Parents who welcome a newborn into their family feel excitement, hope, fear—and, of course, love. During this special life moment, parents often look for support and guidance as they begin to make decisions about their child’s care, including the stressful task of determining the first place the child will spend time outside of the home. A variety of options are available, and we need to make Jewish early childhood education a more visible and desirable choice than it is today. That’s why we created BUILDing Jewish ECE, the first-of-its-kind national marketing and family engagement initiative for synagogues and Jewish Community Centers (JCCs) with early childhood centers.

For children, preschool years are a critical time in the development of cognition, personality, and identity—including religious identity. If we wait to engage the youngest members of our community, we lose out on being an integral part of their development. In addition, when children enjoy Jewish learning and rituals at school, we win: they bring them home and often introduce them to the entire family.

Therefore engaging families when children are between the ages of zero and five is critical. We can introduce families to Jewish life through Jewish early childhood education (ECE) centers that are welcoming, accessible, offer high-quality education for infants to five-year-olds, and present opportunities for parents to form meaningful friendships with each other. These ECE centers, often found at synagogues and JCCs, can be the first place where a family’s Jewish journey together begins.

Jewish early childhood programs benefit children and their parents. We know that parents also choose Jewish preschools to meet other Jewish parents and to create their own community. Parents who have Jewish peer groups through their child’s ECE center are more likely to be actively engaged in Jewish life in the future. If they perceive an ECE program to be of high quality, they are more likely to listen and absorb when an educator engages them in Jewish activities and teaching.

As a result, it is critical that we market this sacred work effectively. Producing high-quality marketing materials and strategies must be a priority. Our families will then receive the message and respond—ideally by becoming part of an ECE center and its umbrella synagogue or JCC.

Successful Jewish ECE centers filled with families mean a brighter financial picture for the synagogues and JCCs that house them. Each new family enters the pipeline for new members and supporters. For example, in 2012, the Denver/Boulder Jewish communities commissioned the consulting firm EKS&H to conduct an economic study that revealed that the power of connecting early with families was not being realized because synagogues and JCCs did not have a proactive, systematic approach to marketing to families. The study, titled Economic Study of Jewish Early Childhood Education Centers in the Denver/Boulder Areas, found that when Jewish ECE centers in the area operated at best practice marketing standards, their congregations and JCCs’ aggregate revenues could increase $720,000 annually, an average of 11 percent. Most of the eight JCCs and congregations involved in the study were not cross-marketing the value of the synagogue and JCC and how together they met the needs of young families in addition to the benefits of their ECE center.

Shortly after that study, recognizing ECE nationally was still under-resourced and lacking a rich base of best marketing practices, the Denver-based Rose Community Foundation brought together the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), JCC Association (JCCA) and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ) to launch BUILDing Jewish ECE, a two-year process that provided coaching and tools to effectively market for and respond to inquiries, increase enrollment, and enhance family engagement at nine Denver/Boulder ECE centers.

For the last three years, the participating ECE centers in Denver/Boulder have served as learning labs for the Jewish world, teaching the field how to build and maintain institutions that emphasize the highest quality of relationships with prospective and current families and, relatedly, have the highest-caliber customer retention systems.

By working closely with expert ECE and marketing coaches, ECE centers:
• completely changed how they conduct parent visits and how they track and follow up with potential parent customers to maximize enrollment conversion;
• developed their brands and created taglines to promote their educational philosophy and Jewish values;
• began using sophisticated lead-to-registration CRM software to enhance communication with parents and manage the inquiry process;
• learned from mystery shoppers about how to improve parent visits; and
• adopted “parent ambassador” programs to help with peer recruitment.

The ECE centers now understand their enrollment success is premised on strong relationships between families and centers, which begin at the first phone inquiry or meeting. The most effective centers learned that the parents’ first pre-enrollment school visit provides a critical opportunity to gain understanding of a family’s needs. That visit is the time for ECE centers to determine if the center is a good fit for the family—as opposed to trying to “sell” the center. Simultaneously, the director and staff must be able to demonstratehow the center provides high-quality Jewish early learning and discuss their basic competitive advantages—what makes them unique and special—in a crowded marketplace.

Additionally, the centers in BUILDing Jewish ECE broke down silos that existed previously between the ECE center and the synagogue or JCC. The ECE directors changed how they work with their executive directors, as both parties saw the opportunity and benefit of introducing ECE families to all that the community offers. Synagogue and JCC administrators were able to see the ECE centers nested within the larger organizations—often for the first time—because BUILDing Jewish ECE “spoke their language” of recruitment and marketing. This deepens the connection between ECE centers and the larger organization, ultimately making it more likely that ECE families will be engaged for the long term. One synagogue leader explained:

BUILDing Jewish ECE created a regular space for our new director to think through the big picture goals. It helped by requiring the team to include a member of the clergy, the president, and executive director—constituencies who, by default, think larger than the ECE center. We thought about our parent population in a new way. Consider that a family may have one child in the ECE center, one learning in the Hebrew school, and another in the bat mitzvah program. We now have an integrated approach, which provides a more cohesive engagement experience for all the families.

All of the participating ECE directors said the initiative increased their knowledge and skills in marketing, enrollment conversion, and family engagement. They also said that after implementing specific strategies they learned as part of the initiative, they saw positive changes in their ECE centers. Capacity utilization and enrollment increased.

