From Daniel Miller’s first job as a CPA, he observed the commandment of tithing meticulously, opening a second checking account where he separated and invested 10% of his salary into local nonprofits. He recalls 9th grade at YULA High School in Los Angeles, “The rabbis explained in Ta’anit 9a through use of a pun that the Torah commandment of tithing, עַשֵּׂר תְּעַשֵּׂר aser te-aser means that by tithing, one earns the reward of wealth, עַשֵּׂר בִּשְׁבִיל שֶׁתִּתְעַשֵּׁר aser b’shvil shetitasher. I took the lesson to heart and looked forward to my working career when I could finally put the lesson into action.”

Miller learned about crypto-currency in 2013 and began investing. After receiving an MBA in finance from Northwestern-Kellogg he continued diligently giving, now 20% (chomesh), and watched his portfolio grow. Facing a crypto-currency liquidity event in 2021, his philanthropy budget outgrew the capacity of his traditional non-profit partners. “I put on my consultant hat to consider the largest problem that my tzedakah could impact. I arrived at addressing yeshiva and day school affordability,” Miller said. “This is a very expensive problem that I’ve seen drive people away from the faith and break families apart. It puts the biggest financial burden on the youngest people, which for some is too great to bear.”

With the partnership of the local federation, Miller was able to make major investments in several Jewish day schools in Bergen County to support tuition assistance, capital campaigns, and endowments. “Receiving gifts in crypto-currency is still something new for many non-profits, though it is getting easier thanks to third-party processors. Partnering with the federation greatly helped with the timeline that we needed,” he said.

Miller connected to Prizmah through his federation partners, and had the opportunity to speak at Prizmah’s 2022 Investor Summit. “The event was a place to inspire people to dream bigger,” he said. “I was exposed to North America’s leaders in Jewish day school education and, enabled by Prizmah’s national reach, I got to see impact I didn’t know was possible.” Miller was proud to have made Prizmah’s first crypto currency gift just this year.

As a parent with young children in daycare, Miller credits the determination of people decades ago who founded and funded yeshivas and day schools and sees his role as building on those visionary actions to keep schools strong for the next generation. “One lay leader told me his story. His grandfather benefited from financial assistance to make it possible for him to receive a yeshiva education. That person is now the grandfather of day schoolers. It’s incredible that an initial investment in Jewish day schools almost a century ago yielded returns across five generations and will continue deep into the future.”

Reflecting back on the lesson he learned from the Talmud, Miller remains faithful to the wisdom of the rabbis. “What may have started for selfish reasons—making sure to tithe so that I could gain wealth— created deep meaning in my life and changed me in profound ways. Giving is truly the best investment I can ever make.”

People often marvel about my title at Prizmah, “director of educational innovation.” What does that mean? 

At first, I did not understand the question—isn’t it clear? And then I realized that the question comes from classic Jewish textual training to scan for extra words. Why add “innovation” when that is implied in the word “education”? Doesn’t the process of education require a regular search for new insights, methods, curricula and pedagogies?

Yet for so many of us, the word “education” and especially “Jewish education” is often not connected to the word “innovation.” Somehow, education has become known for its dull, receptive and impersonal drone—think of the teacher in Charlie Brown. This is super strange given our tradition’s emphasis on questions, deep engagement, the priority given to struggle and deep analysis on personal, communal and national levels. When did “innovation” drop from “education”? I am not sure.

But I am excited to let you know this: It is back!

In this issue we highlight ways in which many great educators are engaged in deeply considering how to awaken our students, connect them personally and deeply with their tradition and teach skills that will enable them to own their “mesorah” according to their own paths, way beyond their time in the classroom.

Serving the Judaic administrators and leaders in day schools is one of the greatest joys of my job. I am inspired by them daily and excited about the kinds of work they are developing. In this issue, you can have a taste of just some of the wonderful approaches being created and shared. 

I encourage all of us, parents, educators, professionals and students, to consider what makes us wonder, what makes us engage with our tradition, and why? What experiences make Jewish life and learning coalesce into something radiantly meaningful? Where are the challenges, and how do we not shy away from them but explore them as powerful opportunities to learn and create new understandings?

The educators in these pages want you to ask, they want you to engage and wonder.

