n.d.).
[3] New Hampshire: Brandeis University Press, 1993.
[4] Beth Cousens, “Shifiting Social Networks: Studying the Jewish Growth of Adults in Their Twenties and Thirties.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Brandeis University, 2008.
[5]  The term “reflective skeptic” is Stephen Brookfield’s. It refers to a learner’s intuitive and automatic propensity to examine ideas for one’s own truth. Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore Alternative Ways of Thinking and Acting (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987).

This essay is from The Peoplehood Papers, volume 10 – Peoplehood in the Age of Pluralism – published by the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education.

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Kiev Moishe House Pesach 2013; courtesy.

Being a young Jewish adult in a city with many varied ways of spending your free time can easily leave you without a “Jewish” focus. That is why when Moishe House came to Kiev in September 2010, a quiet revolution started. It was the first time young adults were creating programs for their peers, offering a pluralistic space where everyone could find their Jewish identity and explore it in their own way.

Moishe House has provided the Jewish hub and home base that neither I nor any of my Jewish friends had growing up. We come from a generation that learned about Jewish tradition at Hillel and JAFI summer camps, and then taught it to our parents. We never went to Jewish day school, but we did conduct hundreds of Shabbat services and Pesach Seders for kids and the elderly around Ukraine during our years at university.

Now, as young adults working eight hours a day (sometimes more), it is our Jewish traditions that we draw on to feel nurtured and motivated. We approach Shabbat both as a day of rest set apart from the week and also as an opportunity to celebrate with friends.

Before Moishe House, I never cooked for Shabbat – my room could not fit 15 people at one time, and to be honest, I could not afford to spend that much money on just one dinner. Now, together with my three fellow Moishe House Kiev residents, I do it just about every week, inviting peers from across our community to share it with us.

At every Chagim, Shabbatot and programs we organize, we see the faces of people who would rarely go to synagogue, would not celebrate festivals at home or who feel too old for youth organizations. But they do want to be a part of Jewish life and traditions, and our home offers a safe, welcoming place for them to do that.

As current Moishe House Kiev residents, we have created a space where our peers can be engaged, participate, mold and strengthen their Jewish identity in any way they choose and, most importantly, can take responsibility for their Jewish community. It is a challenge to make each program interesting, but the greatest trick, we have discovered, is to create and maintain an atmosphere where people can share their thoughts, discuss “hot” topics, not be judged for their opinion or beliefs and feel a sense of belonging.

Moishe House has become the place where we put into practice our skills as leaders and where the next generation can create a committed community of Jewish young adults who will, in the near future, take responsibility for the decision-making.

This year we celebrated Passover Seder at Moishe House during a snowstorm. Among my personal reasons not to cancel, despite the weather, was a 33-year-old friend who was planning to join us. Even with two Jewish parents, he had never before participated in a Seder. We led a service and discussion, which are key elements that contribute to the success of this house.

And yet, as successful as we have been, we still have a long way to go to make Jewish life and traditions central to the lives of more of our peers. After all, the very definition of community has a different meaning here, and we are still building the concept, dealing with the past as we work to ensure the future. To do that, we need more spaces where young adults can explore, try, fail, try again and gain hands-on experience and tools for building a community that everybody can feel part of and actively engaged in.

Moishe House has helped young adults in Kiev find a place where they can explore their sense of belonging to the Jewish community. We are fortunate to be one of the 54 Moishe Houses in 14 countries, supported by very generous foundations, federations and individuals. Now we have the responsibility to build on this solid foundation by taking a leadership role, empowering others to follow suit and creating a space for young adults to participate and embrace their identity.

Olga Bard is a resident of the Moishe House Kiev.

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Chaim Chesler, Chairman of the Committee, had undertaken preliminary research with respect to the seven potential projects which were outlined – including in St. Petersburg; Kishinev, Moldova; Zhitomir and Odessa in Ukraine; Brest and Volozhin in Belarus; and Sighet, Romania. Each project envisioned a commemorative event and exhibit focusing on the devastating impact of the Shoah in the particular area, as well as a depiction of the Jewish life and culture which had previously flourished there.

The next step for the Committee, after further assessment of the various circumstances related to each proposal, is to make a determination of which project to implement.

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Three years ago, Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates formed the “Giving Pledge”, enlisting America’s billionaires to commit a majority of their wealth to nonprofit institutions either during their lifetime or following their demise.

Over 100 billionaires have signed on to the “Giving Pledge” since its initiation. The signatories include a significant number of highly identified American Jews known for their great generosity toward institutions both in the United States and Israel.

The initial focus of the initiative was on the wealthiest families and individuals in the United States. Since the start of this year, the “Giving Pledge” has expanded globally starting with twelve non-U.S. signatories from eight different countries representing over $10 billion of charitable commitment. Each new signatory is seen as an important personal example to others in his/her respective country.

Israelis have every reason to be proud that the country is today a first-world member of the OECD and has reached a level of development and sophistication whereby it is possible to succeed and prosper in the “start-up nation”. Israel has weathered the past few years better than many other western countries with a growing economy, stable currency, strong private sector, rising standard of living, and relatively low unemployment.

This year, Forbes listed thirteen Israelis as among the world’s billionaires, and last year, Merrill Lynch reported that there are more than 10,000 individuals in Israel whose annual income exceeds $1 million.

The time is now for Israel’s wealthiest individuals and families to step up to the “Giving Pledge” challenge. The mass call for “social justice” that began on the streets of Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, and which resonated in the recent general election, conveyed an expectation that Israel’s elite must contribute more to ensure a just society. Commitments to the “Giving Pledge” by Israel’s most privileged would represent an important statement attesting to the success of Israel while giving back to the society and economy that enabled these individuals and families to achieve.

The time is also now for those great U.S. Jewish philanthropists who have committed to the “Pledge” and are themselves strongly supportive of Jewish life and Israel to challenge their Israeli counterparts to match their generosity. Indeed, those same Jews may argue, if the wealthiest of Israelis do not support their own institutions, why should a Jew living overseas be called upon to do so, especially as many of their own local institutions are in need.

Israel has many outstanding institutions, organizations, and causes that are worthy of Diaspora Jewish support. However the new Zionism will be defined, it must certainly include a higher level of philanthropy among Israelis. This is a challenge which Israel’s wealthiest citizens can and must meet both for the benefit of all Israel and as an important role model to those in the Diaspora whom Israeli institutions canvass for philanthropic support.

Shimon Arbel is the Director of Institutional Advancement at Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem.

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USY Pilgrimage 2011; courtesy

by Rabbi Dave Levy

The Jewish community has been abuzz about the recent Jim Joseph Foundation study “Effective Strategies for Educating and Engaging Jewish Teens.” This important study highlights 10 key areas of learning, as well as another 10 implications for strategy development. I am grateful for this study and the structure it provides for an important conversation about our future work. The study encourages us to create a community of peer organizations that, while already existing informally, could really take flight with more coordination and effort. We at United Synagogue Youth (USY) immediately convened meetings to discuss the study and its impact on our work with USY. I look forward to sharing our findings and action plans in the future and I am looking forward to great outcomes for all of us working with teens.

As my staff and I reviewed the study, we noticed one key strategy that was not mentioned in the report: creating true, deep, JOY in celebrating and living Jewish lives.

Let me elaborate. What I have observed in travelling to USY events all over the continent and Israel is that our teens still love to sing and dance. So many studies and statements about today’s teens suggest that they are radically different from the teens that came before them. Singing and dancing, though, is a commonality shared by teens of every generation. I have seen teens, from a group of sophomore guys who would typically be too cool, dancing to “Call Me Maybe,” to 800 teens going wild singing and dancing at the opening of our annual International Convention. What they all have in common is one of our most cherished values: simcha.

