Once in awhile, we try to pass on stories or articles that catch our attention and that might be useful to Jewish teachers and educators.

This article really takes the cake. It’s by Lisa Greengard, a youth director who “gets it.” She works at Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles, and she recently wrote the piece linked below. It’s called “Youth Groups Are Worth the Fight.”

In it, she confirms the importance of youth groups’ role in creating Jewish communities and helping kids to really live Jewishly. She wants parents to realize how important it is to encourage their kids to participate:

Your child’s peer group during these years can determine what kind of Jewish life your child will lead in young adulthood and beyond… Don’t you want to know that your children are in a safe, nurturing environment where positive Jewish role models, Judaism and acceptance are the norm?

To read her whole article, click over to Temple Isaiah’s website.

If the 1960s Hebrew school is really a thing of the past, then 1960s textbooks need to be a thing of the past, too.

by Josh Mason-Barkin

My wife and I went to see the Coen brothers’ latest film this weekend, A Serious Man. For me, it was a double-whammy must-see. First, I’m a huge fan of their movies. (“We’re talking about unchecked aggression here, Dude.”) Second, the movie purports to be about rabbis, Jews, and Judaism, and well, I’m a Jewish educator and my wife is a Jewish educator and soon-to-be rabbi. So suffice it to say that we were excited.

The film lived up to expectations, and then some. It’s a deep and fascinating look at Jewish life in 1960s middle American suburbia, complete with a Job-esque examination of a father’s quest to find meaning in his life. It’s rich with cultural and religious allusions, and has a lot to say about the relationship between Jews and Jewish leadership (especially rabbis).

But I have to admit I paid extra attention to the Hebrew school scenes.

Twice in the movie we visit Danny Gopnick sitting bored in his Talmud Torah class. It’s as old-fashioned a classroom as you can imagine. The teacher is trying to show the students how to properly conjugate the Hebrew word for “to go,” droning on “Hu holekh habayta, hi holekhet habayta, anahnu holkhim habayta…” The students are totally unengaged, they have no idea what’s going on, and their answers to the teacher’s questions suggest that they don’t understand anything he’s been trying to teach them. They each sit staring at their books, totally confused at the meaningless foreign language printed in front of them.

(As for me, I sat there during that scene praying. “Please don’t let it be a Torah Aura book…” Thankfully, the prop folks went with books from a different publisher. Whew.)

In a second school scene, the teacher tries to teach the students to say, in Hebrew, that they want to plant a tree in Israel. Not only are they all bored, but it’s clear that they have no idea what’s going on, they don’t care, and there’s virtually nothing meaningful, worthwhile, or redeemable about the entire enterprise. The non-Hebrew-speaking audience has no idea what’s going on either, which seems to be a very intentional choice by the filmmakers. As Naomi Pfefferman points out in the Jewish Journal:

The Coens chose not to subtitle the Hebrew lesson scenes in “A Serious Man” to help enhance the fictional classroom’s droning sense of ennui.

Pfefferman is a gifted writer, and her choice of the word “ennui” is perfect.

Ennui is “a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement” (thanks, New Oxford American Dictionary).

Jewish education has come a long way since 1967, when the film takes place, and I’m proud to say that I’ve worked with and in many schools whose students, I can confidently say, never feel a “droning sense of ennui.”

Schools are doing some amazing things to make Jewish learning exciting, engaging, and meaningful: experiential learning, family education, flexible scheduling, and rethought curricula. The entire idea of a supplementary (ahem, “complementary”) education has undergone a complete re-imagination (for the better!) in the past decade.

So if few of today’s classrooms look like the one in A Serious Man, why are too many textbooks designed for educational settings where children sit stoically at their desks as teachers attempt to mindlessly drill facts and Hebrew reading skills into their heads? (And lets be clear: Computer games that mindlessly drill facts and skills are just as bad. Being computerized doesn’t remove the ennui.) We’re not sure why these sort of textbooks still exist, but we know that we want to be part of the solution.

Here are four suggestions for improving the quality of Jewish educational publishing:

1. Jewish educational materials need to be designed to serve the needs of the experiential classroom. Good textbooks aren’t collections of facts and drill pages. They are tools that serve as the foundation for exciting learning. The textbook provides some core content and “sets the stage” for imaginative and engaging outside-of-the-book learning activities. Good textbooks also need to provide a myriad of opportunities for discussion, debate, exploration, ritual- and biblio-drama, and artistic expression.

In other words, a good textbook is a series of discussions that have impact, that allow for self-clarification and self-actualization, that build connection, friendship, and community. The needs of Jewish learning are very different that those of secular learning. We don’t care about the ability to review a chapter and prepare for a test, but we do we care about moments of introspection and being the next step in a student’s becoming an empowered and involved Jewish adult.

[As a side note, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that this has become a major thrust of our work here at Torah Aura. All of our student texts published in the last three years (especially The Circle of Jewish Life, Artzeinu, and Eizehu Gibor) were designed to be used as foundations for true experiential learning. They feature tools for imaginative classroom programs, "core" material designed to provide important background content, and teacher's guides that are really collections of programs and activities, not just guides to using each page in the text. To find ideas for using textbooks to enable programmatic experiences, click here.]

2. Jewish schools need to strategically and thoughtfully integrate technological tools into their classrooms, and publishers need to create materials that are congruent with these efforts. For the past several years, Jewish educational publishers (ourselves at Torah Aura included) have been trying to offer computerized tools that are basically digitized (or computer-gameified) versions of textbooks. Furthermore, publishers have seen educational technology as the next frontier in publishing, a new way to make a buck by selling software that claims to make Jewish learning “exciting.” That’s the wrong attitude. Instead of trying to use software to answer the same old questions (“How do I get kids to properly decode Hebrew?”), we need to be asking a new set of questions.

How can we utilize new technologies like Google Wave, twitter, and YouTube to allow for collaborative (hevruta for the new generation!) learning? How can computers help us to maximize our financial resources? How can the internet help us engage (and empower!) parents and families in new ways? How can we use technology to open up the world of Jewish education to better integrate the arts, science, and communication?

Lots of smart people are thinking about these issues, and we (both publishers and our customers, Jewish schools) need to listen. A bureau executive told me recently that Jewish education is miles behind secular education in these fields. That must change, and we as publishers must be leaders, not followers. We need to help teachers and students think about using tomorrow’s technologies, not provide them with hokey and simplistic “educational” games or digitized flashcards for iPhones.

3. Jewish publishers need to re-examine how content is being used (and ought to be used) in re-imagined schools. I learned recently about a concept called “functional fixedness,” which is about how humans react to the world (and fail to “think outside the box”) based on preconceived notions derived from our previous experience. Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.

As publishers, we have a functional fixedness when it comes to Jewish schools. And, despite our efforts to create whole new kinds of curricular materials, many people have a functional fixedness when it comes to textbooks. We need to overcome these fixednesses.

In order to create new types of curricular materials that might be useful (or even transformative) in new types of schools, publishers need to do a better job of recognizing the way in which schools are changing. Then we need to react.

That’s why, in the next several months, we’re convening a series of “think tanks” to discuss with Jewish educators the ways in which they’ve transformed their schools and the ways in which we might develop materials to fit their needs. (If you’re interested in helping us to host a think tank in your community, drop me a line.) I look forward to sharing everything we’ve learned from these experiences on our blog and in the TAPBB.

4. The Jewish educational establishment — of which publishers are a part — must do a better job of changing public perception. A Serious Man takes cheap shots when it comes to Jewish education. It’s not that hard to find an American Jew who can talk about how bored they were in Hebrew school. As blogger Danielle Berrin writes,

The film is funniest when mocking many of the cultural norms experience by American Jews: boredom at services, ineffectual Hebrew schools and a near crippling fear of ascending the bimah for a B’nai Mitzvah.

The ineffectuality of our schools has surpassed the point of being a problem. It’s a “cultural norm.” Jewish education has changed a lot since the 1960s, but lots of Jews don’t know it. (At least the ones I observed in the theater laughing and nodding knowingly at the Hebrew school scenes don’t know it.)

The renaissance of complementary Jewish education — the fact that so many synagogue schools are doing so much more than boring b’nai mitzvah training — needs a better PR firm. We need to do a better job of showing the world that today’s Danny Gopnick’s aren’t always bored in services (because they learned how to meaningfully participate), their schools aren’t ineffective (because we worked hard to create vision-driven schools that accomplish more than rote learning), and they are certainly not terrified of the bimah (because our synagogues are warm and welcoming places).

As a premiere publisher of Jewish educational materials, we’re dedicated to reshaping the publishing industry and the field of Jewish education. As schools continue to improve so they don’t look like the one in the Coen’s movie, Jewish publishing needs to change too. Unlike the protagonist in the movie, a suburban dad who finds little meaning in his work (or his life in general), I love my job because I get to work on serious issues like these.

Josh Mason-Barkin is director of school services at Torah Aura Productions.

by Joel Lurie Girshaver

When I went to graduate school the term was “teacher proofing.”

It was thought that such technologies as “programmed-instruction” were good, not only because of their ability to allow for individual pacing, but because of their ability to take teachers out of the equation. Today, we see schools that script teachers’ lessons that opt for camp like programming, that fantasize the use of technology and do everything possible to compromise teacher involvement. While understanding that they have experiences that suggest that teachers are the weakest link in Jewish education, they miss the truth that teachers are also the strongest link. The failure of Jewish education may rest in the hands of some teachers but the success of Jewish education also resides in the skill and attitude of other (or perhaps the same) teachers.

Teaching Naked

Naked Teaching, advocated by Southern Methodist University dean Jose Bowen, calls for active use of technology before and after class, but calls for student teacher interaction in class. According to a report on NPR:

“While it sounds like it’s an anti-technology position, really what I’m doing is using technology like podcasts and online games and things so that students have first contact with the material before they come to class,” Bowen says. He is inviting teachers to invert the traditional model, in which students come to class unprepared, are introduced to material by a professor, then leave to study on their own before coming back to be tested.

