The Seders Four Elements of Creative Education

The Pesach Seder, perhaps the most popular of Jewish rituals, is a visceral and meaningful educational experience.  Maybe this is why it has remained so widely celebrated within the Jewish community. As the professional Jewish community continues to struggle with the most effective ways to keep our tradition vibrant and alive, a task that demands tremendous creativity, we can learn a lot from the Seder itself.  The Seder is a model of creative education, which elicits the kind of experiences and ideas critical for the constant renewal of Jewish life. Here are four core educational elements that the Seder embodies, which echo best practices in todays world of innovative education:

I. Constraints Drive Creativity: Perhaps counter-intuitively, it is only when we are given clear limits and structures that we can be our most creative, innovative selves.

Gross Schechter Day School in Cleveland, Ohio was recently chosen to participate as one of 15 Jewish Day Schools, and one of only two outside of the New York area, in the second year of the Day School Collaboration Network (DSCN).  

DSCN is a joint project of The Jewish Education Project and Upstart Bay Area, made possible by a generous grant from UJA Federation of New York.  This exciting new initiative utilizes Adaptive Leadership and Design Thinking to to create a shift in mind-sets and skill-sets that will lead to new forms of creativity, distributed leadership, and efficacy within and across schools. 

In the DSCN, educators from across the religious spectrum address challenges facing individual schools while working together to bring new models and approaches to the broader field of Jewish day school education. 

A team of four educators from Schechter participated in a two day retreat as part of the schools involvement in the program. The educators included Early Childhood Center director Tracey Bortz, kindergarten teacher Orli Rabkin, fourth grade teacher Donell Newman, and middle school teacher Cheryl Stone. The four spent the retreat working side-by-side with teams from other schools and experts in Design Thinking and Adaptive Leadership.

Dr. Ari Yares, Head of School at Gross Schechter Day School, participated in the inaugural cohort of DSCN during the prior school year. Dr. Yares shared that through the DSCN, we are acquiring new problem solving skills that allow us to tackle challenges and grow stronger by understanding the needs that underlie those challenges.

The Jewish Education Projects Director of Jewish Day School Leadership and Innovation, Rabbi Ed Harwitz, has been involved in the program since its inception. He commented that  The DSCN seeks to become the Silicon Valley of the Jewish day school world,  a real location for creativity and measurable innovation.

Perhaps this year the Jewish community can commit itself to taking professional development to the next level, identifying what it might threaten if it is taken seriously, and learning to tolerate some discomfort, some awkwardness, for the sake of swifter, smoother, healthier movement.

I recently invested in swimming lessons. I love to swim; it is one of my regular ways of exercising. But when an old injury began hurting each time I was in the water, and when my father shared that he'd recently torn a rotator cuff while swimming, I decided that if I am going to continue swimming, I'd better get a few pointers. At first, the lessons were fun I felt like a kid again. Then, I realized something. Each time I was in a lesson, I'd turn, stroke, and kick the way the instructor was teaching me. But each time I swam on my own, I'd revert to my old way of swimming, because it was faster, and more natural. It dawned on me that if I really were going to learn how to swim more efficiently and safely, I would have to endure an unknown period of transition time, during which I felt slow, awkward, and frustrated in the water. Since I've realized this, I've come up with every possible excuse not to swim.

There is often an aspect of loss involved in any change process.

[eJP note: This piece was published on eJP on May 13, 2009. It is as relevant today as it was then.]

Dr. Anita Friedman, Executive Director of Jewish Family and Childrens Services, the oldest charity west of the Mississippi, and one of the most innovative and successful Jewish organizations in the United States, was this months featured speaker at UpStarts Executive Director Round Table series. Bringing her stellar leadership experience of over thirty years, her sense of humor, and her honesty to the table, she wowed participants with her Yoda-like wisdom Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness, I hated it so much that I decided to take it over, Its the difference between a Sushi Restaurant and a Cold Dead Fish Restaurant and with her genuine passion and phenomenal knowledge about making organizations thrive.

Here is her top-ten list of essentials for creating, or transforming, an organization: 

The Torah was given to people. Let us not protect it so hard. It is flexible. It is adaptable. It is resilient. It can expand, and contract. And it teaches us, after all, to put people above all.

I had the privilege of hearing Rabbi Edward Feinstein speak at The Covenant Foundations gathering of Jewish educators in Chicago last week. His topic was the one around which the entire field of Jewish communal life is currently dancing how might we successfully and meaningfully engage 21st century Jews?

He began his talk with a Rebbe Nachman of Breslov story. Once upon a time, he shared, there was a little boy who became convinced that he was a rooster. He removed his clothes, huddled under the table, refused to eat anything but rooster food, and communicated by clucking. His parents were beside themselves. They called doctors, teachers, friends, and family, but nobody could convince the boy to abandon his rooster-like ways. Finally, wringing their hands, they called the Rebbe. The Rebbe assessed the situation, and declared that he could cure the boy, though his method may be unorthodox. The parents quickly assented. The Rebbe proceeded to take off his clothes, huddle under the table, eat rooster food, and cluck. After some time, the Rebbe said to the boy: Im cold. What if we put on some human clothes? The boy responded, But were roosters! The Rebbe replied, We can be roosters who wear human clothes! The boy considered this for a moment, and concluded, Fine. That sounds reasonable. They put on clothes. More time passed. The Rebbe said to the boy, I dont like this food. What if we ate some human food? The boy responded, But were roosters! The Rebbe replied, We can be roosters who eat human food. The boy decided, Fine. That is reasonable. And so it went with the huddling under the table, and so, at last, it went with the clucking. The boy was cured.

Rabbi Feinstein used this story as the core metaphor of his talk. Good Jewish educators connect with people where they are. They get under tables. They eat rooster food. But good Jewish educators ultimately help those with rooster-like tendencies to become more human. That is the value that Judaism brings to their lives; it gets them out from under those tables. The role of the Rebbe is to guide them, step by step, towards the awareness of fuller humanity that is at the core of Jewish wisdom, and towards its embrace. Rabbi Feinstein argued that Judaism, symbolized by the Rebbe, can fill the gaping holes in peoples modern lives, holes they may not even be aware of, providing them with the authentic in the face of a culture that idolizes the entrepreneur, creating for them genuine community in a world of radical individualism.

But it is this story and what it symbolizes, which I believe is ultimately preventing the Jewish community from successfully engaging 21st century Jews. Rabbi Feinsteins read represents one line of thought that Judaism has something of tremendous value to offer human beings in general, and Jews in particular, and it is our responsibility to ensure that it is embraced by current generations, and, therefore, preserved for future generations. In this approach, whether we are comfortable admitting it or not, the Rebbes way is of greater value than the boys way; the tradition is ultimately of greater value, wiser, deeper, more true, than the people.

But there is another way to read this story. Might it be possible that the boy is onto something?

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G-dcast announced this week that its latest animated app one that teaches kids how to make challah and partake in the Jewish rituals surrounding it is available to download for free in the App Store. 

Lets Bake Challah! is the S.F.-based nonprofits fifth app, but the first designed for 3- to 6-year-olds. Kids using their parents smartphone or iPad get to interact by doing things such as dragging ingredients into a mixing bowl, rolling out dough and braiding the challah. Optional parental settings include prayers, lessons about rituals and a male or female voice.

UpStart Bay Area, the S.F.-based nonprofit that supports up-and-coming Jewish social entrepreneurs, welcomed three new groups into its cohort this month, while transitioning five current UpStarter organizations to alumni status meaning theyve proven to be sustainable organizations on their own. The new groups cover a wide scope of interests.