The dawn of a new decade has brought with it a flurry of retrospectives assessing the first ten years of the 21st century. Clearly, there's been much to cause discouragement, anxiety, and concern. But, as we at JESNA look back on the past decade in Jewish education, we also find much to celebrate. In fact, it's been a pretty good decade for Jewish learning, not without its challenges and disappointments, but one marked by many exciting developments, new ideas, and promising directions.

So, in the spirit of the new decade, with perhaps a touch of the Oscars thrown in, here is our JESNA "Top Ten" list of achievements, developments, ideas, and trends in Jewish education worthy of note and gratification (in no special order). And, since we're Jewish, we wanted to be generous and threw in an 11th just for good measure.

Please feel free to share your own list and let us know what you think of ours. [contact Rika Levin at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with your thoughts]

• Taglit-Birthright Israel - Taglit-Birthright Israel has demonstrated that big ideas can generate big successes: 200,000+ young people encountering Israel for the first time in an experience that for many has been life changing. The "home run" that all new program initiatives seek to emulate.

• Funding Partnerships to transform critical sectors of Jewish education - Beginning with the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE), the decade saw the coming to the fore of funder-driven initiatives to bring new ideas and energy to arenas such as day school, early childhood education, complementary education, camps, and Jewish innovation.

• Consumer-centric education - This is the age of choice in Jewish education: individuals and families choosing among multiple options to find the most meaningful and appropriate educational experiences. This imposes new demands on our institutional infra-structure to place education's "consumers" at the center of their thinking and to put in place concrete mechanisms, like the Los Angeles BJE's Jewish Education Concierges, to assist and guide these consumers in making choices that work for them.

• The rise of the innovation sector - The past decade has seen an explosion of innovative people, projects, and organizations creating new modes and venues for Jewish learning and engagement. Equally important, endeavors like Bikkurim: An Incubator for New Jewish Ideas and a growing number of others have emerged to nurture and support this innovation sector.

• Congregational educational change initiatives - It's definitely not your father's (or mother's) Hebrew school any longer, as more than a dozen national, regional, and local initiatives involving hundreds of synagogues collectively have begun to transform the landscape of supplementary education, bringing new vision, energy, and leadership to an often disparaged arena.

• The revitalization of Jewish camps - Cognoscenti have long recognized the unique power of Jewish camps to nurture lifelong Jewish engagement. In the past decade this power was rediscovered, and new investment, spearheaded by organizations like the Foundation for Jewish Camp and the Grinspoon and Avi Chai Foundations, has elevated the prominence and performance of Jewish camps and spurred growth and innovation across the field.

• Online Jewish learning - Technology is transforming how we work, play, communicate, and learn, and Jewish learning is no exception. From MyJewishLearning.com to Twitter, the technological revolution is coming to Jewish education, empowering learners, challenging teachers, putting new resources at our finger tips, connecting far-flung classrooms, and bridging time and space.

• PJ Library - Educators have long known that the family is our first and most powerful teacher. With the simple idea of giving Jewish families books to read to young children at bedtime, The Grinspoon Foundation's PJ Library program has brought a seminal Jewish experience into tens of thousands of Jewish homes and spurred communities to invent new programs to help these families continue their Jewish journeys.

• Jewish service learning - Today's young people want to be "hands on" when it comes to repairing the world. Jewish service learning programs for teens and young adults have blossomed to build the bridge between Jewish activism and Jewish education. AJWS, Avodah: the Jewish Service Corps, Panim, Jewish Funds for Justice, Areyvut, Teva Learning Center and a host of others are helping young people to learn and apply Jewish values to make a better world.

• "Public Space" Jewish education - If some Jews are reluctant to come to Jewish institutions, why can't we bring Jewish experiences to them? That's the premise behind a growing number of initiatives that take Jewish learning and experiences to where Jews are, whether it's the aisles of supermarkets, the lounges of bookstores, the board rooms of corporations, or the campuses of public and private high schools.

• A focus on outcomes - In an era of limited resources, it's vital to make sure that all of our educational investments are as effective as they can be. But to do so, we need to look beyond the programs to the learners themselves and to be clear about the outcomes we seek and the results we're obtaining. Clarifying outcomes and developing measures to assess them is enabling us to make better programs and, we may hope, laying the groundwork for even greater investment in quality Jewish education.

BOSTON - The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE) announced today that its long-time executive director plans to leave the organization at the end of September and that a transition will begin immediately that will soon see its associate director become the acting director.

After fourteen years of guiding the leading Jewish day school support organization, Rabbi Joshua Elkin, himself a former day school head, wrote to his board, "just as 1996 was a time that felt right for a new venture, so too is 2011. I feel that I have another chapter within me that I am eager to explore - a not-yet-identified different platform from which I can continue to help strengthen the Jewish people."

News of Rabbi Elkin's coming departure was greeted with understanding and gratitude by the PEJE board chair, Diane Troderman. Ms. Troderman affirmed her commitment to a seamless transition through Rabbi Elkin's departure on September 30. To that end, she and the entire PEJE board concurred in a vote this week to appointment Amy Katz, Associate Director of PEJE, as acting director.