We don’t talk enough about simcha – joy – in our discussions of how to reach teens. I believe firmly that our success is rooted in our ability to engage our teens in joyous expressions of their Judaism. This is important not only in Jewish terms, but in terms of the pressure cooker lives teens experience in their high schools and communities. One of the essential roles that we can play, therefore, is providing them the space for unguarded expressions of joy. From our perspective as educators and parents, it is when they are singing and dancing that we know that our teens are going to be okay.

Don’t take my word for it. Read what the Prophet Jeremiah says in his words of consolation after the destruction of the Temple. We sing his famous words at many of our USY events: “Od Yishamah…” “It will again be heard…” What does Jeremiah prophesize will again be heard? “Voices of joy and gladness.” Jeremiah tells us that while things look bad now, we will one day again know that the “Kids are Alright” – when they are singing and dancing again. Even in the time of the Bible our community was concerned with the engagement of our youth. Jeremiah gave us singing and dancing as an indicator to detect that things were looking up.

That is why, for all of us concerned with youth engagement, we should feel good each time we see our teens sing and dance. The joy of being Jewish that we impart to our teens is crucial to their making enduring commitments to the Jewish community.

Going forward, let’s challenge ourselves to create new and more music for our teens to sing and dance to. The Jim Joseph Foundation study, and those that came before it, point us to strategies for better delivery of these tunes to our teens. Our future will be brighter as we act on these critical recommendations. In the meantime, we should continue to celebrate each time we find our teens singing and dancing together.

Rabbi Dave Levy is the director of Teen Learning for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

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Sharansky made his call in a letter to Conference chairman Julius Berman in which he “recommended that a public independent committee of distinguished members who are not connected to either the Board of the Directors or the beneficiaries be established, in order to investigate the allegations so that the public trust in this important organization not be damaged…”

Lauder, who has called the allegations facing conference leaders a “long-term issue with potentially serious implications,” instructed WJC CEO Robert Singer to form an independent task force to “deal with and follow through on this and related issues.”

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by Dr. Jon Mitzmacher

On April 28, 2013 over 100 participants representing schools, agencies, foundations and universities from all over North America and Israel arrived at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School in Jacksonville, Florida to learn, reflect, share and co-create the future of Jewish day school education at edJEWcon 5773.1.

How did this happen? How did a (relatively) small K-8 Jewish day school in a Jewish community of less than 15,000 find itself at the center of an educational revolution? And – more importantly – what does it mean for the field?

Here’s what I have learned over my last two and a half years as head of this school and, as a result, co-creator of edJEWcon.

When it comes to innovating education, it doesn’t have to take millions of dollars and it doesn’t have to take an abundance of faculty. It doesn’t necessarily require expertise in advance and it certainly doesn’t require knowing the end of the journey before you take the first step. You don’t need interactive whiteboards, tablets and laptops in order to adopt a 21st century learning mindset.

It is not about the “stuff.” Technology requires “stuff”; learning requires “people.” It isn’t that the technology is unimportant – there are certain minimum thresholds of technology necessary to walk the path. But most schools and educational programs can reach that threshold with creative budgeting and fundraising. Harder than accumulating the stuff is changing the paradigm. It doesn’t take an endowment to revolutionize your educational philosophy – it takes teachers, administrators, parents and students. And every school has those.

In the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School we are currently engaged in a three-year process to redefine job descriptions of non-classroom teachers to include 21st century learning profiles. Our “Technology Teacher” became a “21st Century Learning Consultant.” Our “Librarian” is now a “21st Century Media & Literacy Specialist.” We may call the “Academic Resource Teacher” a “21st Century Pedagogy Consultant.” In this way, we maintain the core elements of each person’s job – we still have books to catalogue in the library, keyboarding skills to teach, and remediation to perform – while stretching each into coaching and collaborating relationships with faculty in their areas of expertise. This has allowed us to transform teaching and learning in our school without adjusting the budget at all.

A leading feature of 21st century learning is giving students the opportunities to own the learning. Knowing that Bloom’s Taxonomy recognizes “creativity” as the highest rung on the ladder, we are interested in giving our students opportunities to create meaningful, authentic work. This is why we are also beginning to explore opportunities to pilot applications of gaming theory to Jewish day school curriculum. We are currently working on a joint project with Jewish Interactive, where our students are designing from the ground up an educational Purim video game. Jewish Interactive will actually build the software, to be released in advance of next Purim for use in their current network to more than 50 elementary schools around the world.

In large ways, our school has been shaped by leading thinkers of 21st century learning. And in small ways, I believe our school has contributed to the movement as well, by serving as a living laboratory and culminating in our creation of edJEWcon – a yearly institute for 21st century Jewish day school education, launched in 2012 with 21 Jewish day schools throughout North American and representing the full ideological spectrum. edJEWcon is a conference based on 21st century professional development where attendees can experience a Jewish day school in transition to becoming a dynamic 21st century learning environment. We are sharing a vision of teaching and learning that transcends physical boundaries and connects across geographic borders and time zones.

Our school and conference shared the belief that reflective learners achieve at a higher level than non-reflective learners. It is both that simple and that complicated. For our school, it is why reflection is embedded into all subject matter. It is why students have blogfolios. It is why teachers have classroom blogs and responsibility for blogging on a faculty ning. It is because we believe that the process of reflection leads to the product of achievement.

For the conference it is why this year’s theme was “Learn. Reflect. Share.” This year we welcomed returning schools as well a new cohort of schools, academicians, foundation and agency people and other forward thinking educators. Our keynote speakers included Chris Lehman, founder of Science Leadership Academy and EduCon, and Steve Hargadon, creator of Classroom 2.0 and director of Web 2.0 Labs. We had more attendees this year than last, and are hopeful that this will be an annual event for the field.

I do believe it is important to state that there is an additional spotlight on 21st century learning right now because the field has been keenly interested in seeing how educational technology might positively impact the budgets of Jewish schools, and not just the quality of instruction. Twenty-first century learning may indeed provide important paths toward the financial sustainability of Jewish day school. The crisis of day school affordability is very real. The promise of 21st century learning and educational technology is equally real. I look forward to more conversations, more experiments, more research, and more sharing. Whether there is one answer or many, it will take us all to discover them.

Watch Jon’s video below and share your thoughts about 21st century learning and how your school and community can possibly benefit from this technology.

Dr. Jon Mitzmacher is the Head of Galinsky Academy [which includes the DuBow Preschool, the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School (a K-8 Schechter), the Bernard and Alice Selevan Religious School, and Makom Hebrew High] located in Jacksonville, FL, and part of the Jacksonville Jewish Center. He was the founding head of the Solomon Schechter Day School of Las Vegas. Jon has worked in all aspects of Jewish Education from camping to congregations and everything in between.

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In a provocative piece in the Huffington Post, Hildy Gottlieb argues for faster-moving, decentralized, and opportunistic program development, taking advantage of communities, relationships, and resources that already exist. She uses a parable:

Star Wars (the original) revisited: The rebels identify the source of the galaxy’s problems and know they must take immediate action. So they form an organization, build a board and a fundraising committee, and spend years building organizational capacity, knowing that one day, they will be big enough – with enough money for a huge marketing budget and well-paid staff – that they will finally be able to formulate a plan and kick the Death Star’s butt.

Ross Perot, who before he ran for President founded and built the hugely successful Electronic Data Systems, famously put it in a more colorful way:

When someone sees a snake at EDS, we kill it! When someone sees a snake at GM, the first thing they do is form a committee on snakes. Then they bring in a team of outside consultants on snakes. They write a strategic plan for getting rid of snakes. Then six layers of managers delegate someone to kill the snake.

