Reinventing Education for the Digital Age

Education — truth — has come to depend on the context, as our illustrious university presidents would put it. Just as depoliticized journalism so rarely exists, depoliticized education — facts, objectivity, critical thinking — has virtually disappeared.

Reading is also passe. Twitter/X may have expanded its character limit, but the damage has been done: Reading more than 10 words is so last century. What started as the Information Age has devolved into the Disinformation Age, and as we saw well before Oct. 7th, lies about Israel trend faster than an Elon Musk post. 

Enter OpenDor Media. In 2020, Jerusalem U rebranded into a multi-dimensional media company geared to address not just the lies but to teach — Jewish/Israeli history, Jewish identity, and Judaism — to young people today. “For the first time in history, we can reach anyone, anywhere,” says Executive Vice President Noam Weissman. “Media is the universal language of our generation.” The target audience is 18- to 34-year-olds. 

Dor means “generation” in Hebrew. How to reach the next generation — who are growing up with blatant antisemitism, both online and off — in a powerful yet nuanced way? How to inspire the next generation through stories, values, and ideas? This is the OpenDor mission: “To strengthen the understanding and enduring personal connection of all young Jews and their peers to Judaism, Israel, and the Jewish people, and to address the challenges young Jews face today.” 

Today’s teens use their phones an average of almost nine hours each day; more than half get their news from social media. “OpenDor Media’s approach is a simple one: To create great content that educates and motivates, that informs and inspires in a language young people can relate to,” CEO Andrew Savage said. “This a campaign of education,” Weissman says, “not one-liners or memes.” 

“When media drives education, we should be worried about what they will find,” the OpenDor site states. Indeed. Activist education today begins in kindergarten. Millennial teachers “teach” kids their personal opinions, often influenced by neo-Marxist ideology. Despite the fact that nearly all of our families emigrated to America fleeing persecution, arriving with virtually nothing, millennial teachers make a point of calling Jews “oppressors” and “privileged.”

While OpenDor is just beginning to provide teachers with facts, most of the focus thus far has been to inform students through YouTube, podcasts, and film.

While OpenDor is just beginning to provide teachers with facts, most of the focus thus far has been to inform students through YouTube, podcasts, and film. “Success in algorithmic media is often driven by being louder and angrier than everyone else. We are successfully bucking that trend by taking a bet on people’s yearning for understanding and to be understood,”  Savage said. “At OpenDor Media we leverage the digital universe to inspire exploration of Judaism and Israel in new and transformative ways.”

“We are Davids to Al Jazeera’s Goliath,” says Weissman. And we know how that story ended.

OpenDor’s main YouTube channel, Unpacked, has 224,000 subscribers. Compared with Al Jazeera’s English channel alone — 1.8 million subscribers — they’re not even close. But that’s part of our history too. “We are Davids to Al Jazeera’s Goliath,” says Weissman. And we know how that story ended.

Oct. 7

A few days after Oct. 7, Weissman created the video “Hamas-Israel War Has Changed Everything.” He spoke about how a massacre against civilians is not about moral equivalency; it’s about “moral clarity.” “Hamas forgot that the Jewish people will stand together,” Weissman said. “The Jewish people are eternal: Netzach Yisrael lo yishaker.”

Soon after, OpenDor created an Israel at War section. “In the weeks immediately after Oct. 7th millions of people turned to us as a credible source to understand not just what was happening but make sense of why it was happening, and what this all means,” Savage said.

OpenDor’s Unpacked for Educators division collated and curated content about the war, making it accessible to schools, both in the classroom and on every social media platform. “War is always complicated,” Weissman said. “We must bring context and nuance in ways that students can digest. That battle is no less important.”

The site now offers more than 300 videos, articles, and podcasts covering the hardest, most complex topics that are at the root of understanding this war — what led up to it and what it means for the future of Israel and the Jewish world.

The site now offers more than 300 videos, articles, and podcasts covering the hardest, most complex topics that are at the root of understanding this war — what led up to it and what it means for the future of Israel and the Jewish world.

In the first video Unpacked has posted about the Oct. 7th attack, Yirmiyahu Danzig considers the question “How Did Hamas’ Attack Change Israel?”  Quoting Bob Marley —“You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice” — he talked about how the war has brought out the “best of Jewish/Israeli society: this global outpouring of unity, generosity, resilience and strength.” The resilience and strength of Holocaust survivors is “encoded in our DNA.” 

The war has also bridged divides, both religious and ethnic. “Hamas made a point of murdering Israeli Arabs, who they see as traitors. But during a war there are no Arabs; there are no Jews. There are only Israelis.” 

“It’s the love between family,” Danzig said. “This is the secret to our survival.” Danzig spoke about baby girl Be’eri, born five days after the massacre, as a symbol of rebirth. “Choosing life — there is no better example of defiance.” 

Other videos include: “Does Israel Commit War Crimes?” “Why Israel Must Destroy Hamas” “What is Hezbollah?” “History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” “Should the IDF be Held to a Higher Moral Standard?” and “Does Israel Act as an Apartheid State?”

On Oct. 17, Weissman spoke to an audience of 800 students at Horace Mann School, in Riverdale, New York. As any NYC parent will tell you, this is a huge deal.

The team also set up speaking engagements and Zoom calls at various schools. On Oct. 17, Weissman spoke to an audience of 800 students at Horace Mann School, in Riverdale, New York. As any NYC parent will tell you, this is a huge deal.