After all, at the Seder the whole drama of the evening unfolds as a prompt to get the children to ask. Because asking questions is the key to connection. It turns out that the secret to amazing Jewish education is in the DNA of the Torah: Get them to ask and wonder, and we will live and thrive. 

So, my friends, here is to innovation! May it always be synonymous with “education!”

Why is it that years later we still remember the song listing the 54 parshiot in the Torah, but we can’t remember what we came into the kitchen to get? Why is it that our brains retain and store some information while filtering out others? Is there a way we can intentionally plan and teach so that our students will enduringly retain and store what was taught?

While there is much that science still does not know about brain function, interaction of memory warehouses, and long-term retention, it has successfully identified chemical reactions triggered by sensory input that have the potential to induce long-term potentiation (LTP), the chemical process associated with learning and memory.

How Does Learning Happen?

Let’s quickly review how information enters the brain where it is either attended to, filtered out or retained. We will then explore how neuroscience can inform and drive the curriculum-building process.

Not a science person? That’s okay, me neither, we’ll proceed slowly or skip to item 5.

How can I intentionally teach with higher frequency sensory signals?

What must happen in the classroom that will cause a strong sensory experience, causing the brain to attend, retain, and store the sensory input in the student’s memory, ultimately leading to enduring and impactful learning?

Teaching students in a way that causes them to pause and ask, “Huh, what do I think about that?”

It’s about teaching students in a way that promotes engagement, intrigue, exploration and discovery while providing students with an active and primary role in the process, not just a front-row seat. A classroom that is student-centered and student-driven can arouse a student’s natural curiosity. It’s about propelling students to face challenges and dilemmas, and presenting the material in a way that students start to see their own reflections in the characters’ faces and stories.

As clinical psychologist Dr. Rachel Levine stated, “We either find a way to tap into what is cognitively or emotionally exciting for them, or we lose them.”

What are some examples illustrating what this looks like in the classroom, and how can we intentionally plan for enduring connections using Judaic content?

Below are a few examples demonstrating how to facilitate meaningful (cognitive or emotional) connections within the Judaic studies curriculum.

1. When learning the first two mishnayot in Brachot, lead the students to explore the life-altering reframing of the mitzvah to recite the Shema in the early morning and again at night. Guide the students to uncover that their day’s direction and regulation can be easily influenced and shaped by simply taking the time in the morning and at night to remember what is truly important and primary.
2. Many teachers and students alike find the first chapter of Bamidbar to be dry and technical. What personal relevance and meaning can be found in counting Bnei Yisrael, naming the tribal heads, solidifying the tribes, identifying the army soldiers, delineating the role of the Levites, assigning camping locations and assuring that Bnei Yisrael did as God commanded?
   An intriguing perspective can be uncovered through the lens of adolescent maturation.  The chapter presents Bnei Yisrael in a transitive stage from infancy, having no control over their own choices in Egypt, to adolescents in the desert who are now responsible for their own decisions. In this chapter, God reassures Bnei Yisrael that they have all the necessary tools (Torah), guidance (Moshe, Aharon and the tribal heads), and infrastructure (tribes, camping and army preparations) to succeed during this new transitional stage while experiencing unconditional love (counting, especially of names and not just numbers). This unpacking culminates in the students’ recognition and self-reflection of their own adolescent transition and current struggle.
3. When referencing Tannaim or Amoraim, instead of focusing on when and where they lived, share an interesting and unforgettable story that differentiates them from all the other names and people they are learning about. How striking and memorable are the stories of when Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish first met, and again towards the end of their lives?
4. When teaching Hebrew’s past tense, set it to an upbeat and fun song that the kids love singing repeatedly while allowing for the students to add a dance with hand motions.
5. When teaching Gemara function words, throw them into your conversational speech and make it fun and funny for the students. Nothing like a good mimah nafshakh retort!

The important thing is to ask yourself, will this lesson or activity yield a strong or weak signal? Will the brain retain or filter the input out? These specific examples are not important. What’s important is that you are intentionally planning opportunities for intrigue, humor, exploration, rumination and reflection; giving your students a reason to care and connect.

Zooming out and thinking about the broader curriculum, how can a school design a scope and sequence (or unit plans) that will increase stronger signals and opportunities for impactful learning while decreasing weaker signals and avoiding learning that will be filtered out of the brain?

