By Lynn Schusterman · June 18, 2010

TULSA, Okla. (JTA) -- Next week, as millions of people around the world celebrate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month, we in the Jewish community will mark the occasion with a pivotal milestone: the first-ever Jewish LGBT Movement Building Convening, to be held June 27-29 in California.

Organized by the leading Jewish LGBT organizations, Keshet, Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity and Nehirim, the gathering will bring together 100 leaders of LGBT synagogues, organizations, foundations and other representatives to create a unified Jewish LGBT agenda for change.

As a proud funder of the convening and longtime supporter of Jewish LGBT work, I believe now is the ideal time for the Jewish community to foster a welcoming, inclusive environment for LGBT Jews and to stand up for LGBT equality.

Religion and faith have long been isolating topics in the LGBT world. In 2007, Angelica Berrie and I hosted the Conference For Change, which was designed to put issues of equality, diversity and inclusivity on the Jewish communal agenda. As a participant in the track focused on LGBT Jews, I heard far too many stories from talented, committed Jewish professionals who still felt excluded or invisible within our community because of their sexuality. Many even feared losing their jobs if they came out publicly.

The fact is, despite some signs of progress -- the Jewish Theological Seminary deciding to admit LGBT individuals and the ordination of the first transgender rabbi, to name two -- the overall pace of change within our community in this area has been far too slow. The continued marginalization of LGBT Jews is especially disheartening for those of us who believe in the power of a fully inclusive Jewish community that embraces every Jew as "b’tzelem elokim," made in God’s image.

Our people represent a tapestry of interwoven identities embodying the rich diversity of what it means to be Jewish. When we neglect or deny the needs of any population within our community, we not only weaken the strands of this tapestry, we also drop the mantle of leadership we have assumed when it comes to protecting and advocating for the civil rights of minority populations.

This is why now, more than ever, we need to uphold LGBT inclusion and equality as fundamental tenets of our community.

Read the full article at jta.com...

by Jack Wertheimer

Over the past three months I’ve published six essays in Jewish Ideas Daily on specific examples of people and programs that seem to me to offer welcome news—”Vital Signs”—for the future of American Jewish life. My list was hardly exhaustive; it could have been easily expanded to twice or perhaps even three times its size. Looking back now at my examples—a summer camp, a supplementary high school, a Hebrew-language initiative for young children, an adult-education program, a fellowship program for young community leaders, and a prayer group—I’m struck by the ubiquity of a leitmotif that, directly or indirectly, runs throughout all six.

That leitmotif, broadly put, is education. Nothing new about that, one might say; but one would be wrong. To be sure, Torah study has long been a core value of rabbinic Judaism. But for much of the past century, the people of the book in this country seem to have transferred their devotion almost exclusively to the secular domain, becoming authoritative students of every conceivable professional and academic discipline while for the most part remaining ignorant of the great texts of their own tradition, let alone of the Hebrew language. Only in our own time has the ground begun to shift.

To appreciate the significance of the change, we need to remember that Jewish education has never been high on the agenda of the American Jewish community. The working assumption in most periods seemed to be that Jewish culture was a matter not of study but of osmosis: of absorbing and imitating the style and customs of parents and grandparents. Of course, an elite of trained personnel would need to know more, but few American Jewish leaders entertained serious expectations of the rank-and-file.

Read the full article at the Jewish Book Review blog...

by Ari Davidow | May 7 2010

Earlier this week I listened in on the “Technology and Jewish Education” conference organized by the Lippman Kanfer Institute and Berman Jewish Policy Archive @ NYU Wagner, held at the JESNA offices in New York. I heard many familiar themes: Jewish education is underfunded, and in particular Jewish educators lack both resources and training to take advantage of technology. At the same time, the environment in which students today learn seems to rely increasingly on mobile devices and Facebook feeds—even more than my generation relied on bulky film projectors and film strip readers (both of which proved difficult for some teachers, who relied on us students to make the machinery work). Funding is also lacking to develop tools key to teaching Jewish subjects—to develop specialized software, for instance, or ensure access to significant Jewish texts, with translation(s).

Lisa Colton of Darim Online reminded us that technology should be the means, not the end—the real goal must remain one of Jewish education.

Meredith Lewis, of MyJewishLearning.com, spoke of how her site helps people looking for answers to specific questions, often phrased in ways that make it clear that the person asking has no understanding of Jewish traditions or cultures. In this she sees few signs of specific “Jewish learning,” if the term implies some engagement with Jewish life and continuity.

