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Education August 2015
Bar/bat mitzvah tutors and the new ‘gig economy.’ New JTS center reimagines prayer. BDS: the legal fights to come.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Click To Flip
Inside This Special Section
Spiritual Innovation at HUC
Going One-On-One For A Rite Of Passage
For Catholic Educators, A Glimpse Of Israel’s Diversity
A Different Kind Of Prayer Education
Brown Vs. Board Of Education
Israeli Unity Through Education?
Pop Music In Touro Poli Sci Class
Pouring Over Their Jewish Lessons
Incubating An ‘Innovation Movement’
BDS: The Legal Fights To Come
A Different Kind Of Prayer Education
A new JTS center will be an incubator for inventive forms of prayer and liturgy; including poetry, responsive chanting, instrumental music, silent meditation and more.
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A Different Kind Of Prayer EducationHannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Rabbinical students at JTS will experiment with different types of prayer at the new Block/Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts.
The childish notion of soliciting a white-bearded man in the sky is no way to pray like an adult, according to Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, director of liturgical arts at Jewish Theological Seminary.
“Many people today find prayer inaccessible,” said Rabbi Uhrbach, also the spiritual leader of the Conservative Synagogue in the Hamptons, in Bridgehampton. “Squaring the desire to pray with what one does or does not believe about God is becoming an increasingly difficult task.”
The JTS Block/Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts, an incubator for inventive forms of prayer and liturgy, aims to address the issue. Set to open next month, the center will provide classes and interactive workshops for cantors, rabbis, community leaders and JTS students. Rabbi Uhrbach, who will direct the new center on JTS’ Morningside Heights campus, described the project as a “laboratory space for experimenting with approaches to prayer.” Led by local experts in the field of inventive prayer, different methods, including poetry, responsive chanting, instrumental music, silent meditation and layering English and Hebrew within the liturgy, will be explored.
According to Rabbi Uhrbach, the new center is intended to combat a “crisis of prayer,” a term coined by the late Abraham J. Heschel in his 1954 book “Quest for God.” The crisis is a growing disinterest in traditional liturgy and synagogue services, said Rabbi Uhrbach.
“Adults haven’t been offered models of prayer that reconcile contemporary understandings of God, or at least help people live with the paradoxical tension,” she said.
The “crisis” is reflected in the numbers. A March 2014 Pew Research Center study found that millennials are increasingly unmoored from institutions. Three in 10 young adults between 18 and 33 say they are not affiliated with any religion; the study found that millennials have the highest level of religious and political disaffiliation recorded, in comparison to the post-World War II, baby boomer and Gen-X generations.
A recent study by UJA-Federation of New York on voluntary dues in synagogues corroborated the Pew study’s findings, indicating that Jewish young adults are far less interested in affiliating with Jewish institutions than their older cohorts.
To be sure, efforts to counter growing disengagement with alternative prayer services have been gaining traction. Romemu, a Renewal-inspired congregation on the Upper West Side led by Rabbi David Ingber, often replaces conventional Shabbat services with yoga, ecstatic chanting and meditation. On its website, the congregation describes itself as “unabashedly eclectic” and a center for “Judaism that will ignite your Spirit.” The Institute for Jewish Spirituality, a educational organization in Lower Manhattan, hosts retreats and programming to deepen the spiritual experience of community leaders and laymen, and Or Chayim, an alternative, egalitarian Orthodox minyan on the Upper West Side, allows traditional members to celebrate religious milestones in untraditional ways. (This past Shabbat it celebrated the aufruf, or traditional Shabbat service before a wedding, of two gay members.)
The Block/Kolker center adds to this growing movement to revitalize prayer, using a range of creative and untraditional means. This past Purim, Rabbi Uhrbach led a creative reading of the Megillah, setting each scene to different Broadway show tunes. In the background, images, humorous commentary and text played on a large television screen. The service was packed.
“People were laughing and enjoying themselves — the mood was light, rather than the heaviness often associated with services,” said Rabbi Uhrbach. “It’s not enough to work with clergy; the people sitting in the pews need to think changing prayer culture is possible.”
Still, though others recognize the problem of growing disengagement, they believe the solution lies not in changing the texts, but in re-examining them.
Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, stressed the importance of preserving the traditional liturgy.
“Instead of reformulating the words, we try to reinterpret the words in order to connect,” said Rabbi Kaunfer, who holds a doctorate in liturgy from JTS. He emphasized Hadar’s dual approach of preserving the traditional liturgy while recognizing that the prayer from a disconnect between the words themselves and the experience of prayer.
“How we perform the words oftentimes has much more to do with our experience of prayer than the words themselves,” he said. Melody and the “sound field of a synagogue,” the noises present in between prayers, deeply impact the experience of prayer. “If we are thoughtful about sounds, prayer can be experienced very differently.”
While many people choose to substitute English for the traditionally Hebrew prayers, Rabbi Kaunfer stressed the “power of praying in Hebrew.”
“Whether or not you understand the words, there is a rhythm and mystery to the traditional Hebrew liturgy.” He gave the example of Kol Nidrei, the service recited at the start, and the Mourner’s Kaddish. “It’s not something everyone can fully understand, but the meter of the words in Hebrew has a powerful force.”
Still, both Rabbis Uhrbach and Kaunfer agree that the search for meaning in prayer, though far from a new issue, is a pressing one. Rabbi Uhrbach, who served on the editorial committee of “Mahzor Lev Shalem: Rosh Hashaha and YOM KIPPUR,” a prayer book for the High Holidays, and who is in the process of editing a full-length siddur, said that directing the Block/Kolker Center feels like a circle closing.
“Heschel worked tirelessly to revive prayer, and to remind us what prayer could be. His teachings reached me, and now I’m trying to do the same. I hope to bring that conversation back to JTS.”
Going One-On-One For A Rite Of Passage
Dissatisfied with the Hebrew School experience, private bar-bat mitzvah tutors-who spring out of the 'gig economy'-are becoming increasingly popular as private tutors
Read More
“Instead of reformulating the words, we try to reinterpret the words in order to connect,” said Rabbi Kaunfer, who holds a doctorate in liturgy from JTS. He emphasized Hadar’s dual approach of preserving the traditional liturgy while recognizing that the prayer from a disconnect between the words themselves and the experience of prayer.
“How we perform the words oftentimes has much more to do with our experience of prayer than the words themselves,” he said. Melody and the “sound field of a synagogue,” the noises present in between prayers, deeply impact the experience of prayer. “If we are thoughtful about sounds, prayer can be experienced very differently.”
While many people choose to substitute English for the traditionally Hebrew prayers, Rabbi Kaunfer stressed the “power of praying in Hebrew.”
“Whether or not you understand the words, there is a rhythm and mystery to the traditional Hebrew liturgy.” He gave the example of Kol Nidrei, the service recited at the start, and the Mourner’s Kaddish. “It’s not something everyone can fully understand, but the meter of the words in Hebrew has a powerful force.”
Still, both Rabbis Uhrbach and Kaunfer agree that the search for meaning in prayer, though far from a new issue, is a pressing one. Rabbi Uhrbach, who served on the editorial committee of “Mahzor Lev Shalem: Rosh Hashaha and YOM KIPPUR,” a prayer book for the High Holidays, and who is in the process of editing a full-length siddur, said that directing the Block/Kolker Center feels like a circle closing.
“Heschel worked tirelessly to revive prayer, and to remind us what prayer could be. His teachings reached me, and now I’m trying to do the same. I hope to bring that conversation back to JTS.”
Going One-On-One For A Rite Of Passage
Dissatisfied with the Hebrew School experience, private bar-bat mitzvah tutors-who spring out of the 'gig economy'-are becoming increasingly popular as private tutors
Read More
Going One-On-One For A Rite Of Passage
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Todd Shotz, a mentor in the Hebrew Helpers tutorial program, works with bar mitzvah student. Courtesy of Hebrew Helpers
Samara Lipsky, a staff member of the Union for Reform Judaism and an online doctoral student at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, has privately tutored undergraduate psych students for a few years. Last year Lipsky, who graduated from the Ramaz School, a Modern Orthodox institution on the Upper East Side, and has served as a Hebrew teacher at the neighborhood’s Reform Temple Israel, decided to parlay her Jewish background — she branched out into tutoring bar and bat mitzvah students.
“This was my strength,” she says.
Lipsky found her first tutoring match, a girl who will become bat mitzvah later this year, in Lower Manhattan, through a web-based job-finding service. “She’s a very quick learner,” Lipsky says. “We have a lot of fun.”
Lipsky is part of a growing trend in Jewish education, one that tracks the wider story of a burgeoning freelance economy in the country in the years since the Great Recession. According to many observers, more Jewish families than ever are turning to private tutors, instead of traditional synagogue-based religious schools for their children’s bar and bat mitzvah lessons; and more men and women than ever are supplementing their incomes by serving as such tutors.
“It’s definitely on the rise,” said Todd Shotz, founder of Los Angeles-based Hebrew Helpers.
A standard Hebrew school education often “doesn’t work for contemporary families — it pits Hebrew school among competing needs for a student’s free time,” said Rabbi Joy Levitt, executive director of the JCC in Manhattan. She is also founder of the Jewish Journey Project, which, in collaboration with local religious schools, coordinates classes “all over the city” in venues that include parks and fitness studios.
Parents “want a really good experience” for their children, “and they don’t see that in traditional Hebrew school formats,” Rabbi Levitt said.
Tutors are particularly effective for families who live in an isolated region, away from a shul or religious school (Skype and teleconferencing technology can also help with this issue), and for special needs children who require the concentrated attention that an individual tutor can provide.
