Education for Jewish Endurance

When I ask Jewish grandparents to describe their hopes for their grandchildren, they often say, “I just want them to be Jewish.” When I ask parents about their hopes for those same children, they say some version of “I just want them to be happy” and “I want them to be good people.” More Orthodox or observant families might express a similar hope as “I want them to be religious.” They want their tradition to continue. Both responses usually follow up with some version of wanting those children to grow up to be successful, too.

These hopes are genuine. But in the face of historic headwinds of antisemitism, disinformation, algorithmic media and extremism, “be Jewish,” “be happy” and “be successful” need an upgrade: despite today’s challenges – indeed, to endure today’s challenges – the Jewish community can hope for more and we can achieve more.

For 25 years, I have served as a leader and professor in the Jewish education landscape, observing and intervening, sizing up and strategizing, consulting and creating.  I have watched the organized Jewish community and its funders treat deep Jewish education as a “nice to have,” while complaining of the expense, making bets on the most efficient, scalable measures to achieve the greatest numbers of new participants who feel like they belong. How many of those participants in engagement projects are armed with the wisdom to endure the challenges of today and create the Judaism of tomorrow?

Look at the crises we are living through. We have to stop sprinting toward a quick return that does not last. Jewish history is a series of tests of endurance, and the turbulent 2020s is one of those tests. There is no shortcut to achieve endurance. We Jews have been playing an infinite game for thousands of years and we are still here.

What’s our secret? There is a ma’ayan mitgaber, an ever-flowing well of Jewish wisdom to guide us and inform who we are. We need to hand many more Jews the map to find and drink from that well. How we design and deliver Jewish education is our most important strategy for Jewish endurance.

On a strategic and practical level, as we face sea changes in geopolitics, technology, culture and education, where do we need to course-correct as a community, to achieve our collective hopes and dreams? With humility, knowing that readers may have their own worthy ideas, I offer five issues that I believe demand our attention, to ensure that Jewish education can be an effective tool for Jewish endurance:

1. We debated funding knowledge vs. belonging, and we sacrificed neshama.

When being Jewish was easier, we took Jewish education for granted and didn’t insist it serve a higher purpose. Jewish education does more than instill familiarity with Judaism – it’s about knowing who you are, and being able to tell the story of why. Basic, rote knowledge won’t serve the spiritual and political needs of today’s Jews. Belonging requires a values system that binds people together and makes them feel like their participation matters.   

Day schools have benefited from investment in fits and starts. The organized Jewish community has often opted for easier to scale “engagement” initiatives, which replaced true education as a priority in Jewish life. Success was measured in numbers – how many people show up – instead of measuring learning and growth over time.

Welcoming and belonging are important for building community, but they are not educational outcomes. We need to help people navigate the deep waters of Judaism and teach people to swim, even when the water is too hot or too cold. It’s helpful for humans to get comfortable in the water when they’re young, so they can stay afloat as they get older.

In the tumultuous 2020s, Jewish education has to take responsibility for the resilience of the collective neshama of the Jewish people. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. Insisting on weaving spiritual lessons into our curriculum is essential. There are so many examples of Judaism’s best ideas embedded in the praise of Tehillim (the Book of Psalms), the resilience narratives of Genesis, the Jewish poems from the Golden Age of Spain, the personal stories of grandparents; the list is endless. These texts all contain life lessons that help Jews access what is extraordinary about their tradition and ancestors. “In a place where there is no humanity,” Mishna Avot 2:5 teaches, “strive to be the human you should be.” We have to teach spiritual resistance if we want spiritual resilience.

Wise educators can create “low barriers of entry” without reducing Jewish learning to an intellectually or spiritually lowest common denominator. We don’t need to dumb down or hide the learning to get people to come. We need to offer deeper, delicious bites of Judaism to help Jews learn – and lead authentic Jewish lives.

