What do we mean by "lifelong learning?"

A piece I wrote for Jewish Federation of North America's "Ideas in Jewish Education and Engagement" blog appeared on November 28. Entitled, "What do we mean by 'lifelong learning,' I describe two of our most successful (and explicable) programs here at Emanu-El and the big ideas about Jewish education that underscore them.

Here's the tl;dr take-aways:

1. Our classes form a microcosm of Jewish community, where diverse opinions can be expressed and, through thoughtful reflection and mutual respect, our students learn to accept one another for who they are and what they believe, and empower one another to grow as individuals.
2. We study ancient wisdom in the context of intergenerational relationships.
3. Our teen leaders are role models, sharing their expertise and modeling their commitment to Jewish life.
4. The teens are proud of their growth as leaders and of the connections they make with the younger kids. Many describe their work as “giving back” to the community 
5. We publicly acknowledge and celebrate students who go “above and beyond” school attendance. 
6. Children play a crucial role in shaping the lives of the rest of their families.
7. For parents, coming to school-based family activities normalizes the experience of participating in synagogue life, making it easier to prioritize it over other ways to spend their time and to consider coming to another activity even without their own children. 

Moving Past Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit

Here's something that I wrote back in 2008, together with Rachel Brumberg, Danny Mishkin, and David Wolkin for the "Mentor's Voice" column of the (now defunct) Leadership Institute for Congregational Educators. 

Anyone who has been involved in a change initiative has probably encountered the phrase “low hanging fruit,” those targets or goals which are easily achievable and which do not require a lot of effort. There are any number of reasons why it is advantageous to focus change efforts on low hanging fruit at the outset.  But what then? 

At Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York, in a series of departmental retreats, we identified new challenges that arise as low-hanging fruit is picked, and how we might respond to those challenges.  Here is a summary of the thoughts of our Department of Lifelong Learning full-time staff:

1. What do we mean by “low-hanging fruit?”

• Things that require little work and can be done easily
• Things that can be successful more quickly (even if a lot of work)
• Things for which it is obvious what success would look like
• Things that may not require systemic change – can stand alone, can be handled departmentally and autonomously, are perhaps less threatening or non-threatening

2. Why focus on low-hanging fruit at the start?

• To build confidence and trust in leadership & change process though early successes
• To respond to the hunger for change and for deliverables – start with a bang!
• To create buy-in and to build trust among stakeholders – people want to see results!
• To build the morale of the team

3. What new challenges arise as low-hanging fruit is picked?

When the low hanging fruit is used up –  what then?  How will we know what to tackle next?  How can we prepare for future challenges? 

• There is the possibility of addressing symptoms but not causes. As a result, the changes we make may only be superficial and the solutions may only work for a limited duration. 
• Any new interventions or program changes require systems, structures, and staffing that must be coordinated, managed, and supervised -- they don’t run themselves!  Managing the increased workload resulting from new initiatives, and developing new systems and procedures, can become so time consuming that no further initiatives can be developed.
• We don’t necessarily learn the skills (or help others learn the skills) that will enable us to tackle more challenging problems or projects.
• Because this work doesn’t require people to get out of their comfort zones, it does not require us to create an environment in which conflict and debate is effectively managed and resolved.
• The expectation can be developed that we will continue making positive change at the same pace, even though further changes would be more challenging to institute.
• If all the work done is done internally and departmentally, it does not build a collaborative environment or shared sense of accountability.  Therefore, changes may not develop the deep roots that enable them to endure beyond the efforts of the change-makers.

4. What should we do to respond to these challenges?

• Be willing to shake the tree!  Take risks!
• Climb the tree: Think strategically and long-term. Set priorities that will have deep impact and stick to them.  Build consensus and shared accountability around these priorities. Be strong and resolute in face of opposition. Learn to say “no” by sticking to our priorities.
• Focus on infrastructure and build systems.  Use what we have learned so far to develop procedures and routines to handle day-to-day tasks – especially high urgency, low importance and low priority items.
• Broaden and deepen our relationships with members of the community (including families, faculty, and staff in other departments).  Provide volunteers with real responsibilities, an active voice, and the ability to directly impact the program. Continue to build and deepen buy-in among our stakeholders, not merely as lip service, but because we see their participation as critical to the long-term success of the endeavor.
• Clarify our expectations (for participation, achievement, and so on) and publicize them widely.  Where our language is vague, clarify what we really mean.  Establish a culture of commitment and responsibility.
• Think about our legacy – what do we want things to look like once we are gone, and how can we make our changes stick?