Many of us hate committees, and as each day winds down often wonder where it has gone. After a series of meetings in which we seem to get nothing done, with no deliverables, and with the work we needed to do that day still crying out to us – unwritten proposals and emails, calls to return, colleagues who need our help, clients, customers, and others we serve still waiting to hear from us.

The software development world has begun to recognize the merits of small, with concepts such as minimum viable product and agile development. We also see it in new product development and communications practices; in fact the pace of change is accelerating all around us. The world is perhaps a bit less orderly, less predictable, but at the same time faster-moving, and often more productive.

We need to recognize this in our community, and embrace it. I’ve written in eJewishPhilanthropy about the trap our community often falls into with large-scale digital development. There are multiple effects, including lack of flexibility, high overhead, lack of user input, and long lead-times before benefits are achieved. The need to define these mega-projects in advance, funder reporting requirements, projects which proceed along a multi-year implementation plan without adapting along the way, in a world which is evolving rapidly, means when the project is done, it may no longer be what the community needs.

So let’s adapt our practices. Let’s become nimble and quick. Let’s stop looking and waiting for the opportunity to hit the grand-slam home run. Instead let’s swings for hundreds of singles and doubles; we’ll score more runs for sure.

David Behrman is President of Behrman House, a publisher of textbooks, software, and other educational materials for Jewish religious schools throughout North America. Before joining Behrman House, he was a consultant with McKinsey & Co, in New York, where he served clients in the service, transportation, and not-for-profit sectors. A graduate of Haverford College and Stanford Law School, he also practiced corporate and securities law with Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York.

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by Michael Hoffman

Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN) has made the move from North America to Israel easier than ever. For those ready to make Aliyah, NBN provides all the information and logistical support needed. Many of those who made Aliyah before NBN was founded are jealous that they didn’t have those advantages.

But the landscape that has traditionally propelled Jews to make Aliyah in the first place has changed dramatically since the first Nefesh B’Nefesh charter flight in 2002. The Jewish Agency for Israel has shifted its focus from Aliyah to identity and peoplehood, and mainstream movements in the American Jewish world rarely if ever talk of or encourage Aliyah. Even influential Israeli thinkers such as Gidi Grinstein now argue that the Zionist insistence on negating the Diaspora was a mistake and that Diaspora communities are critical for Jewish survival.

It is in this environment that NBN is struggling to increase the number of Jews moving to Israel from North America.

New Realities, New Demographics

While Aliyah is not being officially encouraged within mainstream Jewish organizations, tens of thousands of young Jews have experienced, and often fallen in love with Israel through programs like Birthright and Masa. For NBN, this pool of prospects represents an opportunity. NBN is tapping into a generation of Jews who would love the idea of living in Israel, but aren’t sure what “Aliyah” means, or where to start.

While traditionally the majority of those making Aliyah from North America were primarily religious, the rightward move of the Orthodox communities in the US has decreased their emphasis on Aliyah and consequently the number of religious Jews moving to Israel. As the number of religious Jews moving is declining, the number of secular 20-somethings moving to Israel is growing.

Today’s secular 20-somethings have qualities that the previous generation didn’t have. They are:

• more likely to have experienced Israel because of Birthright or Masa etc
• less concerned with traditional notions of remaining in a job for a specific amount of time
• more likely to see Israel as a hub of modernity and high tech with a fun lifestyle
• less likely to have good job prospects in the United States
• more comfortable with staying in touch with friends and relatives over the Internet, making geographic distance less of an issue

New Tactics

To leverage these changes in the environment for Aliyah, Nefesh B’Nefesh is changing their strategy and working to reach people earlier in the Aliyah decision-making process.

Working with Chicago-based See3 Communications, NBN is currently running two new online campaigns designed to create conversations about Aliyah, in particular on social media. These contests are the Best Job Contest and the Wedding Gift Challenge. NBN is luring Aliyah prospects to immigrate by offering special incentives targeting two core audiences: young people looking to launch their careers in Israel’s dynamic economy, and newlyweds who might want to start their families together in the Holy Land.

Best Job Contest winners will receive jobs in Israel at companies including Sodastream, IBM, Iscar, and The Times of Israel, while couples in the Wedding Gift Challenge vie for “presents,” like new appliances, an IKEA shopping spree, or a $10,000 grand prize.

As they go, contestants are encouraged to rack up votes on their contest profiles by reaching out to their friends on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and more. NBN is hoping to generate a viral Aliyah buzz by encouraging contestants to post about Aliyah and Israel on their social networks – generating content including photos, personal narratives, and videos about why making Aliyah still makes sense for North American Jews today.

In other words, rather than try to advertise their way into the homes of Aliyah prospects, NBN is leveraging contestants’ social networks to reach one step further into the wider community and create a conversation about what it means to make Aliyah. They are replacing the official community conversations about Aliyah with a more up-to-date social and distributed version.

Whether the numbers of those making Aliyah ultimately increase remains to be seen, but the contests are off to a healthy start, with dozens of entrants and tens of thousands of voters – and it’s just the beginning of a wider push to reach new constituencies who might be interested in making Aliyah. Both contests can be found at thisismyisrael.org

Michael Hoffman is CEO of See3 Communications.

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One of the most common questions heard in the halls of nonprofits is, “Why can’t we get a volunteer to do it?” The underlying thought is that if a volunteer can do a specific task, then he or she can relieve the staff of that responsibility. One might refer to this way of engaging volunteers as an “incremental approach” in which each challenge is faced with a stopgap measure to meet the needs of clients. It is an ad hoc approach to engaging volunteers: they are sought just to fill a void – to serve as a “band aid” to deal with gaps in service provided by the staff in the organization.

For example, a day center for people with Alzheimer’s disease has developed a system for transporting the clients to and from the center each day. Volunteers provide this transportation and donate the cost of gas for the trips. The agency envisions that using volunteers this way will save them and their clients the cost of a taxi service.

However, the system is not functioning well; one reason is that the agency has never developed criteria for selecting volunteers and then evaluating their performance. Given that the volunteers are entrusted with the welfare of the clients as they travel together from their homes to the agency, it is essential that the volunteers be excellent drivers. They should also be familiar with the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and be able to deal with the clients compassionately and knowledgeably.

Because the agency has failed to screen its volunteers, has not developed a job description outlining their responsibilities, and has not provided an orientation about clients’ needs and how the agency serves them, it is now confronting several serious issues relating to the use of volunteers. The volunteers just continue providing services year after year, without guidance or specialized knowledge.

Recently the center’s director learned that one of the drivers has a problem with cataracts and can barely see while she is on the road. This immediately raised a red flag for the professional staff, and they asked themselves how they should deal with this volunteer. She is 82 years old and in her 19th year of driving, and even though she is sometimes tired she looks forward to making the daily trips. This task forces her to leave her house in the morning, and she would often run errands in between the two trips. Her volunteering provides structure for her daily schedule and keeps her busy.

Yet there was neither a job description for her nor a periodic review of her performance as a driver. The agency had no built-in system for reviewing her status and engaging her in a discussion about her continuing to volunteer for the nonprofit. The only option now was to request a special meeting with her to talk about her present situation. Of course, the center staff was concerned about her response to being told that she could not drive until after her recuperation from cataract surgery.

The tense moments between the center director and the volunteer could have been lessened if there had been a volunteer manual requiring a semi-annual or annual performance review. This review would have provided the opportunity to discuss the volunteer’s age, performance, and ability to continue driving clients. This conversation might still have been difficult, but having an ongoing review process would have given it structure as part of the regular assessment of all volunteers. This particular volunteer would not have felt singled out as having a problem.