No formal studies are available, but anecdotal evidence indicates that at least scores of men and women are offering their services as private bar-bat mitzvah tutors, an increase over the handful doing this a generation ago.
At the same time, recent decades have witnessed what observers of Jewish education describe as a decrease in both the number of children enrolled in synagogues’ religious schools and the number of teaching jobs available in those schools.
Partly a response to the growing dissatisfaction with students’ experiences at Hebrew schools, partly an example of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Judaism trend among some segments of the Jewish community, partly a reflection of the “gig economy” that has seen an increase in the number of people serving as freelancers, independent contractors or temps, this phenomenon has brought a change both for the teachers and the religious schools.
The number of people doing part-time work “grew to 32 million from just over 20 million between 2001 and 2014, rising to almost 18 percent of all jobs,” The New York Times reported last month.
Private bar and bat mitzvah tutors mark a return to an old tradition.
In the old country, and among new immigrants in this country, boys studying for their bar mitzvah — this was before the introduction of the bat mitzvah ceremony a century ago — a melamed, always a male scholar, often wandering from community to community, would tutor the student in his Haftarah and other requirements for leading a worship service.
This was before synagogues’ religious schools largely took over this job.
Today, a growing number of Jewish families are engaging private tutors, many of whom are women, as an alternative to, or sometimes as a supplement to, the synagogue-based religious school system. With more and more Jews choosing not to affiliate, they see no reason to join a synagogue, and pay steep membership dues, just for the sake of a child’s bar or bat mitzvah; many opt to hold the ceremony and/or celebration offsite.
For people interested in using their training in education and knowledge of Jewish subjects, it means more opportunities to do something they enjoy while supplementing their incomes — tutoring positions often pay better than teaching jobs in religious schools, to observers of Jewish education.
Is the turn-to-tutors trend good for the Jewish community?
“This is a very good thing” if the parents have high expectations for their children’s bar-bat mitzvah training, if they want the ceremony to be “meaningful,” Rabbi Levitt said. have found that students in any subject who learn one-on-one “learn more” than in a classroom setting where students compete with classmates for a teacher’s attention, the rabbi said.
For the religious schools, it has meant a re-examination of how they operate. Many have started to ask themselves what they are doing wrong, why they are losing students, and what they can do better. A growing number of synagogue-based schools, and think tank-type programs, have come up with curricula that are highly experiential, very personalized to the students’ interests, and often include the students’ parents in the learning process.
“Many of them [religious schools] are changing,” adding an emphasis on “Jewish history simulations,” family retreats and Shabbaton programs, said Jonathan Woocher, president of the Lipman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, an independent organization that awards grants to innovative educational projects. He formerly served as chief ideas officer of the now-defunct Jewish Educational Service of North America. “There is more emphasis [on a curriculum] that forces the student to engage with the material.”
At the religious school level, projects such as, and the Union for Reform Judaism’s B’nai Mitzvah Revolution are in place.
“We see that many congregations are working to provide a b’nai mitzvah process that is engaging and transformative both for the learner and his/her family,” Suri Jacknis, associate director for congregational learning of the Jewish Education Project, said in an email interview.
The downside of one-on-one learning?
No interaction with other Jewish students, and less opportunity to become part of a wider Jewish community. “A synagogue offers” by definition “a synagogue community,” said Cyd Weissman, former Innovation in Congregational Learning at JEP, now director of the Reconstructionist Learning Network at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
♦One freelance tutor, Howard Blas, began to sense the of the independent learning trend some 30 years soon after graduating college in St. Louis. At the time, he was working as a Hebrew school teacher, and he would get calls from principals of other synagogue religious schools; they wanted him to work one-on-one with some students “who the school didn’t know what to do with.” His background in social work and special education made him a natural fit.
Now based on the Upper East Side and working as director of the Tikvah Program for adolescents and young adults with disabilities of Camp Ramah in Palmer, Mass., he continues to serve as a private tutor for Jewish students who can’t adjust to a standard religious school setting; many are preparing for the bar and bat mitzvah. He does this at night and on Sundays.
Lee and David Degani, a “transdenominational” couple who live in Boca Raton, (she’s a cantor; he, a rabbi) founded Shirat Shalom (shiratshalom.org), a synagogue without walls, 25 years ago. Almost immediately they began hearing about families with bar-bat-mitzvah-age children who didn’t belong to a congregation, didn’t want to their kids in a traditional religious school, but were looking for someone to serve as a tutor for the religious coming-of-age ceremony.
Previously residents of New Jersey, “we thought everyone belonged to a synagogue,” Cantor Degani said. She and her husband began working with the youngsters, first in the couples’ houses, now mostly through Skype. “Word spread,” she said. “Children kept on coming to us.”
All the tutors who spoke to The Jewish Week said they typically go beyond training students how to read unfamiliar words, as was often the case in earlier bar-bat mitzvah preparations; they teach what the words mean, the concepts behind the haftorah and prayers, as well as related education about Jewish history and holidays.