Now, as this initiative concludes and we can document marked improvements in the participating ECE centers, Jewish ECE is poised to take another important step forward with the recent release by Rose Community Foundation of the Standards of Excellence for Jewish Community Centers and Synagogues with Early Childhood Education Centers: Guidelines for Exemplary Educational Practice and for Exemplary Marketing, Enrollment Conversion, Family Satisfaction and Retention, Integration of Center Families into JCCS and Synagogues (SOE).

After ten years of work and millions of dollars invested, the SOE is a compilation, a refinement, and a streamlined publication of ECE standards developed over multiple initiatives by expert evaluators and consultants who worked directly with ECE centers.

The SOE are presented as a workbook with clear guidelines to help Jewish ECE centers understand and document their accomplishments in both educational and marketing strategies, and to develop action plans for change. These centers need the best marketing and recruiting strategies and tools to reach all kinds of families, to respond effectively to inquiries, and to help those who inquire make the decision to enroll their child.

By offering the field a common language, as the SOE does, practitioners, consultants, and evaluators can more easily and consistently share best practices and discuss challenges. As a result, Jewish ECE centers will achieve even greater outcomes, and the entire Jewish community will benefit.

Lisa Farber Miller is senior program officer at Rose Community Foundation, which supported both BUILDing Jewish ECE and the Standards of Excellence. The SOE was developed as part of the Denver/Boulder ECE strategic plan, a partnership of JEWISHcolorado (formerly the Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado), Colorado Agency for Jewish Education, Jay & Rose Phillips Family Foundation of Colorado, Rose Community Foundation, and other anonymous donors, designed to help the Denver and Boulder Jewish ECE centers.

Imagine—what would it be like to have a child in a program that provided an educator who was dedicated to helping teachers deepen their reflective practice as well as their Jewish knowledge? And, what if this person worked as a concierge to engage young families in Jewish life in the broader community?

Actually, imagination is not necessary. Six years ago, the Early Childhood and Family Engagement Initiative (ECFE) in San Francisco filled this position for Jewish preschools. With generous funding from the Jim Joseph Foundation and the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund, the San Francisco Early Childhood Initiative began the Jewish Resource Specialist (JRS) program.

The program launched with five pilot sites and quickly became ECFE’s most recognized program. Each of these five sites had a designated classroom teacher who worked ten additional hours at their site with the dual goals of deepening Jewish learning and engaging families in Jewish life. The teachers were given a coach who supported their work and met with them each month. They also attended a retreat, six meetings of a JRS community of practice, and a day of learning at the end of each school year. This professional development helped to strengthen the work of the JRS at their schools, as each JRS brought their learning from these days back to their programs. Additionally, each preschool program also received professional development funding for their teachers to deepen their own Jewish learning programming and funding for Jewish parent and family programs.

What have been the results? Our program impact has been profound. On the leadership level, directors have discovered a partner in their JRS who helps them maintain a high quality of Judaic learning and programming while keeping the education at their school reflective of current practice. The teachers in JRS preschools approach the JRS in their programs with questions for peer-to-peer advice and support—a peer, not a supervisor. On the school level, the JRS program supports work on the school’s vision, each system developing their own goals in the areas of Jewish learning and engaging families in Jewish life. We know that embedded professional development works best, and the JRS system leverages that knowledge to move each school forward.

On the parent level, there are many examples of how these specialists have enabled teachers to articulate the work that they do in the classroom, and to share it with families in their care:

• hahnasat orhim (welcoming guests), where four-year-old children invited parents to an evening “restaurant” that the children had created;

• sharing a mishnah, where three-year-olds taught parents about the meaning of the statement: “Do not look at the jug, but rather what is inside it”;

• a “Sh’ma” walk in the Oakland Hills, during which families recited the Sh’ma, talked about its meaning, and walked through the woods with a new understanding of what Sh’ma (listen) implies.

Each of these experiences has actively involved parents in learning with the children.
In addition to engaging with their children in Jewish programming that is meaningful to them, connections with other parents are fostered, building a Jewish community. Switching from a “parent education” model to a “parent engagement” model is a subtle change, but one that moves from a deficit model to one that is strength-based. The JRS actively works with the parents to ask them how and where they like to learn, to engage them in the kinds of activities that they enjoy, and to provide a Jewish lens for the learning at these family engagement times. They work with one or two “JRS parents” who help them create meaningful Jewish programming, again, emphasizing family friendships and connection to the Jewish community.

The ECFE’s second cohort just had their siyyum, their closing celebration. As this current cohort ends, the third cohort of the JRS will begin in the fall of 2017. In the words of a parent, “I just can’t imagine what our school would be like without the JRS program.”

Denise Moyes-Schnur is a Jewish early childhood educator, and has been in the field for over 40 years. She has worked in both local and national Jewish early childhood programs, (including JTS’s own first cohort of JECELI, where she was the mentor coordinator). Denise specializes in creating programming, coaching, and mentoring Jewish early childhood centers. She is the director of the Jewish Resource Specialist program, and in July will become the associate director at the Early Childhood and Family Engagement Initiative at the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation.

