What Makes Jewish “Zoom School” Different? Relationships
By Akiva Berger

Schools have a strong focus, both in mission and in practice, on academics. Acceptance to a top-tier college is seen as a predictor of future success. Since high grades are a precondition for admittance to such an institution, students are naturally incentivized to do well. 

Jewish schools are unique in that they have the added mission of connecting students not only to their future, but to their venerable past. Grades may motivate students to focus on their future. But to inspire the next generation of students to internalize their rich and multifaceted heritage requires strong relationships with role models. Indeed, ongoing research, including some recent findings, have pointed to student-teacher relationships as a key factor in the religious experience and success of Jewish schooling. As Professor Haym Soloveitchik put it, “A way of life is not learned but rather absorbed. Its transmission is mimetic, imbibed from parents and friends, and patterned on conduct regularly observed in home and street, synagogue and school.”

As a result of COVID-19, most schools are now implementing online teaching as a substitute to classroom learning. Relationships are being moved online as schools across the world scramble to create proper guidelines for “Zoom school.”

As part of my research at Tel Aviv University regarding Jewish distance learning, I, along with Dr. Arnon Herskowitz, conducted a study (pre-COVID) comparing teachers’ perceptions of student-teacher relationships in the classroom and online. The teachers in the study taught religious subjects in Orthodox schools both face-to-face and remotely. Teachers were asked to freely select a student they taught face-to-face and a student they taught online. Teachers were then asked the same questions aimed at describing each relationship.

There were three key findings in the study.

The Chosen Student

When asked to choose a student about whom to complete our questionnaire, there was a clear and consistent difference between the students. The students chosen from the online classes were all academically successful, while those chosen for the interview from the face-to-face class were all struggling, either academically or otherwise.

When describing the online students, teachers repeatedly used positive terms such as “intellectual,” “enthusiastic,” “on target,” “never gets discouraged,” and “initiates questions.”

On the other hand, teachers characterized their the face-to-face students using language that conveyed struggle, with descriptions such as “did not bring about the expected outcome, mainly regarding her motivation and cooperation,” “seemingly uninvolved with the course, not engaged,” “not sure that intellectually at that moment in his life he was actually able to […] handle the texts,” “she is really struggling with who she is.”

As we will demonstrate in the coming findings, the reason for this discrepancy stems from the very different avenues of support engendered by online learning and face-to-face learning.

Student First Versus Person First

In describing their relationships with their students, teachers expressed empathy for all of them. However, for online students, their empathy focused mostly on academics and school work, while empathy for the face-to-face student addressed multiple facets of the student’s life.

When describing her relationship with the online students, one teacher said, “She knows that I care, she will always write ‘Thank you for understanding, thank you for caring, thank you for letting me hand something in late, thank you for being so flexible’... I think she knows that I care and that my goal is for her to love class and to learn something.”

The focus there is on empathy and caring based on academics. When describing her face-to-face relationship with a student, however, the same teacher does not limit her descriptions to school work.

Because of our respect for each other, we really cared about each other, we were very close, she could come to me… She was very concerned about a student who was having a really bad relationship with the administrator and she came and talked to me about it.

In both the online and face-to-face instances, the teacher expressed caring and support for her students. However, due to the differences inherent in online and interpersonal student-teacher interactions, there were very different routes of support. The face-to-face route is immersive and touches on the “person” behind the student, while the online route is more focused and touches primarily on the “student” aspect of the person.

What Moodle Can’t Measure

Online learning technologies, like Moodle, are not structured to assess or facilitate student-teacher relationships. These mediums are designed for academics. The technology used to support the online courses and monitor online students’ progress may yield positive results for the academic goals of both teachers and students in promoting transparency, for example, but it fails to support and develop other facets of the student-teacher relationship.

When face-to-face relationships are absent, teachers lose the ability to assess in real time the effectiveness of their teaching; in other words, teachers cannot “read the room.” As one teacher describing her online class put it, “It’s not like in a classroom, where you can say, ‘OK, I see that he’s bored, so I’ll give him something to do.’” Another teacher described the difference as follows:

Wondering if you give the [right] response to students is stronger in face-to-face, because you see the student. [You wonder:] Maybe I could have gone easier on her yesterday, maybe I shouldn’t have gotten angry yesterday. You immediately see the results.

While online learning platforms provide a picture of a student's academic success, face-to-face teaching provides a much greater context through which teachers can assess, measure and understand a student's success and failure.

I believe there are several practical strategies suggested by these findings.

Keep Students and Teachers Together

This study was conducted on teachers who did not have a prior relationship with their online students other than the one they built online. If Zoom school continues on to next year, schools that have moved to an online format should consider keeping the current teacher with his or her class in order to retain the benefits of the existing student-teacher relationships. Teachers who have a prior relationship may be able to maintain the rapport they have built with their students online and have that more easily translate to their online teaching.

Encourage One-On-One (or One-On-Few) Opportunities

The class size in this study ranged between 8-15 students per class. Teachers teaching a student one-on-one, even online, report strong relationships with students outside of the subject matter. This implies that the academically driven relationship found in our study is contextual and can be overcome by smaller teacher-student ratios.

Be Cognizant of the Academically Struggling Students

Teachers should be cognizant of the fact that academically stronger students will more naturally thrive in online settings, while those whose strengths lie in non-academic areas will be challenged to succeed even more than in the traditional classroom setting. The face-to-face classroom is characterized by multiple avenues of communication, verbal and nonverbal, active and inactive, which are all very immediate. Online learning communication tends to be fragmented, focused and formal.

a. Model Non-Academic Avenues of Expression

While it is difficult to increase the frequency of communication, there are some strategies that can enhance the quality of the communication. For example, encouraging nonverbal cues can positively affect student-teacher interactions. Another strategy that has proven to increase online student-teacher relationships is exercising self-disclosure, by sharing opinions of ongoing events or personal habits. This strategy can create an avenue of expression for students who do not communicate academically.

b. Utilize Alternative Spaces

Another means of strengthening relationships between teachers and students is opening multiple spaces other than the virtual classroom where students and teachers can converse in informal groups. In this way, teachers can learn more about their students beyond just their academic achievements while also actually increasing the frequency of their communication and support. Some research has found that such informal settings as Facebook can increase perceived student-teacher relationships in students.

