Welcome from the Associate Dean

I welcome you to the fall 2023 issue of Gleanings, a publication of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education. The issue, focusing on “Israel Education in Time of Crisis” finds us in a war, facing challenges on two fronts: the ongoing battles in Israel and the effects of public opinion on our communities.

For this issue, we approached experienced educators whose thoughtful and innovative initiatives inspire, educate, and support school-age learners, adults, and teens. We seek to highlight their knowledge and understanding of the events in Israel and here in the United States and to help communities think about different aspects of Israel education especially in difficult times.

To this end, we are profiling five educators, two of them Davidson alumni, one current student, and two professionals from an organization that hosts our students every year for a certificate program in Israel education. These educators think about Israel education and practice how to educate and teach about Israel to learners of all ages in diverse settings in a balanced and nuanced way.

Especially in this difficult time, the trauma of war and personal losses makes it even more challenging for educators, and we all need all the support and compassion we can get from our communities. We hope you will find this issue interesting and helpful in your own practice.

We send our thoughts to the people who lost their dear ones and to the families of all who have suffered. As we write this in early November, we pray for the return of safety for the land of Israel and all who dwell there.

On a personal note, I wish you, your families, and friends strength as we all hope for calmer and more peaceful days.

Ofra Backenroth

Associate Dean, William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education

Responding to Educators: Samantha Vinokor-Meinrath

Since October 7, thousands of educators have benefited from webinars, resources, and articles from the office of Samantha Vinokor-Meinrath, senior director of knowledge, ideas, and learning at the Jewish Education Project. Vinokor-Meinrath received an MA from the William Davidson Graduate School for Jewish Education in 2014. During her MA studies, she participated in Vision and Voices of Israel and spent a semester in Israel on Kesher Hadash, a William Davidson School program based in Jerusalem dedicated to the Israel education. In early November, she shared her impressions of what this moment means for those devoted to Israel, Jewish education, and Jewish peoplehood.

Timeliness/Timelessness

Vinokor-Meinrath describes how the days after the Hamas attack placed totally new demands on educators. “We have been expected to respond in ‘real-time’ to the war and live-streamed images on social media. At the same time, we have faced age-old questions about antisemitism like, ‘Why do people hate us?’ “Never before have educators had to teach so quickly, which is really difficult, especially those who teach part-time. There was no training for ‘how to make meaning out of unfathomable horror.’”

In these past months, Vinokor-Meinrath has observed the confluence of timeliness (responding in real time to immediate concerns) and timelessness (understanding connections to a shared Jewish past and traditional texts). “We need to hold both of these together,” she said, “even though that can seem incongruous and destabilizing and is not how educators have been trained.”

To illustrate this, Vinokor-Meinrath shared her recent eJewishPhilanthropy article, which opened with Hayyim Nahman Bialik’s poem, “In the City of Slaughter,” an epic written after the 1903 Kishinev pogrom. “This is a poem that we have always studied as part of history, but the events on October 7 forced educators to turn on a dime. Bialik was never meant to be relevant to contemporary experiences, yet here we are,” she said.

For many, the war has changed the way educators—and many in the Jewish community—think, talk, and teach. “I am hearing over and over the use of ‘we,’ not only from educators but everywhere. “North Americans and Jews worldwide are seeing ourselves as part of Am Yisrael, part of the same family.”

As a professional whose portfolio includes Jewish peoplehood alongside Israel education, Vinokor-Meinrath’s acknowledged that this unity presents a true “peoplehood moment.” “There’s beauty in that, but the challenge looking ahead is that we need to find a sense of unity without a moment of extreme adversity such as we are experiencing now,” she said. “How can we continue that sense of belonging? Once you’ve taken a breath, what lasts?” she asked.

What Educators Need

Through the various services that Vinokor-Meinrath and the Jewish Education Project have offered Jewish educators, she has heard many educators ask for specific content, like the Hamas charter or detailed maps of the region. Some educators are looking to fill gaps in their knowledge or tools to assist in their classrooms, and resources are readily shared. “Really, though, what they need is the confidence to know that their authentic voice is enough,” said Vinokor-Meinrath.