In a dinner-time address, Jeffrey Shandler reminded the audience that the challenge of technology as it meets Jewish (or religious) life is not new. He used the controversies around advent of the printing press and what it meant for Jewish learning, and the more recent example, in the US, of the advent of radio to drive home the point.

All of this suggests that technology is a stand-in for a larger problem, what it means to talk about “Jewish Education.” 

Read the full article at The Jewish Women's Archive blog...

By Susan H. Fuhrman, president of the National Academy of Education, and president of Teachers College, Columbia University. A longer version of this piece appeared in Education Week. This is part of an occasional series by Teachers College faculty, who will write about reforms proposed by the Education Department in “A Blueprint for Reform,” the Obama administration’s vision of how to rewrite the federal law commonly known as No Child Left Behind.


The Obama administration’s “Blueprint for Reform” of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act encourages states to evaluate teachers based in part on their students’ scores on standardized tests. It is likely, then, that linking teacher evaluation to student achievement will play a significant role in upcoming policy initiatives and renewal of ESEA, the federal law more commonly known as No Child Left Behind.

In order to ensure fairness, most plans to evaluate teachers based on their students’ performance attempt to control for differences among students and other factors that are beyond the teachers’ control. They use the so-called “value-added” approach.

Recently, the National Research Council and the National Academy of Education jointly issued a report on value-added approaches, based on findings from a November 2008 workshop funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. According to the report, value-added models refer to sophisticated statistical techniques that measure student growth. They use one or more years of prior student test scores, as well as other background data, to adjust for pre-existing differences among students when evaluating student test performance.

Read the full article at The Washington Post blog...

Since I began working in the Jewish community as a JCSC in Champaign six years ago, meeting people “where they are at” seemed to be a common phrase among Jewish organizations. I remember being told at my training that 80% of my time should be spent out of the office, meeting students where they are at – in their dorms, at their fraternity houses, on the quad – anywhere but in the Hillel building. Recently, it seems that this phenomenon has hit the education world, as teachers and administrators are thinking about new approaches to education that speak to 21st century learners – students who are “plugged in” for nearly as many hours as they spend at school each day.

Several months ago I read a blog post about an educator in Newton, MA who took the attitude of “if you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em”. She recognized that her students were constantly texting, and rather than fighting with them to put their phones away, she encouraged her students to text their parents with the very same questions they were discussing in class. By doing so, she was able to meet the students “where they are at” with respect to their technological inclinations, while still educating them and engaging the parents in their children’s education.

Read the full article at the Innovation in Jewish Education blog...

by Bradley Solmsen

Two important pieces of information to set the context for this piece:

1. Our work with experiential Jewish education at BIMA and Genesis is often thought about with reference to the concept of “Well Framed Empty Spaces.”[1] This is a concept that is used by others with different names but was coined by  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it when he served as Senior Educator at Genesis. A good deal of Josh’s dissertation is devoted to topics related to these ideas.
2. I am an unapologetic fan of all things Apple.

On April 9, New York Times reporter Steven Johnson published, “Rethinking a Gospel of the Web.” Read it. In case you don’t right away let me summarize…Many people think that innovation and creativity happen on the web because of its open and democratic nature. However Johnson points to Apple’s App Store as a source of innovation and creativity despite significant limitations and hierarchy. How could this be?

Sometimes what people need in order to innovate and create their best work is complete freedom. In my experience with high school students and experiential Jewish education this is not the case. What they need and what the educators who work with them need is clear structures and then the freedom to be creative and innovative and be pushed to create their best work within those structures.

Read the full article at the Innovation in Jewish Education Blog...

After much debate and controversy, Joshua Venture this morning announced its grantees. Each grantee will receive $80,000 in funding and $20,000 for healthcare over the next two years and tens of thousands more in supportive services and mentoring.