מדוע אתה יושב לבדך… לא-טוב הדבר

Why do you sit alone? . . . It is not good [to do so].
—Exodus 18:14, 17

Poor Moses. The guy sure had a way of making leadership look isolating. You know you have a problem when your in-laws admonish you to your face, calling your leadership style “lo tov” (Exodus 18:17). Ouch.

Today’s early childhood leaders know what Yitro knew—that going it alone is lo tov for so many reasons. We have all seen how leading alone can be a recipe for burnout and an obstacle to succession planning. We know it is anathema to Jewish and progressive pedagogical ideals about learning from and with others. And yet it is neither obvious nor simple to imagine how to begin leading differently.

In recent years, Chicago Jewish early childhood leaders (directors, lay people, and educators) have been gathering together to seek knowledge, support, and understanding. Their work has addressed several needs in our system: cultivating a shared sense of responsibility for each early childhood center, identifying and nurturing future leaders, helping leaders develop non-profit management skills, retaining directors through the challenges of leading a family center, developing an inspired vision for excellence in teaching and learning, and recruiting new teachers.

Already we are seeing an impact on individuals and schools. Remarkably, directors insist that this is an entirely new way of working for them; in their words I hear echoes of my favorite 1980s song: “Til now I always got by on my own; I never really cared until I met you.” Unsurprisingly, then, I regularly hear stories about how caring relationships with colleagues are pushing area leaders to try new practices and lifting them up when their efforts miss the mark.

Below I offer a few examples of the purposeful systems supporting leadership development across our 39 Jewish early childhood programs. Following these examples, I will share hopes and dreams for next steps in our ecosystem.

Chicago Early Engagement Leadership Initiative (CEELI). This cohort of 12 schools gathers regularly for professional development. Each school team is composed of a director, a teacher, and a lay person. Together the cohort focuses on strategic challenges and opportunities such as marketing, communication, and family engagement. The CEELI project director supports each team in reaching a goal the school sets for itself. Past goals have included developing a marketing plan, redesigning a website, integrating families into the host synagogue, developing new feedback mechanisms, engaging in visioning with staff, and aligning the preschool and supplemental school program. This year the initiative welcomed new schools to the cohort and began inviting additional community institutions to skill-building boot camps to learn how to more effectively engage young families. CEELI is the brainchild of the Union for Reform Judaism and includes participation from a wide variety of schools.

The Jewish Early Childhood Leadership Institute (JECELI). JECELI brings leaders in area schools together regularly for Jewish learning, community building, professional development in Jewish constructivist and experiential education, and leadership development. Through communal study with local and national experts, these 17 participants are building the Jewish knowledge, confidence, and skills to lead Jewish programs. Essential to this program are four incredibly experienced mentors who attend the sessions, conduct small group reflection sessions with their mentees, and visit and guide mentees on-site on a regular basis. Participants develop and share final projects that reveal the pedagogical leadership they have been bringing back to their schools. JECELI is a joint initiative of the Leadership Commons, part of The Davidson School of The Jewish Theological Seminary, and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute for Religion.

Director’s Council. In Chicago there is a long-standing group of seven schools whose directors meet monthly, sharing dilemmas of practice and working together to offer thoughtful feedback and engender reflection. This group is facilitated by a clinical social worker who is also a child development specialist.
Study travel is a new element in our community, in which school teams—each composed of a leader and two teachers—study cutting-edge practices in early childhood education, delve into the common texts and ideals that bind Jewish schools, travel to visit leading centers and learn from experts, and reflect together on new approaches and practices they have begun employing in their programs. This year 12 schools participated—half of them studying together in the fall and then visiting Los Angeles to tour early childhood programs and study progressive pedagogy, and the other half meeting monthly throughout the year and studying together in Reggio Emilia, Italy, in the spring.

Beginning this summer, the Chicago Teachers Project: A Laboratory for Early Childhood Education, funded by the Covenant Foundation, will onboard a cohort of 12 individuals who have recently been recruited to pursue Jewish early childhood education as a career. Under the guidance of local education leaders, these new educators will meet for a summer retreat and a summer intensive, study and reflect together three times a month, complete a certificate in Progressive Education from the Erikson Institute, and work twice a month with skilled mentor teachers from Jewish schools across the community. These educators will learn the art of leading a classroom community. As part of the same initiative, three tiers of educators will grow in their own leadership—12 co-teachers will assist in onboarding these new teachers and will benefit from an enhanced budget for their own professional development, 12 mentor teachers will learn about the art of mentoring and receive a stipend for their work, and six school directors will travel together to the Boulder Journey School to reimagine their own schools as laboratories for excellence in teaching.

In an effort to enhance coordination between networks and among participants, our Federation, the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago (JUF), has initiated a strategic planning process for Jewish early childhood education, incorporating the voices of parents, teachers, and leaders across the city and the country. Chicago’s new strategic plan boldly outlines strategies and tactics for strengthening the pipeline of teachers and leaders, advancing a culture of excellence in our schools, and expanding accessibility for families.

Central to carrying out this plan is the possibility of collective impact. Thus the plan calls for the development of a collaborative, to be housed at JUF, that will not only do the vital work of focusing myriad communal initiatives around shared outcomes, but will also have the power to address the seemingly intractable issues that have and will continue to plague early childhood education—inadequate resources for schools to properly invest in teacher compensation and professional development, and barriers to enrollment such as limited hours, scarcity of infant care, and unaffordable tuition.

To properly embolden our community as we take next steps, I look to counter Moses’s lonely leadership (lo tov) with Psalm 133’s virtue of togetherness (hinei mah tov, or “here is what is good”) and Genesis’s rife praise (ki tov) for the work of creation. Taken together, it seems that doing good work will require leading and creating—together—in wholly new ways. I believe that with the stability, relationships, and confidence being nurtured through our various leadership networks; continued encouragement and support from funders; and generous relationships with leaders around the country, we have a chance at Moses’s happy ending.

As Exodus 18 concludes, Yitro tells Moses that when he will develop a system of shared communal leadership, the whole of the people will reach the proper place in peace (18:23). May it be so.

Anna Hartman is the director of Early Childhood Excellence at the Community Foundation for Jewish Education of the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago. She is also the director of the Paradigm Project.

V’shinantam L’vaneha—And you shall teach them unto your children. Our tradition teaches that Jewish parents should transmit Judaism to their children, but what do we really understand about how the majority of progressive Jewish parents of young children see that role today?

With this question in mind, the Jewish Education Project, the central agency for Jewish education serving New York City, Long Island, and Westchester, wanted to understand how parents make decisions to participate in activities with their youngest children. With the burgeoning of secular early enrichment classes, such as parent-child music classes for children ages 0–2, we wanted to understand what parents value about these programs, how they perceive Jewish early enrichment experiences, and what goes into their decisions to join both. In spring 2016, the Jewish Education Project, with funding from UJA-Federation of New York, conducted a scan of Jewish and secular early enrichment programs across New York. We also conducted a series of focus groups with parents of children ages 0–2 in Long Island and Manhattan. All the parents had participated in secular enrichment programs (such as Music Together, Gymboree, Music for Aardvarks, etc.) and were raising their children to identify as Jews, but most were not connected to any Jewish institution or organization. This study revealed several insights into how they see their role as Jewish parents and about their decision to participate in, and their understanding, of Jewish engagement and learning at this earliest stage.

First, it is clear from our research that parents believe that enrolling their children in secular early enrichment programs is an integral part of being a good parent. The decision to participate is not debated. The only decisions to be made are about budget and the logistics of where and when to participate. However, when we asked about participating in similar types of Jewish programs, we received very different responses that often indicated more angst:

“Right now I do these classes by myself with my daughter, but if it were something like this [Jewish class], I would make my husband come with us. It would be a family class with the three of us.”

“My husband’s biggest fear from all of these classes would be that he would go and he would be judged. Or people would only speak about keeping kosher at home or their Shabbat dinners and we don’t do that. I think everyone in the room probably, or I will speak for myself, gets judged enough as parent. To bring a religion into it, that can be super stressful.”

“I kind of want to learn and I’ve realized I haven’t been the greatest Jew, but just don’t make me do it. I want to—just don’t force me.”

This is in part good news as parents see Jewish programs as a family affair. However, we see that parents today often fear that they or their spouse will be judged. Parents today are inundated with parenting advice from multiple sources: friends, family, Facebook, parenting blogs, and hundreds of websites, causing much insecurity. Offering them a safe haven from all judgment is essential.

Many parents also expressed that though they understood the benefits of secular programs—making their children happy and teaching them new skills—they didn’t see the clear value of Jewish content in programs for their young children. In addition, when they spoke about exposing their children to Jewish life, it was mostly in terms of imagining traditional Jewish learning that happens in more formal settings outside the home, such as early childhood centers, and at a later stage, such as in Hebrew school. Some did understand an enculturation process that can happen early within the family, but most expressed Judaism as something that is only accessible once it can be understood or talked about:

“I think it comes out as a cultural thing in family get-togethers. Kids are like sponges, so even though they don’t really pick it up, they do on some level. I try to keep it as a joy instead of a strict religious thing because then it starts to feel like a burden. It doesn’t really have much significance other than we’re just enjoying family life. When they get older of course I’m definitely going to talk to them about it. I’m not going to stress over it.”

“It doesn’t seem like it would be for small children though. Although we do want to expose our small children it seems it could be more targeted towards three and above where they can actually participate in some small way. I know that four- year-olds would really love this.”

“My daughter is only one and I plan on raising her Jewish and she will go to Hebrew school. But at this age I don’t think she’s old enough to understand and I don’t think under three years old they really are. Maybe next year I’ll feel different when she is two but at this age I don’t. But at one-and-a-half, I don’t really see the need yet. But I will once she’s older, of course.”

Our study suggests several findings that are important to keep in mind when understanding a parent’s role in making decisions to join Jewish experiences:

1) It carries emotional weight: it affects family dynamics and decisions, perhaps due to the fear of being judged and the perceived commitment associated with formal learning that parents associate with Jewish programs.

2) Most parents in this study want to expose their children to cultural elements of Judaism, not necessarily the more religious or ritualistic elements.

3) Parents explained that while Judaism isn’t always at the top of their minds at this life stage, they do think about it—but mostly related to the future.

4) Since their children are so young, and perhaps because parents did not have similar Jewish experiences when they were the same age, it is sometimes impossible for parents to understand or articulate a clear benefit from engaging in Jewish activities right now. They do understand how secular aspects of early enrichment experiences are valuable for their youngest children, but not Jewish ones.