2. Jewish creativity and curiosity need to be strengthened, not undermined, by the AI revolution.

Jewish history is a story of Jewish creative preservation, adaptation and transformation. Over millennia, when we have faced existential challenges, even when we have suffered monumental tragedies and losses, an endurance “x factor” kicked in. The kind of creativity that enabled Jews to survive forced migrations and renew Jewish culture in multiple host societies is a key Jewish sensibility that we have forgotten to teach. Instead, the culture of contemporary schooling, emphasizing specific outcomes and standardized test metrics of success, disincentivize creative thinking.

Liberal education, no longer true to its liberalism, turned “questioning” into critique instead of curiosity and genuine wonder. Look at today’s college campuses, and you’ll see how “critical thinking,” a mantra of progressive education, became “critique” without “thinking.” Our Jewish schools need to double-down on curiosity and be places where kids learn to think and are inspired to be thoughtful, curious and creative – an important design principle as AI becomes a tool for efficiency.

We need to get back to our tradition of the Passover seder’s four questions and the dialogue around them; the Talmudic debates that quote textual evidence to support arguments; the interpretive imagination of midrash to fill in where the story leaves off. We live in a society where education has become about “doing school” and just trying to get by. But true Jewish education relishes conversation, ideation and wonder.

We are living in extraordinary times. We have to break the mold and offer extraordinary education. What would this look like? Kids need to learn to use AI as a tool for charting a new universe instead of cheating their way through the one they live in. They need to be readers and interpreters of texts, discerners of truth.

But being a motivated discerner of truth is now countercultural. When learners use AI to find information and the first answer offered to them is wrong, a recent study showed that high school kids tend to just give up and lose interest. In a recent study published by the Digital Inquiry Group, Dr. Sam Wineburg, scholar of teaching historical thinking and author of “Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online,” noted that in a study of high school students who were presented with a factually incorrect claim about the Gold Rush by ChatGPT, only 22% of the learners rejected the response. 28% of students believed it was correct and 50% weren’t sure. Not one of 72% of learners who distrusted the response bothered to push back, ask for citations or search elsewhere.

Students need to care enough to correct the machine, to look for the answer, to not accept mediocrity. They also need to care enough to come up with their own interpretation – otherwise we will never generate new knowledge. That care has to be modeled as an expectation in Jewish classrooms. We need to strive for emet, to seek insight and pathways to light and truth. Jews may not endure in a world that shrugs its shoulders at lies and hallucinations; eventually those libels penetrate the social psyche. Jewish education has to be countercultural in the face of apathy. Builders of Jewish Education’s (BJE) team is consulting with several key development efforts in Jewish AI adoption, both in tools to enhance Judaic and Hebrew studies and in teaching students ethical use, discernment of truth and jumpstarting creativity without short-circuiting it. We plan to introduce these efforts to LA schools that want to explore the options with us.

3. We failed to resist a culture that undervalues educators.

Judaism professes in the daily Shema prayer, “you shall teach your children.” “Acquire for yourself a teacher” is the mantra of Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers 1:6. The list of references to the importance of teachers in Jewish tradition is long. Why then, how then, have we failed to prioritize educators as pillars of Jewish civilization? Why are teachers expected to engage in “mesirat nefesh,” essentially, donating their souls for the sake of the community?

The Jewish community is not alone in facing a crisis in the talent pipeline. The executive director of a major association of private schools recently told me that the crisis in leadership, characterized by not enough talent to fill open position coupled with high rates of burnout and departures, has been particularly challenging since COVID and is the primary matter on his agenda to solve.

An additional exacerbating factor in the talent pipeline is parent anxiety and how it is expressed to school leaders and teachers. At BJE’s Retreat for LA day school leaders this past January, and at an evening workshop for parents, preeminent child psychologist Dr. Michael Thompson explained that parents fears and hopes have heavily impacted the workload of educators; managing parents has become a major strain on educators.

Educators need to be supported emotionally and financially. They need incentives to join and stay in the profession. The sea change we are experiencing in the turbulent 2020s is taking a toll and further reducing hopes of finding and elevating new talent in Jewish teaching and leadership.