The Mishnah in Pirkei Avot 5:16 states:

All love that depends on a something, when that thing ceases, the love ceases; and all love that does not depend on anything, will never cease.

Online teachers do not lack any of the emotional capacities that face-to-face teachers have, and they are often the same people. Rather, the imbalance between distance-learning relationships and face-to-face relationships is rooted in the modality of instruction. With online learning, the relationship ceases outside of the academic environment. 

Developing a connection to one’s own roots needs to transcend subject matter. A role model holds history, morality and tradition in one hand, and extends the other hand into the future. Not every student can grab that hand with academic inquiry. Schools must strive to engender that independent love the Mishnah speaks of and allow an avenue to it for every student.

As we face the real possibility that schools across the U.S. will not be physically opening in September, we must be proactive in creating the most encouraging and effective models for online teaching, ones that will give every student the ability to thrive and grow, and ensure that no child is forgotten or needlessly struggles. The key to successful Jewish education is relationships, so let us provide teachers with the tools they need to best create those meaningful and lasting relationships online.

Akiva Berger is a doctoral student in the Applied Science Communications Research Group of the Technion and at the Technologies in Education Program at the University of Haifa.

Sometimes what is so obvious to us needs to be restated: Jewish day schools are places of excellence, in ways that the word “education” only begins to cover. Their excellence has never been more apparent than now, during the pandemic of COVID-19. At a time when schools everywhere are struggling to teach, to engage students, and to attend to the stress and mental health challenges of prolonged isolation and confinement, Jewish schools are rising to the fore for their ability to adapt, to persevere, to provide care and support to their students and families.

With all of the uncertainty in the world, it’s therefore a good time to revisit some of the arguments for Jewish schooling, with a special appeal to parents feeling a sense of heightened instability, uncertainty, and anxiety.

1. Jewish day schools show the values, commitment, and practices of Jewish life in action better than any other institution. They model the kinds of communities we hope to foster and develop in the future, ones where Judaism and secular culture, Zionism and patriotism go hand in hand. Communities where we model respect and love for Torah, for others, and for one another. In Jewish schools, stakeholders live our values in action, instead of having “real life” for part of our days and “Jewish life” in others.

2. Jewish day schools are excellent centers of learning that have continued to be excellent under these most trying conditions. Day schools know that education is at the heart of what they offer. While schedules have had to be adjusted and shortened, clubs and sports have shrunk or vanished for now, schools have kept a focus on delivering education in a way that preserves the essence of the program—critical skills, valuable conversations, important knowledge. Whether online or in-person, synchronously or asynchronously, day schools are experts at fostering student reflection and growth, at developing student abilities in ways that spiral and expand year after year.

3. Jewish day schools are communities expert at creating community. Our schools train students to consider themselves as part of a community, starting with the people within the school, and extending to communities far beyond. They inculcate habits of mind and dispositions for action on behalf of others: classmates, teachers, parents; the elderly, the poor, a wide variety of people in need; people who are oppressed and suffering. During this time, they have worked to create new forms of rituals and activities to replace the in-person community-building events that are the neshamah of our schools.

4. Jewish day schools care deeply about each and every student in their midst. They pride themselves that no student “falls between the cracks,” whether a student needs extra support or opportunities for advanced study. They find new forms of assessment and pedagogy to assure that they understand each student’s strengths and challenges.

5. Jewish day schools see their students in their entirety. Teachers, principals, deans, therapists, psychologists, learning specialists—everyone who has meaningful contact with students is part of a team that brings together all the knowledge available, from inside and outside of the classroom, to help inform the school’s plan for a student’s learning and growth. They attend to the intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual needs of students, and celebrate each student for who he or she uniquely is.

6. Jewish day schools are nimble and flexible. We saw this trait in extraordinary fashion through the rapid transition that all Jewish schools made to online learning. But that transition was built upon our schools’ foundations, their philosophies and practices. Jewish schools believe that teaching is a noble profession that requires investment for training and growth; schools and teachers cannot stay in place, deliver the same education, and expect the same results. The willingness to learn, grow, and improve has enabled Jewish schools to stay focused on their mission even during these times of unprecedented upheaval.

7. Jewish day schools plan for the future. While some might draw the lesson now that “The best laid plans…,” it is more accurate to say that the ability of our schools to make plans and to act strategically are what give them their advantage. Through all of the challenges under COVID-19, teams of teachers have collaborated on strategies for effective teaching and learning online; administrators have planned for revisions to school schedules and creative new school rituals, have created structures for professional development this summer and are envisioning multiple scenarios for the fall; boards have drawn scenarios for financial planning and school governance, development directors have found new ways to cultivate funders, admissions directors have created virtual tours and Zoom meetings with prospective families, all while technology directors have worked tirelessly with everyone to ensure that online school is as familiar and smooth as possible.

8. Jewish day schools care for their teachers so that the teachers can care for the students. This has been a time of extraordinary stress for teachers. Some have had to gain comfort and familiarity with online programs for the first time. They have dealt with having to recreate the personal engagement from a distance that was so natural in person. The line between their personal and professional lives, which they cherished and tried to hold firm, is bending and breaking: children and families in the background, extra work and pressure off hours. Schools have done their best to show their teachers appreciation and to give them support they need and deserve. These include everything from gestures of thanks to varieties of support and professional development.