Dr. Tom Kelly, Mann’s head of school, reached out to Weissman after an alum heard a talk he had given. “Dr. Kelly listened to ‘Unpacking Israeli History’ and checked out our YouTube content and asked me to be their scholar-in-residence, representing OpenDor Media regarding the topics of antisemitism and Zionism education,” Weissman said. “To quote something Dr. Kelly said to me, ‘I don’t want to put a band-aid on a wound that needs stitches.’ Since then, we have been meeting with their administration and faculty to discuss how to cultivate healthy dialogue amongst differences, and we are working on sessions for the school, teaching about Zionism, antisemitism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Weissman talked with the students about social media and the influence it is having on how we think about the conflict, offering ideas on how to think about viewpoint diversity as it pertains to such complicated and complex ideas. 

“The students wanted to know if TikTok should be banned or utilized,” Weissman told me. They asked how to make sure they can make positive changes in these areas; how to persuade others if the other is not interested in being persuaded, and they wanted to know when something should be allowed to be discussed and when it is beyond the pale.

“I was quite moved by how thoughtful the students were and how genuinely open they were,” he added.

Weissman was also recently interviewed by Katie Couric. I was impressed by how Weissman handled Couric’s often inane questions — she even quoted Jimmy Carter on Israel. “Zionism means restoring dignity to the Jewish people,” Weissman calmly told her, modeling precisely that.

OpenDor has three main divisions: Unpacked, Unpacked for Educators, and Amplified. “Over the years we understood that leveraging digital media and digital learning was essential for the future of Jewish education, Israel education, and engaging young people,” Weissman said. 

Unpacked

OpenDor has three main divisions: Unpacked, Unpacked for Educators, and Amplified. “Over the years we understood that leveraging digital media and digital learning was essential for the future of Jewish education, Israel education, and engaging young people,” Weissman said. 

Unpacked creates and distributes videos, podcasts, and articles across media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok (@jewishunpacked). In 2023 Unpacked videos had 15.9 million views; their most successful podcast, “Unpacking Israeli History,” has had more than 1 million episode downloads and consistently ranks as the #1 trending Jewish podcast.

In February 2023 Noah Shufutinsky, a musician who performs as Westside Gravy, created one of their most successful videos, “Unsafe Spaces,” which focuses on antisemitism on the left. “I have lost friends because I am a proud Jew,” Shufutinsky said. The young women in the video are smart; in fact, the young women in all of Unpacked’s videos are smart. It’s sad that I even have to say that, but most nonprofits today no longer care about whether they hire smart women — it’s all about how well the women can fabricate selfies or how much skin they’re willing to show. For this alone, every young woman should be following Unpacked.

Unpacked for Educators creates extensive educational resources for classroom teachers and informal educators to use in any educational setting. Those resources include lesson plans, suggested discussion topics, and further reading materials that supplement the Unpacked videos. More than 8,500 educators globally are now using these resources. They work extensively with hundreds of schools across the world, of all denominations, to enrich their educational offering on all topics relating to Israel and Jewish identity, history, and culture.

Amplified

OpenDor launched Amplified in 2023 to magnify the voices of other Jewish and Israel content creators and to make sure they have the tools to teach about Israel, Zionism, and Judaism. Amplified is committed to building and strengthening a community of creators so they can successfully inspire and educate more audiences about Judaism, Israel, and combating antisemitism. “Our Amplified division is ramping up to support and empower young content creators, amplifying their influence in the dynamic and challenging landscape of Israel awareness,” founder and executive chairman Raphael Shore told me.

Through compelling stories, OpenDor’s award-winning films, screened at hundreds of film festivals, also draw viewers into the world of Israel and Jewish heritage, often providing a transformative experience. “Exodus 91” — about the airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1991 — is “key as it highlights how Israel is very much the opposite of an apartheid state, but at the same time struggles with racial discrimination like any country,” says Weissman. “It humanizes Israel powerfully.”

In 2024 they are planning to work extensively with both private and public schools, to reach people in other languages such as Arabic, French, and Spanish, and to begin to engage with elementary school aged children, “so that we create a seamless pipeline for Israel education from early grades to 12th grade,” Shore said.

“Oct. 7th has not changed our sense of mission or our core strategy,” Savage told me. “Meeting people where they are — both figuratively and literally — with content that educates and inspires remains the essence of our business. What it has done is elevate the sense of urgency to dramatically accelerate our efforts to continue to expand our reach and impact.” 

Controlled passion

I had a dance teacher in college who called great dance “controlled passion.” I haven’t thought about the term in a while, but it aptly describes what OpenDor is doing. Their passion for Judaism and Israel is deep and palpable. But it is presented in such a controlled — elegant — way, it creates a sharp contrast to nearly everything on social media, which can only be described as complete chaos. 

“The central tenet of our educational philosophy — the importance of nuance, context, deep thought, and substance in Jewish education—is one that we believe to be the single most important element of a healthy educational experience that is fundamental to Judaism and a responsibility of Jewish educators and all educators,” Weissman said.  “We believe it is an approach needed now, more than ever, to counter the polarization in our politics, media, and social lives. Every piece of educational content we produce contains multiple perspectives, in an attempt to break through echo chambers by exploring the wide contours of dispute that exist on any given issue. We strive to produce content that is credible and transparent and can be used by all sectors of the population, right, left, or center, and very clearly comes from a proudly Zionist worldview.”

In many ways, they are teaching Generation Z, Millennials, all of us really, how to use social media in general. To think before we post. To add nuance when nuance is needed. To not pretend that an “influencer” knows the facts just because they have billions of followers. To not dehumanize women by only promoting those who are virtually naked. 

OpenDor is a much-needed corrective, an inspiration for anyone wanting to make social media into a positive experience. And for Jews and Israel? We couldn’t ask for a better team to tell our story, our history, truthfully and with dignity.

Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine.