It is both obvious and inescapable that it’s been a long year.  For some, the pandemic has forever changed lives: loved ones lost, jobs and financial realities upended, experiences of family, community and school interrupted. Still, others may have emerged relatively uscathed, grateful for good health and fortunate to have been able to survive to a frightening crisis. As the light at the end of our global tunnel grows stronger though, we’re all left with the same question: what’s next? 

When it comes to Jewish education, there are many questions but no obvious answers. Will day school enrollments increase, driven by public school closures over the past year? How will distance learning reshape classrooms and pedagogies? What social-emotional needs will our students carry as they return to our new “normal?” I’m certainly not here to make predictions about the future - but I would like to argue that whatever challenges or opportunities lay ahead must be met with a clear vision of the central goals of Jewish education. 

Why we teach

In his book “Start with Why,” Simon Sineck famously argues that any sustained product or goal must be driven by a clear articulation of why that effort is necessary. And so, the first step as we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic is to revisit the why of Jewish education. 

Let’s be clear: Jewish schools offer a lot to our students. We teach math, science, English and the arts - often at the highest college prep-school levels - and offer a seemingly endless menu of co-curricular activities, from sports teams to debate and robotics clubs. But much of that can be found at other private schools down the block, and, in some communities, at well funded public or charter schools. So why do parents send their kids to Jewish school? What truly differentiates Jewish education from the other options (some less expensive, some similarly priced) available to our communities? Simple: it’s Identity. 

Writing in 2014, Jon Levisohn suggested that we define student identity “in terms of how a person thinks about who she or he is in the world: How do I understand myself? Who do I understand myself to be? What story do I tell myself about myself?” And when it comes to Jewish education, I’d argue that the organizing principle that must drive our work - now as much as ever - is helping students develop answers to these questions. Everything that is taught, every activity that is offered cannot be an end in of itself - instead, our educational system must be designed to foster the development of a robust personal Jewish identity within our students. At its core, the ‘why’ of Jewish education is for our students to define themselves through their learning experiences. 

This is no small task. As Moshe Krakoswski pointed out about Orthodox Jewish schools, “religious schools aim explicitly to acculturate and socialize students; content knowledge is important, but becoming a productive member of Orthodox Jewish society is often administrators’ primary goal.”

Jewish education, then, isn't just about what students know - it’s about how they use knowledge to shape their own self-perceptions, guide their decisions and interact with the world around them. Indeed, in his 2013 study of Jewish schools, Jeffrey Kress made much the same argument:“Jewish educational settings are expected not only to provide knowledge about Judaism, but also to assist in the acculturation of students as participating members of the Jewish community.” 

In short, Kress argues that Jewish education aims to facilitate the development of students’ “cognition, behavior, affect, and attitudes” through learning experiences, relationships with both teachers and peers and community engagement.

This focus on identity, of course, isn’t just a response to pandemic. It’s been the animating goal of Jewish education since our very first day as a people. As the Jews made their way into the desert, charting an unknown path as they escaped the horrors of slavery and persecution, Moses famously commanded that “ve-Higad’ta l’binkha” - “You shall teach your children.” In order to forge a nation, in order to sustain our people, we’ve always needed education. Now and always, we’ve needed to ensure that our children build strong connections to the values of our past. And so, as we face new and emerging questions in the wake of Covid-19, our response must be guided by the foundational goal of Jewish identity development.

How we teach

If the goal of education is not just content knowledge but also identity formation, schools stand at the epicenter of student learning, coping and development in a post-pandemic world. Instructional strategies that help students make meaning of their learning and facilitate their social-emotional growth in the context of the classroom therefore become essential tools of our mission. Rather than school being a factory where knowledge is acquired, it must be a laboratory where information is analyzed, viewpoints are exchanged and meaning is formed. It is the arena in which social relationships, role models, texts, ideas and values intersect, and where students filter and absorb those elements in order to shape their opinions, goals and values about themselves and about the world around them. Whether on Zoom or in person, experiential activities, havruta discussions, project based learning, spirited discussion and personal reflection are all tools of the trade within an identity-focused classroom. 

What we teach

Curricular choices also come into focus if we’re keeping our goals in mind. This is pretty simple: the content of our classes should be geared directly towards fostering student identity. Every lesson, every source, every idea that is taught in our schools needs to be purposeful and meaningful - the days of learning something “because you just need to know it” are long gone. If we are really aiming to develop meaningful commitment within our students, they need to study texts and design curricula that highlight the values we wish to impart. When it comes to Judaic studies, doing this requires an innovative approach to Jewish learning built off of the work of Jerome Bruner. His vision of the “spiralled curriculum” argues for introducing foundational ideas and essential concepts that can then be revisited, reinforced and deepened as students progress across the curriculum. Such a model not only allows for students to develop advanced frameworks for understanding the material, but it also facilitates transfer of classroom content across domains, allowing students to apply the ideas they learn in school to their own lives. At its core, this approach requires a school community to clearly articulate its values and then transmit them to its students through the learning process. 

“Holding Up the Wall”

A veteran Israeli educator once spent an immersive week at my school, shadowing my colleagues and me through classes, co-curriculars, student schmoozes, faculty meetings and even shabbat meals in the community. He marveled at the time and effort that our teachers put into their work, and couldn’t believe the hours - 7am to past 7pm in some cases - that students spent on campus. And as he prepared to leave at the end of the week, he turned to me and said “I figured it out - I figured out why your team works so hard and why your students spend so much time here. You’re holding up the wall for them.” School, he said, “is the epicenter of your students’ Jewish life and identity.” His words were true then, and they’re even more essential now. And as the world emerges from Covid-19, our students will need a strong and supportive wall to hold them up more than ever.