Learning and Community Job Name: 560670 PDF Page: txt_560670.p1.pdf denisek Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life Jonathan D. Sarna, Editor Sylvia Barack Fishman, Associate Editor For a complete list of books that are available in the series, visit www.upne.com Susan G. Solomon Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal Louis I. Kahn’s Jewish Architecture: America, 1957–1965 Mikveh Israel and the Midcentury American Synagogue Andrea Greenbaum, editor Jews of South Florida Amy Neustein, editor Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities Sylvia Barack Fishman and Child Sex Scandals Double or Nothing? Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage Jack Wertheimer, editor Learning and Community: Jewish George M. Goodwin and Ellen Smith, editors Supplementary Schools in the Twenty-first The Jews of Rhode Island Century Shulamit Reinharz and Mark A. Raider, Carole S. 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Sales and Leonard Saxe Edward S. Shapiro “How Goodly Are Thy Tents”: Summer Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Camps as Jewish Socializing Experiences Brooklyn Riot Ori Z. Soltes Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg, Fixing the World: Jewish American Painters editors in the Twentieth Century Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History Gary P. Zola, editor The Dynamics of American Jewish History: Kirsten Fermaglich Jacob Rader Marcus’s Essays on American American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Jewry Job Name: 560670 PDF Page: txt_560670.p2.pdf denisek Learning and Community Jewish Supplementary Schools in the Twenty-first Century ❖ Edited by Jack Wertheimer Brandeis University Press Waltham, Massachusetts Published by University Press of New England Hanover and London Job Name: 560670 PDF Page: txt_560670.p3.pdf denisek Brandeis University Press Published by University Press of New England, One Court Street, Lebanon, NH 03766 www.upne.com © 2009 by Brandeis University Press Printed in the United States of America 54321 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Members of educational institutions and organizations wishing to photocopy any of the work for classroom use, or authors and publishers who would like to obtain permission for any of the material in the work, should contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Lebanon, NH 03766. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Learning and community : Jewish supplementary schools in the twenty-first century / edited by Jack Wertheimer. p. cm. — (Brandeis series in American Jewish history, culture, and life) Includes index. isbn 978-1-58465-770-5 (pbk. : alk.paper) 1. Jewish religious education of children—United States. 2. Jewish religious schools— United States. I. Wertheimer, Jack. II. Series bm103.l373 2009 296.6Ј80830973—dc22 2009000998 University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. Job Name: 560670 PDF Page: txt_560670.p4.pdf denisek Contents Contributors vii Introduction xi I. Innovative Small Schools Chapter 1 Kehillah 3 Isa Aron with Nachama Skolnik Moskowitz Chapter 2 The Power of Their Commitments: Lessons for the 47 Jewish Community from a Small Synagogue School Susan L. Shevitz with Marion Gribetz Chapter 3 Between Entrepreneurship and Jewish Mission: 79 The Making of a Chabad Hebrew School Jack Wertheimer with Serene Victor II. Re-Thinking Large Suburban Congregational Schools Chapter 4 Belonging Before Belief 113 Harold Wechsler with Cyd Beth Weissman Chapter 5 Adath Shalom Religious School: Strengths, 145 Challenges, and Transitions Randal F. Schnoor with Billy Mencow Chapter 6 Innovating Inside the Box: An Ongoing Process 176 to Improve a Congregational School Susan L. Shevitz with Marion Gribetz Chapter 7 Promoting a Counterculture 207 Harold Wechsler with Cyd Beth Weissman Chapter 8 Beit Knesset Hazon: A Visionary Synagogue 236 Isa Aron with Nachama Skolnik Moskowitz III. High School Models Chapter 9 Western Hebrew High: A Place for Social 277 Belonging and Personal Meaning Randal F. Schnoor with Billy Mencow Chapter 10 Putting the School Back into the Supplementary 308 Jewish High School Jack Wertheimer with Serene Victor Conclusion 347 Index 363 Job Name: 560670 PDF Page: txt_560670.p5.pdf denisek Research for this project was sponsored by the Avi Chai Foundation, which has taken a strong interest in strength- ening Jewish education in the United States. The research team is grateful to the foundation for its support and encouragement. During the course of the project, we received much helpful advice from Yossi Prager, North American director of the foundation and Deena Fuchs, the foundation’s communications director. Job Name: 560670 PDF Page: txt_560670.p6.pdf denisek Contributors Isa Aron is Professor of Jewish Education at the Rhea Hirsch School of Ed- ucation, huc-jir, Los Angeles, where she teaches courses in teaching, phi- losophy of education, and organizational change. She was the founding di- rector of the Experiment in Congregational Education, a project of the rhsoe, now in its sixteenth year. She continues to serve as the senior con- sultant to that project, which works with synagogues throughout the United States, helping them become congregations of learners and self- renewing congregations, and to re-imagine their religious schools. She is the author of Becoming a Congregation of Learners and The Self Renew- ing Congregation, both published by Jewish Lights Publications. She is currently engaged in a study of the long-term impact of synagogue change efforts, together with Steven M. Cohen, Lawrence Hoffman, and Ari Y. Kelman, which will be published in 2009. Marion Gribetz is on the faculty of the Shoolman Graduate School of Jew- ish Education at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts. She is also managing director of Gribetz Mencow Consultants, an independent con- sulting firm specializing in improving Jewish education. She has published, researched, taught, and consulted in all areas of Jewish education. Billy Mencow founded Kolbo, Inc. in 1978, which grew into the nation’s most innovative retailer of Judaica. Billy’s new career in Jewish Education began as the high school coordinator at Temple Emunah in Lexington, Massachusetts, and as the director of post-graduate studies for the Solo- mon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston. He moved on to central agency work, and coordinated the Youth Educator Initiative (now yesod) at bje Boston. Billy has since served as director of Camp Ramah in New England from 2000 to 2005, and as associate director of the Bureau of Jewish Education in Boston. Billy currently consults to Jewish educational institutions in the United States and Israel in the areas of strategic planning and team building. vii Job Name: 560670 PDF Page: txt_560670.p7.pdf denisek viii Contributors Nachama Skolnik Moskowitz is the senior director, as well as the director of curriculum resources at the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland. She has been a day school principal, congregational school director, and camp educator. Nachama is nationally known and respected for her curricular work and is the author of numerous student materials and teacher re- sources, including The Ultimate Jewish Teacher Handbook (ARE, 2003). Randal F. Schnoor, a sociologist, teaches at the Centre for Jewish Studies at York University in Toronto. He is co-author, with Alex Pomson, of Back to School: Jewish Day School as a Source of Meaning in the Lives of Adult Jews (Wayne State University Press, 2008) and of the chapter titled “Bring- ing School Home” in the forthcoming Jewish Day Schools, Jewish Com- munities: A Reconsideration (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civiliza- tion). His research on Jewish identity has been published in academic journals such as Sociology of Religion, Canadian Ethnic Studies, and Ca- nadian Jewish Studies. Since 2005 he has served as president of the Asso- ciation for Canadian Jewish Studies. Susan L. Shevitz is an educational consultant with a particular interest in congregations, religious pluralism in Jewish education, and patterns of lead- ership. She has served as an associate professor at Brandeis University, as a senior research associate at its Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Edu- cation, and as an instructor at the Rabbinical School of Boston’s Hebrew College, where her teaching has focused on the organizational contexts of rabbinic work as well as leadership. Recent publications include a review of efforts to improve congregational education over the last decade (“Don’t Conduct, Improvise: New Approaches to Changing Jewish Schools,” in Paul Flexner and Roberta Goodman, eds., What We NOW Know about Jewish Education) and “Building Community in a Pluralist Jewish High School,” in Alex Pomson and Howard Deitscher, eds., Jewish Day Schools, Jewish Communities, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Serene Victor is lecturer and faculty leader of the DeLeT/MAT Program at Brandeis University. Previously, Serene was consultant for synagogue edu- cation for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.