“First contact with the material is about, you, the student. Then you come into the classroom, and now we have what’s called learning. We work together, we work on problem sets, we argue. And then you go away and I assess you.”¹

Naked Teaching is the rejection of some methodologies and the affirmation of good teaching. It says, lectures are not the best way of conveying information. Power-point presentations make it worse, not better. The real goal is to use technology to transmit information and the classroom to process it. It is a process that say, the teacher is central to the learning that lives long term with the student.

Abraham Joshua Heschel Speaks

Asking, how do I get around the influence of teachers is always the wrong question. Asking, how do I improve the impact of teachers is the right question. Abraham Joshua Heschel got this when he said, “What we need more than anything else is not text-books but text-people. It is the personality of the teacher which is the text that the pupils read; the text that they will never forget.”² He says,

Judaism is teacher-centered, and according to its tradition, God, Himself teaches…It is impossible to imagine Jewish life without the self-sacrifice, skill, and wisdom of our teachers or to overestimate the achievement and greatness of what teachers have done for the survival of Judaism in America.

While we, as textbook publishers are sensitive to the abuse of Rabbi Heschel’s quotation as an attack on textbooks, we know, because we have studied the entire article, that it was originally was a speech delivered to the Pedagogic Conference of the Jewish Education Committee of N.Y.C. in 1953, and that the speech/article is a defense of teachers and is an argument for more deep and spiritual content in Jewish schools. In it he says, “Recognizing the vital importance of Jewish education in our day, we should worry less about technique and more about content.”

Most importantly, Rabbi Heschel begins this speech by saying,

…certain things in Jewish usage fill me with shame. One such thing is the connotation of the word Melamed (Yiddish for “Hebrew School teacher”). Melamed is a synonym for “schlemiel.” The fact that this is so is nothing but blasphemy, and I am a Melamed myself. It is treason to the spirit of Judaism for in our teachings there is no higher distinction than that of being a Jewish teacher.

When we try to teacher proof, when we dissolve the classroom, we are betraying the Jewish tradition and destroying our best hope for Jewish survival. Teachers left to be in relationship with their students is the once and future education that we must seek.

Teachers Can Respond

Think Naked Teaching. Give me a classroom with reasonable students, a good teacher and a good textbook and I know that the following will happen: the students will learn both new content and gain new insights into themselves, friendships will be made or deepened, a sense of community will evolve, Judaism will be practiced, and a viable future for the Jewish people will be a little bit closer. Classrooms can be redemptive places.

Teachers create relationships. They care about and enjoy their students. Let’s talk about moments. A teacher is working on teaching a prayer. The word “God” comes up. Then several questions come up. Among them is, “My grandmother is sick, can God help?” No teacher can answer that question, but they can ask, “What do you think?” A teacher can sincerely say, “God can give you strength to do your best to help her.” And, most of all a teacher can care—and ask about the grandmother next session.

The Potential of the Classroom

“Naked Teaching” is based on decades of educational thinking.

Before there was Understanding by Design³, there were behavioral objectives. Dr. Benjamin Bloom and his team defined six levels of cognitive learning and five of affective learning.

The Cognitive Domain includes: (1) Knowledge, (2) Comprehension, (3) Application, (4) Analysis, (5) Synthesis, and (6) Evaluation.⁴

The Affective Domain includes: (1) Receiving, (2) Responding, (3) Valuing, (4) Organizing, and (5) Characterizing.⁵

Later a psychomotor domain was added: (1) Perception, (2) Set, (3) Guided Response, (4) Mechnamism (5) Complex Overt Response, (6) Adaption, and (7) Origination.⁶

The psychomotor domain is almost completely the result of human interaction. It takes modeling and correcting to happen. Someone has to show me how to tuck my leg when I roll over the bar in the high jump. Personal, visually obtained feedback, is needed to improve my efforts. A friend, Barbara Ziedman was a master chef and a Jew-by-choice. She once baked three Passover sponge cakes from the recipe on the package and then threw them all out because she didn’t know that sponge cakes don’t rise. The directions hadn’t told her that. That took a sister-in-law, a teacher, to give feedback.

Psychomotor learning is like that. The same is true of the higher domains of both the cognitive and affective domain. Facts can be learned on one’s own, but the cognitive skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation take interaction and feedback. The same is true of the higher levels of the affective domain. Receiving may happen in print but responding, valuing, organizing and characterizing are process and conversation oriented. They take teachers, too. Judaism exists on these higher domains. Judaism is not just “knowing” what a hallah is, rather it is “characterizing” hallah as a symbol of Shabbat as a sanctuary in time. Judaism, real Judaism, takes teachers.

Chaim Potok said, “Jewish tradition is a kind of deedology, rather than a creedology.”⁷ He is saying that Judaism is doing. Classrooms are places where students can act together and reflect.

Abraham Joshua Heschel deepened this idea when he said,

Judaism is not merely a matter of external forms—it is also a matter of inner living. The Sabbath is not essentially a matter of external performances, of prohibitions, restrictions, customs and ceremonies. It is an answer to one of the deepest problems of human existence, to the problem of civilization.

This means that first we need to learn the dance steps; then we need to own the dance. Actions are best learned in groups, and they are best reflected on with a good teacher. Remember, for Jews, learning Torah is an action.

Teachers Can Respond

Core Jewish learning, deep Jewish learning, comes from interaction with Jewish sources. These sources ask students questions and perhaps offer options of solution. The job of the student is to choose the solution that makes sense to them. In this way they make meaning of the passage and expand or help to focus the students’ beliefs. The primary role of the teacher is in listening and responding. The teacher needs to hear, affirm, prod, wait, clarify and make sure that the text enters the students as they make it their own.

Sometimes it is just a smile. Sometimes it is, “No. Try again.” The teacher does most of his/her work during the solution of problems, not in their presentation. Great teaching moments are hearing a flow of words, partially coherent, flow out of a student and reaching in to that chaos, and pulling out the core idea with which the student is struggling. They are hearing a student confidently expressing a rote opinion, and with the right questions, pushing the student to think more deeply about an issue. And sometimes, they are just smiling, nodding and saying, “Good.”

Teaching is being there in the moment where questions become worth answering, and where sharing an answer is an important statement of self. While ideally (and we will talk about it) students are talking to the whole class, they are listening and responding to each other, more often, an answer is given for the teacher—out of the belief that the teacher will understand. One of the single most important roles for teachers is being there and responding. The job of the school is to make sure that as many of these moments of real learning can and do take place.

Teachers Create a Dialogue between the Material and the Student

There is the page and then there is off the page. The act of teaching is that of getting ideas and information off the page and into the minds and hearts of their students. Textbook publishers can choose good texts. They can edit and shape those texts so they have the greatest chance of speaking to students. And, they can ask good questions that suggest a path into the heart of the material. A teachers’ guide can suggest a process for learning. They can off up programs and activities. They can describe the book in the context of the active classroom where learning is a series of events. As good as all these resources can be, the teacher still has to breath life into the words.

Teaching is acting, choosing, pausing, translating, illustrating and adapting. Curriculum is not in the book. Curriculum is not in the set of objectives and goals that schools publish. Curriculum is the living creation of the moment. It is the fusion of text, student, teacher, and school vision. It is the reaction that takes place when all the elements interact in the right way. Teachers control the flow. They keep all these elements in balance. They bring the match, they insure the combustion, they fan the spark, and they stand in the middle of the reaction bringing it into the heart of each student.

It is through the teacher that words and ideas are embedded in the student. Once embedded, these words have the potential to emerge, to help and shape, real moments in the students’ life, and to bring Judaism into practical usage. Once they are known and valued, Pikuah Nefesh or Tikkun Olam (or lots of other word-ideas) are locked, loaded, and ready to act on.

There is a powerful role for technology in the learning process, but that does nothing to remove the need for teaching.

Teacher’s Create Dialogue between Students and Students

Dr. Saul Wachs has regularly said, “When you get one student to ask another a question about something the other student has said, you know you have succeeded.” Saul understands that when a classroom moves from the teacher serving as the traffic control tower through whom all communications must go, to a legitimate learning community. When a class makes that transformation, the world completely changes. Nothing is frontal anymore, instead the class takes responsibility for their own learning.

The teacher can shape dialogue in the classroom. They can do it by choosing the grouping size. Working in groups of two, three, four, or larger changes the dynamic and the conversation. The questions a teacher asks opens or closes the dialogue. The more the teacher is looking for a right answer—the more terse the conversation. The more a teacher asks students to solve problems, the larger the dialogue.

In a world that is scared of teachers just teaching, who wants to turn every classroom moment into some active event, it is important to remember that a great conversation is active and involving. There is a big difference between asking “What is the capital of Uzbekistan?” and “Do you think God actually keeps track of your actions?”

Good programs, great events, all kinds of trigger activities generate conversation. But, much of the learning happens in the “talking about it.” Here is where the teacher is critical. Having students study a text in hevruta, having the class wander around the room adding comments to various posters, breaking the class in half for a debate are just a few of many great classroom moments, but these are locked in time and in the heart by the conversation that expresses and shares the meaning made by the experience. “Who wants to react to Josh’s comment?”

Teachers can Correct and Model

How we teach conveys as much as what we teach. We teach about respect, dignity, empathy and lots more by the way we interact with our class. What students learn has a lot to do with the way a teacher greets them, listens to them, talks to them, deals with them when they are difficult, and reaches out when there are issues in their life. This is the part of teaching that Rabbi Heschel labeled under “text people.” This is the part of the classroom experience that calls on us to be Jewish and human.

Of equal importance are the conversations we have with our students when their behavior needs modification. The way in which we preserve their dignity, keep far from embarrassing them, and help them to see a new path is of truly significant importance. Part of teaching is coaching, empowering, actualizing and this involves providing our students with insight into their own behavior and presenting alternative ways of acting or responding. These actions can either make or break a student’s relationship to the teacher, to the school, and to the Jewish people.

We teach by the way we are—and we need to be working on our own growth—just as we expect our students to do the same. One of the greatest models we can give our students is an example of how to be wrong. We make enough mistakes. We don’t need to invent situations. If we can admit that we were wrong, say we are sorry, and then change, we give our students the chance to be wrong and change, too. This happens when we help our students understand their behavior in a way they can process, and invite them to fix the situation.

Teaching Humanity

What we need do is make sure that teachers are in a position to provide inspirational experiences. That is the “naked teaching” part—great interaction. While resources for teacher-training are now shrinking, our real need is to expand the resources, education, and empowerment we give to our teachers. Dr. Haim Ginott wrote:

I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.⁸

Teachers are both Jewish education’s largest risk and greatest resource. It depends on who they are and how they teach. Teachers’ classroom reality can be influenced by the way that parents and schools treat them (respect flows down hill), by the resources and skills they acquire, by the knowledge and insight they have, and by the sense of mission and vision that is shared with them. In the same work, Dr. Ginott makes this clear.

I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness. Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and killed by high school and college graduates. So I’m suspicious of education. My request is: help your students to be human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, or educated Eichmanns. Reading and writing and spelling and history and arithmetic are only important if they serve to make our students more human.⁹

Teachers are the ones who can make that happen. (Ibid) We must put the Jewish tradition in their hands and then support and enable their success. We need to celebrate good teaching as our greatest Jewish treasure. And we need to know, that happens when teachers talk with, not talk to, their students. Technology can do many things—and then there is what teachers alone can do.

Notes

1. “Teach Naked: Dean Urges Tech-Free Classes,” Week-end Edition, National Public Radio, August 26, 09.

2. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. “The Spirit of Jewish Education”, Journal of Jewish Education, Volume 24 Issue 2, 1953.

3. Wiggins, Grant and Mctighe, Jay. Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd Edition. ASCD Book, 2005.

4. Bloom B. S. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc., 1956.

5. Krathwohl, D. R., Bloom, B. S., & Masia, B. B. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, the Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook II: Affective Domain. New York: David McKay Co., Inc., 1973.

6. Simpson E. J. The Classification of Educational Objectives in the Psychomotor Domain. Washington, DC: Gryphon House, 1972.

7. “Judaism Under the Secular Umbrella, 1978 interview with Chaim Potok,” Christianity Today. Vol. 46, July 2002.

8. Ginott, Haim G. Teacher and Child: A book for parents and teachers. New York, NY: Collier, 1995.

9. ibid.

Larry Greenberg is a cool dad. He’s a writer for the tech website GearDiary, and he recently wrote a blog post entitled “Technology meets Tradition” about how he used techie gadgets to help his daughter with her Hebrew school homework:

My 9 year old daughter began Hebrew School just yesterday. Up until 2nd grade the children at my temple attend only Sunday School, where they learn mostly about Jewish holidays, traditions etc. In 3rd grade they also begin attending Hebrew School one night a week, mostly, I gather, to prepare them to become Bar or Bat Mitzvah.

My daughter came home from school today, and just like she does most days sat out to do her homework. After her regular was completed she took out her new Hebrew school text book and asked if she could read it to me.

I said of course. As she started reading it aloud it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea if what she was reading was correct or not. I’d long forgotten how to read and write Hebrew myself. I felt a little guilty that I was unable to help her.

Larry then goes on to describe his novel solution: He used his iPhone to take a photo of the page his daughter was working on, sent the photo to Dan, a friend and fellow techie who happens to be a rabbi, and set up a Skype conversation between his daughter and rabbi techie. This way, his daughter was able to do her homework with the aid of someone who could hear her reading, correct any mistakes, and encourage her when she was doing well:

Using Skype and my iPhone we’d created our very own Hebrew tutorial session. Abby continued reading, and Dan followed along via his electronic copy correcting and applauding her as she went.

Great idea, right? This is a great example of technological problem solving, and (even better) of a parent getting involved in the best possible way.

Of course, we’d love to make Larry’s life a little easier.

Though Larry’s webpost includes a picture of the page his daughter was decoding, we can’t actually tell what Hebrew curriculum his daughter’s school uses. But we can tell you this:

Abby wasn’t learning Hebrew from top-of-the-line curricular materials.

We know this because if Larry’s daughter was in fact using the best Hebrew materials available, this entire geeky miracle would have been totally and completely unnecessary.

Why?

Because Torah Aura Hebrew and prayer materials come with a free homework websites that are designed for this very situation. The websites have virtual versions of the homework pages, and they have built-in audio that reads the Hebrew words out-loud along with the student.

Larry could have headed over to the appropriate homework webpage, where Cantor Ilan Davidson would have read aloud (via the miracle of internet audio) with his daughter, right along with the page in front of her.

And one more thing: The homework websites are totally free. No passwords, no serial numbers, and no activation codes.

We created these websites precisely for parents like Larry who care deeply about their children’s Jewish education, and who wish that their own Hebrew skills enabled them to help their daughters and sons succeed. So we designed sites that allow parents and children to read Hebrew together, even if mom or dad (or grandma or grandpa, etc.) struggles with Hebrew.

Parents learning with their children. That is where technology really meets tradition.

When Larry used his technological expertise to help his daughter with her Hebrew homework, he was doing something very wonderful. He was taking an active interest in his child’s Jewish education.

Unfortunately, not every parent has a tech-savvy rabbi on Skype speed dial. That’s why we developed our home workbook websites. We believe that every child deserves a a little help with their homework.

Last week, we discussed why we believe in textbooks, and articulated why we think they’re important. In that article, we kept mentioning that textbooks aren’t boring if they’re used properly. Of course, that sort of talk flies in the face of the assumption that the only way to use a textbook is to read it out loud — paragraph by paragraph and line by line, or to instruct students to sit and read by themselves. It’s an incorrect assumption.

Textbooks can enable exciting, interactive, programmatic learning experiences. They should not be equated with static, frontal — boring! — learning. Learning with textbooks can be more exciting than learning without them. Textbooks can increase the amount of active learning that takes place in classrooms. They can be the sources for debates, drama, creative experiences, research and a lot of other idea learning moments.

So what do we mean when we talk about using textbooks “properly”? Here are ten exciting, interesting, and fun ways to use textbooks in the classroom:

1. Text Study

1. Take a textbook and turn to a page with a text on it. (A Torah Aura Productions assumption is that textbooks should be books of texts).

2. Working in Hevruta (pairs, small groups, or as the whole class) have students go through the four steps of text study: recitation, translation, explanation, and discussion. (This technique is articulated by Samuel Heilman in his book The People of the Book.) Good textbooks have guide questions to facilitate this process.

   Recitation means reading out loud. Translation happens even with an English text. It is a restating of the text in one’s own words. Explanation is an isolation of the problems in the text or caused by the text. Discussion is a process of personal association and problem solving. It is also choosing among solutions to make personal meaning out of the text.

3. Go over the text as a class. Share insights and deepen understandings.

Text study is the original Jewish programmatic experience. The process of meaning making is inherently personal, interactive, and intellectually active. It has nothing to do with absorbing information. Done well, it in no way resembles anything frontal. Rather it is active interaction of the class with the word-set being presented.

In Being Torah, students are asked to read Genesis 12, the story of Abram leaving home and coming to Eretz Yisrael. Using color coded words (with different groups of the class reading different colors) the class performs the text (like a drama). They discover that the word “land,” is used seven times, “Abram’s” name is used seven times and that there are seven verb-clauses in the blessing given by God. Having made this discovery (and having already learned that the repetition of words a fixed number of times is not a coincidence) students are left with the question, “What is the Torah trying to teach by connecting Abram, the Land, and blessing?” The gates of solution are now open. We have read the text. We have found the problem. The solution is now in the students hands. In the process of solving the Abram-problem, students also get to work on their own relationship to the land of Israel.

We may involve a book. We may use reading out loud as a way of revealing clues. But, the resulting process is active and interactive and empowers students as the decisors of meaning.

2. Resource for a Project

1. Break the class into small groups (or plan to have students work alone).

2. Assign a project to the class. Give them only the broad outline.
3. Have the class turn to a given page in the textbook and have them read the material that will be the background for the project.
4. Give the students time to work on the project.
5. Share the creations. Discuss if appropriate.

Project-centered learning can be an important part of the instructional vocabulary of a classroom. It involves students taking content and utilizing it to produce a creative endeavor. This is an educational strategy that can be applied to textbooks or written into textbooks or their teacher’s guides.

Here’s an example. We have a new Israel book called Yisrael Sheli. It is designed for third grade. One of the chapters deals with a visit to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial. Students are told that they are going to make a holocaust sculpture. They are asked to read the chapter that has background on the holocaust, background on Yad Vashem, and a number of pictures of sculptures that are presently at Yad Vashem. Students are then give a long piece of soft wire (and perhaps other materials) and are given time to create their sculpture. The class then shares and explains their renditions. The project would make little sense and teach little without the textbook material. The textbook material literally becomes three-dimensional because of the project.

Project center learning should be a major part of a teacher’s repertoire. Through application and translation (the processes that are part of the project process) students personalize and internalize the learning. Projects turn textbooks into programs and projects have substance because of textbooks.

3. Poster Sessions

1. Divide the class into working groups.

2. Assign each a parallel section of the textbook.
3. Give each group a colored graphic image download from the internet, a poster board, and a few markers. Some paper and pencils may be useful.
4. Have each group prepare to teach their section of the textbook to the class. Have them create a “poster” that they will use as the visual for their presentations.
5. Have groups present their section of material to the whole class.

Poster sessions that involve research and presentation are a good way to master material. It provides a way of inviting students to bring the lesson alive themselves. While their mastery will be greater to only one section of the material, the reality is that the remainder of the class will probably get more from the oral presentation than from their own quick read of the material.