That’s why BJE launched the LEV Institute for Teaching and Leadership: a premier hub for world-class professional development that cultivates bold, soulful and skillful teaching and educational leadership across our community. Lev means “heart,” reflecting the belief that the heart of Jewish Los Angeles beats through our educators and school leaders. LEV also stands for Learning, Excellence and Values: the principles that guide our work and our investment in those who shape the next generation.

The LEV Institute is built on the belief that the strongest professional learning happens in community. Through partnerships with local schools, educational leaders and nationally recognized experts, LEV brings educators and leaders together to learn from one another while connecting Jewish Los Angeles with world-class ideas, practical strategies, and innovative thinking. Reinforcing the connection between Shema and V’Ahavta – educators are the beating heart of Jewish education and are critical for the kind of relational teaching required to inspire a students’ relationship with Judaism.

Educators are an essential driver of extraordinary education. If we don’t invest in talent, the enterprise of Jewish education will fail.

4. We made an end-run around parents and left them behind.

Educators are not the only adults who need our investment and attention. Jewish schooling is as much about parents as it is about kids. We failed generations of parents by making Jewish education a pediatric enterprise centered only on kids, a consumer good for parents to buy for their children. We set schools up to compete with other schools and activities competing for our kids’ time and attention.

By not addressing parents’ existential needs, we failed them. Jewish parents are unprepared to manage the stress of the stormy 2020s. They are searching on Instagram for answers instead of in books or from rabbis and educators. BJE is partnering with schools on parent-facing seminars and resources because our parents are seekers.

Jewish education isn’t just for kids – we need to include parents and grandparents on the journey. BJE’s new Jewish Family and Teen Learning Institute is designed to address this void in Jewish life, create multi-generational programming that enriches what happens in day schools and religious schools and recenter Judaism in homes across LA. We have launched parent leadership circles for Parent Association presidents in Jewish early childhood centers and elementary schools. JKidLA provides concierge guidance to parents on how to choose a preschool, a day school, camps and various other learning programs and pathways.

In LA, we have many vibrant grandparents who are hip, active, involved and, most of all, beloved. We plan to activate and support them to teach their families and communities, a modern version of the trusted village elders. BJE is launching grandparent salons to guide them to be storytellers, truthtellers and inspiration-weavers.

Parent and grandparent engagement cannot be reduced to outreach, marketing or asking for money. We have to refocus on empowering parents with the tools to live meaningful Jewish lives and contribute constructively to building their Jewish villages. At BJE, we are taking a lesson from Disney. Disney is investing more in their cruises now rather than their theme parks. Why? Because vacations are where memories are made. Jewish vacations are where families connect, talk to one another, slow down and enjoy life. We can send them Jewish travel games and playlists, conversation guides, trivia and scavenger hunts. Jewish education is so much more than school. Participation by parents and grandparents is critical for the success of the Jewish learning enterprise.

5. We underinvested and made Jewish education too expensive.

We have backed ourselves into a Catch-22. Affordability is a major barrier for growing enrollment in Jewish education. But we cannot sacrifice quality – indeed, everyone is crying out for better Jewish education — nor do we want to devalue Jewish education by making it cheaper. In this maze of dead-ends to sustainability that we have created for ourselves, how do we choose which way out to try first?

Birthright modeled a belief in big bets. But one big idea or big bet is not enough. We need lots of them. Strategists and scholars who have studied the history of brokenness in public schools have noted for decades that there is no “one best system” in public education, nor is there a one-size-fits all solution in Jewish education. The Jewish community needs to invest in a variety of educational assets: community schools and niche schools, part-time programs and full-time programs, camp and early childhood. Above all, we need strong villages where these schools, programs and camps are nested – with vibrant multi-generational cultures and family education resources infusing the ecosystem with wisdom.

We need to design and polish the entire educational mosaic in order for the mural of Jewish life to retain its value and timeless beauty. Pitting sectors of the field or individual schools against each other only undermines the ultimate goal, which is to educate as many Jews as possible. One family may have multiple academic, health or social emotional needs not met by a single institution.