Aspiring to "Failure" (from the Jewish Futures Conference, 2015)

With the next Jewish Futures Conference just around the corner, I realized I had never posted this video of my presentation from the 2015 Conference. 

The theme was "radical empathy," and my presentation, "Failure," was on my experience as a teacher at the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan. 

Here's the punch-line: "If I'm a better teacher now, it's because what I've learned is that being a great teacher...isn't about being a great teacher. It's about helping the kids to be great students."

Studying our history to build a Jewish future

In May of 2014, I posted a personal vision statement for Jewish education. Previously, I offered two examples of this vision how we have implemented these ideas in our work at Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York: In our curricula for tzedakah (which I will here translate loosely as "social justice") and tefilah ("prayer"). This week, I wish to share with you a little of how we have organized our history curriculum for grades 3-6. In so doing, I want to once again emphasize that collaboration is the cornerstone of our methodology, and I am reporting on the intersection between my philosophy and the work we do, not taking credit for our achievements. As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts, your feedback, and your critique.

The most important thing you can do for your children, writes New York Times columnist Bruce Feiler, is to tell them true stories about your own family. The more children know about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem, and the greater their resilience in the face of stress. By sharing our childhood memories and the stories of our parents and grandparents, we teach our children that they are part of something larger than themselves, something intergenerational and ongoing. As our children discover that they, too, can be story-tellers, they learn how to make sense of the confusing and sometimes unpredictable world around them.

Stories of redemption -- family narratives that tell of overcoming setbacks and recovering from failures -- are the most beneficial, according to psychologist Dan McAdams. We help our children to be courageous in the face of adversity when we let them know that although we have had both good and bad times, we have always persevered. Telling stories about the times when we endured hardship without losing hope gives our children confidence in themselves and their capacity to succeed. Further, McAdams’ research shows that those who have both this sense of personal agency as well as intimate, caring relationships are most likely to demonstrate a concern for and commitment to promoting the well-being of future generations.

How to ask a question (?) (!) (?)

The following is a excerpt from the article "Active Learning in the Halakha class" by Mark Smilowitz, which first appeared in the Lookstein Center's journal Jewish Educational Leadership:

Classically, teachers and students alike tend to view questions as stemming from problems; if nothing bothers you, you don't ask. Even progressive methods devised to make students active learners through questioning seem to view questions as stemming from problems. For example, the "inquiry training" model relies on presenting students with puzzling events that will naturally arouse their curiosity and stimulate their questions. This approach "deliberately selects episodes that have sufficiently surprising outcomes to make it difficult for students to remain indifferent to the encounter.

Perhaps you've seen a science exhibition where they put a blown up balloon into liquid nitrogen, and it comes out shrunk. The kids are naturally stimulated to ask why it does that, because the outcome is surprising. This is precisely the kind of curiosity-generating activity that would kick off a unit in the inquiry training approach.

But let's consider another way to stimulate curiosity. Take a regular balloon, a normal object that doesn't automatically generate questions, and hold it up in front of a classroom as is, and tell students they have two minutes to write down as many questions as they can think of that will help them understand the balloon better. Tell them not to hold back, but to let their imaginations go.

When I do this experiment on myself, I find that I suddenly become interested in things I wasn't interested in before – science questions such as why balloons lose their air after a while, manufacturing questions like how balloons are made, or maybe economic questions like how do they decide how much balloons cost. When one is prompted in this manner, instead of curiosity generating questions, it is the discipline of questioning that generates the curiosity. We might refer to this latter kind of question as a research-oriented question, as opposed to a problem-based question, because asking this kind of question is often the key to researching a topic

My guess is that most students only know about problem-based questions and are never taught to ask research-oriented questions. Neil Postman expressed his “astonishment at the neglect shown in school toward” the art of formulating questions. “All our knowledge results from questions, which is another way of saying that question asking is our most important intellectual tool. I would go so far as to say that the answers we carry about in our heads are largely meaningless unless we know the questions which produced them.”

What does it mean to live a life that is "authentically Jewish?"