9. Jewish day schools partner with families. Parents have been under burdens most have never seen: overseeing their children’s online studies while working from home—if they have managed to keep their jobs. Parents with younger children are under even greater strain. Schools have worked with families in numerous ways, and financially in particular: increasing their financial aid budget substantially, providing significant refunds for early childhood education, preparing for discounts in the year ahead for days when the school building needs to be closed.

10. Jewish day schools go many extra miles for their students. Perhaps this has been most evident in the remarkable graduation and moving-up ceremonies seen everywhere: caravans of cars with teachers and administrators stopping in front of each student’s house, floats rented with heads of schools delivering a speech via microphone, parking lot ceremonies, graduation-in-a-box deliveries, taped Pomp-and-Circumstance marches down hallways and driveways—all via Zoom, enabling people near and far the opportunity to celebrate and witness the creativity of day school students and faculty.

Through the strength of their values and commitments, their flexibility, their devotion to the people who teach and learn together, and the remarkable people who work there, Jewish day schools have demonstrated their worth as an invaluable treasure of the Jewish community—now more than ever.

Elliott Rabin is Prizmah's director of thought leadership. He works to promote thought leadership in the field of Jewish day schools, in particular as editor of Prizmah’s magazine, HaYidion. He has taught classes in Jewish studies, Hebrew language and literature, and world literature in universities, JCCs, and synagogues. Elliott holds a PhD in comparative literature, with a specialty in Hebrew, from Indiana University. He is the author of Understanding the Hebrew Bible: A Reader’s Guide and The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility.

“This was so much better than we expected!” The 8th graders reflected on their two weeks of virtual Israel programming that stood in for their IRL Israel tiyyul this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our two-week experience, led by Avi Allali, the Israel tiyyul coordinator, and Elisa Rotman, school social worker, was designed with the two prominent requests from the students and the school’s educational and value-driven goals in mind. The students voiced their desire to have their distance-learning schedule suspended for the time they would have been in Israel, and to have time with their peers (albeit virtually) to bond and hang out. Israel is one of the school’s seven core values:

Through Hebrew language education and immersion in Israeli culture, Solomon Schechter Day School personalizes for its students the American Jewish connection to Israel, instilling a passionate, lasting commitment to, and a sense of responsibility for, the State of Israel. 

The dilemma was to create an engaging and immersive chavayah (experience) that would solidify an emotional connection to Israel and expose the students to a variety of sites, people, and facts about Israel. We wanted the programming to break through the screen with synchronous interactive offerings presented in charismatic and interesting ways. 

The first step was to find a tour guide in Israel willing to play with us and step out of their comfort zone. I reached out to Ami Braun, who had guided my 8th grade students at Kellman Brown Academy a decade earlier. I knew Ami as an energetic, engaging, and fun guide, but he hadn’t worked with this age group for years. His touring schedule halted, and stuck at home due to the pandemic, Ami was willing to try something new. We agreed that he wouldn’t hand us video clips to show the students. Rather, he would prepare a presentation to show the students on Zoom, where he could guide students and answer questions. We added another layer by providing the students with activities to complete while they were in the sessions. One session Ami prepared a  bingo card with key names, places to fill in as he presented. Another day, he sent a scrambled recipe for the students to re-order as Ami and his wife made hummus with the students.

Each day began with Ami guiding in a different location. We even tried for him to “take” the students live to one or two locations, but the connection wasn’t stable enough, and we found it was best to take the hybrid approach of having Ami live while sharing taped videos. Ami enhanced his presentations further by interspersing historic film clips and GoogleEarth live 360 images of the location. Among other locations, the students visited Ir David, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City including the Kotel, Nahal David, and Tzfat. 

My vision was to design the experience as multisensory as possible, adding in music, photography, cooking, and more. We invited Ami Yares, a talented folk musician who performed Israeli music for the students. Ami connected me with a gifted photographer, Udi Goren, who shared his colorful and dynamic presentations of his experiences on the Shvil Yisrael. Our timing was fortunate in that the Prizmah organized session with Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, took place during this week. Other events included student-led games and cook-alongs; meet-ups with peers from Israel and local Schechter alumni; Krav Maga sessions; a talk with the head of Israel baseball. We honored the students’ request by creating a daily “lounge” over lunchtime, an open Zoom managed by Elisa where the students could shmooze and relax. 

On our last day, teachers volunteered to deliver a felafel to each student’s home. As we shared our Israeli lunch together and apart, the students reflected on the virtual experience over the two weeks. Over and over, the students thanked us for putting together the virtual experience and expressed gratitude for creating an experience that was so much more than they thought it was going to be. 

As schools plan for the upcoming academic year, the path of the virus is uncertain, and our experience with pandemics is unprecedented. We are all challenged to forge ahead in multiple directions, yet it is certain students will not be able to participate in the experiential adventures which make our programs unique. How will we create Shabbat experiences when we can’t bring everyone together in our schools or retreat centers? How will students visit historic sites in our cities, neighboring states, and Israel? What outdoor experiences have become traditions in our schools?

This Tuesday, 400 students from North American Jewish Day Schools attended the online event “Private Conversations with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer” hosted by Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools. Ambassador Dermer reached out to Prizmah offering an exclusive conversation for any 8th or 12th-grade student whose Israel trip had been canceled due to COVID-19. 

“He was dynamic, told fabulous stories, and made us feel like we were just hanging out chatting with him, bringing a piece of Israel into our homes at a time when we cannot go to Israel ourselves,” said Rachel Dratch, Associate Director of Educational Innovation at Prizmah.

Students asked about his favorite sports (he likes football, not soccer), his thoughts on the peace process, anti-semitism, Israeli elections, and American political leadership. Sitting in the “Golda” room of the Embassy, next to an Andy Warhol painting of Prime Minister Golda Meir, the ambassador shared how he grew up in Miami, Florida and fell in love with Israel at a young age before making aliya in his 20’s. He passionately described his love of America and how that informs his service in Israel--fighting for shared values of freedom and community. “The stronger we are, the closer to peace we will be. My hope is that Israel continues to be strong and that ultimately all of our Arab neighbors will make peace with us,” said the ambassador.