Most of the families whose students the Deganis tutor are unaffiliated but who become affiliated (annual dues are $300) by joining Shirat Shalom.
Tutors are reluctant to state how much they charge, but said usual hourly rates in the field range between $50 and $200. “People are used to paying for services,” Blas said.
“It would be very difficult for people to make this their [only] job,” he said — but it’s a nice second income.
Todd Shotz, founder of Hebrew Helpers, which offers “mentors” to work with bar-bat mitzvah students in one-on-one sessions or in “cohorts” of a few students, said some of his in-demand tutors can earn $20,000-$40,000 a year.
Robert Schwartz, a resident of Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill section, said that two years ago a friend helped him find a Hebrew Helpers tutor for his son Demitrius’ 2014 bar mitzvah. “It was like meeting a friend every week,” Schwartz said. Both Demitrius, and his parents, learned the meaning of the words he was reciting.
Samara Lipsky said she has been invited to attend the September bat mitzvah of the girl she has been tutoring. She plans to attend – and afterwards, she plans to keep tutoring bar and bat mitzvah students. “I like to make a difference in someone’s life.”
steve@jewishweek.org
BDS: The Legal Fights To Come
BDS has been with us a quarter-century and more, so why the sudden explosion of activism, especially on campuses?
Read More BDS: The Legal Fights To Come
Jerome A. Chanes
Special To The Jewish Week
A sign calling for the boycott of Israeli products in Bethlehem. Getty Images
Everyone, it seems, is in the BDS game these days: Sheldon Adelson, the Presbyterian Church, American universities and their students, national Jewish groups — and, not least, Congress and state legislatures.
The hot spot of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, of course, is the college campus. BDS has been with us a quarter-century and more, so why the sudden explosion of activism, especially on campuses?
The issue has become a worldwide one, with calls from many quarters to “punish” Israel for its alleged misdeeds by boycotting Israeli products and academics, divesting investments and applying a range of sanctions. BDS became a popular technique early in the second intifada, with pro-Palestinian activists musing, “Hey, it worked with apartheid; maybe it will work with Israel!” Academic sanctions against Israel, especially in the U.K., became commonplace. And in America, where a number of mainline Protestant churches have had boycott and divestment on their agendas since the 1980s, there has been in recent years an uptick in activity.
But the main battleground, in 2015, for BDS has been the campus. For one thing, the campus is the most sensitive, and the most visible, of the BDS arenas. For another, the campus is blessed with the burdens of freedom of expression — whatever that means.
One reason for what’s different in 2015 is that there is a right-wing Likud government in Israel, one that is tailor-made to exacerbate an already hot situation. Closer to home is the emergence on campuses of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which has become a vocal, well-organized, highly effective group on many campuses. SJP has focused much of its activity on attracting uninvolved students to BDS activism. The Anti-Defamation League reports that there are only 29 campuses on which there are unusually active SJP groups, but the number is growing. Almost every campus has some sort of BDS activity.
Yet at the same time, in terms of the impact of BDS activity, anti-Israel activity and anti-Semitism — always a complicated relationship — the overwhelming majority of Jewish students on campus feel, and indeed are, secure. It’s important to note that, with all the BDS activity and activism, not one university has adopted a divestment policy. The pattern was established early on, when, in 2002, then-Harvard University President Lawrence Summers was faced with a serious divestment threat by faculty; he said in effect, “Not on my watch!” and declared that BDS is “anti-Semitic in effect if not intent.”
Summers was delivering an important message: Not all BDS activists are anti-Semitic; some may be — but even those who are not are creating a campus climate that may be conducive to anti-Semitism.
This dynamic, of course, suggests the question of the fine line between “anti-Israel” — that is, legitimate criticism of the government of Israel — and “anti-Semitic.” This threshold question is obviously subjective; some have a very low threshold: any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism, or at least motivated by hatred of Jews. For others, anything goes.
My sense is that criticism of the policies of the government of the State of Israel — indeed, harsh criticism — is entirely legitimate. (The discussion within Israel, on a range of policies, is sharp and tough.) The point at which criticism of Israel shades into anti-Semitism is when the legitimacy of Israel, of the Zionist enterprise, is questioned.
One approach to fighting BDS, advocated especially by those who dramatically overstate the problem, is through anti-BDS legislation, and there is a momentum building in that direction.
Such legislation is a complicated matter, and falls into two categories. An example on the federal was a provision in the 2013 trade bill, which provided that, in negotiations on trade with European Union countries, the EU resist boycotts of Israel. Legislation in the states is varied. An Illinois bill, for example, would prohibit investing pension funds in companies that boycott Israel. Other bills would cut off funding to schools that engage in academic boycotts. National Jewish groups, faced with the question of schools losing their funding if they engage in criticism of Israel, have mostly stayed out of this fray.