Ultimately, parents want to see their children happy and developing the physical, emotional, and social skills that they need to thrive. As a result, those of us trying to engage families at this stage struggle to find the right formula for Jewish content. Listening to the voices of parents gives us important guidelines to consider. The most important: being sure to offer and articulate clear benefits of Jewish programs that resonate with the life skills that families perceive are important for their children and themselves. If we can provide happiness and skill development while parents and children are engaged in the earliest Jewish early childhood experiences based on any of our cultural elements—song, art, cooking, movement or dance—perhaps this will finally inspire V’shinantam L’vaneha (and you shall teach them unto your children).

Shellie Dickstein is managing director of Early Childhood and Family Engagement for the Jewish Education Project. Shellie leads a team to facilitate networks and change initiatives that spark and spread innovative approaches and new models in early childhood education and early family engagement. She has facilitated workshops and seminars on family education and engagement nationally and internationally and as adjunct faculty for HUC-JIR in New York. Shellie has written and contributed to various articles, blogs and publications on Jewish family education, including Jewish Family Education: A Casebook for the Twenty-First Century, published by Torah Aurah.

“The essence of teaching is to have a dialogue with the child’s potential.”
—Carla Rinaldi

“The essence of Jewish education is to have a dialogue with the
whole family’s potential.”
—The authors

ENVISION . . . children digging in the ground discovering worms and other bugs, and a conversation ensues. As a few children excitedly pick up some wiggling worms and start carrying them around the playground, other children begin wondering if is it okay to take the worms out of their home. Might they miss their mommy? The teacher joins them and explains enthusiastically that they are being like Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King Jr.; as Heschel taught, they are responding ethically to the calling of the awesome world in which they live. Not coincidentally, a picture of these two ethical giants, walking together, adorns the classroom wall. Next week, following the continued interests of the children, the teachers support them as they explore how to build a playground for the worms, an offering from the children full of joy and desire for the well-being of the worms.

A month later, parents come to the school for a classroom meeting where teachers share the journey of the children’s project work through photos, videos, and conversations. In this meeting, the teachers offer a glimpse inside the ethical choices children are wrestling with as they design a playground for the worms. The parents become inspired and begin to think together more deeply about what it means for their children to live Jewish values in a robust and authentic way at school as well as at home. They begin working together to build a just community, centered in the school and serving the wider neighborhood.

Our children are not isolated individuals, experiencing life and learning on their own. They are social beings immersed in meaningful webs of relationship, of which the family is central and fundamental. Therefore, the nurturing of a vibrant life inspired and guided by Jewish values and practices—the outcome we all desire—requires young children to have a family actively engaged in Jewish learning and living.

CONSIDER THIS: “A child’s brain undergoes an amazing period of development from birth to three—producing more than a million neural connections each second. The development of the brain is influenced by many factors, including a child’s relationships, experiences and environment” (“Brain Development,”
Zero to Three). Recognizing that humans have the greatest period of growth before the age of five years old brings into focus the crucial responsibility and vast opportunity we have in Jewish early childhood education. From the first breath of life, children are asking questions, searching for the meaning of the world around them and within them, developing theories of how things work and then testing out their ideas . . . children are the world’s first researchers in their lifelong quest to develop their potential.

NOW IMAGINE THIS: A family experiencing the growth of their first child undergoes an amazing period of development during the first three years. They are discovering and—inscribing in the life of the family—the values, rituals, and practices that will determine the shape of the family for decades to come. We need to recognize that as young adults get married and begin to raise children, marking the most formative moment in their adult lives, we are presented with the crucial responsibility and vast opportunity we have in Jewish early childhood education. Even before birth, parents are asking questions, searching for the meaning of the world around them and within them, developing ideas about the family they want to be, testing them out and seeking guidance from others on this same journey. If we focus on this critical time, we find that families with young children reveal the relevance of Jewish values, rituals, and practices for building thriving families in contemporary society.

How we regard young children—our beliefs about who they are, what rights they have, what place they hold in society—influences the kinds of environments and interactions we have with them, which then has an impact on their self-concept and the possibilities of who they can become. Judaism offers us distinct core values about what it means to be human, including the fundamental belief we are all born b’tzelem elohim (created in the image of God.) As Rabbi Yitz Greenberg taught, tzelem elohim means that each soul is born unique, of infinite value, and equal to all other souls. If we believe each person is created in the image of God, many questions arise.

What does it require of us as educators when we view all children as having unique needs and capabilities? What kind of educational spaces do we need to nurture children who have infinite value? What actions must we take when we recognize the rights of all children as being equal?

Now imagine seeing each family as being unique, equal, and having infinite value. What does it require of all of us to invest in the growth of these infinitely valuable families? What educational spaces do we need in order to welcome families with unique ways of being Jewish and being families? What actions do we need to take for all families to matter in our understanding of equality?