When asked about lessons he has learned as ambassador, he shared this insight: “Assume good and give others the benefit of the doubt. Just because you disagree with someone doesn't mean that they are a bad person.” He explained that serving as a leader is all about people. “There may be honest disagreements--don't assume the worst about the other side.”  “In Israel, he continued, “They'll argue with each other, but they can also sit down and have a meal together knowing that everyone has served the country- so don’t assume the worst about your political opponents.”

“What a privilege it was to have this special time with the Ambassador,” said one school leader.  Another added, “He conveyed a lot of important information, from the light-hearted to the more serious.”

“It truly is an honor to be able to partner with the Israeli Embassy, and with schools and communities to bring people together and support educational initiatives and projects across North America,” said Rachel Dratch from Prizmah, “we look forward to future partnerships and projects - stay tuned!”

Prizmah is the network for Jewish day schools and yeshivas across North America. We see what’s possible for schools. Together we can achieve it.
 

This article is part of a series representing a partnership between JEIC and Prizmah. It grew out of a collaboration at the 2019 Prizmah Conference, where JEIC ran Listening Booths in which 52 participants shared their dream for Jewish day schools. 

Interview with Rabbi Moshe Margolese
Director of Advancement and Development at Ohr Chadash Academy in Baltimore, MD

Describe what you see in terms of contemporary education in Jewish schools.
Most schools today, including Jewish day schools, place tremendous focus on academics. The students are expected to achieve high academic goals; therefore, a serious environment is required. We want our students to become independent learners, across a range of abilities.

Judaic studies teaching is no different. There are now Judaic standards and benchmarks comparable to general studies. Our classrooms emphasize skill-building, and the learning is often tech-based.

If you walk into schools run well, you will find a Jewish environment that is highly rigorous, academic, with students engaged in their studies; the teachers make sure both to explore subjects in depth and to cover the material expected, many worksheets are distributed, etc. In this environment, student joy can be overlooked.

How do you know when a school is succeeding in infusing learning with simchah? What are the tell-tale signs?
When you go into a school on Rosh Chodesh, or even on erev Shabbat in some schools, you can see and feel the simchah that they have created, through music, singing, dancing. When you walk through the halls of school during the month of Adar, you can see and feel simchah all around you. People in costumes, funny signs hanging on the walls. The schools have been able to highlight specific times throughout the year and infuse the environment with joy and simchah. 

You can see students laughing, staff in a pleasant mood, focusing on the positive around them. There is momentum, a ruach of simchah during these times. You can walk into individual classrooms, seeing students with smiles on their faces deeply engaged in a class lesson. You can see students acting out the parshah chapter that they just learned followed by carryover conversations and laughter. You will see students excited to tell you about what they are learning, just learned, or are about to learn b/c of their excitement about the lesson. Happiness spreads, it’s contagious, and people can’t keep it to themselves—it needs to be shared.

Where do you see schools falling short?
To me, an important aspect of life is simchas hachayyim—the enjoyment of life in all that we’re doing. I believe that simchas hachayyim needs to be deeply embedded in the school, in its environment, its culture—a part of all aspects of school life, including academic.

Would you describe davening and benching in our schools as a time of simchah? Would you describe Judaic classes as a time of simchah? What portion of the eight hours a day that children and staff are in your school is focused on simchah? My guess is almost none, except for the times that we have set aside for that, rosh chodesh, adar, a siyyum. But on a daily basis we keep things very focused and measurable. 

At day schools, everything is planned, thoughtful. The focus is chinuch; schools strive to attain results that are measurable. This level of planning creates a desired level of control, which in turn creates a restrained environment.

I think we are undervaluing how much can be learned while infusing simchah into our learning, within a fun atmosphere. I think we are falling short on wanting to “treat children like adults” and needing a “level of seriousness.” We say, “It’s chinuch, you don’t want them banging on the tables and doing hand motions when they are an adult while bentsching.” “They are talking to Hashem, this is a very serious time.”

In the younger grades, students love learning. Chumash: they make models, play with the material. When they get older, however, things change; classes become more textual, analytical. Is that always necessary? Is there room for what children like and want to do, to make them laugh? Is there room to continue dramatic play, art, games, in middle school?

Childhood is a time to create foundations. If we can create a foundation of simchah, ruach, fun, people will want to keep that in their life. Especially for elementary/middle school, schools need to form an emotional basis upon which the intellectual life will flourish.

And would it be so bad if all of us allowed a little more joy in their life on a daily basis?

What does it take to achieve this?
Infusing learning with joy takes creativity and imagination. It requires working with teachers to ensure that this is part of their pedagogical approach. Often, it requires expanding our teachers’ skill sets, and ensuring that they operate with the permission to teach in a different way. Some teachers are afraid that this approach will take time away from academic learning and harm the expectation of rigorous learning. They need to see that bringing more joy into the classroom can lead to greater student engagement with their subjects, as well as greater student—and teacher—wellbeing. It takes creating new ways of assessing students. It takes shifting stakeholders' expectations. It takes confidence to do something that not everyone else is doing. It takes the willingness to take risks.

Can you share some examples of programs you have tried?
In our school, we use a mix of scheduled and impromptu activities designed to raise student excitement. 

Every time the students come back to school, we plan a special activity. For example, this year our school’s theme is “building and rebuilding education.” At the start of school in September, students were given hardhats when they were greeted back. They wrote their names on Jenga pieces and added it to a large board that said, “We are OCA builders.” This board was displayed for the first few months of school.

During winter break, I made a video of myself dressed as a knight. When students returned, the head of school dressed as a queen, and kids dressed up as royalty; students built castles out of milk crates; the school rented a horse and carriage, and we gave rides to kids and parents. The activity lent the return to school, a time often fraught with anxiety and queasiness, an air of great anticipation. Students wanted to be there, to take part in the fun. They had something exciting to look forward to.