It works like this: In Artzeinu, our fifth-sixth Israel book, there is a chapter on the Old City of Jerusalem. The chapter is divided into quarters of the city. The teacher’s guide directs teachers to divide their class into three groups: one for the Muslim Quarter, one for the Jewish Quarter, and one that will cover both the Armenian and Christian Quarters. Each group is given a piece of poster board (two for the Armenian/Christian group), a couple of downloaded color images, a glue stick, and some markers. They are then asked to prepare to teach the class about their quarter and to use their poster as a teaching tool. Students are given time to work. Then the lessons about the quarters is shared.

4. Simulations/Trials/Debates

1. The teacher notes that the textbook presents two or more sides of an issue.

2. The class is divided into groups, each of which is assigned a specific opinion.
3. The group uses the section(s) in the textbook to prepare for their side of the program.
4. Using the metaphor of the program (model congress, trial, debate, election, etc.) Students present their positions.
5. The event is debriefed including letting students present their own positions on the issue.

A textbook can be designed or utilized to create really dramatic learning events. They can help students to flesh out their thinking about an issue; experience in a powerful way, a moment in history; and master the details of either. These modalities, simulations, trials games and debates create memorable learning experiences. This is a different model of the master and application of learned material.

The Torah Aura series You Be the Judge: A Collection of Ethical Issues and Jewish Answers is designed to be utilized as a trial. The teacher divides the class into juries. The text presents a legal case that encapsulates a value conflict. Working in juries (small groups) the case is discussed and the value choices are considered. The jury votes and creates a majority and minority spokesperson. The teacher then facilitates a discussion where the majority and minority opinions are presented and confronted by the ethical ramifications of each choice. Finally, the class reopens the textbook and studies the summary of Jewish sources that presents the Jewish value conflict and the probable Jewish decision.

Likewise, The Circle of Jewish Life, our fifth-sixth grade lifecycle text, is organized in such a way that each chapter culminates in the simulation of a life cycle event. The class visits a mock shiva and/or a funeral and stages a wedding.

These kinds of really active learning experiences can be among the memorable learning experiences. They remove any hint of frontal learning and create the interactive learning experience where the mastery and presentation of material is in the hands of the students. This is both a good design to build into textbooks and teacher’s guides, and a great model to retrofit on existing passages in textbooks.

5. Scripts

1. The teacher finds a text that breaks easily into voices with a minimal amount of narrator. Biblical texts are good for this. Rabbinic texts are often good for this. And, some stories work well, too.

2. Parts are assigned and often casting can be like a Greek play where a chorus reads certain parts.
3. The class performs the text/story/etc.
4. The “cast” discuss the motivation of each character, the matching tone of the performance, and the choices made as an interpreter.

There are more ways to read out loud than down the row, paragraph by paragraph. Sometimes turning an oral reading into a performance can change the way the text comes across. With biblical texts, because there are few stage directions, the same text can be read sarcastically or lovingly, and the meaning changes. With rabbinic texts a complicated dialogue can come off the page and the arguments are clarified. With stories, their drama can be enhanced.

Torah Aura’s use of drama (and scripted texts) grew out of two places. First, Dr. Stephen Passamaneck used to teach Talmud with a technique he called “The Pumbedita Players.” Pumbedita was a city in Babylonia with an important Talmudic academy. He would assign parts and have students work out on their own the parts of the texts they were supposed to read. From this, two thing were learned. First, that the Talmudic text is very much a drama. Second, that having a specific person orally present a specific voice in the text made the argument much easier to follow. This is why in such series as Talmud with Training Wheels, we present the Talmudic text as a script. (Unlike Dr. Passamaneck, we sort out the parts and give access to the dialogue.)

Our second source for using scripted text is Dr. Robert Alter, who wrote a book called The Art of Biblical Narrative. In it he makes it clear that when the Bible tells a story there are basically only two things: (a) dialogue, and (b) the description of action. There is virtually nothing else — almost no description. Feelings are usually expressed as observable actions, like, “His face fell,” “His nose burned.” This makes the Bible directly into a radio play.

In a number of our works, particularly Make a Midrash Out of Me, we present the biblical text as a script. We make it ready to perform. New oral midrashic traditions such as Bibliodrama and Storahtelling make use of the same stylistic elements in the text.

Reading out loud, the very act that distances some people from the use of text books, can sometimes be the very key to their programmatic strength. What starts out as words on a page becomes drama and becomes a text open to interpretation.

6. Case Study / Problem Solving

1. The class is presented with a case.

2. Working in some grouping they struggle for a solution. They may even act out the case to determine possible solutions and their outcomes.
3. The solutions are collated.
4. Jewish texts are brought in as suggested solutions.

Our first know use of this process in Jewish education was in a book called At Camp Kee Tov: Ethics for Jewish Juniors by Helen Fine. This was a chapter book that took place at a summer camp. In each chapter there was an ethical dilemma. While this is similar to our use of “courtroom simulations,” here the range of solutions are not yes/no verdicts. The teacher would stop and work with the situation. Then, the class would read (yes, read—it was a different era) the next part of the chapter where the old camp gardener, who knew more than any rabbi, would solve the case with a story from the Talmud or the Midrash. This then lead to the unpacking of that story.

At Torah Aura, we’ve used the case study method has been used to train teachers and madrikhim (high school teaching assistances). It’s also an important method for teaching the application of Jewish ethics. A good example is Randy’s Naval Piercing (an instant lesson).

Randy wants to have her navel pierced. For the sake of the case, her mother is fine with it, but the Jewish summer camp where she wants to work refuses to let her be a staff member with a piercing. This real case (Is the camp right or wrong?) leads to the reviewing of about sixty pieces of text and the forming of the students own responsum (Jewish answer).

Case study is not only a popular technique in a lot of university courses, but is an old Jewish form that goes back to the Talmud. “What if…” begins lots of good Jewish questions.

7. Four Corners (or sometimes three).

This is a variation on the case study method.

1. Students are given a case (in the textbook).

2. The text proposes three or four different solutions to the problem.
3. The teacher places a “poster” of each solution in a corner.
4. Students read the text and then move into the corner they believe holds the best solution.
5. Students in each corner form a group and discuss why their solution is best.
6. The class as a whole discuss, debates, etc. the question.

The idea here is that learning takes place on three levels. (1) Students start with a passage that presents them with an informed view of the solution and some insights into various solutions. (2) They then make a choice, commit to one set of values. Discussion deepens this commitment and insight. (3) Debate then texts it with challenges—further deepening the understanding.

The book I Have Some Questions about God is designed for this exact process (or this process with variations). The book is built around twelve God questions. Each question is answered by three or four stories, each presented by a different rabbi. Students discuss the questions, choose their answers, and then discuss both the similarities and differences.

8. Outline for a Series of Visits or Visitors

1. The class works through a chapter and discusses its major points. (This working through can be experiental).

2. A visitor comes into class and present their actual story that parallels the chapter’s content.
3. The class works through another chapter.
4. The class “goes on a field trip” to a setting that actualizes the material presented in the chapter.
5. The process is repeated with variations that are appropriate for each chapter.

We didn’t invent this formula. We learned about from Eileen Hamilton, director of education at Touro Synagogue in New Orleans. She took our book Apples and Oranges: Judaism and the World’s Religions, her group of difficult eighth graders, and matched them with a combination of visits to various religious institutions and guests speakers. It worked wonderfully for her and her school. Ilene found that the chapters in a textbook prepared her students with adequate background to appreciate the experiences. And she found that the visits and visitors deepened, actualized, and personalized the material in the textbook.

Textbooks are not an all-or-nothing proposition. The textbook is a classroom resource that can be used in the order and the amount appropriate to the school’s and the teacher’s vision. It can be matched and balanced with all kinds of experiences — offering the best possible learning experience for students.

9. Open Space Talmud Page

1. Students open their textbook to a given text.

2. Working in pairs, small groups, alone, or as a whole class, students read the text, answer guide questions, and write notes in the margins around the text.
3. The teacher posters a huge version of the text (with a lot of white space around it) on the wall.
4. Students are given a marker and invited to write their best insight somewhere around the text. They are to sign their comment.
5. Students are then invited to make a comment on someone else’s comment. This can also be done by having students add a post it note to the large document.

This is the combination of, or rather the parallel between learning modalities, one ancient and one modern. The ancient one is the Talmud. On the Talmud page the text is in the middle and the commentators surround it. Most of the commentators respond to the take (or what is missing from the take) of earlier commentators. The newer one is called “Open Space Technology,” and its a method for large groups to organize thoughtful discussions and self-direct the agenda of the gathering.

The “Open Space Talmud Page,” a hybrid of these two methods, works like this: Start in a room, and on the walls put up big pieces of butcher paper (you can also use a large tag board, a chalkboard, or a SMARTBoard). Usually there are texts on the big pieces of paper (you can also use topics or thought provoking questions). People write comments on the texts as they roam around the room. Then as they continue they comment either on the original text or on other people’s comments. The room becomes a map of the group’s thinking.

Here is a working example. The Circle of Jewish Life teaches the structure of the sheva brakhot (wedding blessings) by presenting them as two progressions of three ideas. It also gives students a chance to personalize their meaning. Think of that text resource working that way. (1) Students work through those texts in hevruta, writing notes in the margins. (2) Student go to the wall sized version of the text and leave their notes in its margins. (3) Students then take Post-It™ notes and add their comments to the handwritten comments that had already been written. (4) Students are given time to read the whole creation and add any additional notes they want to — including comments on the comments on the original comments. (5) The class reviews the entire process, outlining the content and sharing major opinions.

The basic insight here is that the process could happen if you skipped the textbook. Without the time “making meaning” out of the sheva brakhot using the tools that are the textbook, the commentary process would be empty, because there would be no substance with which to create. The textbook makes the Open Space/Talmud experience possible.

