Education >> Early Childhood Education >> Shiurim >> Archive >> August 2008

Shiurim

USCJ EC Staff Meeting Shiur - August 2008

Cut off from a living and vital Jewish community, Jewish education is meaningless talk with little connection to values, culture, or purpose. Great synagogues must be a central component in any effort to fill our day schools as part of a general revitalization of Jewish life.

- Barry Shrage, “Jewish Renaissance: A Broad Vision for the Next Decade,” in 10 Years of Believing in Jewish Day School Education, Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE), 2007.*

Questions for Discussion:

  1. How does the Jewish education you provide to your children and families create a connection with the community? How else could it?
  2. What path has your own Jewish education taken? What would you like to learn more about? Where could you go to make this happen?
  3. Teach a child in the way he should go, and he will not stray from it even when he gets older (Proverbs 22:6). While this sentiment from Proverbs is lovely, sometimes the investment you have made in your students’ Jewish education needs some protection if it is to grow instead of withering away. What do you envision as ideal paths for your children (and their families)? What do you know about the options available in your community for Jewish education once your children leave the early childhood program? How can you start to pave these paths now?
  4. At the PEJE conference in April 2008, day school leaders struggled with how best to connect with Jewish early childhood programs. They heard the message that it’s not ok just to send the admissions director in to “get the list,” but that they must form real, mutually supportive relationships, beginning with the head of school and the early childhood director. Before you recommend the synagogue’s religious school or any local day schools to your children’s parents, what do you want from a relationship with those schools? What do you need to know about those programs? What resources can they provide for your school? What can your school do for them?

*You can read this entire article here, pp.9-14.

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Maxine Segal Handelman
Consultant for Early Childhood Education,
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism

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