"When Josh approached me and told me of his desire to move on, perhaps for his 'last hurrah,' I was deeply saddened but came to understand his feelings and applaud his choice," wrote Ms. Troderman. "[My husband] Harold [Grinspoon] and I began this journey fourteen years ago as full Partners when PEJE was birthed and have watched Josh with profound gratitude shepherding us through three transformative phases - building, strengthening, and now sustaining Jewish day schools."

In the fourteen years Rabbi Elkin has led PEJE - beginning with its formation in December, 1996 - the organization has considerably strengthened the Jewish day school field, providing valuable expertise and coaching, as well as considerable grant allocations. Sixty new Jewish day schools were funded, volunteer and professional day school leaders were regularly convened cross-denominationally, and the first-ever day school Donor Assembly was organized in 2000. The Assembly was expanded in 2003 to include a leadership component. The most recent Assembly took place in October, 2010, with 1,100 participants from 250 Jewish day schools.

Meanwhile, over roughly the same period, the total number of Jewish day schools nationally has swelled to 800 and the number of students has increased dramatically by an estimated 25% to over 230,000, according to a 2008-09 AVI CHAI-funded report, "A Census of Jewish Day Schools in the United States," by Marvin Schick.

And in the last year alone, PEJE has significantly modified its governance and funding structures, adding new board members, and embracing a business plan focused on financial sustainability and affordability for Jewish day schools. Recently, PEJE received a $3.1 million grant from the AVI CHAI Foundation to allow PEJE to help over 40 schools grow legacy and endowment programs. In addition, a new PEJE challenge award program was launched in April to stimulate new efforts by schools to sustain themselves.

Spanning a Jewish communal career of over 33 years in the Boston area, Amy Katz has worked in leadership positions since 1991: ten years at Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Boston's Jewish federation in the area of financial resource and leadership development; two and a half years as the founding Executive Director of a start-up Jewish educational nonprofit; and since 2003 as Associate Director at PEJE, responsible for all internal operations and programming. A day school graduate herself and the mother of five day school graduates, Ms. Katz is an alumnus of Yeshiva University's Stern College and holds an MSW from the University's Wurzweiler School of Social Work.

"A year ago, Josh and Amy, working with the Partners, developed a new business plan whose focus - viable day schools in the 21st century - reflects the challenges of the 21st century," Ms. Troderman wrote. "Josh has positioned us in a very strategic way, which allows us to fully embrace PEJE's leadership transition. With Amy as the acting director we are confident that PEJE will go from strength to strength."

From The Jewish Week:

When it comes to promoting financial sustainability for Jewish day schools — an issue on the front burner for many schools in a time of economic uncertainty — one player is putting cash on the table.

The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (www.peje.org) announced last week at the North American Jewish Day School Conference that it would award a total of $625,000 to 25 day schools that demonstrate innovative ways of boosting their bottom lines.

Read the full article at The Jewish Week...

In a time of economic uncertainty, when fund-raising campaigns are down and school tuitions are up, members of the North American day school community crossed denominational lines to come together for one big powwow.

The three-day North American Jewish Day School Conference here that wrapped up Tuesday was the product of a year of planning by the heads of four major day school networks -- Ravsak: The Jewish Community Day School Network, the Institute for University-School Partnership at Yeshiva University, the Solomon Schechter Day School Association, and Pardes: The Progressive Association of Reform Day Schools.

The conference at the Marriott at Glenpointe drew more than 550 participants from across the continent, surprising organizers who expected a much smaller turnout because of the economy. Some 200 participants received subsidies of 50 percent from the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, the Covenant Foundation and the Kohelet Foundation.

“We’re all dealing with the same challenges of trying to make quality Jewish educational experiences for children,” said Scott Goldberg, director of the Institute for University-School Partnership. “That commonality drove our programming from the macro-level -- needing to do more with less and really forcing us to reassess how we do things.”

Continue reading at www.JTA.org.

eJewishPhilanthropy and JESNA are sponsoring a series of essays they’re callingGrowing Jewish Education in Challenging Times. We’ll be linking to those posts regularly here as they come in.

–Matt Brown

JESNA'S Picks for the Best of the Decade in Jewish Education

The dawn of a new decade has brought with it a flurry of retrospectives assessing the first ten years of the 21st century. Clearly, there's been much to cause discouragement, anxiety, and concern. But, as we at JESNA look back on the past decade in Jewish education, we also find much to celebrate. In fact, it's been a pretty good decade for Jewish learning, not without its challenges and disappointments, but one marked by many exciting developments, new ideas, and promising directions.

So, in the spirit of the new decade, with perhaps a touch of the Oscars thrown in, here is our JESNA "Top Ten" list of achievements, developments, ideas, and trends in Jewish education worthy of note and gratification (in no special order). And, since we're Jewish, we wanted to be generous and threw in an 11th just for good measure.

Click here to see the picks.