10. Recipes, Craft Projects, and other Creative Projects

1. Learn something concrete or conceptual from a textbook.

2. Do an art project — any kind of creative endeavor.

You can study havdalah and make a spicebox. But that’s not the same experience of studying spiceboxes, learning their history, examining their style and symbolism, and then making a spicebox. One is an art project, the other a Jewish learning experience. Both are projects!

Torah Aura has a series called Whole School. It is designed to allow you to teach the same subject (like a holiday) every year and always teach something different. Some of the years deal with basic meaning, the story of the holiday and the like. Two in particular are overt projects. Once in seven years there is a cooking project that not only gives the teacher and student recipes and directions, but also provides context and background of the recipes. If it is hallah, we go into the history and backstory of hallah. We understand the braiding, the taking of the Hallah, and a lot more. Students understand hallah and then create their own version, going home with their own recipe and directions. Likewise, in another year students study and make a hallah cover. Again, it is more that a simple art project, it is a Jewish act, created in the context of an artistic and symbolic tradition. Students examine examples of artistic hallah covers, they learn about the role of the hallah cover, and then they make their own. In both the case of the hallah and the hallah cover, the text on the page and the experiential program in the classroom are interacting as partners.

Sidebar

The use of textbooks as a foundation for programmatic learning accomplishes two other long term learning experiences:

1. The use of textbooks model respect for books, save the environment, and don’t utilize dishonesty. In contradistinction to photocopies, textbooks can save trees, last a student for a lifetime, and show respect to intellectual property. When photocopies are used, the Jewish tradition is disposable, trees are killed, and learning winds up in the wastebasket.

2. Much experiential learning is an oral-aural experience. When textbooks are used as a foundation, not only is their room for depth and sophistication, but visual learners are honored. Some of our students need to learn through seeing (while others do learn better by hearing, etc.) But textbooks do provide the visuals.

by Joel Lurie Grishaver

Jonathan Woocher is chief ideas officer at JESNA (Jewish Educational Service of North America) and director of the Lippman Kanfer Institute. He once thought that religion would disappear in the North American Jewish community and that all would be left would be secular institutions.

He has said,

“From an educational standpoint, there is good reason to welcome a situation in which learners drive the agenda. The learning itself will be more powerful and more enduring when it responds to authentic questions, when the learner actively seeks out the answers to these questions, and when there is ample room for diverse learning styles and formats.”

When he wrote that a few years ago, that sort of thinking was a breath of fresh air, and it was especially poignant for day school educators. At the time, booming enrollments and adequate funding gave them the opportunity to do some innovative things in their classrooms, and Woocher’s notion of learner-directed education was very helpful.

With the recent economic downturn spurring reports that day school enrollment is down, Dr. Woocher is now thinking about supplemental schools. In an article published in the recent edition of The Jewish Week, Woocher wrote:

“At JESNA, we believe that every family that wants to send its children to a quality day school should be able to do so. And we want the same for those choosing supplementary education. It will take some creative thinking and a lot of collaboration. But it’s doable, and we’re working now with our partners in central agencies across North America to make that vision a reality.”

He gives the following example of this free choice in action.

“Take a day school family now seeking an intensive supplementary program, perhaps one that meets eight or 10 hours per week, rather than the typical four or five, and that emphasizes serious Hebrew literacy, either for purposes of conversation or text study in the original. Or, take a very different, but not uncommon family whose Jewishness is primarily cultural, not religious, or focused on social justice and activism. Perhaps the family has a child who is passionate and gifted in the arts and wants to approach her or his Jewish learning through this lens. Perhaps the family is an interfaith one, and seeks a Jewish educational program that is uniquely sensitive to their life issues.”

There are only a few problems with this thinking. First, it does no good in Shreveport, Louisiana and places like it, where there are fewer than thirty students in the combined religious school. Filling classes, finding teachers, and enabling success is the problem. Offering alternative school models is beyond fantasy. This is exactly the problem that the Institute for Southern Jewish Life is successfully focusing on, and they are doing it by going in the opposite direction. They are doing it by standardizing curriculum while training and inspiring teachers.

Second, this is not a moment in history to have great faith in market driven economies. My Rabbi and teacher, Shelly Dorph, used to worry about Gresham’s Law that states that “Bad money drives good money off the market.”

He was saying that given the decision making ability, families that want less will always control the level of Jewish education. That is how we moved from three days a week to two or one. Believing that there are a significant number of families who want ten to twelve hours a week of “Hebrew School” is one of the fastest ways of putting a school out of business.

The idea of involving families in making choices is a good idea. All the best of congregations are doing so in their visioning and executing of excellence. In Jack Wertheimer’s latest study he says, “Good schools regard families as allies and also clients.”

Dr. Woocher is right that we need to have our ears to the ground, that we need to offer options wherever possible, and the market place has room for entrepreneurs who want to find and serve niche markets.

Where he is wrong, however, just as he was wrong about civil religion, is that Jewish life begins and progresses as community. This is not the time to follow the rules of the market place, but of the extended family who knows how to meet the needs of each member.

Are you looking for interesting, innovative, and inexpensive ways to improve your skill set as a teacher or educator? Do you use (or are you thinking about using) Torah Aura materials in your school? Are you bummed because you’re missing the professional development opportunities that used to be offered by CAJE?

If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then we’ve got a great solution for you:

Torah Aura Professional Development Webinars.

Using the latest and greatest technology, the team at Torah Aura Productions is excited to bring you a series of six online workshops designed to help you become a more skilled professional who makes the most of the materials you use in your school. These webinars are absolutely free and are available to you while you sit at your computer in the privacy of your home or office.

Here are the first six Torah Aura Professional Development Webinars that we’re offering in the coming weeks:

Teacher’s Clinic for Using the Torah Aura Hebrew/Prayer Program
Tuesday, July 21 at 10:30 am Pacific / 1:30 pm Eastern
Missed the webinar? Click here to watch a video.

Do you use Torah Aura Hebrew/Prayer materials in your school? In this webinar, we’ll first examine the philosophy behind Torah Aura’s Hebrew/prayer materials (S’fatai Tiftah, Journeys Through the Siddur, and/or Pirkei T’fillah). Then, we’ll transition into a practical discussion of how to make the materials work in the classroom. By the end of the webinar, participants will have a firm grasp on…

• the philosophy behind the Torah Aura Hebrew/Prayer Program
• the goals of teaching Hebrew and prayer
• the pieces that make up a chapter of the Torah Aura Hebrew/Prayer Program
• how to use the accompanying teacher’s guides and home resources
• how to plan a lesson
• how to make Hebrew/prayer learning experiential and exciting, and
• how to pace the curriculum over the course of a semester or year.

Real Siddur Teaching: A Guide for Educators
Tuesday, August 4 at 11 am Pacific / 2 pm Eastern
Click here to sign up.

This is a session about the philosophy of teaching Hebrew and Prayer in the supplementary school. We’ll examine goals, objectives, and some ideas for successful implementation of a Hebrew/Prayer curriculum. By the end of the webinar, participants will have a firm grasp on how to make a Hebrew/Prayer curriculum work in their schools, including the five elements that build towards the goal of enabling students to be meaningful pray-ers.

Everything You Need to Know About Using Teacher’s Guides
Wednesday, August 12 at 4 pm Pacific / 7 pm Eastern
Click here to sign up.

Lots of principals buy teacher’s guides for their teachers, but these hefty volumes often end up (at best) being quickly skimmed in the few minutes before class or (at worst) a permanent fixture in the teacher’s car trunk. In this webinar, we’ll talk about how Torah Aura teacher’s guides are designed, and help teachers make the most out of them. Attendees should have a teacher’s guide handy as they participate in the webinar.

Making Israel Come Alive: Using Artzeinu in the Classroom
Thursday, August 13 at 11 am Pacific / 2 pm Eastern
Click here to sign up.

Teaching Israel in a supplementary school setting presents a number of challenges. How can we teach appreciation and love of Israel to students who haven’t visited? How can we present the real Israel while at the same time trying to inculcate the values of Zionism? How do we address all the richness and diversity of Israel given our limited time and resources?

This webinar will address all these challenges and more, and will introduce teachers to using Artzeinu: An Israel Encounter to teach Israel from an historical, cultural, Biblical, religious, and reality-based perspective.

The Magical Lifecycle Curriculum: Using The Circle of Jewish Life
Tuesday, August 25 at 10:30 am Pacific / 1:30 pm Eastern
Click here to sign up.

What happens when you want to talk about brit milah (or brit bat!) or death? How can we teach about the Jewish lifecycle in a way that’s engaging, sensitive, and empowering?

In this webinar we’ll discuss why the Jewish lifecycle can be a challenging part of your curriculum, and we’ll explore ways to use The Circle of Jewish Life to turn lifecycle learning into a series of magical experiences for your students.

This webinar will be useful to teachers and educators currently using The Circle of Jewish Life, as well as to anyone interested in “jazzing up” their lifecycle curriculum.

All About Eizehu Gibor: An Introduction to a New Way to Teach Jewish Heroes
Thursday, August 27 at 11 am Pacific / 2 pm Eastern
Click here to sign up.

Eizehu Gibor: Living Jewish Values is a new heroes book for fifth and sixth graders. It’s revolutionary in the way it integrates the traditional pantheon of Jewish heroes with a set of new heroes for a new generation. It’s also unique in the diversity of it’s heroes, and in the way it integrates living a life of Jewish values with the lives of heroes. This webinar will introduce you to Eizehu Gibor, and will highlight some of the elements that make it a unique curricular tool.

Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of computer equipment do I need to attend a Torah Aura Professional Development Webinar?
Basically, you just need any Mac or PC that is connected to a high-speed (not dial-up) internet connection. In order to hear the presentation, you’ll also need computer speakers (or you can listen to the audio over a plain-old phone connection, like dialing into a conference call). You can ask questions by simply typing them in (kind of like typing in a chat room or instant message), or you can ask via audio using a microphone connected to your computer or your phone handset. In a nutshell: as long as your computer isn’t totally ancient, and as long as you have an internet connection that’s faster than dial-up, you’re good to go.