As an example of something unscheduled: A staff member strolled through the halls strumming a guitar and making up songs to random things. The activity gave the students a feeling of something new, unexpected, exciting, and it did not take any time or money. Another activity: we set up a coffee shop in the parking lot one day and handed out coffee to parents who were dropping off students. 

What do such initiatives add?
Little efforts like these add a sense of life to a school, a pulse, passion. They create a place where people want to be. They give a spark to the teachers, a feeling that their work is filled with playfulness, enjoyment, relaxation, that carries over into the classroom. These activities reinforce what we’re about: children. Of course, we’re also about education, but there’s so much more: we’re here 8 hours a day, and that time cannot just be about pounding books. We need to be in touch with our own childhood side; teachers need to have fun for the students to have fun.

For teachers, this requires a delicate balance. They need to set expectations, within which fun can take place. Teachers need to believe that we can make learning come alive while maintaining classroom standards; we can be successful and the class will not fall to chaos. To achieve this balance on a school-wide level requires teamwork and consistency, as modeled by the administration.

What advice do you have for schools that want to elevate the joy in their school?
The culture of a school has to start from the top. Administrators should know what they want the school to feel like. If simchas hachayyim is important, then that should be a quality explicitly desired in candidates.

There are many practical steps that schools can take to set the tone. One is to have people serve as greeters, like at Walmart, giving all students a large smile and a big “hello, nice to see you” when they arrive. Some schools play nice music when kids come in the morning.

It’s important to utilize both planned and unplanned time for imbuing the school with joy. The unexpected brings life to the expected, to the normal rhythms of school life. Students don’t always have to know what’s coming or when. For example, they know something’s happening when they come back to school, but they don’t know exactly what will take place.

Another example: Every Rosh Chodesh, we, as do many schools, come together and play music. This event, designed to break the norm of schooling and to mark the day as special, becomes the norm through repetition. Where can schools find the life source within it? How do you change it up so there’s a spark that fuels their curiosity? There’s a tendency to keep something when we’ve got something good that works—but we need to build on it, put a spin, find new ways to make it meaningful and come alive.

In our elementary division, the student guidance counselor creates a video with a morning message every day. Students from different grades greet everyone, wish people a happy birthday, say a cool fact of the day, read ikarim cards (a positive behavior reinforcement system where teachers fill out a card giving a specific compliment to a student who displays one of OCA’s values), remind everyone to pledge and say Hatikvah. Although this is a major highlight of students’ morning, we found that students got bored of it over time, even though every day different students were featured in the videos. Therefore, to change it up, every once in a while we add music, get a guest speaker, and run family episodes, with parents sending in a clip of them sharing a cool fact of the day.

If you ask people at most Orthodox schools if this is an important aspect, they will tell you it is. Most rebbeim carry a geshmak, a “taste” or sense, for spicing up classroom learning. However, for joy to become a guiding principle of a school, it must go beyond the classroom to encompass the entire school environment. Someone on the leadership must fuel conversations: what are we doing that makes the kids excited, want to come back, want to learn? Just as we are learning to continue to foster creativity within learning as students get older, so too we can continue to encourage simchah as a part of schools.

Is there a deeper goal of this work you’re describing?
For students to feel joy, they need to know that they are loved. The book Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman claims that there are five different ways that people feel love: quality time, writing notes, words of affirmation, acts of service, and physical touch. Each person has a dominant one of those; in relationships, we should know what the other person’s dominant way is.

In school, I’m not sure how much we feel this. Kids we spend time with need to feel love to experience simchas hachayyim. They need to know that no matter how hard of day they’re having, the people in the school love them and care for them.

The book shows that we need to give thought for how individuals want to receive love. For example, we rarely give kids presents in school; some kids would feel appreciated by presents more than others. The same with teacher appreciation. While some would be fine with general gifts, others might prefer a more individualized form of recognition: a card, a laptop, etc. 

If our schools can be places where each student feels known and loved, and the classrooms and hallways are infused with joy, surprise, delight and creativity, then the learning and the Jewish life will be vibrant and meaningful, sparked by student passion.

Yom HaShoah ve-HaGevurah is Israel’s—and by extension the Jewish people’s—day of remembrance and commemoration for those murdered in the Shoah. Most people use the shorthand “Yom HaShoah” and don’t include, or perhaps even know, the second half. This is particularly interesting as the date was selected to fall a week after the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; gevurah, strength or heroism, was clearly on the mind of those who created this national holiday in Israel. 

I too was among those who did not know the full name for many years. Then I discovered the stories of Jewish partisans and the gibborim, the heroes, became a core part of my teaching and my learning. These stories are now an integral part of my curriculum in multiple grades and in my wider teaching to Jewish and non-Jewish audiences about how to inspire upstanders.

It is vitally important that we never forget those who were murdered for no other reason than the facts of their birth. Their lives, cut short by the Nazis and their collaborators, deserve a permanent place in our consciousness. Recalling this dark and unimaginable time in history is absolutely necessary to continue the work of assuring that it does not continue to repeat. Not just for Jews—not for anyone. But while these memories and this commemoration remind us why we must be vigilant, it is the stories of the gevurah that teach us how to be vigilant, how to work together, how to stand up to tyranny and to hatred, to sacrifice for the good of the community, to withstand more than we thought we could and get up and do it again the next day. How to be an upstander even when we just want life to be “normal” again. 

The Ladder of Gevurah
The Bielski Partisans, the Ghetto Fighters of Warsaw, The Jewish Avengers of Vilna—Abba Kovner, Vitka Kempner, Ruzka Korczak and their comrades—these are the big names that come up when we think about the Jewish heroes of the Shoah. But there are countless less well-known stories of men and women who decided “If I was going to die, I was going to die a fighter, not because I was a Jew” (in the words of Sonia Orbuch). 