The legal question on campus, yet to be addressed, is whether BDS will create an environment hostile to Jews. This is a federal Title VI question. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in federally funded institutions, and almost every university in the land falls under this rubric. Legal analysts predict that there will be a spate of Title VI lawsuits. The hostile-environment issue is the one to watch; the Jewish community’s traditional commitment to freedom of expression will be under challenge.
What ought be done on campus? Most analysts suggest that education is the key, especially education that makes the case that Israel is not an apartheid state. Also important is strengthening the traditional alliances and coalitions in opposition to BDS and other anti-Israel.
At bottom, there are many voices in the Jewish community that suggest that it is not BDS that threatens Israel; it is Israeli policies (or lack thereof) in the West that enable those who advocate BDS to have a life.
In the words of a senior Jewish communal professional, “It would be nice if Israel were to do a few things.”
Jerome Chanes, a regular contributor, is the author of four books on Jewish public affairs and history. He is a fellow at the Center for Jewish of the CUNY Graduate Center and teaches in the City University system.
Spiritual Innovation at HUC
Technology to enhance the worship experience. An app to create LGBT Shabbat dinners in Brooklyn. A multi-lingual online journal and more.
Read More Spiritual Innovation at HUC
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Winners of Hebrew Union College’s Jewish entrepreneurialism fellowships. At left is HUC’s dean, Rabbi Shirley Idelson.
Spiritual Innovation at HUC
A program to use technology to enhance the worship experience. A social networking app to create LGBT Shabbat dinners in Brooklyn. A multi-lingual online journal for “progressive Jews around the world.” A “blessing resource” for use at hospital bedsides.
Those are among the innovative spiritual ideas spawned by the “Be Wise Fellowship in Jewish Entrepreneurialism” program, now in its third year under the auspices of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
The fellowship, created to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’s Jewish Institute of Religion (which merged with Hebrew Union College into HUC-JIR in 1950), encourages students at the school “to bring a spirit of innovation and creativity to campus,” to design activities that can spread a traditional message of religion in non-traditional, edgy forms.
The fellowship, led by Rabbi Peter Rubinstein, former spiritual leader of Central Synagogue in Manhattan and now director of the 92nd Street Y’s Bronfman Center for Jewish Life, has given 21 seed grants since 2012.
Among this year’s recipients are Nicole Armenta Auerbach, whose “Two Minutes of Torah” trains HUC students and faculty to produce “engaging two-minute ‘sermons’ for distribution through social media,” and Danny Moss and Caryn Roman’s “Neighborhood Project,” which encourages “community-building” in New York City’s Jewishly underserved neighborhoods.
“HUC students are constantly engaged in creating creative divrei Torah for their pulpits, but their Torah is not heard by the wider community,” Auerbach said. “Our Torah does not ‘go viral’ because we are unaccustomed to creating brief, engaging and easily accessible vehicles for our message. My hope would be to create a HUC YouTube channel, which students and professors could use to distribute their videos.”
“Many young adults are choosing to live beyond more-established neighborhoods in Manhattan and northwest Brooklyn, and find themselves in areas of the city that lack liberal Jewish community groups,” Roman said. Her program would let these people, primarily singles and young couples, “connect with Judaism” and “support emerging community leaders” in Brooklyn and Queens. Some activities would be synagogue-based; others, “centered on individuals’ homes or common communal spaces such as a park.”
The entrepreneurialism fellowship gives students “the mentorship as well as material resources they need to pursue their passions,” said Rabbi Shirley Idelson, HUC dean. “We look for proposals that are original and gutsy … [not] duplicative of one another or of extant programs.”
Rabbi Idelson said some fellowship recipients have already received additional funding from other Jewish organizations, and some have incorporated their projects into fieldwork or post-ordination jobs.
Steve Lipman
steve@jewishweek.org
More in the Education Supplement
For Catholic Educators, A Glimpse Of Israel's Diversity more...
Brown Vs. Board Of Education more...
Israeli Unity Through Education more...
Pop Music in Touro Poli Sci Class more...
Incubating An "Innovation Movement" more...
Pouring Over Their Jewish Lessons more more....
Read more at JewishWeek.Com
The Jewish Week
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Todd Shotz, a mentor in the Hebrew Helpers tutorial program, works with bar mitzvah student. Courtesy of Hebrew Helpers
Samara Lipsky, a staff member of the Union for Reform Judaism and an online doctoral student at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, has privately tutored undergraduate psych students for a few years. Last year Lipsky, who graduated from the Ramaz School, a Modern Orthodox institution on the Upper East Side, and has served as a Hebrew teacher at the neighborhood’s Reform Temple Israel, decided to parlay her Jewish background — she branched out into tutoring bar and bat mitzvah students.
“This was my strength,” she says.
Lipsky found her first tutoring match, a girl who will become bat mitzvah later this year, in Lower Manhattan, through a web-based job-finding service. “She’s a very quick learner,” Lipsky says. “We have a lot of fun.”