Do I have to attend the webinar at the scheduled time?
A webinar is an interactive experience, like attending a real-live workshop. So, yes, to fully participate, you need to attend the webinar at the scheduled time. However, if you’re unavailable during the scheduled time, we’ll be uploading video of the webinars as soon as they’re completed. That means you’ll be able to watch a “rerun” on your own time (but you won’t be able to ask questions or participate in the real-time discussion).

How long are the webinars?
For each of our Torah Aura Professional Development Webinars, we’ve planned 50-60 minutes for the presentation itself, plus 20-30 minutes for discussion and questions. If you can’t make it for the whole webinar, you’re free to log-in and log-off at any time, as you please.

How do I sign up for Torah Aura Professional Development Webinars?
Just click on any of the “Click here to sign up” links above. Once you sign up, you’ll receive an email with a special link that you’ll use to log into the webinar.

Will you be offering more Torah Aura Professional Development Webinars at another time
Yes! These webinars are just the beginning. We’ll be offering more of them in the future. If you have suggestions about possible topics, dates, and times, please drop us a line.

Who should I contact if I have more questions?
If you want to learn more about Torah Aura Professional Development Webinars, please be in touch with Josh Mason-Barkin, director of school services. You can email him at josh@torahaura.com or call him at (800) BE-TORAH (238-6724) x122.

by David Singer

David Singer, a student at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University, is the author of our new Israel book, Yisrael Sheli. He recently went on a trip with American Jewish World Service to Senegal, Africa. This is an account from that trip.

Standing on a rooftop, I looked around, and felt anywhere but home. As far as the eye could see was a morass of concrete and dirt. The thick humid air smelt of smoke. The sounds of donkeys, and horses, and a muezzin filled the air.

I was surrounded by twenty four colleagues – fellow rabbinical students from throughout the United States – as we prayed the morning service from atop a building in downtown Dakar, the capital of the West African nation of Senegal.

For two weeks, our delegation joined the American Jewish World Service to work with its grantee, Tostan, aiding in community-led development in rural villages facing extreme poverty throughout Africa.

No prior experience could have prepared me for what I saw in Senegal: children with flies in their eyes; distended bellies; open sores; bare feet; hunger; sickness; a land parched by drought. At first glance, the place seemed like hell. How could God allow such a place to exist?

For ten days we worked with locals in the villages of Darou Mouride and Keur Songo, building latrines and helping them in their daily chores. I swept, I tilled soil, I brought forth water from wells. All the while, I built bonds with people so different from me, and yet so similar. They love, they cry, they laugh, they play.

I played with many kids. Two in particular I will never forget, Tidiane Geye and Popmusonjop showed me firsthand the power of the AJWS and its grantees to bring positive change to the world.

As I butchered their names time and time again, the two kids laughed in a way that any would at a blubbering foreigner standing before them. “Tubob” they called me – white man.

Finally, Tidiane Geye crouched down and spelled out his name in the sand below him. In a country with almost no literacy, this defiant act writing was nothing short of miraculous.

But my new friends need far more than an education. They need food. They need mosquito nets. They need basic health services and access to a world which has left them behind. They need shoes.

They need an American Jewish community that remembers them, and does all we can to help the billions of people like them who live in abject poverty, trying to make ends meet on as little as a dollar a day in conditions more horrific than most of us could imagine.

I returned from Africa inspired by the work of the AJWS. I returned motivated by my new cadre of rabbinical students dedicated to bringing our message of social justice to our home communities. I returned ready for the hard work ahead.

The Wolof word used in response to a greeting is “mangifee,” which translates literally as “I am here.” The Hebrew equivalent is “hineini”, the response by Abraham when God first calls out to him in service.

To all my brothers and sisters in this world stricken by the disease of poverty – to Tidiane Geye and Popmusonjop – to all of the communities where AJWS works and those yet to be helped, I cry out Mangifee. I am ready to help you. I am here to work on your behalf. Hineini.

The re-thinkers and re-visionists and re-imaginers are coming for your textbooks.

That’s right. They want to remove the textbooks from your classrooms. And the blackboards, too. And maybe even the teachers. They’re coming for your textbooks because they’re well-meaning Jewish leaders, and they want to put a spark back in the classrooms in your school. They want learning to be fun and meaningful and worthwhile (and not dull and stale and boring). They look at camps and Israel trips, and appreciate what a good job those folks do at Jewish education. So they decide that schools should be just like camp, and they come to take away the desks and the blackboards (or the whiteboards), and they come to take the textbooks, too.

We think this is a problem, and not just because we’re textbook publishers. Rather, we became textbook publishers because we think this is a problem.

Torah Aura Productions was founded in 1981 by a group of innovative Jewish educators who looked out at the field of Jewish education and found materials that were shallow and dull. We started a company to create new tools for teachers that would be exciting and meaningful. From the beginning, we’ve always believed in re-imagining synagogue schools, but we refuse to take an extremist or aggressive approach to school reform, because we’re afraid to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

We got into this business because we didn’t think Jewish children should have to sit stoically at their desks as teachers attempt to mindlessly drill facts and Hebrew reading skills into their heads. We’re dedicated to publishing textbooks of a much higher quality, and we defend textbooks because we believe that well-designed curricular materials have the power to make a real difference in the lives of Jewish students.

Here are eight reasons we believe textbooks are important.

Textbooks Should Be Books of Texts

The Talmud recalls a moment when Judaism changed. It says (Bava Kamma 82a) that Ezra, after the return from the Babylonian Exile, instituted tikkunim (fixes) to the Jewish tradition that included the regular reading and translating of Torah in every village and hamlet, and that he also told the elders to sit in the gates of the city on market days and use the Torah to judge between the people. These changes instituted the Judaism we now live, a Judaism of texts. This was first of all, the democratization of Torah, taking it out of the Temple and moving it into the hands of every Jew. The process of translation grew into the interpretation of Torah, the creation of Midrash, and gave every Jew the freedom and responsibility to decide what the Torah means. The process of using the Torah to resolve issues between neighbors grew into the ability of every community to apply Torah to the situations in their communities.

Our Judaism is a Judaism of words. It is a Judaism of Jews struggling with extracting meaning from texts and wrestling with the application of these words to real life. Classically Jewish friendships have been built talking to each other over a platform of texts. Simply put, had Moses come down Mount Sinai with a collection of learning activities rather than the Torah, the Jewish people would not have survived.

Rashi’s second comment on the Torah begins, “Ein ha-Torah ha-Zot Omeret Elah Darsheni,” “The Torah only asks, ‘Explain me, make sense out of me, make a midrash out of me.” For Jews, texts are conversations. We meet each other. We become friends through our shared struggle with words. That is why we are Yisrael, God wrestlers. Rashi’s first comment on the Torah was quoting a textual interpretation of his father, Rabbi Isaac.

The premise here is this: text books can be good or bad, but what Jewish schools need today is good textbooks. Abraham Joshua Heschel is often misquoted on the subject. He is often quoted as saying, “What we need more than anything else is not textbooks but text people.” He said that, but he wasn’t bashing textbooks. In actuality, he was talking about the importance of teachers. The quote comes from a speech (later published as an article) entitled “The Spirit of Jewish Education.”¹ In it, Heschel said:

To guide a pupil into the promised land, [the teacher] must have been there himself. When asking himself: Do I stand for what I teach? Do I believe what I say? he must be able to answer in the affirmative. What we need more than anything else is not text-books but text-people. It is the personality of the teacher which is the text that the pupils read; the text that they will never forget. The modern teacher, while not wearing a snowy beard, is a link in the chain of a tradition. He is the intermediary between the past and the present as well. Yet, he is also the creator of the future of our people. He must teach the pupils to evaluate the past in order to clarify their future. ²

Taken as a whole, the article is about the need to teach not just facts about Judaism, but to enable students to derive meaning from living a Jewish life. Heschel observes that religious schools effectively teach students the basic blessings said before eating bread or drinking juice, then bemoans the fact that few teachers exploit the opportunity to explore the “grand mystery and spiritual profundity” conveyed by the blessings’ words.³

People who take Heschel out of context suggest that relationships (“text-people”) are more important than book learning (“text-books”). But examining the entirety of Heschel’s argument, he’s not saying that relationships are more important than learning, but that relationships enable learning. Guided by Heschel, we believe that good text-books are designed to be used in the context of real relationship. So let’s talk about good “text-books” that let “text-people” do their best work.

A good textbook is not merely a well designed collection of facts with exercises that review those facts. A good textbook is filled with words that are worth remembering. Those words need to demand interpretation and choice. They need to ask, “What do these words actually say?” and they need to ask, “What do you believe about this text’s message?” Texts demand clarification, that why the first step in text study is the reading and translation of a text — even from English to English. In the final step, “The students’ concerns and words merge with the issues and language of the text… This, the ultimate step of the process, is the point at which life and lernen become one.”⁴

To watch this in action, let’s look at a transcript of a Being Torah lesson. Students have compared the story of Abraham welcoming strangers and Rebekah providing hospitality to Abraham’s servant. They learn (by comparing color coded words) that the two passages both involve repetitions of the words “run,” “hurry,” and “please.” Asked what lesson is taught by comparing the two stories we have this dialogue. They are asked to write their own answer, share it with this class, and then review an answer by someone else in the class whose answer they like.

SONDRA: Rebekah was the perfect bride for Isaac because she was just like Abraham. Both of them hurried and hurried to make strangers welcome. Just like Abraham, she cared about the “mitzvah” of hospitality. This made her the right woman to be the next mother of the Jewish people because she was kind, generous, and a great hostess.

(Sondra on Jonathan): He thought that Rebekah was the right woman to be the next mother of the Jewish people because she did hesed.