This example shows the need for well-thought-out, structured volunteer programs. The staff of an organization has to be clear about the role volunteers can play within the agency. One staff person, or even a volunteer, needs to have the responsibilities of a volunteer coordinator. This person is responsible for working out the potential roles for volunteers in the organization and developing job descriptions for them in consultation with the other professionals responsible for the delivery of services.

Ongoing meetings between the volunteer and his or her supervisor would give both of them an opportunity to discuss the volunteer’s placement and response to work, as well as to appraise his or her performance. These meetings are used to support the volunteers and to provide positive feedback, as well as to discuss areas in which they need support and assistance in developing their knowledge and skills in performing their tasks. In the example discussed earlier, such a meeting would have provided the opportunity for the volunteer to discuss her relationship to her clients in general and her vision difficulties in particular. The supervisor and volunteer could have discussed the need for her to take a leave of absence so she could attend to her health issues.

The more time and effort spent in structuring the volunteer program correctly, the more smoothly it will be implemented. In addition to crafting volunteer assignments, the volunteer program should also provide support, supervision, and assessment of volunteer performance to ensure that the organization functions effectively and efficiently.

Stephen G. Donshik, D.S.W., is a lecturer at Hebrew University’s International Nonprofit Management and Leadership Program and has a consulting firm focused on strengthening nonprofit organizations and their leadership for tomorrow. Stephen is a regular contributor to eJewish Philanthropy.

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When Pascale Bercovitch took a chair next to the podium at ADVANCE: The Ruderman Jewish Disabilities Funding Conference, she lifted herself from a sleekly designed wheelchair onto the same slightly uncomfortable chair on which each member of her audience sat.

“I am who I wanted to be. I set out to be a champ,” said the Israeli Paralympic athlete.

More than 100 members of the Jewish Funders Network (JFN) gathered in New York to attend the annual ADVANCE conference in early May. The conference brought together funders from around the Jewish world passionate about the field of special needs and disabilities, and discussions included inclusion of people with disabilities in Jewish communal life. For three days, JFN members – prospective funders – met with advocates and providers of services for people with disabilities, and visited supported worksites.

“When the continuity of our community is paramount, we need to find a way to be more inclusive of the people with disabilities in our midst,” said Jay Ruderman, president of the Ruderman Family Foundation, the conference’s sponsor. “At nearly 20 percent of the Jewish community, they are a strategic asset and very much part of our future and our long-term success as a people.”

According to a Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute study provided by JFN, approximately 1 million people with disabilities of working age are living in Israel – including Bercovitch, whose well-muscled body and attitude convey confidence. She is in a committed relationship, a mother of two, a writer, and a sportswoman.

At 16, Bercovitch came to Israel as a volunteer on an army base near Ashkelon through SAREL, a program similar to Taglit-Birthright. Her katzeen (supervising officer) was Alon Davidi (later head of the Security Council of Sderot in Israel’s south). At the end of that volunteer summer, she returned to France to complete high school, with plans to make aliyah and join the Israel Defense Forces. At 17, running to catch a train to her school, she fell. Both of her legs were severed at the mid-thighs.

When Davidi learned of the accident, he came to France. Bercovitch told JNS.org his encouragement made her more determined. “I decided to do it my way – to follow my dream to become an Israeli and go to the IDF,” she said. “I so badly wanted to do it. You know what happened? I did it!”

Bercovitch, who continues to represent Israel at international Paralympic events, hardly considers herself a woman with a disability.

“I don’t think legs are a major thing in life,” she told JNS.org. “It is our duty to do what we can do… There is no such thing as can’t: you never know what you can do until you try.”

William Daroff, vice president for public policy and director of the Washington Office of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), said the mission of the ADVANCE conference was to “find ways to open Abraham’s tent.” Daroff is the Federation umbrella’s go-to domestic policy expert, including when it comes to health and human services. His portfolio includes working on setting JFNA’s positions on Medicare, Medicaid and long-term care, as well as policies affecting people with disabilities.

JFNA’s policy is to celebrate diversity while creating a sense of unity within the community. “It is a responsibility for each Jewish soul, to light a flame of welcome,” Daroff said.

Following his presentation at the conference, JNS.org asked Daroff about the long-term effects of advances in prenatal genetic testing, particularly whether or not early knowledge about genetic abnormalities can reduce the future population of people with disabilities.

“It’s controversial,” Daroff said. “The new test for Down’s syndrome that relies on a blood test in the first trimester is about 90 percent accurate.” Without qualification, he stated, “You’re going to see fewer people with Down’s syndrome. As time goes on, as testing gets more sophisticated, we’ll be able to identify other things as well.”

In the Jewish community, especially among Orthodox segments, genetic testing is a regular part of pre-marriage health care for young men and women.

“There is massive testing, and it’s only going to get more intense as you have more and more people aware of what’s possible,” Daroff said.

Jewish ethics, Daroff said, “obviously allows prenatal testing – without a question.”

“Where I come from, it’s an individual choice,” Daroff said. “I resent the attempt of the whole right to life community trying to hijack this issue from people with disabilities.”

The ADVANCE conference presenters mirrored its agenda quite closely, integrating experts and advocates, people with disabilities stemming from neurological and accidental sources, prospective funders, and others into a program of education and experiential content.

NPR investigative reporter Joseph Shapiro, an advocate for people with disabilities, they have “redefined what it means to have disabilities” and “seek understanding of their needs.” People with disabilities represent the “one minority group we can all join at any moment,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro said the needs of people with disabilities could have a positive impact on general society. For example, curb cuts created to ease street crossing for people in wheelchairs help thousands daily – from kids on scooters to elderly people with walkers.

People with disabilities “must not be treated as commodities,” Shapiro said, adding that care for them “should be in the most inclusive setting possible… When people are included, good things happen.”

Autism, and integration of people with autism, into Jewish social institutions, was a major focus of the ADVANCE conference. Marne Aldrich of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, told JNS.org regarding the perceived increase in the numbers of children with autism, “I do not believe there is actually an increase in the number affected children, rather, diagnostics testing has become more sensitive.”

“There is a change in the diagnostic criteria, greater awareness and more understanding, mot an increase in absolute numbers,” she said.

Conference attendee Ari Ne’eman, diagnosed with autism at age 12, is an advocate for people with autism and president of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN). He believes the Jewish perspective on disability issues is many years behind the perspective of the general community.

Ne’eman told JNS.org the Jewish community needs “an agenda that focuses on integrative services” for people with disabilities. When it comes to autism, Ne’eman said there are “a lot of stereotypes.”

“There is a perception that autism should be portrayed as a tragedy in need of cure,” he said. “That’s not our belief… We [at ASAN] try to inform that autism is broader than many understand and help change the public perception.”

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Davidson clan divides over foundation

A petition to split the $1 billion-plus William Davidson Foundation into two pieces was dismissed by Oakland County Probate Court last week for lack of jurisdiction, but the family differences that led to the request are likely to continue.

The records were sealed, so those involved in the court action weren’t talking, but others with knowledge of the family said tensions have been growing among foundation board members, most of whom are related, since soon after Davidson’s death.

The issue appears to be differing beliefs about who is the keeper of Davidson’s philanthropic vision. During his lifetime, Davidson’s philanthropy was notable for its focus on Israel and other Jewish causes, as well as Michigan-based projects.

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by Esther D. Kustanowitz

This is the second part in a two-part series on how second-screen experiences relate to Jewish leadership and programming.

On Sunday – or perhaps Monday, depending on where and when you read eJewishPhilanthropy – I wrote a piece about the second-screen experience in television, how today’s fans aren’t just spectators, but active participants in the culture, mythology and longevity of a show. Even though that piece appeared first in this series, the truth is that the events described in part two came first, and inspired both pieces.