Identity theorist Elli P. Schachter, following Erikson, observes that one’s “historical era or social environment” constrain one’s options for identification or practice, limiting the available choices. Awareness of, and knowledge about the cultural traditions that have already shaped one’s identity and continue to influence one's behavior -- in other words, the stories of those who came before us and how they lived their loves -- allow the individual to more fully recognize the scope of available options. Perhaps it has always been this way, but it seems to me that for us today, being Jewish demands a constant re-examining of, and re-committing to, one’s beliefs and practices.   

Given the social and geographic mobility common to North American Jews in particular, and the rapid pace of change in technology and science in contemporary times, it is certain that we will consistently be exposed to new ideas and information throughout our lives.  We can expect to be faced with unfamiliar situations that allow for (and demand) new responses.  In such a context, ongoing study, skill-building and dialogue becomes an imperative, so that we, our communities and our institutions may respond appropriately to new situations as they arise -- this is one of the things I mean when I speak about "life-long learning." By imitating successful endeavors, past or contemporary, intentional or developed through trial-and-error, we take on a new positions and practices, we modify the beliefs we previously held as conclusive.  

To be authentically Jewish is to take a stance on our values and behaviors and to articulate how they relate to our inherited traditions.  I say stance, rather than commitment, because I believe our values and behaviors must be constantly reaffirmed, in the context of each particular set of circumstances, with an openness to the possibility of realigning one's beliefs and practice in light of shifting settings and newly acquired information. 

I contend that taking such a stance is a possibility - and legitimate - at any point in one’s life, at any level of knowledge. The need to better inform oneself in order to intentionally choose one’s behaviors and beliefs is necessary at all points of one’s life – as true for those who are knowledgeable as those who are at the beginning of their study. In actuality, we can never have comprehensive knowledge so that we might make a completely coherent decision. So we must be unafraid to take a stance on an idea or a practice simply because there is more to be learned. Choosing to delay making a decision to change is, after all, a decision as well.

An analogy: When we commit to another person in a relationship, both the relationship and the commitment itself grow and change over time.  They are tested by a variety of new contexts and situations. Just as some relationships will fail to survive, or to thrive, over time, so too must some values or behaviors be modified as new ones are learned that fit better with one’s increasing knowledge or changing life-experience.

However, at some point we must acknowledge that the change is so great that we can only describe it with the words "break." When we can no longer explain how our values or behavior relate to the previous tradition, at that point, we must admit that we have started something new.

In other words: I am disagreeing with the definition of "authentic" that says it means "true to oneself" or in other words, authenticity as relevance. But I'm also disagreeing with the definition of authentic as "the way we used to do it" or authenticity as consistent with the past. I'm saying that those two principles are in tension, and authenticity means taking a stance that accounts for both of them, being reflective about that choice, and being open to rethink in light of changing circumstances.

So, it isn't "keeping kosher is a more authentic way of being Jewish" and it also isn't "I eat pork and that's an authentic expression of who I am," but rather "let me explain what keeping kosher means to me."


Reference: Elli P. Schachter, “Identity Constraints: The Perceived Structural Requirements of a ‘Good’ Identity.” Human Development 45 (2002), 417.

Vision-Driven Institutions: Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan

In 2007, I wrote on this blog about the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Israel. At the time, I expressed my skepticism about my ability to turn this into a regular feature, but here I am, just six short years later, with a description of another innovative institution, the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan. I wrote this piece as part of my coursework for the executive doctoral program at the Davidson School of Education. This is not a comprehensive discussion of the institution, but a description of just one element of the program, and the institutional leader who created it.

Dr. Steven Lorch is the founding headmaster of the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan, a K-8 Jewish Day School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that is currently in its 18th year. I taught at Schechter Manhattan for three years. I loved its team-teaching approach (every class is led by two teachers, both fluent in Hebrew, who share responsibility for all areas of the curriculum), its constructivist philosophy, and its focus on menschlichkeit [kindness and empathy] as a core component of the institution. Yet, no aspect of my work there has influenced me more thoroughly than the experience of leading daily worship and teaching its tefilah [prayer] curriculum. At both Central Synagogue and Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York, the two institutions I have served since leaving Schechter Manhattan, I have attempted to adapt the Schechter prayer curriculum to suit the needs of a Reform Jewish supplementary school setting. This sketch focuses solely on this aspect of Dr. Lorch’s work: His role as the creator of the Schechter Manhattan tefilah curriculum.