SH’MUEL: Rebekah was the perfect bride for Isaac because she was just like Abraham. Both of them hurried and ran to make strangers welcome. Just like Abraham, she cared about the “mitzvah” of hospitality. This made her the right woman to be the next mother of the Jewish people because she was generous and did more than necessary.

(Sh’muel on Ashley): Ashley thought that Rebekah was the right woman to be the next mother of the Jewish people because she has a lot of confidence in herself.⁵

Here we have a Biblical text decoded, analyzed, and personalized. While the answers are similar (because they respond to the same data set) they are also individualized in the way word and express this insight. We get “kind, generous, and a great hostess” on one hand; “She had a lot of confidence in herself,” on the other.

In other words, a good textbook is a series of discussions that have impact, that allow for self-clarification and self-actualization, that build connection, friendship, and community. The needs of Jewish learning are very different that those of secular learning. We don’t care about the ability to review a chapter and prepare for a test, we care about moments of introspection and being the next step in a student’s becoming.

Textbooks Should Encourage and Develop Hevruta

Hevruta is an Aramaic term for two overlapping ideas. First it means a study partner. Second it means a friend. One classic form of Jewish learning involves ongoing study with a partner. Partners prepare lessons before they are taught. They read, translate (into their own words), question, and explain material that will then be gone over by their teacher. Traditionally, these partnerships last a long time–years. Often when they are used in Jewish schools today the timing is considerably shorter (including different each session). But the Rabbis (Avot d’Rabbi Natan 8), make it clear that studying together leads to deep friendship and deep friendship leads to a deeper ability to study together.

While much of Jewish educational efforts are spent trying to keep students from talking to each other, we should actually be trying to get them talking together. According to Glenn A. Drew, executive director of the American Hebrew Academy, hevruta is

…based on the notion that each person has access to a piece of the truth and that we should talk to one another as a means of getting closer to the truth. By doing so, each student gains a greater understanding of themselves, the world in which they live and the subject matter.⁶

He adds that the hevruta method is about students coming to learn that they “must have trust in their partners, speak honestly, and listen to one another.”

Friendship is a key to Jewish survival. Friendships are the reason that most students stay in school, return to camp, and visit Israel. One goal of every Jewish classroom should be to build friendships and hevruta is a good way to do that. A good textbook presents opportunities for hevruta learning. Not only does it invite conversation, but it invites (and directs) conversations that two students can have together. There needs to be room in a textbook for students’ opinions and interpretations to matter. This has to include but go beyond feelings, to a place where what a student draws from and creates because of the textbook matters. Good textbooks respect students as innovators and problem-solvers. They leave space for dialogue and have faith in the students’ ability to respond.

In Make a Midrash Out of Me we have an activity called “The Canaanite Gazette.” Students work in hevruta to create interviews with characters in the Biblical text. These interviews invite students to create individual midrashim that parallel traditional investigations of the text. Here is an example:

Imagine that you are a reporter for the Canaanite Gazette. Conduct the following interviews.

1. Ask God: “What did you see Noah doing (as compared to what you saw other people doing) that made You comfortable with him?”

2. Ask Noah: “Why do you think God picked you? What makes you different?”

3. Ask Noah’s Sons: “What was it like being part of the only “Righteous Family” in the neighborhood?”

4. Ask Noah’s Wife: “How do you feel about all the work it takes to save the world?”

5. Ask any animal: “Tell the story of the flood from your perspective.”

What results is students using the information they have gleaned from studying the actual biblical text, opinions they have formed while studying the text, lead to articulate and original expositions of the text. It is both a process of interpretation and a creative expression. The activity is empowered by it happening with a partner, or being rehearsed in hevruta, before a classroom performance.

Good Textbooks Have Content and Structure that Leads to Activities

In their book Active Jewish Learning, Mel and Shoshana Silberman explain:

Yes, there is a whole lot more to teaching than telling! Learning is not an automatic consequence of pouring information into a student’s head. It requires the learner’s own mental involvement and doing. Explanation and demonstration, by themselves, will never lead… to real, lasting learning. Only learning that is active will do this. What makes learning “active?” When learning is active, students do most of the work. They use their brains…. studying ideas, solving problems, and applying what they learn. Active learning is fast-paced, fun, supportive, and personally engaging. Often, students are out of their seats, moving about and thinking aloud.⁷

Good textbooks need to lead to moments of active Jewish learning. They need to turn classrooms into memorable moments. To be clear, text study and hevruta learning have great experiential potential, but they are not the only vehicles for effective Jewish learning. Good textbooks provide multiple active possibilities.

Let’s look at an example. In The Circle of Jewish Life, the marriage chapter includes the following elements:

a. A Story about God’s Involvement in Marriage

b. The Wedding vow

c. A Piece about Relationships

d. A Summary of a Jewish Wedding

e. Texts on Mikvah

f. A Crossword Reviewing Vocabulary

g. A Series of Resources for Design Your Own Ketubah

h. The Story of Akiva and Rachel

i. The Text of the Marriage Service as a Script

j. X-Raying the Sheva Brakhot

k. A Piece on Commitment Ceremonies

About half of these are directly text study. Of those, most of those work nice in hevruta. There are a few expository pages, but most of the rest are hands on activities. Editing a Ketubah text, designing a Ketubah, etc. (We are not counting the crossword puzzle as active Jewish learning. It is just an exercise needed to help in mastering a lot of vocabulary). But in the end the whole chapter turns into a huge activity, a model wedding. The wedding service presented as a script becomes the hub of a whole class activity.

Good Textbooks Provide Scope and Sequence

Jean Piaget makes it clear that things like chronology and other organizational structures can’t be mastered until students enter the fourth development stage, concrete-operational, sometime around puberty.⁸ That means that teaching things like sequential history makes no sense much before Bar/Bat mitzvah. But that doesn’t mean that learning doesn’t need structure. Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, a Russian educational psychologist, taught that scaffolding is an important teaching strategy that is based on a concept of the zone of proximal development. The zone of proximal development is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance.⁹

In scaffolding instruction a more knowledgeable other provides scaffolds or supports to facilitate the learner’s development. The scaffolds facilitate a student’s ability to build on prior knowledge and internalize new information.¹⁰

The idea of scaffolding is that the teacher (or the text) can facilitate development by providing the right learning structures. Let’s take a Torah Aura example. Yisrael Sheli is a third grade Israel book. Its main purpose (and the main purpose of all our Israel materials) is to connect students to Israel. It does this through the interaction of two things: the stories of people who shaped the history and development of Israel and a visit to places in the Land of Israel. So we have (1) Solomon was a King of Israel, (2) he was famous for being wise, (3) King Solomon built a Navy in Eilat, (4) Eilat is a beachside community with coral and lots of fish. Students will not know the years that Solomon lived and who was King before or after him. Odds are that most of them will not be able to locate Eilat on a map. That, too, comes later. But, we will have built two connections. Solomon once figured out which woman got the baby. And, Eliat is a fun place to go diving. We anchor the two with King Solomon’s Navy. With those two concepts anchored, other connections will grow. This is an act of scaffolding towards history and an act of scaffolding towards geography while establishing a connection to a person and a place.

Too much curriculum today makes sense to the curriculum writer and not the student. One can divide the school year for each grade by God, Torah, and Israel. It looks really good on paper, but the chance of the thematic work done in second grade connecting to fifth grade’s thematic match is small. The chance of knowing how any three lessons fit together is less. Books designed to address the student’s learning progression help to make connections and provide both parallels and sequences.

Textbooks Actively Honor Visual Learners

Much of recent education has been built around the theory of multiple intelligences. It suggests that different learners have different learning styles, there are ways that an individual learner learns better and ways that this learner has a harder time learning.¹¹ This is sometimes presented in the simplified earlier model called VAK (for Visual-Auditory-Kinesthetic) that was first developed by psychologists and teaching specialists such as Fernald, Keller, Orton, Gillingham, Stillman and Montessori.

As we translate the theory of multiple intelligences into a post-textbook, post write-on the board, post-frontal kind of classroom, this shifts into a preference for oral learning and an under-serving of students with a visual preference. In other words, there are students who learn best when they have visual resources (like books) at their disposal. The growing informality of material, the more learning that is small group tasks (without printed material) and the more programming shifts to big all-school or all-grade programs, the less we support learners who need to see in order to process effectively.

The solution is to offer learning that doesn’t entirely abandon one learning style for another. Good textbooks can support interactive, activity-oriented learning, and when they do so they offer a win-win. Using this kind of textbook keeps much of the learning programmatic and exciting yet still honors the learning style of visual learners. Camp-style learning works well for many students, but educational psychology reminds us that we have a number of students who need to see it in order to learn it.

Torah Aura Hebrew and Prayer materials have a pattern. Teacher (or teacher and class) examine a prayer. This gives students a chance to both see and hear the material at the beginning. Then they are told to work in hevrutot. Students rehearse the material with each other. They are working with both seeing and hearing as they perfect the performance of the material. Finally, they present and the teacher has a chance to make any corrections. The process (unlike many self-learning programs) provides students with audio and visual reinforcements on their journey towards mastery.

Textbooks Allow Students to “Go Ahead”

Sometimes it’s hard for teachers to remember that students will not dedicate 100% of their attention to what the teacher is saying and doing. Students with diverse learning styles – especially those with ADD and ADHD – have taught us that their “survival secret” is drawing, doodling, and “browsing” (more on this in a sec) through class. In order to have their ears open to what their teacher and classmates are saying, these students need to also engage their eyes and hands. There is a bunch of research, especially in special education, that tactile involvement (like playing with koosh toys) helps students to concentrate on lessons.¹²

One of the things that students do when they are half-listening is flip through their textbooks, an activity that educational psychologists call “browsing.” When browsing, students are not only listening to the teacher, they are engaging with the material by contextualizing the information and reading to see “what’s next.” Research conducted by journalists suggests that captions (and sidebars) are the most mastered part of books (and magazines) thanks to the “flip factor.”¹³ Textbooks actually allow students to learn on their own (and often when you are teaching them) by reading and flipping ahead.