A few weeks ago, the Jewish Communal Service Association sponsored a free conference call on Jewish leadership with Dr. Misha Galperin, The Jewish Agency’s President and CEO for International Development and author of Reimagining Leadership in Jewish Organizations. (You can listen to the recorded conference call here.) At some point early in the conversation, which was moderated by Wexner Senior Philanthropic Advisor Larry Moses, someone noted that “a vision for the future cannot be crowdsourced.” Given my involvement in the social media sphere, I thought it might be interesting to test that theory by crowdsourcing responses to this statement on Facebook.

The responses were fascinating – coming from Jewish professionals who were simultaneously on the conference call and following other conversations on Facebook and Twitter, as well as from those who had never heard of JCSA and didn’t know about the conference call but were able to access and participate in the conversation via social media. Because my list of Facebook friends even includes one or two people who don’t work in Jewish leadership (go figure), the conversation had an even wider reach, and those “civilians” also weighed in on the definitions of “vision” and “crowdsourcing,” and on some of the challenges surrounding the concept of “leadership” today. The Facebook conversation also gave us the opportunity to interact with each other, a privilege that couldn’t be granted to conference call participants who were necessarily muted, to avoid audio chaos. Call participants were able to submit questions electronically, so some of our words and questions did reach the call’s featured speakers. But our voices, themselves, did not.

Here is a rundown of the conversation on our Facebook “second screen” (comments have been shortened for space, and typos have been corrected).

Carin Goldberg Maher, Talent Acquisition Executive at JFNA, agreed “Vision is a communal thing. The broader the net cast on ideas for a vision, the more buy-in and potential for impact there is.”

“Leadership collects, refines and perhaps massages the message,” I added, “but should reflect the opinions and experience of the people they’re leading, or they will cease to be the leaders.” “Having your own vision is GOOD … leaving room for others to come onboard and modify the vision to make it stronger is GREAT,” said Adam Pollack, the west coast director for Birthright Israel NEXT.

Jodi Berman Kustanovich (different surname spelling, no relation), Executive Director at Synagogue 3000, took a different tack, opining that “feedback from the crowd informs, but leaders create the actual vision, crafting the plan and implementing. The crowd never really comes together for decision-making, action plan generating, etc. – all of the things that require actual leadership.”

“Vision comes from leaders,” added Haleh Rabizadeh Resnick, a college friend of mine who’s now a doctor. “Good leaders have a pulse on who they are leading. Crowdsourcing can be used to learn how vision can best be transmitted to the community.”

Liz Polay-Wettengel, Director of Marketing and Communications at Aviv Centers for Living in Boston and co-creator of JewishBoston.com, said that “crowdsourcing opens everything up to unique thoughts and ideas.”

“Haven’t we been crowdsourcing vision long before the internet?” asked Yechiel Hoffman, past executive director for LimmudLA and incoming director of Youth Learning and Engagement at Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles, launching a new branch of the discussion focusing on defining “crowdsourcing.”

“If the objective is to gather as much information in response to a specific question, and pick out which of the data to assimilate that is one thing,” Hoffman continued. “But vision crowdsourcing is about listening and building ownership, which makes online crowdsourcing an unlikely tool for effective visioning work – it needs bounded time and space on a platform with a facilitator.”

Kustanovich, too, was thinking more about how she previously thought that crowdsourcing was good for things like “asking for a good plumber or for a good Talmud quote for a talk you’re giving. It’s asking to draw on experience and knowledge of other people.” Her vision of the concept of vision “is more like appreciative inquiry and engagement and requires relationship and personal touch to really be able to distill what should be part of a vision for the future and what shouldn’t. I think it requires two-way discussion and consideration, and not just an act of commenting on a question.”

At this point, the conversation veered away from crowdsourcing and toward leadership styles. Kustanovich invoked Steve Jobs’ vision: “You don’t give the people what they want. You give the people what they don’t yet know they want. I think that’s what leadership is – it’s not doing what the people want, it’s doing what’s right and bringing the people with you.”

Although she also agreed with Jobs, Rabbi Alana Suskin noted that leadership “isn’t actually guiding the crowd – it’s figuring out what the crowd wants already, not changing what they want. There’s a difference between providing a product and making social change. And that difference can easily slide into arrogance. There are a privileged few who get a lot of press for their ‘fabulous ideas’ and ‘leadership’ -most of which don’t ever really go anywhere in the long term – they get their fifteen minutes and then it’s over. Real change comes from working with people from the bottom up, not providing a product that they can consume. Real change and vision has to treat its constituents as though their thoughts and ideas are important and relevant; salesmanship, on the other hand, lasts as long as the next big thing, but doesn’t really require deep empathy.”

“I find that two key components of leadership are a) to see things from a different perspective (also in part what can be vs what is), and b) to tell a good story (ie craft a compelling narrative),” Keith Krivitzky, Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of Monmouth County, noted. “I think crowdsourcing can help with b) but not so much a).” Suskin maintains that “a vision for the future can *only* be crowdsourced. Leaders cannot lead any direction that the people are not willing to go – they can guide the curves, but they can’t set the direction.”

Hope Levav, who works at Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn, believes that “the best kind of visionary leaders are deeply connected to the communities they lead, informed by and responsive to the needs of the crowd. BUT real vision requires a step back, an appreciation for and understanding of the crowd from a different perspective, a view that allows the truly visionary leader to see what possibilities lie ahead – and to figure out how to get there. It is almost impossible for ‘the crowd’ to do that, and relying too much on the crowd can get a leader stuck in the present with no clear way to move ahead.”

“Do we have those kinds of leaders now?” Resnick asked. “And how do we encourage the next in line to be those kinds of leaders?” added Polay-Wettengel. ”Can people be trained to be visionary leaders? Is it related to innate charisma or types of intelligence? Is it a habit of mind? A skill? Or a muscle that needs to be developed and exercised?” Hoffman queried.

Not surprisingly, the talk of Jewish leadership led to a discussion about women in leadership positions. After a question from Rabbi Francine Roston in New Jersey about how essential empathy is for Jewish leadership, Galperin acknowledged (my paraphrase) that although there are more women in Jewish leadership, the upper level roles go to the “commanding and authoritative” type of leadership vs. “relationship-based leadership,” and that he believes it “is an enormous loss for the community.”

Goldberg Maher noted that many of the challenges for women happen in the interview process, that when discussing accomplishments, women will tend to emphasize the team, whereas men will have no problem taking credit for it.

Even after the call ended, discussion continued online, returning to both crowdsourcing and leadership as subjects. “We can, and should use the ‘crowd’ to inform, if not establish, the vision for the future in certain circumstances, and certain types of organizations,” says Sheridan Gayer, assistant director for Columbia University’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, citing her efforts with Limmud volunteers, which includes “an ask of what (skills) the volunteers hope to get out of their experience. I think to build strong leaders, we need them to self identify their weaknesses.”

“One benefit of crowdsourcing (if you do it well) is getting outside the inner echo chamber,” says noted social media and technology guru Lisa Colton. “The people talking about Jewish leadership are very inner circle, while the people they are often trying to engage/serve/reach are very NOT. While leadership isn’t all about the ‘boots on the ground,’ having a reality check of the landscape you’re working in/towards is critical.” Or, as Polay-Wettengel put it, “Some of the best visions come from where you least expect it, so stop looking in the usual places.”

By its end, the second-screen experience of the JCSA conference call had also organically generated a reading list, featuring Steve Jobs’ autobiography, Ron Wolfson’s Relational Judaism, Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, and Debra Frieze and Margaret Wheatley’s article titled, “Leadership in an Age of Complexity.” And let’s not forget Galperin’s aforementioned Reimagining Leadership in Jewish Organizations, and two even earlier documents – as Executive Director of the LA Board of Rabbis Jonathan Freund later noted, “The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were both crowdsourced.”