Jewish Education: An Intrinsically Optimistic Endeavor

I wrote the cover story for the April 2013 Temple Emanu-El Bulletin, Volume 85, No. 8. Here is the text of my article:

Jewish education is an intrinsically optimistic endeavor. Our work as Jewish educators is predicated on the faith that we can inspire our students to personal growth. Further, we believe that by studying the past we can successfully prepare our students for an unknown future. Therefore, we act as translators, of a sort: we strive to make the ancient wisdom of our people relevant to contemporary sensibilities.

I believe the most compelling questions of value and meaning have remained largely the same since the days of the Bible. We look to our people’s history for direction as we ask ourselves the same questions that confronted our ancestors, like “What kind of person do I want to become?” and “What kind of world do I hope for myself and for future generations to inhabit?” Our people have struggled with these questions over the centuries, providing us with a legacy of their responses under varying circumstances.

The role of the Reform Jewish educator is not to pass along definitive answers to these questions, but rather to engage our learners in striving together to make meaning of our Jewish inheritance in all of its complexity. Our religious school is a “laboratory” for the Jewish future, providing experiences and opportunities our students cannot find elsewhere in their lives. The classroom is a center for Jewish life, where our students encounter one another’s ways of being Jewish. In accepting one another for who they are and what they believe, our students empower one another to say “I can be myself here and I can figure out who I might want to be.”

Jewish Education Is About Living Jewish Values

I wrote the cover story for the Temple Emanu-El Bulletin, Vol. 84, No. 2, October 2011. Here is the text of the article:

In the fall of 2009, Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York was named one of 24 “innovating congregations” in the New York area because of our dedication to educational transformation. We became a founding member of LOMED (Hebrew for “learning”), a coalition of diverse institutions from New York City, Long Island and Westchester, all committed to developing educational programs that are relevant, engaging and inspirational.

During the past academic year, LOMED provided the resources for us to create a four-minute video about our seventh grade Mitzvah Corps. (View it at www.youtube.com/emanuelnyc.) LOMED also awarded us a grant supporting professional development for our faculty and experimentation with new approaches to learning. We’ve put this funding to good use: After its pilot year, our eighth grade Lirdof Tzedek (“Seeking Justice”) program was identified as a “highly effective model” recommended for replication by other synagogues.

Most important, our work with LOMED has provided a framework to think deeply about the ultimate aims of our school. What is it we hope our children and their families will gain from the Religious School experience? How will it influence our community, both now and in the future? Through LOMED, we defined the purpose of Jewish education at Emanu-El: To support our families in living Jewish values.

Living Jewish values means much more than remembering stories from the Bible or being able to say a prayer in Hebrew. There are far too many examples of people who are knowledgeable and perhaps even religiously observant but who somehow fail to live ethically. For our students, studying a Bible story involves investigating the dilemmas faced by our ancestors and exploring their actions, the virtuous and the shameful, the praiseworthy and the irresponsible. We ask how the decisions they made might serve as examples in our striving to be wise, just and compassionate individuals.

Many ways exist for educators to talk about what we do, and as in any profession, much of it is insider jargon. LOMED provides a language with which we can articulate the goals of the school curriculum clearly and simply. Using the diagram that accompanies this article as a guide, our teachers collaborate to shape meaningful and vital learning experiences.

This diagram is a clever mnemonic device that highlights four dimensions of effective instruction. First, every lesson must engage and inspire the mind of the learner (the “head”). Second, the “hand” is a reminder that every learning experience must both incorporate and lead to action—perhaps a change in behavior or the development of a new skill. Third, we must consider the “hearts” of our learners, for in everything we teach we must ask, “Why should we care?” And finally, the “feet” remind us that effective Jewish education leads us to take a stand on our beliefs as a part of a community.

This “whole person” approach ensures that our Religious School program is responsive to the genuine questions of our learners, that the learning is applicable to daily life, and that our school community is one in which our children will grow into responsible and capable Jewish adults. Each classroom is a laboratory for Jewish living in which the teachers model the thoughtfulness and mutual respect that we seek to promote in our students. The care and concern our teachers have for each child enables our students to support one another and to challenge themselves to grow as individuals, as family members and as part of an ethical Jewish community.

We are fortunate to be the inheritors of ancient wisdom that guides us in living principled lives in complicated times. At Emanu-El, our students become reflective about their actions, passionate about their beliefs and kindhearted toward one another. As we strive to become the best people we can be, proud of our heritage while accepting no dogma blindly, we are prepared to join together with those of all faiths and backgrounds to build a just and virtuous society.