Some fought back without weapons. The amazing Oneg Shabbat archives that were recovered from the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto are a testament to the wisdom of Emmanuel RIngleblum and his compatriots and of their bravery as well. And the information within the archive shows, in all too real detail, how people lived, and, far too often, died in the Ghetto. Acts of compassion, sacrifice and humanity, alongside “choiceless choices” that no one should ever have to make, show how these Jews dug deep into their reserves of gevurah and kept themselves and others alive as long as they could. It shows how they retained their humanity, their sanity, and their Jewishness in the face of overwhelming hatred and violence. 

The Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (JPEF) has a lesson called “Eight Degrees of Gevurah,” based on Rambam’s Ladder of Tzedakah. This lesson has students learn about how acts of gevurah are like acts of tzedakah and think about what particular acts would be equal to each of the eight rungs of Rambam’s ladder. This equating of the acts of Jews fighting both for their own lives and for the lives of all Jewish people to acts meant to help those with less than us or in difficult circumstances can serve to put the need for armed resistance into perspective. The highest level was embodied by Frank Blaichman, who provided arms and training to young Jews seeking to join partisans in the woods of Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. Partisan groups only took those with a weapon that they knew how to use. Having weapons and training allowed them to form their own groups and not rely on the uncertain welcome of Soviet or Polish partisan groups. 

Tuvia Bielski’s “family camp” allowed 1200+ Jews to walk out of the Naliboki Forest on July 8th 1944. The Bielskis did not know all the people they saved, but those saved all knew that it was Tuvia, and his brothers who were fighting with Soviet partisans, who allowed them to survive. This is step five on the ladder: the recipients know the identity of the giver but not vice versa.

Finding Gevurah in Others, and Ourselves
Today we are all “hunkered down” to some degree or other due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are days, weeks, a month or more (I am on week five) into quarantine or “stay home, stay healthy” confinement in our homes. We are scared. We are facing an “enemy” that we know little about and is easily spread. We don’t know what news or advice to follow. We want to see our friends, our family, our students and colleagues. We face weeks of teaching remotely, questions about the school year and even next year. Our students are stressed and miss their friends, their routines and, though they may be loathe to admit it, their school and teachers. 

How can we use the stories of these Jewish gevurah from the Shoah to help them cope? When I share these stories with my students, they often say, “But I could never do that!” My response is twofold: “God forbid you should ever have to know if you could do that,” and “You won’t know until you have to know what you are truly capable of doing.” 

This pandemic is in no way equivalent to the challenges faced in the Shoah, but for our students it is most likely the first time they have felt truly unsure and scared about the future and about the ability of the adults in their lives to provide assurance and to “fix” things. Having them look around to find the acts of gevurah being performed is a way to have them focus on the good being done and the ways that they too can contribute to making everyone safer. Some examples are the healthcare workers and first responders who are working tirelessly, often without proper personal protective equipment; employees of stores and restaurants working, also often without masks and gloves, to be sure we can all eat and have the other necessities of life; neighbors reaching out to help each other; those shopping and caring for the elderly and infirm; businesses that have swapped out their production lines from making haute couture or just regular clothes to manufacturing masks and gowns for healthcare workers. 

There are many other examples if we all look around (hint: teachers working hard to support their students emotionally and help them continue to learn and be engaged in the wider world). Be sure your students think about things that their family members have perhaps done to help make all the time together more enjoyable and create positive memories in this difficult time. You might have them write them out like the strips included in JPEF’s lesson plan and rank them according to degrees of gevurah. This focus on “the helpers,” as Mr. Roger’s called them, is a good way to reassure your students that positive things are happening and that people are working together to control the spread of COVID-19 and help those who are sick.

The memory of the perished reminds us to continue to work for a better world where anti-Semitism, racism, bigotry, and hatred of any kind have no home. The individual stories of those whose lives were terminated show us what was lost. They prove the Jewish teaching that “to destroy a life is to destroy an entire world” (Sanhedrin 37a). The actions of the gibborim prove the second half of this saying, “to save a life is considered by the Torah to have saved the entire world.” 

Ghetto fighters, partisans and others who took up arms, or pens, or song to fight back against the Nazis were doing so to save the Jewish world. They were choosing to give their likely death meaning and importance, dying a fighter, not just because they were a Jew. Their acts of bravery should inspire us to likewise give our lives meaning and importance by working for the greater good of all humanity. May the memories of all those who perished, along with those who fought and survived and have since passed, be for a continued blessing as we work to inspire our students towards lives of meaning.

Nance Morris Adler is in her 15th year teaching Judaics, Jewish History and Social Studies at The Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle. She is a Museum Teacher Fellow at the USHMM (MTF Cohort 2014) and a Powell Fellow at the Holocaust Center for Humanity in Seattle. She is the lead educator for We are Here! Foundation for Upstanders. 

Jewish day schools across the country have pivoted overnight to transition into virtual learning environments. We feel great pride in the way our schools’ leadership, teachers, families and students have worked together in a massive collaborative enterprise to ensure stability, ongoing education and support in the face of the uncertainty brought upon us through COVID-19.

The beautiful pictures posted on social media and school websites sharing creative ways of engaging students and community convey the impression that we are all feeling a heightened sense of being in this crisis together. It is true that we are showing the best of what our community offers and that indeed together we are stronger. It is also true that there is new learning and different ways of engagement, and in many cases it is really hard. Most of us are overwhelmed by the new normal and are struggling to feel seen.

It is during these intense and vulnerable times, where we ourselves are feeling stretched thin, that we need to create space to hear our children. Let us hear their voices to understand what they need, create space for us to learn how we can do this better and how they can help us help them. Maybe we can even create stronger relationships and help our children feel empowered to be advocates for what they need. 