“More than ‘facts and figures,’ educators are reaching out for pedagogical approaches,” she said. “We hear questions like ‘how do I make sense of senseless hatred,’ and to respond to these, educators need to trust their own identity and methodology as an educator.”

At the same time, Vinokor-Meinrath knows that educators are also charged with fostering Jewish joy and “regular” tasks like teaching the parashah. “Life is going on,” said Vinokor-Meinrath, “this week might also be someone’s bar mitzvah and we have to celebrate.” Switching gears like this puts strain on even the most talented of educators.

“Educators do not want to be defined by hate,” said Vinokor-Meinrath. “I still believe in the power of Jewish identity that comes from joy, not victimhood or defiance of victimhood. Everything I believed before October 7 is still there.”

A Forward-Looking Perspective

Vinokor-Meinrath sees this time as a “pivot point but not a defining moment” for those dedicated to Jewish education. “We can ask ourselves and our learners how our Jewish journey may have changed, and my hope is that what remains will be the connection to Jewish peoplehood,” she said.

Moderating a webinar on October 22 that featured nearly a dozen educational leaders from across the field and drew hundreds of participants, Vinokor-Meinrath resonated with the words of Zohar Raviv from Taglit/Birthright. “He said that October 7 was not a Jewish moment, it was a horror that happened to Jews. The Jewish moment is how we respond.”

For educators tasked with working with young people and maintaining a future-facing focus, Vinokor-Meinrath believes that the response to these horrific times stems from the same core objective of all Jewish education. “We have to figure out what all this tells us in a long-term way, to figure out the next step in our own learning and meaning-making.”

Resources for Educators

ISRAEL IN CRISIS: RESOURCES FOR EDUCATORS AND FAMILIES (from the Jewish Education Project)
RESOURCES FOR SCHOOLS ON VIOLENCE AND TERRORIST ATTACKS IN ISRAEL (from Prizmah)
EDUCATING IN A TIME OF CRISIS (from The iCenter)

Being There for Educators: Anne Lanski and Michael Soberman

In the immediate aftermath of the horrific Hamas terror attack on Israel on October 7, the iCenter faced a dilemma. As an organization dedicated to supporting Jewish and Israel educators around the world, it had to jump into action. As an organization that is committed to long-term systemic change, it had to think through its strategy. “Our expertise is not crisis response, but rather being responsive to crisis by supporting educators and learners,” said Anne Lanski, CEO of the iCenter.

First and foremost, the iCenter checked in with its Israel-based staff and 2000+ person alumni network. “We have staff in Israel who are traumatized,” said Lanski. “And many of those in North America are Israelis or have close family in Israel.” Then they turned to their network. “In addition to needing educational resources, alumni and Jewish educators in the field said they need space and support.”

“We heard it over and over again,” said Michael Soberman, a senior educational consultant to the the iCenter. “Jewish educators—and especially Israel educators—were being asked to support and assist everyone around them. But who was there for them? The Israel educators, who had such a strong relationship with Israel and Israelis, were hurting badly, but still they needed to organize programs, talk to members of their community, listen to people in crisis, and respond to those who wanted information.”

“The issues educators are confronting right now are both timely and timeless, both in terms of the subject matter and the challenges of addressing it. We need to respond by relating directly to the educators and their circumstances. This is the core of our educational philosophy: relationships,” said Lanski.

The iCenter was founded in 2008 to create and then rapidly advance the field of Israel education. “Our mission is to catalyze excellence in the professional field of Israel education by supporting the development of educators, pioneering new educational approaches, and promoting a relational and learner-centered philosophy,” said Lanski. “Our end goal,” added Soberman, “is that learners from early childhood through young adulthood, and then extending beyond to the educators themselves, will have the opportunity to develop deep and meaningful relationships with Israel and Israelis.”

There are three hallmarks of the iCenter’s approach to field building:

1. Providing academic credentialing and professional certification of Israel educators—something that did not exist previously in the Jewish education and Jewish communal world.
2. Creating a language for the field—12 key educational principles that the iCenter refers to as The Aleph-Bet of Israel Education. These include creating immersive and integrative Israel education, being inclusive of diverse narratives, and experiencing Israel firsthand.
3. Convening the field of Israel education including educators, funders, and communal organizations. One of the clearest manifestations of this purpose is the iCenter’s signature biennial gathering, iCON, which took place most recently in March 2023 and brought together hundreds of educators to learn from each other and from important voices in the field.

The iCenter partners on professional learning opportunities with major Jewish educational organizations including 12 academic institutions, Birthright Israel, RootOne, and the Jewish Agency for Israel. It also works directly with communities, schools, camps, JCCs, and other Jewish communal institutions supporting the integration of Israel education into Jewish learning and education.

“One of the most important things we provide is the capacity for educators to see themselves as professionals, as people who are in a position to facilitate learning effectively,” said Lanski.

Soberman offered the example of a camp counselor. “Most role models in informal settings don’t identify as educators. It used to be that Israel education in camp was owned by a shaliah (Israeli emissary) or two; now every madrikh (counselor) contributes to cultivating a connection with Israel.” The challenge, according to Lanski, is that most camp counselors do not see themselves as educators, and so the iCenter has invested a lot of effort in changing this paradigm.

“What we can provide is the knowledge, information, context, and understanding of what questions are being asked right now and why they are being asked. This approach makes Israel education systemic and cuts across all parts of any educational setting,” said Lanski. “Our hope is that when you walk in a school, you see how Israel is infused across every touch point. We want to fulfill the goal that Israel is integral to Jewish life and learning, experiences, and people.”

Reflecting on the present challenges presented by the Israel-Hamas war, Lanski said: “Part of why this time is so painful is because North Americans have real people in mind when they think about the war. These relationships between North Americans and Israelis can bring us both joy and pain. We need to be able to recognize and be responsive to both. We need to show our educators and learners, wherever they are, that we are in this together and we will see it through together.”

Text Study Is Israel Education: Rabbi Joshua Ladon

“I thought we were learning about Israel, why are we studying Jewish text?” Rabbi Joshua Ladon, who received his EdD from the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education in 2023, got used to hearing this kind of question when he taught at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay in San Francisco where he was dean of student life and Jewish life.

Now director of education at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, Ladon sees text study as a unique Jewish way “to advance the Jewish questions and connections that Israel compels.” Ladon believes text study is an important tool for locating Israel education within a broader Jewish educational context. “How do we include texts from varied Jewish creative traditions to inform the big questions we have about Judaism, which obviously includes Israel?”

“When we approach a text with our questions,” said Ladon, “we acknowledge the complexity and power contained by the text itself. With regard to texts that we use to teach about Israel, that complexity is all the more important.”

Ladon believes text study—in all its complexity—can be a potent means to “move from patriotic love of Israel to a sense of responsibility and connection.” Before the war, Israel was enmeshed in societal tensions about judicial overall. This revealed a narrative break from the core texts of cultural Zionists like Ahad Ha’am and Bialik. “Through text study, we can read new, contemporary meaning into foundational sources,” he said.

In both the weekly protests that took place earlier in 2023 and in the numerous rallies in support of Israel, Ladon has paid close attention to the diverse range of speakers and the complex and layered language they use. He has observed a reclamation of the “why” of Zionism over the “who-what-where-when” that typified so much of the way Israel has been taught and venerated. “To early cultural Zionist thinkers, Israel is not just political but actually a vision of Judaism.” Ladon said. “Their texts have a new relevance today.”

“Even in wartime, if our goal as educators is only love for Israel, that doesn’t give a lot of room for really understanding the totality of what Israel is,” said Ladon. “The protesters were speaking in language that is all about core questions such as who we are as a Jewish democratic state, and the communal conversation since October has only amplified these questions.” Ladon believes that educators can follow their lead and use texts to foster a much more nuanced understanding of Israel and, ultimately, to strengthen the idea of Jewish peoplehood.