While all of this interaction was sparked by the call, it all happened externally to the call – on a second screen that was technically public, but not officially a designated channel for conversation. Galperin and Moses probably had few if any expectations about discussion outside the “room” of the conference call. But it is precisely that second, unintentional screen that made deeper conversation possible, across professional, denominational and geographical boundaries, involving people who would have otherwise been excluded from the conversation. Who knows, moving forward, how that conversation will radiate from each of those individuals?

There’s a temptation to see second screen as distraction; but the reality is – as the TV industry is beginning to realize – it’s an opportunity for engagement. And that translates offline, too – we all know that a lecture isn’t as engaging as a panel, a panel isn’t as engaging as a Q & A, and a Q & A isn’t as engaging as a one-on-one conversation. Reading a book on your own is great. And reading it in a group gives you more, and lets you go deeper, because you’re multiplying the available perspectives.

At every level of increased intimacy with a product, mission or cause, there’s an opportunity for deeper personal investment, for more connectedness and increased feelings of ownership and responsibility for a project’s success and integrity. We owe it to ourselves, and to the future professionals and volunteers who support our work, to constantly ask ourselves how we can simultaneously widen our impact and focus our investment, and awareness of the “second screen,” whether literal or figurative, is a great start.

Esther D. Kustanowitz, a Los Angeles-based writer, consultant and Jewish communal professional, has written and consulted on Jewish innovation, pop culture and social media for many Jewish publications and organizations. A longtime consultant for the ROI Community of Jewish Innovators, Esther also works part-time as Program Coordinator for the NextGen Engagement Initiative at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. She has been named to four major lists of Jewish social media influencers, and blogs at myurbankvetch.com. Esther is currently writing a book about grief as a personal and communal experience, tentatively titled “Nothing Helps (But This Might Help): A Guide to Loss and What Comes After.”

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by Charles Cohen

Blended learning! This has been the most galvanizing affordability strategy we’ve considered so far at the Affordability Knowledge Center. Its potential for disrupting the day school financial model, or improving pedagogy for day school students, has been fodder for some amazing conversations on both the PEJE Blog and JEDLAB, the new destination for Jewish educational debate and sharing knowledge.

It started with a great blog post – by G-dcast’s Educational Technology Director Russel Neiss – written in response to this blended-learning white paper. From there, the conversation exploded across multiple platforms, and covered a plethora of issues relating to blended learning and affordability. Jon Mitzmacher, Head of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School in Jacksonville, Florida, effectively laid out the issue: “I’m all for making day school more affordable. And I’m all for replacing teachers who are ineffective. And I’m all for utilizing the latest technology. I’m just not sure they all go together in as neat a package as we may wish.”

Teachers Are Still the Heart and Soul of Jewish Education

The most impassioned comments were in support of teachers, and the primacy of education in this discussion. Dr. Eliezer Jones at Yeshiva University’s Open Day School said that “schools exploring ways to be affordable should be supported as long as teaching and learning is the main driver and affordability is the passenger.” While some people mentioned that there may be an issue of teacher quality in some schools, Tzvi Pittinsky, of the TechRav blog and The Frish School in Paramus, New Jersey, noted that “the answer to this issue of some bad teachers is not to replace them with computers. It is to get better teachers. Blended learning when used to enhance pedagogy can be quite powerful. Blended learning used to replace teachers is a different story.” Nancy Josephs Edelman looked to expose a risky strategy: “Proposing blended learning to cut costs is merely code for cutting teachers and creating impossibly large classes.” Pittinsky spelled it out bluntly: “Bottom line, in education, is the teacher, stupid….”

Dr. Joshua Gutoff, from Gratz College, highlighted the critical role teachers play in building Jewish identity: “[W]hile technology may – repeat, may – be useful as an aid to the transmission of information, or the development of certain formal skills, much of Jewish education, (supplementary ed. in particular, but day school as well) is concerned with the development of attitudes and dispositions. Identity development is formed through connections with both peers and adult role models, and an educational strategy that focuses on reducing the amount of human contact will invariably fail at that.”

Blended Learning: Gimmick or Game Changer?

Blended learning itself was picked over, as well. Is it the elixir parched day school parents are looking for, or is it just more snake oil, sold in a fancy bottle by some smooth-talking hedge-fund managers?

Russel Neiss said that “Far too many schools try to use technology as a gimmick to make parents BELIEVE that they’re getting more value their tuition dollars or to make some other cost savings benefit more palatable…. I think it’s little more than a marketing smokescreen to obfuscate changes to education that parents would otherwise be yelling and screaming about…. To continue pouring copious amounts of cash to subsidize something that the best research to date says doesn’t really get you the most bang for your buck isn’t the model of efficiency that we allegedly hope for re: day school affordability.”

But Rachel Abrahams, from the AVI CHAI Foundation, wondered whether the student-teacher ratio is the best metric for evaluating blended learning. “I’m curious why everyone is stuck on number of kids in the room and not on the number of students interacting with the teacher at a time. Blended groupings are smaller than most classes now. Other students are working independently – do we not believe that can happen?”

And what if blended learning is not meaningfully connected to any cost savings? Tzvi Pittinsky said that blended learning is “an interesting model that needs to be explored for its value for teaching and learning. What if blended learning was an excellent model but only in a regular sized class? Would people be embracing it in the same way they are now?”

Notwithstanding the educational benefits, Isaac Shalev, Principal of Sage70, Inc., and former CEO of Storahtelling, warned against discounting the potential cost savings. “Even stipulating that the last word on blended learning and costs savings is that it adds up to $1,000/pupil, that’s a pretty significant number – something in the neighborhood of 5-10% of tuition. Why would we turn our noses up at these savings? For a school with 500 students, that’s half a million dollars of community and philanthropic money saved!”

Blended Learning Is Part of a Broader Affordability Picture

But what was so great about these conversations was that so many of our day school leaders and educators understand the complexity of the affordability challenge.

Russell emphasized the need for multiple funding streams: “I’m totally open to experimenting, but frankly, I rather see our energies and monies go toward pushing the limits on the revenue end and pushing our community to lobby our politicians to embrace school choice initiatives at the local governmental levels and to setup community day school endowments. Those two initiatives have a significantly higher impact on the affordability of day schools than anything technology could ever accomplish.”

Tikvah Wiener, who runs the RealSchool project at Frisch, spoke to the systemic nature of affordability. She preferred to discuss blended learning in the context of sustainability, “because to me it speaks not only to a school’s financial plans but to how those plans serve the overall mission of an institution. Since I favor the inquiry-based learning approach, I’d add to a sustainability plan involvement of the teachers and students in making their school financially sound. Financial health, in other words, should be part of the school culture, just as spiritual, emotional and physical health are.”

The conversation ranged from pedagogy to government advocacy, from technology to governance. High school students, teachers, administrators, and lay leaders all spoke up. It was truly a communal conversation, and displayed the range of perspectives that make up the affordability ecosystem. Stephen Kepher, development director at Seattle Jewish Community School, summed it up well: “My favorite Director of Finance would always point out to the Board that there are three basic factors at independent schools: class size, faculty salaries and tuition. A school can have any two of the following: small classes, high faculty salaries and low tuition – but not all three. If you want small classes and high (i.e. a living wage) salaries and benefits, then you have to have a high tuition. If you want lower rates of tuition then you have to have either large class sizes or low faculty salaries. This, of course, raises questions about your core values as well as what the market may allow (e.g. is there enough interest in your program to allow for a pool of applicants that will lead to full enrollment at any class size…etc.) Somewhere in the midst of all this is the intersection of affordability and sustainability.”