Textbooks Improve Tutoring

One of the third rail issues in Jewish education is tutoring. Some students use it to keep up, some to avoid attending. But more and more, because of shrinking hours, growing awareness of learning difficulties, greater pressure, etc. we are providing tutoring at school and at home for students.

Textbooks help tutors. Using textbooks gives them a structure to share with the classroom, and doesn’t force them to guess what track is appropriate. When tutors have access to a textbook, they can work out a course that parallels and reinforces what is being done in the classroom. This is much harder to do when the classroom teacher is “winging it.”

Textbooks are Really Important for Novice Teachers

Many education schools teach the mantra, “A textbook is not a curriculum.” They tend to imply that real teachers write their own curricular materials. At Torah Aura Productions, we agree that a textbook is not a curriculum (even when it has accompanying workbooks, teacher’s guides, flash cards, and assessment tools). A good curriculum is always a dialogue between community, school, students and teacher. Curriculum should be a balancing act that evolves as the classroom experience progresses. We make curricular tools that enable the process that is curriculum.

We have created our material with the belief that great textbooks and accompanying material can be a foundation on which schools and teachers can build curriculum. We believe that teachers teach students and the teachable moment and need to make lots of choices. We believe, and research shows, that textbooks and guides can be the best way for novice teachers to make such choices.¹⁴

The research on the subject is best summed-up by the abstract to a study by Deborah Loewenberg Ball and Sharon Feiman-Nemser:

Based on data from a longitudinal study of teacher preparation conducted at a large Midwestern U. S. university, this article describes and appraises what elementary teacher education students were taught about textbooks, what they learned, and what they did with these lessons during student teaching. Although the student teachers were enrolled in two different teacher education programs, all of them developed the impression that if they wanted to be good teachers, they should avoid following textbooks and relying on teachers’ guides. They believed that good teaching means creating your own lessons and materials instead. These ideas proved difficult to act on during student teaching when the student teachers worked in classrooms where textbooks formed the core of instruction and they confronted the fact that they were beginning teachers lacking knowledge, skill, and experience. This article points out that deciding what to teach beginning teachers about textbooks poses a significant dilemma for teacher educators. Although many textbooks have weaknesses, student teachers lack the knowledge and experience needed to develop their own curriculum. The authors argue that, rather than telling novices not to “teach by the book,” teacher educators should consider contextual constraints and the limits of beginners’ knowledge and skills and teach beginning elementary teachers how to learn from using published curricular materials.¹⁵

In Jewish education, where we often struggle with untrained teachers, avocational teachers who rise to the moment to fulfill community needs, we should provide them with the supports needed to create effective classrooms. We applaud and encourage innovation, improvisation and the development of teacher-created alternatives. We want teachers to go beyond our books and use their talents fully. But we want them to have a well-researched, well-written, well-thought-out, and well-collected set of resources that go in teacher and student hands to serve as the stage on which the drama of the lesson takes place. Contrary to the folk belief that textbooks interfere with the learning process, both research and our experience suggest that they enable great teaching and learning – especially for novice teachers. The idea for the Ball and Feinman-Nemser paper came from Sharon’s experience learning how to be a great Torah teacher from our book Being Torah and its teacher’s guide.

Many of our books (You be the Judge, Make a Midrash Out of Me, Journeys and S’fatai Tiftah, to mention a few) contain content and research that almost no teacher could do on their own, and certain not weekly, to create amazing teaching and learning experiences. They are content-rich and provide for teacher as well as student learning.

Torah Aura has never believed in overly scripting teachers or taking them out of the equation, but rather we aim at creating books that empower teachers to create exciting, interactive, rich, and enjoyable moments of learning in their classrooms.

In his book Managing the Jewish Classroom, Rabbi Seymour Rossel relates the following:

A Jewish communal worker once asked me “What is the one thing that, if you could have it, would significantly improve the quality of Jewish education?” Without hesitation, I replied, “Great teachers.”

“That’s right,” he said, “If you have great teachers you don’t even need textbooks.”

“Wrong,” I said. “If you have great teachers, they never do without textbooks. They know how to use them.”

…Texts are just one of the tools in the kit of the master teacher. But texts are the hammer. And it is a poor carpenter who refuses to learn how best to use a hammer.¹⁶

1. Abraham Joshua Heschel. “The Spirit of Jewish Education.” Jewish Education, Fall 1953, pp. 9-20.
2. Ibid, p. 19
3. Ibid, p. 15.
4. Samuel C. Heilman. The People of the Book: Drama, Fellowship and Religion. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1983.
5. Joel Grishaver. “The Technology of Making Meaning, A Systematic Inquiry into the Task of Enabling the Teaching of Jewish Texts,” (monograph). Los Angeles: Torah Aura Productions, 1988.
6. Glenn A. Drew. “Momentum (mō méntəm).” Blog post, 10 Dec., 2008. http://aha-info.blogspot.com/2008/12/momentum-m-mntm.html.
7. Mel Silberman and Shoshana Silberman. Active Jewish Learning: 57 Strategies to Enliven Your Class. Los Angeles: Torah Aura Productions, 2009, p. 9.
8. Jean Piaget. The Child’s Conception of the World. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1928.
9. Eileen Raymond. Learners with Mild Disabilities: A Characteristics Approach. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2000, pp. 169-201.
10. K. Chang, I. Chen, and Y. Sung. “The effect of concept mapping to enhance text comprehension and summarization.” The Journal of Experimental Education. Iss. 71, No. 1 (2002), pp. 5-23.
11. Howard Gardner. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
12. Michael Gurian, Patricia Henley, and Terry Trueman. Boys and Girls Learn Differently!: A Guide for Teachers and Parents. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.
13. Lorie Oglesbee. “Captions: Looking at a picture without a caption is like watch television with the sound turned off.” Communication: Journalism Education Today, Winter, 1998.
14. Deborah Loewenberg Ball and Sharon Feiman-Nemser. Using Textbooks and Teachers’ Guides: A Dilemma for Beginning Teachers and Teacher Educators. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, 1988.
15. Ibid.
16. Seymour Rossel. Managing the Jewish Classroom: How to Transform Yourself Into a Master Teacher. Los Angeles: Torah Aura Productions, 1998. p. 98.

by Joel Grishaver

Started around 1970 by some Harvard professors, just about the same time some other Harvard faculty started the Harvard Hillel Children’s School (that morphed into Congregation Eitz Chayim), The Sunday School for Jewish Studies is a non-synagogue, parent cooperative, not for profit, way of providing a Jewish education and accessing a bar/bat mitzvah experience.

The school was featured in a recent article in the Boston Globe. The article described it as (a) a non-Synagogue and (b) cheaper way of providing a bar/bat mitzvah. The article centers on the fact that this “non brick and mortar” (non) institution that charges as little as 1/4 the cost of belonging to (and sending your kids to school at) a “brick and mortar” synagogue.

Here are the things I know.

[1] Harvard Hillel Children’s School (that I do know about) was started as a chance to provide an innovative, better, experimental Jewish education for a number of positively identified but “syno-phobic” Jews. It did a lot of pioneering work with adult education, family education, alternative education and a lot of the other frontier (for its age) areas of Jewish Education. For a lot of years it was guided by Rabbi Cherie Kohler Fox and her husband Dr. Everett Fox. The hallmark of the school was not its cost, but its ability to innovate. Much of that innovation was its ability to create community among a population that was considered fringe. That community ultimately felt the need to evolve into a synagogue.

[2] I had never heard about The Sunday School for Jewish Studies until The Globe article appeared. The little I’ve been able to learn about it on the internet makes it sound little different from the Harvard Hillel Children’s school at its prime. It is devoted to serving its students and its families. It has a social action vision of Judaism. It is open to all kinds of definitions of Jewish family. All this is to be praised!

[3] It is The Globe article that bothers me, not my understanding of The Sunday School. I have nothing against Jews creating independent institutions that meet their own needs. I have nothing against people choosing and creating alternatives to the synagogue. I do wish Jewish life was cheaper. What bothers me is the smug sense that this is a better way of providing a Jewish education because it has less overhead. The article provides no other way of evaluating the quality of the education offered at this school.

The article ends by quoting the father of a Bar Mitzvah, “He read it perfectly. I’d put his training up against any synagogue training,” Note: the standard was “his training” not “his education.” The author has a pretty classic misunderstanding of Jewish education. The school’s job is to “train” students for b’nai mitzvah. If the kid reads well, the school must have succeeded. It’s an economics equation. The school provides a product (“training”) for less money, so it must be a great deal.

[4] The article actually comes as a warning. The congregational school, that long believed that it has a monopoly on non-day school Jewish education, now needs to look over its shoulder. While we thought the major threat would come from “tutoring,” there are other alternatives on the horizon. Simply put, we are not the only way to have a bar/bat mitzvah. God’s creation of this world does allow for the rental of tents, the borrowing of Sifrei Torah and the photocopying of service booklets. If the only thing our schools offer is bar mitzvah training, we have a big problem because (a) we know that this isn’t a sufficient Jewish education, and (b) as this article teaches us, families can get a do-it-yourself b’nai mitzvah somewhere else.

[5] So here’s my final synthesis:

The article teaches us that congregational schools are not the cheapest Jewish education option in many cities. But we need to be the best. The research of Dr. Jack Wertheimer (Schools that Work: What We Can Learn from Good Jewish Schools) puts creating a nurturing Jewish Community, engaging Judaism at a high level, providing opportunities for experiential education, and valuing themselves and their students on the list of elements of high-quality Jewish schools.

As my friend and teacher, Rabbi Phil Warmflash, likes to point out, “The success of the synagogue school has as much to do with the success of the synagogue as the success of the school.”