My favorite quotes: Ravi Shankar

I have no idea where I came across this quote - or if it is accurately attributed - but I found this in my notes earlier today.  This is the purpose of life in the words of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder of the Art of Living Foundation:

"One who knows, will not tell you! And anyone who attempts to tell you, please know that they don't know! But this much I can tell you...this very fact this question has arisen in your mind, you are lucky! Many people just live life without asking what is the purpose of life. This question itself is like tool, a vehicle for you to go deep into life...the quest for reality!"

A statement that I do know is authentically his: "My vision is a world that is stress-free and violence-free where each one of us takes responsibility for our dear planet." Amen, brother.

The more things stay the same . . .

I thought this was as good a time as any to share with you a few choice quotes from David Resnick's terrific article, The Current State of Research in Jewish Education, which appears in Studies in Jewish Education, Volume III:

"... There is no deep-seated desire on the part of educational consumers to improve educational effectiveness. This is not to say that Jewish parents do not care about their children's Jewishness. Indeed, Jewish education for many American Jews serves as the key expression of their Jewishness, rather than as an instrument of educational mastery. 

"The nature of the dissatisfaction expressed by parents about school programs is usually more about the appeal of the program to the child, than about its failure to achieve particular subject matter goals.

"... Attending school, rather than achievement in school, is the primary, even if implicit, goal of Jewish education  —  at least in its supplementary form... The desire for identification rather than instructional effectiveness characterizes the culture of the Jewish school.

"Furthermore, community preoccupation with a host of other quasi-research issues — censuses of Jewish students; calculations of percentage of eligible students receiving a Jewish education; drop-out rates; retention rates; successful outreach programs — indicates concern with getting and keeping students in the educational system as the primary goal. Enhancing the instructional effectiveness of that system is not a priority.

"... Since failure to achieve even minimal learning levels has next to no social consequences (aside from mastery of Bar Mitzvah skills), there is little need for research related to the improvement of educational attainment. In this regard, it is worth bearing in mind that much of the recent push for excellence in general education has been at the behest of private industry and higher education, both of which bear the brunt of ineffective schools. No comparable institutional demand exists in American Jewish life."

This article was published in 1988.

My Favorite Quotes: Steve Lorch

This is from the January 2010 (Vol. 3, No. 4) issue of "Lev Ha'inyan," published by the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan:

...schools are not, first and foremost, academic institutions at all! Cognitive learning is not primary, and physical, social-emotional, and moral-spiritual learning are not an afterthought. No, schools are institutions of healthy human development, which means that they are institutions of learning of every kind, and the way to decide which type of learning should be prominent at any given moment is by carefully attending to the healthy-human-developmental needs of the learner or learners who are participating in that moment.

To subscribe, or read the full article, email communications@sssm.org.

Neuroscience research shows that Big Bird was right: Praise effort, not ability

I am just lifting this wholesale from a review of the book "How we Decide" by Jonah Lehrer, appearing on Boing-Boing:

"...mistakes are critical to good decision-making, as they are our best tutors. Lehrer describes a famous study from Stanford psych research Carol Dweck, who administered easy tests to 10-year-olds, who did well on it. The control group was praised for 'being smart.' The experimental group was praised for 'trying hard.'

With only this difference, the two groups were then administered progressively harder tests. Dweck discovered that the 'smart' kids did worse: they believed their initial good result was due to some innate virtue beyond their ken or control, and feared that a failure would show that they lacked this intangible. But the 'hard-trying' group had been rewarded for taking intellectual risks, and so they continued.

Afterwards, the 'smart' kids rated the hardest tests as their least favorite; the 'tryers' rated it as their most favorite."

Read the full review, by Cory Doctorow, for more about dopamine, meta-cognition, introspection, and how having too many choices leads us to make poorer decisions.

A heuristic for explaining how we work

Thanks to Sara Shapiro Plevin for forwarding this useful diagram, suitable for board meetings and conversations with funders.

My favorite quotes: Parker J. Palmer

This is, of course, from The Courage to Teach:

"We are now engaged in a crucial public conversation about educational reform, but a conversation is only as good as the questions it entertains . . .

• The question we most commonly ask is the 'what' question - what subjects shall we teach?


• When the conversation goes a bit deeper, we ask the 'how' question - what methods and techniques are required to teach well?


• Occasionally, when it goes deeper still, we ask the 'why' question - for what purpose and to what ends do we teach?


• But seldom, if ever, do we ask the 'who' question - who is the self that teaches? How does the quality of my selfhood form - or deform - the way I relate to my students, my subject, my colleague, my world? How can educational institutions sustain and deepen the selfhood from which good teaching comes?

"I have no quarrel with the what or how or why questions - except when they are posed as the only questions worth asking. All of them can yield important insights into teaching and learning. But none of them opens up the territory I want to explore . . . the inner landscape of the teaching self."

Many thanks to Jo Kay for reminding me of this quote.

I'd only add three points. First, that Larry Hoffman asks this "who" question differently: "What would make you true to your calling?"

Second, that institutional transformation is ultimately about the transformation of individuals and their relationships with one another. Or another way - we can only change the world by changing our own behaviors.

And finally, that all this is predicated on the notion that people are not, in fact, interchangeable. Individual people actually make a difference.

Pluralism, Diversity, and Jewish Education

I am pleased to report that my article "A New Kind of Diversity: Jewish Education in a Pluralistic Society" appears in the Fall 2007 issue of Jewish Education News.

The issue, on "The 21st Century Jewish Learner and the 21st Century Jewish Educator," features several excellent articles on the impact of technology on Jewish education and community, as well as pieces on Jewish professional networks, teacher training, early childhood and older adult learners, and so on. Enjoy!

My favorite quotes: Jerome Bruner

This is from In Search of Mind: Essays in Autobiography (1983):

“If indeed it is the mark of our species that we create our own environments in very considerable measure, then surely education is one of the most crucial aspects of that creation. But I think the lesson of the curriculum reform movement is that you cannot accomplish the deeper ends of education by altering only the content and spirit of the courses you teach. Schools as now constituted are not so much the solution to the problem of education as they are part of the problem.

“If I had it all to do over again, and if I knew how, I would put my energies into reexamining how the schools express the agenda of the society and how that agenda is formulated, and how translated by the schools. That, it seems to me, would be the properly subversive way to proceed.”

Vision Driven Institutions: The Heschel Center

I'd like to believe this will be a regular feature for New Jewish Education, but let's be honest: Once I start working full-time again in July, the frequency with which ANYTHING will be updated on this blog is an open question. So let me start this entry but putting out, once again, an open call to readers to join me on the writing staff.

In any case, let me tell you a little about one of my favorite Israeli organizations. The Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership promotes a vision of a sustainable society in Israel through leadership training, educational initiatives, and dissemination of information and resources.

The institution was founded in the 1990s and has undergone several key transformations during its lifespan. Impacted by developments in the environmental movement internationally, the growth of other environmental organizations in Israel, changes in its funding sources, and increasing clarity about its vision, the Heschel Center has shifted its focus from the development of curricular materials primarily for use with tourists to training and supporting “effective environmentalists” working in education, government, and industry in Israel.

The vision of the Heschel Center is based largely upon a critique of two mainstream paradigms of environmentalism in Israel. In the first, the Zionist ideology of a “return to the land” led to a model of appreciation of nature. However, this model largely benefits the upper and middle classes who can demand the preservation of natural spaces for primarily recreational purposes. A second paradigm examines the impact of human activity upon the environment, focusing largely on issues of public health (such as pollution) and prosperity (such as conservation of resources). The utilitarian approach of this model tends to benefit those with the political clout to demand governmental regulations protecting their interests.

The Heschel Center attempts to chart a “third model” for Israeli environmentalism, in which the question of how humans interact with the natural world reflects a values-driven vision of what it means to be human. This approach of “spiritual sustainability” demands that issues of economic development, social justice, and quality of life be an intrinsic part of the environmental agenda. Interestingly, in expounding this vision the staff of the Heschel Center discovered that the use of “Jewish” language and metaphors, which had infused their earlier work, was not well received by their Israeli audience. Secular Israelis ("chilonim") didn’t want to hear a “Jewish” message, and religiously observant didn’t want to hear it from them.

An Israeli awareness of the need for a values-driven environmental approach integrating economic development with spirituality can arise from the experience of parenting. Parents can become disenfranchised with the mainstream consumer culture as they come to the realization that it can conflict with their attempts to raise conscientious, healthy children (for example, in massive amount of advertising promoting junk food). Israelis may also develop an environmental consciousness while visiting other countries in which recycling, bicycling, and sustainable use are more commonplace than in Israel.

