Yeshiva University
How wonderfully refreshing to be invited to provide advice as a foundation to spend twenty million dollars annually. And in the Jewish education! Those of us to invest our energies moving Jewish hope of life in an institution and its leadership that has focus and is brave enough to ask questions challenging. I spent most of my life involved, professionally and as a volunteer in most aspects of Jewish Education, formal and informal. My term as president of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life has given me something of an overview of both our people and their needs as well as young people and their dreams. My term of office at the University Yeshiva gave me yet another perspective confirmation. I firmly believe that this is a time when being Jewish has become an option, not a condition. After generations of our identity to be determined as much by a world of exclusion as a proud be people, most of Western society today welcomes the Jew in mainstream culture. How do we address the effects of assimilation, it is clear that nobody is obliged to be Jewish. Actually, we had a very significant influence on aspects of popular culture ways that in so many contemporary life is ours. In a welcoming society and assimilationist, the totems and taboos of the past of Judaism does not loom large. Anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Israel, images, sounds and smells districts of Eastern Europe are no longer rooted parts of Jews "beings. I strongly believe that the feelings Jews or Jewish feeling, which was once called the "Pintel Yid" does not transmit generationally. In fact, Judaism is not an option for a condition. Only if there is a reason for the exercise of that option will pick a Jew. But I know that Judaism is much more than images and sounds, tastes and touches. He transcends tribal. We are a people of history and destiny, of pride and purpose, and therefore the alliance, and the community. But it is clear to me that these riches are not accessible through the catechism or visits with grandparents or with simple aphorisms. In a society elective, in order to "choose the Jews," our children have to be Jewishly literate and more, has to be experienced Jewishly. Put simply, they should know their history, and they have their own history. Without basic literacy, without the narrative of the family, we are lacking, in addition to being illiterate, we are homeless and without hope. I've seen in my years of Hillel that, finally, we have a common history of speaking, thinking about, and to build upon. However, knowing the history is necessary but not sufficient. We also need its own history, feel it, the experience of Jews, individually and collectively, to celebrate our existence. As the Torah says "v'laasot Lishmor" - "to learn and do" - we have to teach learning and doing. We are a nation of text and context. Therefore, non-formal and informal education, textual and contextual exposure to Jewish learning and is the essence of education.
It is the ticket for a Jewish journey. Community of Israel, customs, philosophy, practice - all are contingent on knowing the history and owns history. I believe our task as educators is not to be diverted by contemporary fashion for the post - modern views of identity. From a simple and clear, as we as a people, estimated to provide our children with education, we must provide our children with Jewish education. And Jewish education should be experiential and textual, which should be more than another matter. Our people are rebellious and fractured - there are threats to the Jewish future that are existential and schismatic. Many can be resolved, if at all, only during the passage of time, with solutions beyond my knowledge. But this I know: we have no hope for the sustainability of our people and be our opportunity to influence the world will come from a common commitment to make our children want to know and their own Jewishness. This is the great challenge of today. And that is the great opportunity that Jim Joseph, of blessed memory, who presented. With my bias Jewish education thus established, I am happy to share these thoughts as I with the Foundation. The Foundation's fundamental choices only he can do about how to choose the focus. He must also decide whether to be an operational base or a source of funding, or a combination of both. I can not presume to advise you on the decision. I know there are many talented professionals and institutions deeply invested in various realms of formal and informal Jewish education. They would be reinforced by a serious support resources. They also need to be in an environment where the community reinforces the imperative of Jewish education as the sine qua non of survival deliberate. And we all need to be performed with the standards and develop tools for measuring success. In terms of operating principles, I urge the Foundation to follow some basic rules: • Keep your partner - simple with its grant recipients, they do not jump through hoops. The work is very important, the resources and time very precious. • Encourage investment in being successful. • Housing subsidies so that they can have a lasting impact. • Trumpet the successes. • Develop the brand so that an investment Jim Joseph, who represents the quality of Jewish life should require. • The Foundation must stay for the proposition that Jewish education requires text and context, both formal and informal education, information and experience • The Foundation should be seen as an asset and a resource across the spectrum of the Jewish community. I suggest that offers five categories of initiatives: 1. Encourage the profession of Jewish education, 2. Challenge of developing programs of Jewish education for local initiatives; 3. Investing in training institutions; 4. Preserve and strengthen existing educational successes of the program, and, 5. Encourage the advancement of knowledge and research in Jewish education, I have arbitrarily on budget figures for each initiative.