In addition to the story that began this article, here are two more vignettes that inspire us with the possibilities of emergent and deep Jewish learning for children and families:

ENVISION . . . one day the two-year-old children decide to decorate a chair in their classroom. They reserve this chair for special times. When a guest arrives, he is invited to have a seat on the special chair. As part of being welcomed into the classroom, visitors are made to feel at home. When a child has a birthday, she becomes the person of honor who gets to sit on the chair. The teachers document this ongoing experience by photographing the children’s engagement with each other and the chair, writing down the conversations taking place and making note of how the toddlers are designing these significant moments together. At the end of the week, when the parents join their children for the afternoon, they see and read about their children’s creation of sacred time and space. The teachers then engage the parents in a conversation about creating sacred moments in the lives of their families. Through meaningful dialogue, families and educators engage in exploring how spaces and times at home can become more sacred. Ideas range from the reading of books and the saying of the Sh’ma at bedtime, to the lighting of candles and blessing of the children one Shabbat, to the possibility of creating a special chair at home for those moments when one needs to have a place to sit when the sacred is recognized.

ENVISION . . . walking in to the hallway of the early childhood center surrounded by photographs of the center’s families on various vacations. In one picture, a family is visiting the grandparents in Florida and the smiles on everyone’s faces show the depth of love that is felt. In another, children miraculously float on the Dead Sea during a trip to Israel. The children have toured these pictures and heard parents tell stories about
their travels and the wonderful time they had rediscovering themselves as a dynamic, silly, loving family, away from the demands of work and school. At the end of the hallway, the children have created a collage of drawings that tell the story of Abraham and Sarah as they journeyed lekh lekha (literally, go to yourself).

In the stories we have written about ourselves and our journeys throughout the generations, we understand we have an immense potential to create that which is new, to do whatever is desired or needed, and to love regardless of any circumstance. Our schools can carry on the dynamism in our tradition if they are based on a pedagogy of relationships, deep listening, and a regard for one another that facilitate an open and democratic style of learning for children and adults alike. It is within our power to ensure a deeper level of co-participation, as children, parents, and educators are involved in a process of learning—the vital action of being alive and making meaning. Such is the power and importance of Jewish learning that is now happening at a growing number of Jewish early childhood centers across the country.

Sonya Shoptaugh is the founder and director of Creative Childhood. She works with major Jewish organizations focusing on constructivist Jewish early childhood education.

Dr. Bill Robinson is the dean of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education of The Jewish Theological Seminary.

As Barry Holtz illustrates in our leading article, Jewish education is at a turning point. For decades, we have looked to Jewish education as the means of achieving the ends of preventing intermarriage and assimilation. Now that this (for good reasons) seems to be at an end, what are the outcomes of Jewish education? The various authors propose alternatives—old, new, and renewed—which include knowledge and skills; access to Jewish wisdom, beliefs, and commitment; and thriving as human beings.

Each author makes a convincing case for their preference, yet I propose that these are actually not alternatives. Rather, they are essential threads of what could and should be a rich and robust tapestry of learning. To use another analogy, in Jewish education, we tend to be like the blind men exploring different parts of that proverbial elephant and proclaiming our part as the whole. Instead, I propose that we look at the whole elephant in the room, another proverbial elephant we know has always been there but we try not to talk about—that there is no more worthy goal of Jewish learning than (more and better) Jewish learning.

To build toward this claim, I offer as conceptual building blocks three insights gleaned from the various articles in this issue. By weaving together the viewpoints of the various authors, I hope to make visible the whole, and perhaps disquieting, elephant that is Jewish education, whose means is its own end.

Insight 1: Jewish education is a dialogue between text and experience.

Bryfman argues against Holtz’s seeming privileging of knowledge and skills. He states “Jewish education must stop defaulting to literacy over values, texts over ethics, and the past over the present and future.” On the p’shat (literal reading) of this statement, I fully agree. I have been in numerous conversations that echo Bryfman’s enviable desire, where it is simply assumed that we know precisely what the Jewish values or ethics we would teach are. Yet I have come to wonder, how do we come to understand what is a Jewish value except through text study?

One example from my teacher, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg: b’tzelem elokim (being created in the image of God). It has rightfully come to be seen as a core Jewish value. Yet, what does it mean for all of us to be created in the image of God? What does this imply for how we act toward one another?

The first question can only be answered if we look to our sacred texts. The texts that define the meaning of b’tzelem elokim come from the Talmud (Sandhedrin 37a), where we learn that all humans are:

Of Infinite Value: “Therefore, the first human being, Adam, was created alone, to teach us that whoever destroys a single life, the Torah considers it as if he destroyed an entire world.”

Equal: “Furthermore, only one person, Adam, was created for the sake of peace among men, so that no one should say to his fellow, ‘My father was greater than yours…’”

Unique: “Also man [was created singly] to show the greatness of the Holy One, Blessed be He, for if a man strikes many coins from one mold, they all resemble one another, but the King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He made each man in the image of Adam, and yet none of them resemble his fellow.”

The second question (What does this imply for how we act toward one another?) can only be answered if we engage in a dialogue between text and our contemporary experiences, particularly reflecting upon our efforts to live according to this value. We bring the texts to life by filling in the spaces with our own experience, and we give meaning to our lives by interpreting our experiences through the stories, metaphors, and tropes of Jewish text. Orlow, quoting Rosenzweig, echoes this, “It is learning in reverse order, a learning that no longer starts from the Torah and leads into life, but the other way around: from life . . . back to the Torah.” That it must begin this way today may well be true, but regardless of where the conversation starts, it seeks to become a true dialogue.