In other words, how can we intentionally design a curriculum that will optimize our students’ learning experience resulting in the retention and reflection of what is being taught?

I suggest ensuring that you are first working with a healthy, robust, aligned and spiraled curriculum that teaches and reinforces a skill from introduction through mastery (and maintenance). I would then check that the curriculum includes the why: Why are we choosing to expend our valuable and scarce time teaching this unit while skipping others?

The curriculum should then be inspected for items that generate weaker signals relaying to the brain that the information is unimportant or irrelevant information and should therefore be filtered out. Rethink and replace these items with high frequency or repetitive sensory experience that will make a lasting impression on the brain.

Lastly, look at your school’s scope and sequence (or unit plans). Ask yourself, does it:

• Explicitly identify and sequentially track each individual content standard from introduction to mastery?
• Streamline the learning outcomes, ensuring smooth and attainable jumps from component skills to their composite skill?
• Introduce a reasonable number of new skills and content standards, avoiding cognitive overload?
• Contain standards that are developmentally appropriate and attainable for the students?
• Review and spiral prior skills?
• Lead or connect to a skill, standard or understanding that will be meaningful to the students?
• Address the essential question: “Why am I teaching this? To what end?"

When designing a whole school curriculum, it is imperative that large gaps or jumps, cognitive overload, developmentally-inappropriate goals or misalignment are identified and removed. If not, these types of big learning jumps or gaps often present in the classroom as boredom, pushback, confusion, frustration, disengagement, overwhelm or shutdown.

As learning shifts and focuses more on the 21st century learning (i.e. critical thinking, collaboration, creativity), can these skills be intentionally planned for and taught as well?

Yes! If we want these skills to be intentionally taught, then they too must be identified, charted, spiraled, and explicitly communicated. Remember, all learning expectations should be planned, intentional and communicated. (See images below)

For example, are students in your school expected to learn to think critically? To develop and rethink foundational cornerstone understandings and beliefs? To form constructive student skills and habits? To learn differently depending on their learning profile? If these items are not identified and explicitly communicated, how are teachers supposed to know to teach them, exactly what to teach them, when to teach them and to what degree of mastery to expect from them?. The more content standards left to an individual’s discretion, the more likely they will not be learned and retained.

How Important is it that Students are Taught in a Way that Leads to Learning and Retention?

“A life full of unconnected events, of errors that do not lead to any lessons and of emotions without the ability to remember them, is no life at all. Memory is precisely the capacity that allows us to connect experiences, learn and make sense of our lives.” (Eduardo Camina and Francisco Güell, "The Neuroanatomical, Neurophysiological and Psychological Basis of Memory: Current Models and Their Origins.")

Traditional text learning tends to occur sitting around a table, studying in pairs, or as a group. What happens if we get up from the table and study using our bodies? And what if we do that study using circus? 

Yes, I know, what does circus have to do with Jewish life, let alone with studying Bible! We have learned, however, that there are many connections between circus and Judaism (and many Jews involved in circus history!). And we have learned to approach the biblical text using human pyramids, tight-wire, juggling and trapeze to embody the text and learn to think with our bodies together with our minds.

Embodied Learning

Embodied learning is the belief and knowledge that our bodies are capable of making sense of all manner of information, and that relying only on the power of the brain to process information effectively reduces our ability to understand the world by an incalculable factor. How much more could we all learn, process, metabolize and express if we understood the intelligence inherent in our physical beings and the intellectual power our bodies could generate. 

At the Academy for Jewish Religion, a pluralistic rabbinical, cantorial and graduate school, we have spent real time bringing arts into our curriculum, enabling students to use a variety of artistic media to study sacred text. “Sacred Arts” joins and elevates the two foci of our work, sacred text and artistic exploration, so that together they add new sensory experience to the already vast corpus of interpretation Jewish tradition embodies. Our understanding of Sacred Arts is a method in which art forms are used as vehicles to process text. It treats both the text and the art as serious academic disciplines. 

To be clear, this is not art as arts-and-crafts or playtime (although employing art methodologies can be quite fun). And it is not using the text as a jumping-off point to produce art. Rather, it uses the artistic process as a way to understand the text, as a way to study the text. It entails the use of art methodologies as a rigorous discipline.

The Arts as a Means of Processing 

Jewish text communicates on a variety of levels to a variety of students possessing a variety of intelligences. Our method affirms to artists that their ways of understanding are essential, valued, intrinsic and not tangential to their experience of Jewish texts and Jewish life. (This is particularly important in Jewish day schools, where artistic children sometimes feel disenfranchised.) The arts can serve as a means of processing—as important as any other approach to study.

One might think that this work is particularly aimed at kinesthetic learners, or at those for whom art is a primary method of communication. It’s important to recognize, however, that studying through circus works for everyone. Even those of us who love traditional text study, sitting around a table together, benefit in so many ways from studying through circus.

Chiddushim from Circus Exercises 

This mode of study is best understood through examples. As a personal example, I have been studying and teaching the Bible for many decades, and for much of that time I paid very close attention to feminist readings of the Bible. I have spent real time on the wife/sister story in which Abraham passes Sarah, his wife, off as his sister in order to protect himself (Genesis chapters 12 and 20). I had always read this as Abraham being abusive to his wife, Sarah, by putting her in danger and creating a situation where she was taken into Pharaoh’s house to be either potentially or actually subject to sexual violence. 

During a Sacred Arts circus class, I climbed onto a rolla bolla, a board on top of a cylinder where one stands and strives for balance. While standing on the rolla bolla, I then read the wife/sister story again. Because I was feeling unbalanced on the apparatus, and concerned about falling, I was suddenly filled with a new empathy for Abraham. I felt his struggle, his fear, and his pain. This is not to say that Abraham was right in his actions, but this new empathy led to a richness in my reading that had not been there before. A very few minutes on the rolla bolla allowed me a new reading of the text.

Another example occurred at a Jewish education conference where we happened to have a number of parent-child pairings in the group. We were studying the Garden of Eden story (Genesis 3). One of the groups created a pyramid in which a child was leaning on a parent, and then, as part of the plan, the parent needed to step away to move to a different part of the pyramid. This was meant to be representative of God’s role in the story, first being leaned upon, and then moving into a different position in relationship to the humans. 

In our structure, the child was really only leaning on the parent in theory; there was no significant weight on the parent, and yet, when discussing it later, the parent had a difficult time changing positions. She felt uncomfortable moving out of the position of being leaned upon, even though she knew her child would not fall. She sympathized with God’s potential “parental” anxiety in the Divine relationship with Adam and Eve as they emotionally age through the chapters, and where God needed to adjust to a new relationship with the humans. 

Given that there was such a presence of parent-child pairs in the group, this led to a powerful conversation about the roles of parents and children, how to let go, when to let go, etc. We also discussed deeply the relationship of God and the first humans using parent-child imagery. That is a standard reading of the narrative, yet it was one that we had not shared in that group. We came to it purely through embodying the text, not through teaching. It was a very powerful moment for all attending.

Imagine for a minute how your students would react if they felt they were studying Torah while walking a tightwire? If they gained new insight on the book of Ruth while hanging from a trapeze? Yes, it really is as exciting, fun and valuable as it sounds. Our new book, Under One Tent: Circus, Judaism and Bible (edited by Michael Kasper, Ayal Prouser, and me) explores this topic including articles by an international group of educators, scholars, and circus professionals. It explores underlying theory, examples of the use of movement in educational settings ranging from preschool through adult learning, and connections between circus and Jewish life.

Similar work can be done with a variety of art forms including visual arts, writing, storytelling, movement and dance, and music. In our Sacred Arts work using those art forms, we took a similar approach, using the art to process the text, not aiming to create beautiful art or even finished products. This work once again confirms the adage that there is no limit to ways to approach the Bible.

“I felt like I was more spiritual and it was easier for me to pray.” 

“It was really calming and I felt close to God."

“[I felt] enlightened...because I could marvel at God’s creations.” 

These words are not the typical way that Jewish day school middle schoolers talk about tefillah. They are culled from reflection forms after 6th-8th graders at JCDS, Boston’s Jewish Community Day School took part in a pilot program called Makom: Virtual Reality T’fillah. Even at our school, where tefillah is usually quite stirring and ruach-filled, these comments caught my attention.