Clearly, the Foundation would develop realistic budgets. 1. Encouraging Profession - $ 6 million I believe that a number of factors, particular and general, make the time ripe time to attract the best and brightest to the profession of education. Young people are looking for meaning in careers, if they think they can respect, and have a life of dignity that will train and enter the field. Even if you find ways to deal with the crisis of class, we must ensure that educators have quality across the board that can provide excellence. While the issues of teachers' salaries, are a challenge for each community to meet, the Foundation can encourage the field encouraging Jewish Educational career. I suggest the Foundation publicly commit a substantial amount of its resources to encourage young people to enter the field of formal education and / or informal education. This could take the form of a mortgage fund for educators to buy homes at heavily subsidized prices, the mortgage forgiveness programs based on years of service. Alternatively, the Foundation could support a program that would forgive the cost of their education or training related to the duration of the mandate. A capital fund to encourage the serious continuing professional education, or something similar, would make a powerful statement to young professionals. 2. Challenging the Local Institutional Development Program - $ 5 million in local, I would suggest to the Foundation to create a national fund for local institutions - schools, preschools, camps, youth programs - to receive two or three years grants to develop their own initiatives, with the incentive of getting funding for the endowment program on establishment success. As an example, if a school day or school network the day I would like to retreat model programs for high school students (or families) that could contextualize their learning, the Foundation would provide funding for research and development and deployment of a few years, if successful, a donation would be offered to make the program permanent. This would encourage local initiatives and creativity, it would diffuse existing resources, and could deepen the educational experience. The Foundation will have to decide whether he would develop in house consultants or a pool of consultants who could work with the recipients. Certainly, one hopes would be that the programs could be replicated elsewhere.
- Investing in training institutions - U.S. $ 5 million There is a wealth of ideas to expand the work of many institutions of quality education in the Jewish community. Foundation investment in developing new initiatives result, through multi-year grants and donations, would be invaluable to those bodies in both these institutions for training new professionals in contemporary professional education and being of assistance to the local schools. For example, certification programs can be developed to train camp counselors, youth advisers, etc.. Also, perhaps more fundamentally, we must strengthen the capacity of training institutions to develop and teach a generation of leadership - both lay and professional, and impact on local education these students of the institutions of purpose and passion - and our lay kodesh Klei - should be empowered and given the tools to lead. 4. The partnership with Global successes - $ 2 million there are some clear Jewish educational success in our community. They include the Wexner Heritage Program, Wexner Graduate School, Campus Hillel of service, and Birthright. The Foundation can partner with any of these to expand them and increase their impact. For example, many of us are convinced that Birthright is an important Jewish journey. We are also convinced that effective, personal monitoring is necessary to truly capitalize on the investment Birthright. The Foundation may choose to have an important effect in this area in partnership with Birthright to train and build a framework for campus-based follow-Birthright professionals who work with students to connect them to ongoing Jewish growth plans. Or the Foundation can offer $ 5000 scholarships for students that Birthright would begin to participate in programs of long-term Israel proper education. A million dollars a year would allow 200 participants significantly in the construction of Birthright. Another example would be a partnership with the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE) annually to launch niche programs to be modeled on CAJE conferences, providing educators with the school with additional resources to develop a common annual project in all its schools . 5. Encouraging New Ideas and Educational Technology - $ 2 million I think it is critical to the Foundation to support the continuous development of ideas and research in Jewish education. For example, the Foundation could commit to ten years of $ 100,000 annually for major academic conferences on Jewish education, encouraging research and writing by scholars and educators in several disciplines of Jewish education. Serious conferences on pre-school, camping, school curricula, learning processes, Israel education and the like would be very educational format. Alternatively, these funds could provide a visiting professor for education specialists.
Within the item described here, the Foundation can make several statements visible: 1. She wants to encourage young people to build careers as educators. 2. Strengthens extensive creative programming in a set of local institutions. 3. The aim is to strengthen and expand the training institutions. 4. It partners with educational programs worldwide success. 5. It advances research and development of new ideas and technology education. More importantly, a commitment of this magnitude significantly strengthens the culture of investment in Jewish education and be able to trumpet our successes there. It is also an affirmation of the importance of investment in human capital, and not bricks and mortar. In doing so, it's important that the name "Jim Joseph Foundation will be visibly marked as a benchmark of quality. Each of these initiatives could have a team or advisory panel of experts, teachers, lay leaders and philanthropists to help the Foundation. Finally, a report of the foundation can bring about change and progress. Clearly, there is no magic pill. After all, the house is the biggest driver education. The Jewish Home is reinforced when the Jewish community send messages of up and real education, text and context, knowing the history and owns the story, are accessible and valuable, and provide answers of purpose, meaning and community in a world desperate search of values