Insight 2: Jewish education fosters ethical relations among learners.

Edelsberg finds the relevance of Jewish education today in providing “inventive, easily accessible ways for individuals to mine Judaism’s rich treasure of wisdom for purposes of meaning making and living authentically in a complex, dynamic society.” Despite the use of the word “individuals” here, he sees learning not as an individual pursuit, but as a relationship among Jews. “[L]earning for its own sake in the 21st century, given the pervasive presence of networks, will ineluctably become learning done in relationships learners have with others.”

This bodes an important question: what are the values of those relationships among learners that promote rich and generative learning?

Sterne offers a stimulating analogy:

To make a comparison to other areas of our lives where knowledge plays a critical role, let’s think about our relationships with other people and, in particular, with falling in love. When we first meet another person—while the relationship is still superficial—we have a general sense of liking the other and wanting to spend time with him/her. But, the only way for that relationship to become truly sustainable and long-term is to really develop a deep knowledge of the other.

Like falling in love, learning demands not only a dialogue between text and (individual) experience, but also between learners where they come to deeply understand and value one another. Like Martin Buber’s concept of I-Thou, learners, including the teacher, must encounter one another, as well as the text, with openness and a valuing of the other as an end in itself, not merely as a means to my own ends.

To flip Bryfman’s initial premise on its head, good learning presupposes shared values. To engage in the dialogue of meaningful and lifelong Jewish learning, one needs to learn and commit to certain values and competencies. What may those be? Certainly, these include an ability to deeply listen and appreciate the other’s perspective, to value and engage in critical inquiry and conversation, to be open about one’s life, to care about what the text actually says, and to trust one other and the educational process.

While sharing with Edelsberg’s appreciation for Paula Hyman’s assertion, that “the legacy of our generation may well be a postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion and a recognition that a diverse people requires cultural diversity,” this cannot be all. We need to hold to a “hermeneutics of hope,” as well, in which these values that we learn in havruta (partner study) and as members of a learning community become a source of wisdom and emulation in all parts of our lives.

Insight 3: Through Jewish education, we narrate what it means to be Jewish today.

Bryfman asserts that Jewish education “must be focused on making a positive difference in the lives of Jews today. This is foundationally different to Jewish education that has traditionally seen its purpose as making people more Jewish, allowing Jewish institutions to prosper, and making the Jewish community stronger.”

While sharing his sentiments here, I must disagree with his following statement: “Instead, the significant outcome that Jewish education and engagement should be tackling is that Jewish educational experiences enable people to thrive as human beings in the world today—as human beings, in their various communities, and in the world at large.”

There is no such thing as thriving as a human being in general, rather we thrive in the particularities of our identities (how we identify as a particular gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality). Thus, Jewish education should help us thrive as Jewish human beings living in America today.

Moreover, the idea that there are uniquely Jewish values (that help us thrive as humans) is erroneous. There are only the unique Jewish stories through which we understand and talk about our values and the unique Jewish practices through which we express those values. To thrive as a Jewish human being involves learning those stories, as we discussed above, and learning our customs and mitzvot.

It is also useful to treat our customs and mitzvot as lived texts. Looking at the past, they are literally the cultural record of Jewish life. Looking forward as learners, we would seek to read them more intimately through experiencing them and reflecting upon that experience with other learners. As Torah says, “We will do and we will understand.” Then, as with traditional text, we reinterpret them in ways that enable these practices to become more meaningful to us and richer vehicles for thriving in today’s world.

By engaging with others in this dialogical and ethical (educational) relationship with Jewish practice as text, we are developing shared understandings and meanings. We are, in essence, narrating what it means to be Jewish in today’s world. And, in so doing, we are (re)interpreting and (re)forming our identities as Jews. Kardos observes that “Educational experiences are always teaching students beliefs and commitments—beliefs about who one is and is not, where one belongs and does not, and what is and is not valued.” She proclaims, “Developing beliefs is a basic feature of what our minds do, and students are creating the building blocks of what will become their personal identity.”

CONCLUSION: THE GOAL OF JEWISH LEARNING IS (BETTER AND MORE) JEWISH LEARNING.

Holtz focuses on knowledge and skills as the outcomes of Jewish learning because these competencies and dispositions will provide Jews with access to “a religion and Jewish culture in its broadest sense [that] offers a tradition of wisdom and practice that can make a difference in an individual’s life and in bettering the state of the world.” It begins by Jewish learning modeling ethical ways of being in the world.

To quote from Talmud (Kiddushin 40b), “Rabbi Tarphon and some elders asked: Which is greater, study or action? Rabbi Tarphon spoke up and said: Action is greater. Rabbi Akiva spoke up and said: Study is greater.
The others then spoke up and said: Study is greater because it leads to action.”

Jewish education can nurture strong Jewish identities. Jewish education can enable us to better thrive in the world and to act in ways that make the world a better place. But, the ways in which we will choose to act in the world, to thrive, and to define our identity as Jews, are open-ended. They cannot be predetermined prior to the educational process. As Paula Hyman also asserted in the same article that Edelsberg references, the answer to the question of “Who [or what] is an educated Jew?” if posed “in 1750, in say Poland, would have been obvious.”

