Whether it’s Steven Covey who said “Interdependent people combine their own efforts, with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success” or... Michael Jordan who said “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships"...
According to a 2013 JData article, there are approximately 1848 congregational schools in America, in addition to the other supplemental programs being run independently by JCCs and other community organizations...
Imagine you’re a new college graduate and you’re playing around with the idea of becoming a Jewish Educator. You have already taken advantage of some isolated part-time opportunities to teach Hebrew school and had some enriching summer leadership experiences. But, the chance to work full-time in a full-year teaching capacity straight out of college is a long shot, since many of these roles require more advanced degrees.
For at least 2,000 years, Judaism has been a text-based religion. Many would argue it’s been longer than that. And, with some exceptions, the language of our texts is Hebrew. Yes, Aramaic plays a part. The Talmud, lots of midrashim and ancient biblical translations often were written in Aramaic — but even then, written in the Hebrew alphabet. It shares many of the same words and cognates, and is at the very least a not-too-distant cousin of Hebrew. For as long as Jews have been calling themselves Jews, we’ve been doing all that Jewish stuff in Hebrew.
It’s Friday at noon. Five Jewish educators sit around a table discussing their recent experiences using Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to defuse tension among students. One educator tells a success story. Another questions the value of the NVC approach, “how do the kids ever learn that there are consequences to actions?”
Oren Massey walks through a warm classroom decorated with children’s artwork and Hebrew characters, greeting young students and teachers alike with a gentle “Shalom” as Hebrew music plays in the background.
We are a “dual-school family.” Our daughter is in 6th grade at the local Orthodox Jewish day school while our son is in 3rd grade at a public school. We often get asked how this came about. I enjoy replying that when deciding which child should learn Torah, we picked our daughter as a corrective step for generations of reduced access to Torah by girls. But that’s really just a line. As with most things in life, there’s a longer story behind this–and as with much of parenting, our intentions only played a minor role.
“The changing nature of Jewish identity stands out sharply when the survey’s results are analyzed by generation. Fully 93% of Jews in the aging Greatest Generation identify as Jewish on the basis of religion (called “Jews by religion” in this report)...
Parent’s e-mail message: “This is all surprisingly more emotional for all of us than I could have imagined. For myself and each other parent that I've talked to, the topic of Jewish education really tugs at our heart strings and it's hard to feel like we can do right by our kids and our pocket books and our commitments to school and other activities. ooph. I haven't heard about any families where the kids are driving the want to be at something Jewish after-school.
For Rachel and Joel Silverman — a two-career couple in Atlanta — Hebrew school used to be yet another item on the family’s already crowded to-do list. Monday through Friday, the working parents needed after-school care for their daughters. Then on Sundays, when the adults were home and eager for unstructured family time, they had to shlep the kids to Hebrew school.