Here they are (with descriptions of each of the grantees from the Joshua Venture's Web site):

• Zelig Golden - Wilderness Torah, which seeks to "develop a Bay Area center for earth-based Judaism that integrates community programs, organic farm and sustainable life skills education, and nature awareness training – a local educational center that serves as a national resource and training ground for building healthy, sustainable Jewish community."
• Alison Laichter -- Jewish Meditation Center, "a groundbreaking organization that fosters a thriving community of meditators and spiritual leaders, transforming the world through the cultivation of awareness, compassion, and Jewish wisdom."
• Sarah Lefton -- G-dcast, "a media production company with a bold educational mission: to raise basic Jewish literacy, demystify core Jewish texts, and spark great conversations with entertaining short films and games delivered for free online."
• Rachel Nussbaum -- Kavana Cooperative, a Seattle based project that has "gained national attention for its innovative approach to creating intentional Jewish community through a cooperative model. Kavana seeks to empower its partners and participants to create a meaningful Jewish life and a positive Jewish identity."
• Nati Passow -- Jewish Farm School, "an environmental organization that practices and promotes sustainable agriculture, and supports food systems rooted in justice and Jewish traditions."
• Zhenya Plechkina -- Children's Art Initiative, "a new idea that will combine the creation of an arts publication with teaching artist residencies for children age 4-18."
• Ari Weiss -- Uri L'Tzedek, an organization founded in 2007 "to engage, empower, and inspire the American Orthodox Jewish community to enact social change both within and beyond its own communal borders."
• Eli Winkelman -- Challah for Hunger, which "bakes and sells challah bread to raise money and awareness for social justice causes."

Sociologist Jack Wertheimer released some preliminary findings Monday morning of a report that the Avi Chai Foundation has commissioned into young Jewish leaders.

A team of six researchers studied Jews aged 22 to 40 who serve as Jewish leaders -- defined as those who have spearheaded new Jewish initiatives, direct existing mainstream Jewish organizations or are thought to be leaders or activists on Jewish endeavors.

The researchers interviewed some 250 leaders across the United States, but claim to have identified more than 3,000 who might be considered young Jewish leaders. The complete report, which is part of the research that Avi Chai -- a $700 million foundation, according to some estimates -- is conducting as it endeavors to spend down all of its assets by 2020. The full study will be released sometime this summer.

Among the key findings released by Wertheimer:

• The Jewish leaders do not feel threatened by anti-Semitism.
• They prefer to reject us-them relationships with non-Jews and want to be inclusive of non-Jews in their programming.
• They hold strong views on the organized Jewish community and need for new ways of organizing it and are critical of federations, traditional synagogues and agencies that engage in protective activities.
• While many believe that most young Jewish leaders totally buck the mainstream of Judaism, the report suggests that a large segment actually is involved in organizations such as Jewish federations, Friends of the IDF and AIPAC. "It's not true they want nothing to do with traditional causes, especially those who are economically secure and relate to the networking core of traditional Jewish organizations.”
• Approximately 40 percent of Jewish leaders attended day school; only 10-11 percent of those are Orthodox.
• Two-thirds attended Jewish summer camps.
• Half have spent more than four months studying in Israel.
• They believe that Jewish peoplehood means the celebration of Diaspora Jewish culture that is rich, diverse and inclusive.
• While many assume that progressive young Jews are hostile to Israel, Wertheimer says that also is not the case, according to what he and his researchers found, though it is true that most do not see Israel as central to Jewish identity and peoplehood, and there is a broad range of how much criticism about Israel they can tolerate.

Read the full article at The Fundermentalist blog...

By David Bryfman

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be part of a dynamic, if not “messy” discussion about Jewish education and Technology hosted by the Lippman Kanfer Institute at JESNA and The Berman Jewish Policy Archive at NYU.

I wanted to share some of my thoughts from yesterday’s event….

“I am very excited to be here today. I want to introduce you today to something that is going to change the way that we learn. It is so exciting that not only will it change the way we run our schools, but also has the capacity to change the way we live our lives. Now anyone can create information for others to see. We are no longer restricted to learning by ourselves at our desks with a book in hand. With this new technology teachers will be able to reach many more students than ever before. When new information is learned you won’t have to wait for a new book to be printed, you will be able to share it you’re your students immediately. If something changes or you make a mistake, you can just erase it and put up the new information for all to see. You can’t believe how much easier your life as a teacher will become – not just easier, but more effective and more influential. If knowledge is power, now you can share it with so many more people than ever before – we are truly living in a powerful time with endless possibilities.”

This is how I imagined a presentation would have taken place in a Board of Education circa 1800. It would have been followed by the following comments:

“A chalkboard is a reusable writing surface on which text or drawings are made with sticks of calcium sulphate, known, when used for this purpose, as chalk.”

Read the full posting at Bryfy.net...