While blended learning has been an important topic for the past couple of years, these recent discussions have been a great example of how the Affordability Knowledge Center can use its research and network to engage new participants, and to give lay leaders, educators, students and advocates a means to learn from and engage with each other. Hopefully subsequent research will lead to similarly enthusiastic debate.

Charles Cohen is the manager of the Jewish Day School Affordability Knowledge Center.

cross-posted with PEJE blog

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Introducing a Series from HUC-JIR, JTS, and YU on the online learning experience

We are only beginning to understand the potential of online education. A 2010 U.S. Department of Education study concluded that “students who took all or part of their classes online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.” It is clear that this medium presents vast, new opportunities to engage students in effective learning experiences.

The explosion of online learning in the past few years coincides with the Jim Joseph Foundation awarding three major grants of $15 million each to support graduate programs of education at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC- JIR), Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), and Yeshiva University (YU).

To date, the grants have helped to establish 13 new degree and certification programs across the three institutions. 528 students have received Jewish education degrees or certification since spring of 2010. 419 students are currently enrolled in degree and graduate programs of certification. Beyond these numbers, the grants have led to significant developments in each institution’s online education.

New online courses are now offered by HUC-JIR, JTS, and YU to Jewish educators from around the country. Both students and teachers are helping the Foundation gather important lessons about this medium. Students, among other positive feedback about online learning experiences, are excited to share diverse opinions and ideas not only with their classmates but among an array of experts whose insights they can bring to bear via the various online tools available to them. Faculty report increased engagement with their students in their online courses as compared to traditional courses.

The institutions recognize their unique position to capitalize on online learning – and the need to train their educators to be effective in this new environment. Two weeks ago, HUC-JIR, JTS, and YU together launched the inter-intuitional eLearning Faculty Fellowship, which is part of the Jim Joseph Foundation – funded Inter-Institutional eLearning Collaborative. On May 7th, twenty faculty members of Cohort 1 participated in the first of five live sessions to learn strategies, tools, and approaches for using educational technologies to improve student engagement and learning Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) at Columbia. All five live sessions and five additional online workshops have been created and will be led by the University.

We know that higher education is moving rapidly to adapt to a changed world of teaching and learning. The Parthenon Group recently held conversations with more than “100 post-secondary institutions that deem online learning strategies a top priority.” Parthenon notes that important points to bear in mind include: 1) Students are demanding online courses; the majority of institutions have responded to this demand; 2) Online enrollments are highest for graduate students, but there are two million bachelor’s students expected to swell the undergraduate online presence over the next eight years; and 3) Online students need fundamentally different support services than on-campus students.

While there is obviously still much to learn, we at the Foundation are excited about the early feedback from students and faculty from HUC-JIR, JTS, and YU. We are making their reflections on online teaching and learning available to you because we believe their ruminations are worthy of consideration by all those who care about Jewish education and the future of online learning.

Charles “Chip” Edelsberg, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, which seeks to foster compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews in the United States. Dawne Bear Novicoff, is a Senior Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

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by Rabbi Josh Feigelson

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

Emerging Adulthood: Finding One’s Place

The blessing and curse of emerging adulthood is rooted in some basic biology. By age 18, human beings are at their physical peak – fully developed, ready to exercise power, ready to reproduce. But the pre-fontal cortex of the brain – the part that enables us not to act on every impulse, but to consider the consequences of our actions – isn’t fully developed until age 25. Add to this mix that most young adults don’t have young children or aging parents to care for, and you find the description that Jeffrey Jensen Arnett once offered at a conference I attended: emerging adults are at the height of their physical power and the low-point of their social responsibility.

The blessing of this reality is that the whole world seems open to many emerging adults (setting aside for the moment the real socioeconomic and political constraints they face). These are years of possibility and experimentation, often undertaken with a high degree of energy, seriousness, and skill. Consider where we find emerging adults: they are professional athletes, musicians, congressional staffers, corporate junior associates, Teach For America corps members, and social entrepreneurs. The things they can achieve are extraordinary.

But that very openness can also be a curse. The world can seem so open that these years can result in aimlessness, as emerging adults try out various career possibilities and relationships, but don’t commit to any one of them in particular, paralyzed by FOMO (fear of missing out). In the wake of the Great Recession, the image of the college graduate living at his parents’ home without a job is one that too easily comes to mind when we think of emerging adults.

Somewhere between the blessing and the curse lies the driving force of emerging adulthood: the trick of finding one’s place in the family of things. Our task, as their professional, educational, and personal mentors, is to help them find that place. If we can do that, we can empower them to bring their intelligence and creativity into communal life.

Mentoring Emerging Adults

Emerging Jewish adults are increasingly the products of experiential education. They have been campers and camp counselors, Birthright Israel participants, youth group members, engaged in various Hillel initiatives, and potentially involved in ongoing experiential education through communal living programs like AVODAH and Moishe House, community learning, prayer, and activism. This is a world many of them know, a world in which many of them are comfortable.

Experiential education, which partakes of certain characteristics of formal education but rejects others, aligns with one of the key realities of emerging adults: They are ambivalent about institutions. On the one hand, they rightly sense that legacy institutions frequently are more motivated by concerns about institutional self-preservation than mission or innovation. This leads to suspicion of institutional life. On the other, they are adept at navigating the institutional demands of large institutions (most notably universities and often large corporations), and some easily identify with institutional life.

All of this reflects the central motion of emerging adulthood, from what theorist Sharon Daloz Parks calls probing to tested commitment. The probing stage is one we recognize: trying out majors in college (even trying out colleges, or trying out time away from school); experimenting with internships, social networks, interests, romantic partners; testing professions, living arrangements, relationships. But eventually that probing settles down, and a firmer sense of commitment develops. “In the period of tested commitment,” Parks writes, “the self has a deepened quality of at-homeness and centeredness – in marked contrast to the ambivalence and dividedness of the earlier period.”

We can choose to ignore this period of probing commitment, waving our hands as we say, “Our organization doesn’t have time for people who aren’t fully committed.” But that would be a mistake. Emerging adults have a great deal to offer: creativity unbounded by the constraints many older adults have; exposure to skills, theories, and approaches that they’ve learned in college; energy and enthusiasm. All of these can add a tremendous amount to our complementary schools, camps, and other educational settings.

Of course there are risks as well. Unboundedness by the past can mean that emerging adults aren’t aware of history. They may wind up reinventing the wheel. They may come to look at anything old as being obsolete, when in fact there’s plenty of old stuff (like Torah, for instance) of tremendous value.

The transition from probing to tested commitment is the work of mentoring, a word that is probably over-used these days. Mentoring isn’t a small thing. It is more than the occasional lunch or phone date with a senior colleague. Parks defines mentoring this way: “an intentional, mutually-demanding, and meaningful relationship between two individuals, a young adult and an older, wiser figure who assists the younger person in learning the ways of life.” A quality mentoring relationship creates the firm yet flexible space for emerging adults to probe, test, reflect, and develop a firmer sense of purpose and self, all the while developing respect for experience and tradition. That is, mentoring is the way young adults find their place in the family of things. Mentoring relationships also have positive effects on the older mentors as well, keeping them fresh, opening their eyes and ears. Older adults, too, need to reflect on their place in the world.

As Parks writes, the greatest success comes in not only one-on-one mentoring relationships, but developing mentoring environments, in which a network of mentors and mentees create a collective space in which to reflect together. Building such individual and communal relationships yields greater resilience, capacity for listening, and imagination, on both the personal and organizational levels.