The approach of the Heschel Center attempts to pay particular attention to those who are normally disenfranchised by the rhetoric of environmental activism – which tends to mean Israeli and Palestinian Arabs and the urban poor. Inequality in access to and distribution of resources and the negative effects of environmental degradation tend to hit these groups the hardest. Further, the location of national parks and the desire for the preservation of natural spaces can come in conflict with the need for increased living space. The “third model” of the Heschel Center insists that issues of economic development be based upon both a social and an environmental accountability.

For more information: Eilon Schwartz, “Changing Paradigms in Israeli Environmental Education,” which used to be available on the Heschel Center website but seems to currently be unavailable as they update the site.

Some thoughts on Family Education

In my opinion, family education is not simply about bringing the parents in to learn side-by-side with their children: It is about rethinking the relationship between the institution and the home.

For our learners, the home – not the school, synagogue, or summer camp – is the principal arena for the construction of personal meaning. In The Jew Within, Cohen and Eisen wrote that the immediate family exerts the greatest influence on Jewish observance, and parents are the primary agents of their children’s Jewish development. By the choices they make and the kinds of rituals that they incorporate into their homes, they model for their children what is meaningful and significant in Judaism.

Yet, this influence flows in both directions: Parents and children mutually reinforce each other’s Jewish observances and beliefs. In Linking the Silos: How to Accelerate the Momentum in Jewish Education Today, Historian Jack Wertheimer (the Joseph and Martha Mendelson Professor of American Jewish History at JTS) observed that parents can be “spurred on to further their own Jewish education and upgrade their own Jewish knowledge” and to introduce Jewish rituals into their lives as a result of their child’s Jewish involvement. For this reason, Jo Kay, Director of the New York School of Education of Hebrew Union College, suggests that we should look at the individual and the family as an inseparable unit: “Looking at the learner through the lens of the family impacts our perception of who we are teaching. The learner is no longer an individual without a context, but rather a member of a family and the family is ultimately the “student” we are trying to reach” (in her article “Family Education” in the Ultimate Jewish Teachers Handbook).

Our education programs, therefore, must be designed to have clear tie-ins to home observance and family life, providing resources that enable our participants to engage in the content they are learning. For example, giving them the opportunity to explore how they might make their own Passover seders more meaningful or relevant (or hold one in the first place), provides them with the chance to directly impact on their family’s practice.

By the same token, we must provide volunteer opportunities for parents not simply to hand out Chanukah candles and serve latkes, but to play a critical role in setting the agenda for our family education programs. For example, parents ought to be represented in decisions about whether a Religious School’s Hebrew curriculum will place greater emphasis on learning to speak contemporary Israeli Hebrew or on acquiring the skills to participate in a prayer service.

In this way, parents will be empowered to take responsibility for the Jewish upbringing of their own children, students will be empowered to take part in shaping the Jewish life of their families, and the educational program will be a partner in the process rather than the provider of Jewish identity.

Reclaiming the phrase "Tikkun Olam"

Rabbi Jill Jacobs of Jewish FundS for Justice writes in the June 2007 issue of Zeek magazine:

"There may be no other term that is simultaneously as beloved and as reviled in Jewish progressive circles as the phrase 'tikkun olam.' For some people, this concept, generally translated as “repairing the world,” offers the motivation for involvement in social justice work; for others, the term has become so overused and so little understood as to be meaningless...

"...As the meaning of the term tikkun olam has expanded to apply to virtually any action or belief that the user thinks is beneficial to the world, some Jewish social justice activists and thinkers have moved away from using the term at all.

"...Rather than throw out the term tikkun olam altogether, or putting it on a twenty-year hiatus as others have suggested, I propose weaving together the four primary definitions of tikkun olam present in Jewish history: the anticipation of the divine kingdom in the Aleynu prayer; the midrashic call to preserve the physical world; the rabbinic desire to sustain the social order; and the Lurianic belief in our power to restore divine perfection. This definition will occupy a space between a limited definition of 'tikkun olam' as relating only to a specific theology or legal process and an expansive definition that equates 'tikkun olam' with any type of social action or social justice work."

Read her article, "The History of Tikkun Olam," for her complete program for rejuvinating the use of this overused phrase. The image to the right is from Temple Judea of Tarzana, California.