Today, that is no longer true. We are in a continual process of redefining what it means to be Jewish. We can only hope that Jews will redefine their Jewish identity based on profound experiences of Jewish learning. As educators, educational funders, and those who care deeply about the Jewish future, we cannot set forth outcomes that lie external to the process of education. We can only hope and work to ensure that generations of Jews to come will have a desire for, the competencies to engage in, and a commitment to the values that underlie lifelong Jewish learning with other Jews.

Katzman and Abramson capture this perfectly in their question: “[H]ow do we foster students’ desire to be part of the ongoing Jewish conversation and feel competent and motivated as Jewish citizens, kids who intentionally put themselves in the conversation long after they leave our classrooms? We do this by having the educational experience be a model of citizenry and ongoing Jewish conversation. The end is embedded in the means. Or as Dewey argues even more poignantly, “Cease conceiving of education as mere preparation for later life, and make it the full meaning of the present life.”

Dr. Bill Robinsion is dean of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education of The Jewish Theological Seminary.

In considering the desired outcomes of Jewish education, I recall a classic debate from my time in yeshiva: What makes tea sweet? Is it the sugar or the stirring? In the context of this discussion, we can ask the same question: What is more important? Is it the Jewish content (the sugar) or the process of developing Jewish identity (the stirring)?

Clearly the arguments of Abraham and Sarah written by Drs. Jon A. Levisohn and Jeffrey S. Kress are hyperbolic. But, the optimal design of Jewish educational experiences is contingent on where an educator weighs in on this continuum. Based on my traditional educational background, Sarah’s perspective rings true. But my tenure working in Jewish camps and on college campuses with Hillel has developed my appreciation for Abraham’s perspective. That said, before I weigh in on where I fall on this sugar/stirring continuum, there is an even more salient question: Do people even want tea?

Outside of the context of true tea lovers, how is the construct of Jewish developmental outcomes any more or less artificial than a possibly outdated and irrelevant canon of Jewish content/practice? To play out the metaphor further, because I am rather old-fashioned when it comes to my enjoyment of high tea, the student side of me does not have many complaints. As a Jewish educator, however, I realize that my personal preferences are irrelevant. If we genuinely are interested in opening up the market, we will need to be flexible on both sides of this equation. I suggest that we are challenged today to explore our various beliefs around what constitutes Jewish content and to blur the lines of traditional Jewish identity markers.

To this point, revelation is not limited to something that might or might not have happened long ago at Sinai; it is something that is happening in the learning experience itself today. As we learn from Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi:

Every day a heavenly voice goes forth from Mount Horev and makes proclamation . . . And it says, “And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tablets” (Exodus 32:16). Read not harut (graven) but herut (freedom). For there is no free man but one that occupies himself with the study of the Torah. (Avot 6:2)

Textual learning is therefore integrated in and is a manifestation of the relationships in our lives. In this context, all learners can access and feel ownership over Jewish text. The Torah is not static, fixed, or engraved in stone, but, rather, free to evolve with us if we commit ourselves to its study.

In my experience, people often describe successful Jewish educational experiences as “life changing.” Like Abraham, the focus of this education is its relevance, personal transformation, and individual growth. Whereas the course of study in formal educational environments often follows the text, the opposite often happens in experiential education. For Sarah, text plays the role of reacting to, commenting on, and transforming the students’ narratives. As the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig said, “It is learning in reverse order, a learning that no longer starts from the Torah and leads into life, but the other way around: from life . . . back to the Torah.” My prescription then, or recipe, is that the educator needs to trust the educational process. Like the two teams who excavated Hezekiah’s Tunnel, starting at each end of the tunnel and then meeting in the middle, experiential educators must negotiate the tension between reacting to students’ revelations and forcing them to reach the canon of “big ideas.” That is to say, the educator needs to maintain the trust of the students and fidelity with the tradition; constantly negotiating the two.

I find that students’ experiences of this dynamic tension are often their first proper tea. But there is still much work to reimagining the canon of Jewish practices and content. The Abraham in this fake debate and the Abraham we encounter in the Bible are both asking us to be iconoclastic and break free of our preconceptions of authentic Jewish content.

The Men of the Great Assembly said, “Be cautious in judgment. Establish many students. And make a safety fence around the Torah” (Avot 1:1). I see the value of maintaining a fence around the Torah for the students we have now. But what about for the students we may lose due to the perception of Torah’s irrelevance to their lives? Are we willing to break through these fences to bring in new students? It is incumbent upon us to investigate whether we are willing and able to imagine an education where Judaism actually speaks to Jews.

The decision has important implications for all of us who devote ourselves to preparing and consuming a proper spot of tea. A shift away from the primacy of revelation to the accessibility of a Torah of relevance might put stress on our assumptions that we are “one people with one Torah.” At the same time, throwing off the tyranny of classical Judaism may allow more Jews today to take an active role in making Jewish life meaningful. We might even call it a tea party.

Rabbi Avi Katz Orlow is the vice president, program and innovation, for the Foundation for Jewish Camp. He has served as the campus rabbi and assistant director of the St. Louis Hillel at Washington University and has held numerous positions as rabbi, educator, and youth leader. He spent 17 years as a camper and then educator at Ramah camps in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and YUSSR camps in the former Soviet Union. Avi has a BA in religious studies from Columbia University. He was ordained in the charter class at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, the open Orthodox rabbinical school.