BJE’s new Institute for Sustainable Excellence is developing a multipronged strategy which includes encouraging philanthropic investment, accessing government funding, and building new systems to coordinate collaboration across schools to reduce costs. Jewish endurance will require transformative investment in Jewish education, especially the expensive, full-time, dual curricular Jewish private education. We need major investment in the infrastructure of individual schools that demonstrate their value to the community, and we also need a financial invitation to families to participate.

The Birthright generation – the beneficiaries of the original Jewish continuity big bet – are grown up and have children. Their children’s generation needs an invitation to participate and access the wisdom their parents got a taste of on their trip to Israel. The headwinds of antisemitism and decline of Jewish affiliation, coupled with a window of opportunity in the surge in Jewish interest among adults, spells a need for a new Birthright for Babies: savings accounts for every Jewish child to use to try out a Jewish school. Instead of a one-time, first-timer discount like One Happy Camper does for Jewish camp, I propose that every Jewish child receive a savings account that can grow over time and be used to fund their Jewish education.

Building a Lab for Extraordinary Jewish Education in LA

I want to conclude with a love letter to LA. I am a Jewish parent whose life passion and profession is Jewish education. My job – it’s personal. I will always be a rabbi’s daughter from Jersey with at a least chamber of my heart beating in Jerusalem. But after three years at Stanford and two-and-a-half decades in LA (a world that I grew up thinking was just Hollywood and “90210”) and now taking the reins at the independent communal agency responsible for optimizing Jewish education in Los Angeles, I have embraced being an honorary Jewish Angelena.  I fully believe that LA has the creativity, capacity and talent to do anything it wants to do.

I love that LA is alive all year long. We are a vibrant, multigenerational, multilingual, ethnically and religiously diverse Jewish community that is immune to seasonal affective disorder. There is so much possibility in the hills, valleys, flats and beaches.

My husband Jon and I have raised three children in LA. We are fortunate to live in a Jewish village where they are loved and know who they are as Jews; they are surrounded by adults – actual family, friends who are like family, educators, coaches and clergy, who would do anything for them; where the Jewish calendar gives them a hug 365 days and 52 weeks a year; where Jewish food and Shabbat tables nourish them with identity and memories; where their schools have taught them skills, sources, soulful connection, faith and self-awareness; where home is filled with stories, rituals, the mundane routines of life and a place to talk through hopes and fears.

“Dayenu,” the anthem of Passover, doesn’t mean to suggest we can stop after a step or two. It means we feel gratitude for every step when life is a game of endurance. Jewish schools need to resist the 21st-century culture that bubble-wraps kids and tries to make their lives easier; Dayenu is a Jewish spiritual tool for pausing after every step of an arduous journey and saying, “Thank you, Hashem. We did it.” Jewish education has to habituate Jews in a lifestyle of Jewish practice, perspective, interpretation and knowing why each step matters. We take a breath, close our eyes, feel gratitude. Then we reopen them, ready to chart the next step in uncharted territory.

In the nonstop upheaval that continues to characterize life since March 2020, we have learned, each day, to say “Dayenu,” and yet, to keep striving for more. To never give up. Because we are a people who endure. Every single day and minute of my children’s education has not been excellent. (But I’m not convinced that every day at local secular private schools or the best public schools are excellent every day and minute, either. Because life itself is not excellent every day and minute, and we shouldn’t expect schools to be.) My husband and I made choices – to take a mix of extraordinary and ordinary over the constant fruitless pursuit of someone else’s definition of excellence. And overall, there have been enough extraordinary moments and life lessons – created by educators and the school cultures they strive to build every day — that I can say, “Dayenu.” And we keep striving.

If the community commits to investing in our schools, programs and educators, LA can be the laboratory for extraordinary Jewish education. The extraordinary will be defined by a structured, intentionally planned pattern of lessons, experiences and relationships that shape identities, stories, interpretive frames, musical anthems, languages, roots and social networks. Our children will be known for the self-knowledge, commitment, wisdom, courage and care. We have to be willing to aim the extraordinary and for endurance, and nothing less.

Miriam Heller Stern is CEO of BJE: Builders of Jewish Education, the Los Angeles-based independent community agency dedicated to optimizing Jewish education for learners and their families.