Inspired by conversations taking place within the Prizmah Reshet, here are four questions for us to reflect on after the Passover holiday and to guide us in shifting our thinking from crisis remote learning to our children's needs. This blog looks closely at our small school, Einstein Academy in Wilmington, Delaware, as we reflect on the past few weeks and imagine what’s possible if we are asking the right questions.

How might this crisis help us understand what really matters, and what will we do differently in school as a result?

Here are the core questions that guided our team’s initial crisis response:

1. What are the key aspects of our school that we need to transfer online to continue delivering our product?
2. What tools should we use to do that?
3. What can we reasonably expect of our students and their families?

Our school showed students how to access Google Calendar and sent them home on Friday, March 13th to look for links to Google Meet classes on Monday, starting with schoolwide tefillah. We rolled out a calendar with three 45-minute blocks and breaks in between, expecting it to be hard for everyone to sit in front of a screen any longer. The personal connection and the sense of community we found by teaching synchronously was affirmed by students and parents alike.

During weeks 2 and 3, we added specials to affirm our commitment to educate the whole child. We switched to Zoom to have better control of who was talking or chatting. We used a fourth 45-minute block for check-ins and to fit in some of those specials. During this time, closures were extended and stay-at-home orders were put in place.

When I had time over Shabbat to reflect on what we were observing from students, I saw their behaviors as symptoms of grief, in line with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s famous five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Some of our students definitely were angry, though they may not have used that language. We found some turning off their video, some playing with anything and everything in their room, and some not coming to class after exhibiting different signs of anxiety about logging on. We heard them, and before the holiday we called to ask how they were and how our experiment was going. As we approached our Passover break, the limits of our approach became clearer.

It turns out that the right questions are less about how to teach virtually and more, in true Passover fashion, about mah nishtanah, what is different? And what does “different” require of us and our children to be successful?

How might we support our students, teachers and families through a process that often feels akin to grief? 

During a Prizmah webinar on how Jewish day schools might think about commemorating the Yoms (Yom Hashoah, Yom HaZikaron, and Yom HaAtzmaut), it became clear that many school leaders were paralleling Kubler-Ross’s stages of bargaining and sadness. We asked many “what if…” questions, such as: What if we focus on Holocaust stories of resilience? What if older students present to others? What if we share a video of the Yom HaZikaron siren in Israel and then examples of the 7:00 pm pots, pans, and honking for healthcare and other frontline workers here? What if we help families celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut in their homes? 

As the conversation stretched out, the bargaining, looking for versions of what we usually have done in our schools, gave way to a gradual recognition of not being able to mark the days the way we want. If we were unprepared to think about end-of-year programs and graduations, we should imagine that our students and parents will feel that loss even more. If the grieving was not obvious before, it will become so relatively soon after we return.

We now have the opportunity to help our communities get to the fifth stage of acceptance. To do so, we are going to have to name the challenges as more than expecting a lot from students and teachers. We are going to have to state explicitly that no matter how talented our teachers are, they cannot make our existing curricula work well without the magic of the classroom. We are also going to have to admit that whatever notions we had for what parents can pull off at home in support of our initial goals is not sustainable. Lastly, we should also be clear that we are not trained grief counselors nor do we specialize in collective trauma, and we need one another and more support more than ever. We need to be thinking about what supports we need in place to sustain us through the next few months and when we return to our physical co-located spaces.

How might we reimagine the way we are gathering to create space for the many losses our students, teachers and families are feeling?

If Week 1 was a metaphorical shivah, where we tried to comfort the bereaved with our presence and with familiar rituals to keep them distracted from the depth of their loss, we can look to Passover as the end of sheloshim. In fact, many have experienced real losses: loved ones or acquaintances, jobs or percentages of salary, on top of the radical change to how we are living and working. Private burial and virtual shivah minyans are not the same as being comforted by the community. Coming out of Passover, everyone’s mourning has been cut short; our grief has had little outlet and lingers. We are now, to extend the metaphor further, in the year of mourning where our joy is muted and where we make room daily to acknowledge our loss. 

Here are four ways our school will make that room for our K-5 students:

1. Students lost those moments of unexpected joy and connection: in the hallway, in the lunchroom, passing notes in class or on the way to the playground (especially if we blocked the chat feature). We will build in social time, pressure-free. After break, we will open our day into Zoom breakout rooms by classroom to allow students to start their day much as they did in school, arriving bit by bit and socializing before school started. Then, we will bring them from their breakout rooms to be together as a school for tefillah, instead of jump-starting the day with everyone all at once.
2. Students are overwhelmed by what they see and hear on a video conference screen. Frankly, group video conferencing is sensory overload for all of us. We will teach skills for coping and for making video conferencing more like a classroom. Students need help to be able to focus on one person, like the teacher. Students also need to learn how to see their peers without being bombarded by all the square screens. We need to guide students to make the most of their independent time when a teacher needs to work with particular student(s).
3. Our students not only lost their classrooms, we have also turned their homes into schoolrooms. We will help students establish safe spaces for learning and scaffold the learning process in a virtual setting. We need to teach them, like we did at the start of the year, our new routines: when should they be sitting at a desk or table? when can they go to “the carpet” or a comfy chair? what about a bed is out-of-bounds? 
4. Our students see us and their peers putting on brave, happy faces, making it hard to open up about any other feelings. We will invite students to share their struggles. We can discuss the Psalms that model asking for help, rather than the focus on praise in Hallel and Ashrei. We can ask them to think about what tools they may have been using to get through this period. We will also be even more intentional in regular, private check-ins with children and families.

How might we create meaning together given our current conditions? 

When we look past the challenges, it turns out that there are many opportunities. When we take standardized testing and overnight field trips off our calendar, we then have room to stretch our curricula, worrying far less about what might have been missed. 

In fact, we can balance that extra time with advancing new goals to match this moment. David Kessler, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s co-author, subsequently added a sixth, lesser-known stage to the grief cycle model, meaning. On the first day of spring break, the faculty met and came up with a way to make room for the challenges ahead and to make meaning for this moment: we are dedicating Fridays to teaching community through internal efforts, external efforts, and skill-building efforts.