Lipsky is part of a growing trend in Jewish education, one that tracks the wider story of a burgeoning freelance economy in the country in the years since the Great Recession. According to many observers, more Jewish families than ever are turning to private tutors, instead of traditional synagogue-based religious schools for their children’s bar and bat mitzvah lessons; and more men and women than ever are supplementing their incomes by serving as such tutors.
“It’s definitely on the rise,” said Todd Shotz, founder of Los Angeles-based Hebrew Helpers.
A standard Hebrew school education often “doesn’t work for contemporary families — it pits Hebrew school among competing needs for a student’s free time,” said Rabbi Joy Levitt, executive director of the JCC in Manhattan. She is also founder of the Jewish Journey Project, which, in collaboration with local religious schools, coordinates classes “all over the city” in venues that include parks and fitness studios.
Parents “want a really good experience” for their children, “and they don’t see that in traditional Hebrew school formats,” Rabbi Levitt said.
Tutors are particularly effective for families who live in an isolated region, away from a shul or religious school (Skype and teleconferencing technology can also help with this issue), and for special needs children who require the concentrated attention that an individual tutor can provide.
No formal studies are available, but anecdotal evidence indicates that at least scores of men and women are offering their services as private bar-bat mitzvah tutors, an increase over the handful doing this a generation ago.
At the same time, recent decades have witnessed what observers of Jewish education describe as a decrease in both the number of children enrolled in synagogues’ religious schools and the number of teaching jobs available in those schools.
Partly a response to the growing dissatisfaction with students’ experiences at Hebrew schools, partly an example of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Judaism trend among some segments of the Jewish community, partly a reflection of the “gig economy” that has seen an increase in the number of people serving as freelancers, independent contractors or temps, this phenomenon has brought a change both for the teachers and the religious schools.
The number of people doing part-time work “grew to 32 million from just over 20 million between 2001 and 2014, rising to almost 18 percent of all jobs,” The New York Times reported last month.
Private bar and bat mitzvah tutors mark a return to an old tradition.
In the old country, and among new immigrants in this country, boys studying for their bar mitzvah — this was before the introduction of the bat mitzvah ceremony a century ago — a melamed, always a male scholar, often wandering from community to community, would tutor the student in his Haftarah and other requirements for leading a worship service.
This was before synagogues’ religious schools largely took over this job.
Today, a growing number of Jewish families are engaging private tutors, many of whom are women, as an alternative to, or sometimes as a supplement to, the synagogue-based religious school system. With more and more Jews choosing not to affiliate, they see no reason to join a synagogue, and pay steep membership dues, just for the sake of a child’s bar or bat mitzvah; many opt to hold the ceremony and/or celebration offsite.
For people interested in using their training in education and knowledge of Jewish subjects, it means more opportunities to do something they enjoy while supplementing their incomes — tutoring positions often pay better than teaching jobs in religious schools, to observers of Jewish education.
Is the turn-to-tutors trend good for the Jewish community?
“This is a very good thing” if the parents have high expectations for their children’s bar-bat mitzvah training, if they want the ceremony to be “meaningful,” Rabbi Levitt said. have found that students in any subject who learn one-on-one “learn more” than in a classroom setting where students compete with classmates for a teacher’s attention, the rabbi said.
For the religious schools, it has meant a re-examination of how they operate. Many have started to ask themselves what they are doing wrong, why they are losing students, and what they can do better. A growing number of synagogue-based schools, and think tank-type programs, have come up with curricula that are highly experiential, very personalized to the students’ interests, and often include the students’ parents in the learning process.
“Many of them [religious schools] are changing,” adding an emphasis on “Jewish history simulations,” family retreats and Shabbaton programs, said Jonathan Woocher, president of the Lipman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, an independent organization that awards grants to innovative educational projects. He formerly served as chief ideas officer of the now-defunct Jewish Educational Service of North America. “There is more emphasis [on a curriculum] that forces the student to engage with the material.”
At the religious school level, projects such as, and the Union for Reform Judaism’s B’nai Mitzvah Revolution are in place.
“We see that many congregations are working to provide a b’nai mitzvah process that is engaging and transformative both for the learner and his/her family,” Suri Jacknis, associate director for congregational learning of the Jewish Education Project, said in an email interview.
The downside of one-on-one learning?
No interaction with other Jewish students, and less opportunity to become part of a wider Jewish community. “A synagogue offers” by definition “a synagogue community,” said Cyd Weissman, former Innovation in Congregational Learning at JEP, now director of the Reconstructionist Learning Network at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
♦One freelance tutor, Howard Blas, began to sense the of the independent learning trend some 30 years soon after graduating college in St. Louis. At the time, he was working as a Hebrew school teacher, and he would get calls from principals of other synagogue religious schools; they wanted him to work one-on-one with some students “who the school didn’t know what to do with.” His background in social work and special education made him a natural fit.