“Israel educators should be poised to engage learners in text study in order to create new paradigms for connections to Israel,” said Ladon.

Ladon uses the example of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which called for a “Jewish homeland.” “What does that mean in terms of the conceptions of “Jewish” and the vision of the state?” asked Ladon. “By engaging with these texts and using analytical approaches, we can broaden the goals for what we usually expect from Israel education, drawing students into millenia old Jewish conversations at the core of what it means to be a Jew.”

Ladon has written a chapter on teaching Israel education with Jewish texts in Voices on the Page and in the Room: A Pedagogy of Jewish Text Study in Israel Education (edited by Sivan Zakai and Matt Reingold and coming out in spring 2024). Ladon acknowledges that some of these ideas about Israel education are novel and may spark debate. “Not everyone in the field sees Israel education as tied up with Judaism as I do,” he said.

Questioning educational models is nothing new for Ladon. His dissertation at The William Davidson School explored how practitioners create source sheets, on the surface a relatively uncontroversial project. “I researched how educators create source sheets to understand how knowledge is constructed in a digital age,” he said.

“It seems pretty mundane, until you start to realize that the technology enabling educators to build source sheets (digital archives and word processing tools like cut, copy, and paste) empowers educators to construct new narratives. The simple production of source sheets might actually be increasing text study while diluting our inherited core narratives, which is rather radical and subversive,” Ladon said. Narrative and texts are the cultural tools that people inherit and use “for their own needs and contexts,” said Ladon. “The creative act of educators who pick and choose texts—with all-powerful computers at their disposal—and place them in something as innocuous as a sourcesheet actually increases the variety of views about Judaism that are out there in the world,” he said.

Ladon sees his doctoral research about source sheet creation as intimately tied to his Israel education work. He explained, “this is what I loved about my doctoral experience at Davidson, it provided me with the tools to think through complex questions and produce new knowledge. Working with Barry Holtz, I came to understand that a doctorate is a really simple and tight question that offers an opening to a bunch of threads you have to tie together.”

In Israel education, the educational question and frame varies. “Sometimes we are talking about Israel, sometimes we are talking about what Israel means for North American Jews, and sometimes Israel is a prism into American domestic issues,” said Ladon. “Text study is a tool educators can adjust to meet their objectives.”

Above all, Ladon sees himself as a Jewish educator with an ultimate interest in providing access to Torah. “I want to induct people into the sense of Jewish citizenship,” he said. “Jewish history—Jewish belonging—Israel these are three educational ideas that yes, can seem to be in conflict at times and can also form the basis for a sustainable civic identity, or what some might just call Jewish peoplehood.”

“I Am Israel” The Shifting Paradigm of Shlihim: Shelley Kedar

“When times change, actions change. When actions change, words change.” This quote from S. Y. Agnon opens Shelley Kedar’s dissertation, which explores the implicit themes and educational beliefs of Jewish Agency shlihim, Israeli emissaries who dedicate a period of time to working with Jewish communities outside of Israel in order to create connections among Jewish people to each other and to Israel.

As a professional with a long history of roles in the Israel education field, Kedar entered the EdD program at the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education in order to enhance her work with worldwide Israel education. “While as a practitioner I had and have a lot of practice-based knowledge, I thought that devoting time to academic research would add a deeper dimension to my practice,” she said. “I found the idea of being in a cohort of high-level professionals very appealing, and the faculty at the William Davidson School have greatly enriched my experience.”

“My research aims to understand the dynamic constructs that underlie shlihim’s Israel education work,” Kedar said. “Agnon’s insight points directly to how I approach studying shlihim—what they say, what they do, how they relate, and how that changes in relation to the times. All this contributes to what they bring to and leave with the Jewish communities they serve.”