Internally, we will make more room for class meetings. We will reinvigorate our buddy system to have older students read with younger students, and we will have classes share their work with each other. We are still exploring more options, and the process is giving us new energy. We look forward to getting student ideas, too.

Externally, we will write letters and work on video conferencing with the seniors at our local Jewish senior facilities. We will write about and share out what we are doing and experiencing, and we will leverage ourselves as a resource to the community.

Skill-building is our hidden opportunity. Part of struggling to look at the screen in a video conference is not understanding the importance of eye-contact. We will take the time to teach how to have a good conversation, how to make a phone call, and how to schedule an online playdate. While we are spending time in our homes, we can teach how to be a good host (for the future), starting with how to clean and the science behind cleaning devices, or even simply how to set a table. There are so many ways we can use being home as the classroom for life, especially a life of community.

Community is just where we started thinking about meaning in this crisis. Being #AloneTogether does not mean that we will never be together. We want to turn our current loss into a chance to have a stronger future.

Now is our chance to ask about our exodus from our buildings. Let us use these four questions to help us acknowledge our loss, make room for our grief, and attempt to make positive meaning for our students and for ourselves.

On Tuesday, nearly 700 school leaders from eleven countries around the world joined Prizmah and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks for a message of inspiration, hope, and courage. In the midst of new realities and the urgent and challenging work schools are doing, we took some time for reflection, wisdom, and for spiritual self-care.

Each day, under the toughest of circumstances, heroic school leaders and educators are strengthening their communities, educating children, and continuing to fulfill our shared vision for a vibrant Jewish future. Caring for each other and for ourselves at this time of enormous pressure must also be a priority. As Rabbi Sacks asked, “Who will give strength to those who give strength to others?”

Rabbi Sacks called teachers the true heroes of Yetziat Mitzrayim/the Exodus from Egypt. Indeed, at this time of so much uncertainty--at a time of such great disconnection and isolation--we feel such gratitude to those who are leading us forward on the journey from slavery to freedom. Teachers know better than anyone, as Rabbi Sacks put it, that “education is the conversation between generations”--that even in virtual classrooms, connections are formed as ideas ignite learning in the ever-developing minds of our children. Visions of freedom and redemption are not hard to find, even over zoom.

“Empower kids to think of creative responses themselves,” said Rabbi Sacks. “It is in the difficult moments that you get the very best from kids by turning them into leaders. They will surprise you.” As we look ahead to Pesach next week, however we gather around our seder table, may we all be privileged to follow the example of the children who give the best of themselves and may we surprise ourselves with our capacity for hope even in these most trying of times.

Chag Kasher V’Sameach.

By just about any measure these are difficult times. We have been forced to acclimate to an unprecedented paradigmatic shift in the way we live, learn, and work in a very short period of time. Many of us are also dealing with the sickness or loss of family/community members, as well as anxieties related to the unpredictability of the road ahead. Under the circumstances, we have responded with inspiring ingenuity, with institutions and communities banding together to share best practices and create spaces for catharsis. Many articles have been written, virtual shiurim given, and memes created about the countless heroic efforts of so many and the spiritual implications of our current reality. Indeed, there is authentic achdut, unity, being birthed by this episode, and there is a collective feeling that we are all in this, and will get through this, together.

But what about when we are on the other side of this?

What lessons will we take with us, and in what ways will we be reoriented for the better?

As we move into Pesach, it is incumbent upon each of us to spend time preparing for the holiday, both logistically and spiritually. The Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, used to say that the more reliable indicator of a devout Jew is not that he/she is shomer Shabbat, rather that he/she is shomer erev Shabbat. This principle, which we share each year with 8th grade HAFTR students before their shabbaton, speaks to the fact that the degree to which something is special correlates to the degree to which we prepare to make it special. 

With this in mind, in just a few days we will engage in the ancient Jewish art of storytelling via the sacred mitzvah vehicle that is the seder. We will relate the timeless story of yetziat mitzrayim and ask the important question: How is this night different from all other nights? However, I believe that this year in particular, given the social backdrop, it is equally important to reflect on the words of The Holistic Haggadah written by Michael Kagan: How am I different on this Passover night? Given our current state of affairs, how can I, in the paraphrased words of Winston Churchill, see the opportunity in this difficulty? 

In her recent editorial, "Now I finally understand what my grandparents knew," Allison Glock reflects on the childhood memories she has of her grandparents doing seemingly mundane activities with great joy.  She says, "I'd watch them play cards, do crosswords, dance together in their cramped living room, taking care not to topple the miniature, boxy television set that was only ever turned on for baseball games."

Ms. Glock posits that the values her grandparents came to prioritize in life were shaped by their upbringing. She says, "My grandfather served in the war. So, too, did everyone he and my grandmother knew. They'd seen death and futility and heroism and loss. They knew what mattered." 

I would humbly suggest that we all have the opportunity to leverage growth from this challenge. Whether we have rediscovered the beauty of taking an afternoon walk with our spouse, the satisfaction of completing a puzzle with our kids, or the calm that can come from gardening (I've heard this is true from others), we all have the opportunity to clarify our priorities and sensitize ourselves to the situations of others. 

It is my hope that we are all able to get back to normal soon, but I also hope that when we do, we don't go back to business as usual.  I hope that our appreciation for each other and our schools, shuls, and community institutions does not diminish.  I hope we make greater efforts to put our phones down when we interact with our children because we know that over 65% of communication is nonverbal (tone of voice, facial expression, body language). I hope that the tremendous strength of the partnership that I have seen between home and school continues, albeit with a different dynamic. 

Ultimately, I hope that each of us asks the questions this Pesach: How am I different? How have I been changed by this challenge?  And the answer is: I saw the opportunity, and I have been changed for the better.