Now based on the Upper East Side and working as director of the Tikvah Program for adolescents and young adults with disabilities of Camp Ramah in Palmer, Mass., he continues to serve as a private tutor for Jewish students who can’t adjust to a standard religious school setting; many are preparing for the bar and bat mitzvah. He does this at night and on Sundays.
Lee and David Degani, a “transdenominational” couple who live in Boca Raton, (she’s a cantor; he, a rabbi) founded Shirat Shalom (shiratshalom.org), a synagogue without walls, 25 years ago. Almost immediately they began hearing about families with bar-bat-mitzvah-age children who didn’t belong to a congregation, didn’t want to their kids in a traditional religious school, but were looking for someone to serve as a tutor for the religious coming-of-age ceremony.
Previously residents of New Jersey, “we thought everyone belonged to a synagogue,” Cantor Degani said. She and her husband began working with the youngsters, first in the couples’ houses, now mostly through Skype. “Word spread,” she said. “Children kept on coming to us.”
All the tutors who spoke to The Jewish Week said they typically go beyond training students how to read unfamiliar words, as was often the case in earlier bar-bat mitzvah preparations; they teach what the words mean, the concepts behind the haftorah and prayers, as well as related education about Jewish history and holidays.
Most of the families whose students the Deganis tutor are unaffiliated but who become affiliated (annual dues are $300) by joining Shirat Shalom.
Tutors are reluctant to state how much they charge, but said usual hourly rates in the field range between $50 and $200. “People are used to paying for services,” Blas said.
“It would be very difficult for people to make this their [only] job,” he said — but it’s a nice second income.
Todd Shotz, founder of Hebrew Helpers, which offers “mentors” to work with bar-bat mitzvah students in one-on-one sessions or in “cohorts” of a few students, said some of his in-demand tutors can earn $20,000-$40,000 a year.
Robert Schwartz, a resident of Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill section, said that two years ago a friend helped him find a Hebrew Helpers tutor for his son Demitrius’ 2014 bar mitzvah. “It was like meeting a friend every week,” Schwartz said. Both Demitrius, and his parents, learned the meaning of the words he was reciting.
Samara Lipsky said she has been invited to attend the September bat mitzvah of the girl she has been tutoring. She plans to attend – and afterwards, she plans to keep tutoring bar and bat mitzvah students. “I like to make a difference in someone’s life.”
steve@jewishweek.org
BDS: The Legal Fights To Come
BDS has been with us a quarter-century and more, so why the sudden explosion of activism, especially on campuses?
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BDS: The Legal Fights To ComeJerome A. Chanes
Special To The Jewish Week
A sign calling for the boycott of Israeli products in Bethlehem. Getty Images
Everyone, it seems, is in the BDS game these days: Sheldon Adelson, the Presbyterian Church, American universities and their students, national Jewish groups — and, not least, Congress and state legislatures.
The hot spot of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, of course, is the college campus. BDS has been with us a quarter-century and more, so why the sudden explosion of activism, especially on campuses?
The issue has become a worldwide one, with calls from many quarters to “punish” Israel for its alleged misdeeds by boycotting Israeli products and academics, divesting investments and applying a range of sanctions. BDS became a popular technique early in the second intifada, with pro-Palestinian activists musing, “Hey, it worked with apartheid; maybe it will work with Israel!” Academic sanctions against Israel, especially in the U.K., became commonplace. And in America, where a number of mainline Protestant churches have had boycott and divestment on their agendas since the 1980s, there has been in recent years an uptick in activity.
But the main battleground, in 2015, for BDS has been the campus. For one thing, the campus is the most sensitive, and the most visible, of the BDS arenas. For another, the campus is blessed with the burdens of freedom of expression — whatever that means.
One reason for what’s different in 2015 is that there is a right-wing Likud government in Israel, one that is tailor-made to exacerbate an already hot situation. Closer to home is the emergence on campuses of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which has become a vocal, well-organized, highly effective group on many campuses. SJP has focused much of its activity on attracting uninvolved students to BDS activism. The Anti-Defamation League reports that there are only 29 campuses on which there are unusually active SJP groups, but the number is growing. Almost every campus has some sort of BDS activity.
Yet at the same time, in terms of the impact of BDS activity, anti-Israel activity and anti-Semitism — always a complicated relationship — the overwhelming majority of Jewish students on campus feel, and indeed are, secure. It’s important to note that, with all the BDS activity and activism, not one university has adopted a divestment policy. The pattern was established early on, when, in 2002, then-Harvard University President Lawrence Summers was faced with a serious divestment threat by faculty; he said in effect, “Not on my watch!” and declared that BDS is “anti-Semitic in effect if not intent.”
Summers was delivering an important message: Not all BDS activists are anti-Semitic; some may be — but even those who are not are creating a campus climate that may be conducive to anti-Semitism.