Though I have spent the past 11 years as madrich ruchani (spiritual educator) at JCDS, my prior career was producing animation at places like MTV and the Cartoon Network. That portion of my career has often provided me with creative fuel and a different lens through which I see possibilities for connection and innovation in Jewish education. A few years ago, virtual reality struck me as a fascinating medium. I was particularly curious about the notion of “presence,” a VR term that describes when our brains are tricked into thinking that we are standing in and experiencing places when we are not actually there.

Changing Location, Changing Prayer 

My work often leads me to conversations loaded with “big questions.” When asking people to think about times they felt connected to God or something bigger than themselves—to recall a spiritual moment—I have found that more often than not, the descriptions involve a wondrous natural location: a beach at sunrise, a mountaintop vista, or being alone in the woods. I started to wonder: How does where we pray affect how we pray? 

This happened to coincide with a sudden change in the accessibility of virtual reality. Prices were coming down, and personal devices for home use were becoming more ubiquitous. An experiment in VR tefillah seemed within reach. JCDS has always encouraged and prided itself on innovation, so in January 2020, we embarked on the project. With the help of a generous grant from the Covenant Foundation, we began building and testing ways to make people feel like they were doing tefillah in beautiful, natural settings all over the world.

Of course, spring of 2020 was a difficult time to launch any project at a school. We did our best to pivot and think creatively, even pulling off contactless delivery of VR headsets to 7th graders. Since returning to in-person school and the lessening of Covid restrictions, we have been able to test our original pilot.

Making Way for Awe

The project has a rather straightforward execution. As part of tefillah, students put on headsets for a few minutes. They choose an inspiring natural location and can “be” there for one of the psalms in Pesukei Dezimra (the preparatory prayers). Then we have them just pause for a moment, giving them a chance to just be wherever they are. Finally, we have them reflect on the experience. We tailored the project by building a custom app for the VR headsets that allows users to choose their location and also toggle on the words of different prayers so that they appear floating by the beach or over a snow-capped range. (See a sample here.)

The somewhat simple process allows us to fast track and generate these moments of spiritual connection that are so often reserved for those special moments in nature. Borrowing a phrase from writer Eric Liu’s book Imagination First, we were trying to “make way for awe.” A recent article in the New York Times reinforced what Jews have known for millennia: A little bit of awe can be very beneficial for our spiritual, emotional, and physical health. 

Giving students these opportunities is not only important for them in the moment, but it also reinforces that we as Jews and Jewish educators place a high value on moments of spiritual connection. It is not only about learning the words of the prayers, or saying them within community. It is also about connecting these words with real, felt emotion. If a $250 headset can help do that, then I think it is a worthwhile investment. After all, when the Rabbis authored these prayers, the intention was to meet God’s world with wonder and inspiration. So what better way to drive that point home.

The two stumbling blocks for us have been around technology and timing. Many of the tech bumps, such as figuring out how to get the virtual worlds and prayer texts on the headsets, have been smoothed out by building and tweaking our app. Figuring out how to best store, charge, and set up the headsets took some trial and error, but now we have clear recommendations for those steps. We are pleased to have landed on a pretty smooth and replicable process. Scheduling has been harder to solve. Finding regular time to use VR that does not take away from existing tefillah learning and practice has been more challenging.

Integrating Awe with Routine 

Where we have currently landed is that we use a rotation of small groups (5-8 students), in a space adjacent to regular middle school tefillah, and have them do their Pesukei Dezimra as VR tefillah. We still feel it is vital for them to reflect on the experience, but we also think it is important to matriculate them back into the “standard” communal tefillah. This helps to reinforce and habituate the sense that spiritual and awe-filled moments are directly linked to tefillah. 

It is important to note that the goal was never to create a praying community made up of students wearing technology. Rather, the goal is to see how their prayer is changed not just with the headsets on, but more importantly, when the headsets are off.

Last year, when I did finally have a chance to take the 7th grade on their TEVA camping trip, we hiked to a gorgeous overlook. After we arrived and put our packs down to take in the space, the students spontaneously started singing Psalm 148, the very one that they had experienced in their headsets. I can’t say that one was directly connected to the other, but I can be sure that these students felt a true connection between prayer and being overpowered by our beautiful natural world.

Oren Kaunfer and JCDS are happy to share the Virtual Reality T’fillah program and curriculum with all who are interested. For more information, click here.