“Shlihim can nearly be understood as a brand today,” said Kedar, reaching almost every institution in Jewish life. “When war broke out in early October, communities around the world felt an instant personal connection and worried for the welfare of ‘their’ shlihim.” The idea of a “mishlahat,” or delegation is uniquely Israeli, and the paradigm builds from the idea of “hevre” that for many Israelis is established during their army service. The closest comparison Kedar could study as part of her literature review was research on other ex-pat communities, like Americans teaching English in China.

Kedar’s methodology is built from a model of Practice Architecture, which examines the “sayings, doings, and relatings” that contribute to the process of shaping a designated practice. “The shlihim who work in youth movements, schools, Hillels, and federations are usually not formally trained educators, yet their profound impact is transmitted through all that they say, the programs they lead, and, perhaps most of all, through the relationships they develop,” said Kedar.

Kedar has studied workplans, job descriptions, and training materials, and she has conducted in-depth interviews with shlihim. “Even something as seemingly straightforward as the way shlihim are introduced influences the relationships members of their host community have with Israel,” said Kedar. “One shaliah shared with me that the experience of being hosted by a New Jersey family created a personal tie with her family back home as well as one between the community in the United States and the shaliah’s hometown in Israel.” These personal ties made the anguish of the October Hamas attack and subsequent war all that more wrenching.

Currently director of the Connecting the Jewish People Unit at the Jewish Agency for Israel, Kedar has a career that is all about connecting Jewish people to each other and to Israel, a task that the current war has made more critical. She founded the Adelson Shlichut Institute at the Jewish Agency for Israel, which is responsible for developing and implementing content and training for all shlihim worldwide, and she was Hillel International’s first vice president of Israel education and engagement. She has also served as a shlihah herself twice! In her 20-some years dedicated to this work, she has observed shifting paradigms.

“It used to be that Israel was an icon, the land of milk and honey, and Israel education was events like shakshuka in the sukkah,” Kedar said. “That iconic idea worked for the generations of 1948 or 1967, but today, even with the massive outpouring of support for Israel, we live in a more nuanced world. We count on real, humanizing connections to establish lasting ties.” “The paradigm that will serve Jewish communities and Israel today should be more holistic,” said Kedar, “and that translates directly into the roles of shlihim.”

“Now, each shaliah is seen not as a source of information but as a unique person who conveys in many simultaneous and human ways, ‘I am Israel.’” What Kedar calls a “we-dentity” replaces the one-sided model of “identity.” “Today’s world demands that we allow all voices to be heard,” she said.

Israel education has a lot to learn from the ideas Parker Palmer developed about Brave Spaces and the push for institutional DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), said Kedar.

“If we were brave about Israel education, how would we see things differently?” Kedar asked. The Brave Space concept acknowledges the challenges that both students and faculty have when they are discussing difficult and/or sensitive topics such as race, power, privilege. “Talking about Israel today needs to start from the personal, not the political.”

“If you ask today’s shlihim, most of whom have just finished their IDF service or are on a service year fresh out of high school, about their motivation, it is not merely altruistic or even educational. They are curious about Jewish life around the world, and they are seeking their own meaning from the experience. To many, shlihut is an adventure or a taste of a different way of life,” said Kedar.

What’s clear, according to Kedar, is that the experience of shilhut is inherently reciprocal. “For many years we saw shlihim as bringing something to others, whether that was a taste of Israel or a particular ideology. Now, for a variety of reasons, we know that shlihim themselves are changed by the experience,” she said.

Former shlihim are the leading voice for Jewish peoplehood and world Jewry in Israel, said Kedar. “More than 60 percent of people leading Jewish peoplehood organizations in Israel are previous shlihim, as are more than half of all community center directors across Israel.”

Ultimately, the fact that thousands of Israelis leave home each year for a determined length of time (not as expats who go abroad indefinitely) and return with authentic “peoplehood” relationships makes a significant impact on Israeli society. Kedar recalled that in 2017, when tensions rose surrounding egalitarian prayer at the Kotel, shilhim wrote an open letter to the Israeli public raising awareness and conveying the perspective of those outside Israel. “The unique relationship shared by shlihim and those in North America is powerful and mutual,” said Kedar.