This dynamic, of course, suggests the question of the fine line between “anti-Israel” — that is, legitimate criticism of the government of Israel — and “anti-Semitic.” This threshold question is obviously subjective; some have a very low threshold: any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism, or at least motivated by hatred of Jews. For others, anything goes.
My sense is that criticism of the policies of the government of the State of Israel — indeed, harsh criticism — is entirely legitimate. (The discussion within Israel, on a range of policies, is sharp and tough.) The point at which criticism of Israel shades into anti-Semitism is when the legitimacy of Israel, of the Zionist enterprise, is questioned.
One approach to fighting BDS, advocated especially by those who dramatically overstate the problem, is through anti-BDS legislation, and there is a momentum building in that direction.
Such legislation is a complicated matter, and falls into two categories. An example on the federal was a provision in the 2013 trade bill, which provided that, in negotiations on trade with European Union countries, the EU resist boycotts of Israel. Legislation in the states is varied. An Illinois bill, for example, would prohibit investing pension funds in companies that boycott Israel. Other bills would cut off funding to schools that engage in academic boycotts. National Jewish groups, faced with the question of schools losing their funding if they engage in criticism of Israel, have mostly stayed out of this fray.
The legal question on campus, yet to be addressed, is whether BDS will create an environment hostile to Jews. This is a federal Title VI question. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in federally funded institutions, and almost every university in the land falls under this rubric. Legal analysts predict that there will be a spate of Title VI lawsuits. The hostile-environment issue is the one to watch; the Jewish community’s traditional commitment to freedom of expression will be under challenge.
What ought be done on campus? Most analysts suggest that education is the key, especially education that makes the case that Israel is not an apartheid state. Also important is strengthening the traditional alliances and coalitions in opposition to BDS and other anti-Israel.
At bottom, there are many voices in the Jewish community that suggest that it is not BDS that threatens Israel; it is Israeli policies (or lack thereof) in the West that enable those who advocate BDS to have a life.
In the words of a senior Jewish communal professional, “It would be nice if Israel were to do a few things.”
Jerome Chanes, a regular contributor, is the author of four books on Jewish public affairs and history. He is a fellow at the Center for Jewish of the CUNY Graduate Center and teaches in the City University system.
Spiritual Innovation at HUC
Technology to enhance the worship experience. An app to create LGBT Shabbat dinners in Brooklyn. A multi-lingual online journal and more.
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Spiritual Innovation at HUCSteve Lipman
Staff Writer
Winners of Hebrew Union College’s Jewish entrepreneurialism fellowships. At left is HUC’s dean, Rabbi Shirley Idelson.
Spiritual Innovation at HUC
A program to use technology to enhance the worship experience. A social networking app to create LGBT Shabbat dinners in Brooklyn. A multi-lingual online journal for “progressive Jews around the world.” A “blessing resource” for use at hospital bedsides.
Those are among the innovative spiritual ideas spawned by the “Be Wise Fellowship in Jewish Entrepreneurialism” program, now in its third year under the auspices of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
The fellowship, created to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’s Jewish Institute of Religion (which merged with Hebrew Union College into HUC-JIR in 1950), encourages students at the school “to bring a spirit of innovation and creativity to campus,” to design activities that can spread a traditional message of religion in non-traditional, edgy forms.
The fellowship, led by Rabbi Peter Rubinstein, former spiritual leader of Central Synagogue in Manhattan and now director of the 92nd Street Y’s Bronfman Center for Jewish Life, has given 21 seed grants since 2012.
Among this year’s recipients are Nicole Armenta Auerbach, whose “Two Minutes of Torah” trains HUC students and faculty to produce “engaging two-minute ‘sermons’ for distribution through social media,” and Danny Moss and Caryn Roman’s “Neighborhood Project,” which encourages “community-building” in New York City’s Jewishly underserved neighborhoods.
“HUC students are constantly engaged in creating creative divrei Torah for their pulpits, but their Torah is not heard by the wider community,” Auerbach said. “Our Torah does not ‘go viral’ because we are unaccustomed to creating brief, engaging and easily accessible vehicles for our message. My hope would be to create a HUC YouTube channel, which students and professors could use to distribute their videos.”
“Many young adults are choosing to live beyond more-established neighborhoods in Manhattan and northwest Brooklyn, and find themselves in areas of the city that lack liberal Jewish community groups,” Roman said. Her program would let these people, primarily singles and young couples, “connect with Judaism” and “support emerging community leaders” in Brooklyn and Queens. Some activities would be synagogue-based; others, “centered on individuals’ homes or common communal spaces such as a park.”
The entrepreneurialism fellowship gives students “the mentorship as well as material resources they need to pursue their passions,” said Rabbi Shirley Idelson, HUC dean. “We look for proposals that are original and gutsy … [not] duplicative of one another or of extant programs.”
Rabbi Idelson said some fellowship recipients have already received additional funding from other Jewish organizations, and some have incorporated their projects into fieldwork or post-ordination jobs.
Steve Lipman
steve@jewishweek.org
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