At its launch in 2005, the Lippman Kanfer Institute set out to identify the key challenges and opportunities facing Jewish education in the 21st century and the types of changes needed to respond effectively to these.  To do this, it undertook a broad-based survey of educational leaders and activists and convened a distinguished Advisory Council which met three times over the course of 18 months to deliberate on directions for educational innovation and transformation.  As these directions took shape and exemplars of them were identified, the Institute began to assemble a document to capture these, using a wiki to allow Advisory Council members and others to add their comments and contributions.  The result was the Institute's first Working Paper:  Redesigning Jewish Education for the 21st Century.

Redesigning Jewish Education lays out the case for change in how we do and deliver Jewish education in order to keep it relevant and effective in the 21st century.  The Paper describes three core "design principles" for the Jewish education we need: that it be learner-centered, relationship-infused, and life-focused.  The Working Paper imagines what an educational system based on these principles might look like and proposes a number of strategies to make the changes needed.

The bulk of the Lippman Kanfer Institute's work since the publication of this paper has been devoted to testing and elaborating on its ideas and fostering their implementation in a variety of settings.

Click here to access Redesigning Jewish Education for the 21st Century.