We hear a lot these days about the crisis of twenty-somethings, the disconnect between older and younger generations. First I’d say that such talk of crisis is, as usual, overblown. But there is what to pay attention to. If we want to engage emerging adults in our communities and institutions, we have to do so not with the short-term aim of preserving our institutions, but with the more genuine aim of listening to and welcoming them into communal life. As individual educators and professionals, we need to become mentors. As a community, we need to develop an ethic and culture of mentorship, in which we welcome and value the gifts that all of us, young and old alike, bring to our collective work.

Rabbi Josh Feigelson is educational director at Ask Big Questions, and before that served as Campus Rabbi at Northwestern University Hillel. Ordained by YCT Rabbinical School, Josh also holds a BA from Yale University in music. He is currently working on a PhD at Northwestern about higher education and American Jewish life.

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In a recent eJewishPhilanthropy newsletter, there were two articles that unknowingly interconnected large problems with the American Jewish community. Both the articles, A Less Spoken About Angle: The Threat Israel Presents to Jewish Peoplehood by Rabbi Uri Regev and Staying Present: Adult Mentors are Essential to Teens’ Lives and to Effective Jewish Teen Engagement by Deborah Meyer, when read together form a better understanding of the American Jewish young adults’ perception of Israel.

Rabbi Regev’s article takes a very strong attack on what he considers to be an Israel whose “policies on religion and state … undermine that very sense of Jewish peoplehood” and that constantly “discriminates against non-Orthodox rabbis.” While there are many fundamental differences and issues between Orthodox and non-Orthodox rabbis, the challenge is that the mindset of the average Israeli does not focus on nuances of denominations, but rather on a general religious versus secular divide. The topic of the ‘Women of the Wall’ has been widely publicized over the past few months, and I know a fundamental concern of Rabbi Regev’s for even longer. However, the issue represented only affects a minority of Israeli citizens: those who choose to affiliate with the Reform and Conservative movements. The vast majority of Israeli citizens who do not partake in religious ceremony choose so not because they don’t want to go to an Orthodox synagogue, but rather just because they don’t want to be engaged religiously. This is a large problem for American Jewry as well, except in Israel, assimilation is not as large a problem because of the constant immersion in Jewish peoplehood.

The statistic that 92% of participants in immersive service learning in Israel become more connected to the state and people when learning of issues in Israel is very impressive in its own right, but must be taken in context. The typical participant on one of these programs is looking for a way to do tikkun olam, or improve the world, and expressed an interest in going to Israel. The fact that they see that Israel has problems that need to be overcome allows them to connect to her in an unbelievably personal way. The only thing that this statistic tells us is that Repair the World, who commissioned this study of their programs, is doing a phenomenal job and is an example of how targeted Israel engagement by personal interest is succeeding.

The typical American Jewish young adult will never reach a program like those funded by Repair the World because they do not feel an urge to immerse themselves either in service learning, or in Israel, or neither. When reading Ms. Meyer’s article, she develops a strong theory and proof for why positive adult influence would subsequently positively affect young adults. While her article seems to state the obvious, it is a reality that is often forgotten and is important for us in the Jewish communal world to actively remember. The only point of connection with Israel and Jewish peoplehood for a vast majority of the young and unaffiliated is based on what public statements are being made by communal leaders. When an article appeared about the controversy surrounding Women of the Wall in The New York Times on April 26th, it was one of the few messages that they hear about the Jewish world.

The passion and turmoil expressed in Rabbi Regev’s article is an important conversation to have amongst Jewish leaders and active members of our community. What Ms. Meyer reminded us was that most young Jews don’t have the positive adult Jewish influence that would allow them to have an informed, constructive conversation about the topics at hand. Therefore, the large part of all our target population is only hearing a passionate sound bite that we struggle with on a daily basis, yet is completely detached from their reality. Many issues need to be fixed in Israeli society, but we need to speak about it in a personal way when one is ready. The role models that Ms. Meyer works so hard to train are the ones that should be leading the conversation in smaller groups within our community. Otherwise, it just seems like Jews are always fighting one another with lashon hara, derogatory speech, instead of touting all of the amazing things that Jews and Israel are doing for the world. The only effect that this has is the public perception of a divided Israel – not one that works hard to make the world a better place.

Dan Hazony is the Director of Information Systems at NCSY. He is looking forward to staffing his first Taglit Birthright Israel niche trip – “Israel Give and Tech” – focusing on how Israel uses technology and science to do tikkun olam around the world. He hopes that his 40 under affiliated participants will find their own special connection to Israel and Judaism through this experience.

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by David Bryfman

Ben Bag-Bag used to say: Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it. Pore over it, and wax gray and old over it.
Stir not from it for you can have no better rule than it
Ethics of Our Fathers 5:26

I remember the first time I heard these words. It was in a 5th grade Jewish studies class focusing on the laws of kashrut. I remember asking a lot of “why” questions. Why split hooves? Why not milk with meat? Why no shellfish? She gave some answers and then eventually the teacher turned to me in frustration and said, “because that’s what it says in the Torah.” I must have looked at her quizzically because then she added those words, “Hafoch ba ve-hafoch ba, de’kula ba – Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it.[1]” I clearly recall not being satisfied by this response, but I could also tell in the exasperated face of the teacher that it was time to move on.

Later in life I heard these words again. This time they were from a camp counselor. Going through what I now understand to be a typical moment in the adolescent search for identity this camp counselor assured me that all of life’s answers could be found in this mysterious book, again using the words, hafoch ba ve-hafoch ba. This actually triggered off a period in my life of deeper textual study, but it never did quite give me the answers that I was searching for.

Over the years I have discovered that I am not alone in hearing these words. This phrase has become somewhat entrenched in Jewish education and Jewish life.

I do not even begin to suggest anything other than that for many people these words hold truth and real meaning. But I also can’t help but feel that in the 21st century, telling an inquisitive child to keep turning it over and over, because the answer to all of life’s questions is encapsulated within a single book, or even a single canon, is misguided.

In a Wikipedia Age, when knowledge is becoming increasingly democratized and can be accessed by almost anyone anywhere, how is it possible to tell someone that all of the answers can be found in one text?

The great paradox of course is that perhaps more than any time in history Jews are able to develop a greater personal relationship to Jewish text. In an era where knowledge is becoming increasingly democratized access to Jewish sources is truly open to all. By extension the teachers of Jewish texts are no longer the traditional sources of authority in the Jewish world. It is hardly coincidental we are now also seeing a proliferation of “non- traditional” educators producing their own interpretations of sacred text (see G-dCast, The Bible Raps Project, Beit Midrash in Motion, Pearlstone Center, Midrash Manicures etc.), and reaching hundreds of thousands of people in doing so. How are our traditional authority figures adjusting to the new relationship toward text and knowledge in the 21st century?

By asking these questions, the organizers of the Jewish Futures Conference, entitled, Whose Torah is it Anyway?, are opening up a conversation whose time is due. How do we begin to tackle some of the more sacred cows of the Jewish world? For those of you calling out for a Jewish TED conference the first hour of this conference is exactly that – including 5 dynamic presentations by leading thinkers of our time from inside and outside the Jewish world. For those searching for practical implications of these discussions, the second half of the conference will go there too, looking specifically at the impact that these issues have for Jewish learning today and tomorrow.

The Jewish Futures Conference, an initiative of The Jewish Education Project and JESNA, will be held on June 4th between 3:30pm – 6:45pm (EST). Register here or follow the links for the live stream of the event.

[1] For a recent extension of these words, hafoch ba ve-hafoch ba, from the study of Jewish texts to the teaching of Jewish texts, I highly recommend the new book from the Mandel Center at Brandeis, edited by Jon A. Levisohn and Susan P. Fendrick, aptly titled, “Turn It and Turn It Again: Studies in the Teaching and Learning of Classical Jewish Texts” (2013).

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