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As day school educators gather, focus is on investing in leadership and creativity
When Rabbi Adam Englander arrived at a recent national gathering in Denver of Jewish day school and yeshiva educators, he had a good sense of what conference sessions he wanted to attend and whom he wanted to meet.
But it turns out that one of the most valuable benefits Englander experienced at the Prizmah educators conference were the serendipitous encounters he had with colleagues and the new opportunities for collaboration and creativity they presented.
As head of school at the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach, or HALB, in Woodmere, New York, Englander’s main focus usually is what’s happening at his school, not elsewhere. But at the conference he met with two colleagues with whom he shares a leadership coach, they created a WhatsApp group chat for sharing ideas, and Englander soon walked away with a new idea for a dynamic workshop to run with his leadership team this summer.
“Already just from this group I have an amazing idea,” Englander said. “That kind of good stuff can happen where you might meet someone who is like, ‘Oh, yeah. I have the same problem as you.’ Now you are connecting with some principal from San Francisco whom you’d never have met in a million years.”
He added, “Day school leaders really need to take the time and energy to invest in themselves, and their own growth.”
“Creative Spirit” was the theme of the conference in January organized by Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, the national network organization that was created several years ago through a merger of five different day school organizations. The conference in Denver drew more than 1,000 professional and lay leaders from over 200 Jewish day schools and yeshivas across North America. It was the third-ever iteration of Prizmah’s national conference.
With tens of thousands of students spread out over hundreds of schools across the continent, day schools have become laboratories of creativity: for learning, for Jewish action, even for tackling societal challenges.
“Jewish day schools are inherently creative places,” said Prizmah CEO Paul Bernstein. “The exceptional level of shared optimism and imagination around the bright future of Jewish day schools was palpable at the conference. Day school leaders clearly share a belief and innovative determination in the opportunity to grow enrollment in the next decade — by promulgating the value proposition of Jewish day school, ensuring a pipeline of excellent educators and addressing the challenge of affordability.”
A salient example of creativity in action is how day schools adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic, not just adjusting to remote learning and figuring out how to return to classrooms safely, but in reconfiguring teaching approaches to suit different kinds of learning.
“Because of schools’ creativity, and because of the way that different stakeholders in schools — from administrators to teachers to parents to students — were able to work together, they solved these brand new problems we hadn’t seen before,” Bernstein observed.
Another area of tremendous creativity is how Jewish schools are managing the challenges of affordability: Day schools are almost entirely privately funded, tuition is a barrier for many families, and yet tuition fees alone are insufficient to cover costs. In recent years, some schools have adapted innovative and flexible fee models, from setting tuition based on a fixed percentage of a family’s income to using Jewish community grant funding to cap tuition for new families.
Much of the conference was devoted to ideas for the future of Jewish day school education, covering everything from curricula to leadership to finances. One main area of focus is recruiting and retaining quality educators and school leaders.
Debra Skolnick-Einhorn, head of school at the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School in Washington, D.C., who spoke on a conference panel about professional development, said she believes the key to better educator retention is improving compensation and benefits, providing more opportunities for professional growth, and expressing more gratitude toward staff.
Tal Ben-Shahar, an American-Israeli bestselling author who teaches about the psychology of leadership, spoke at the conference about the importance of investing in leaders.
“It’s important to focus on self-care for the teachers, invest in people in the field,” Ben-Shahar said. “It’s critical to treat teachers well, keep them involved, treat them as professionals, and value their opinions.”
“Jewish day schools are inherently creative places,” said Prizmah CEO Paul Bernstein at the organization’s biennial conference in Denver, January 2023. (Courtesy of Prizmah)
John D’Auria, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of four books on leadership, spoke about how great leaders focus on mutual learning — getting colleagues to share and learn from one another — rather than top-down leadership. It’s an approach embodied by many day school curricula, which focus on collaborative and experiential learning.
At the conference, Lisa Kay Solomon, Louie Montoya, and Ariel Raz from Stanford University’s d.school K12 Futures team offered an art project dubbed Hall of Descendants where participants could create a portrait and message for future children and educators.
“While we can’t predict the future, we know it’s going to be filled with a lot of uncertainty, complexity and tensions that we can’t solve,” Solomon said. “The hall creates a relatability to that distant time travel and a sense of responsibility about what we might do today to serve that future descendant.”
Brad Phillipson, head of school for the Jewish Community Day School of Greater New Orleans, said he found the Hall “a powerful exercise in prioritizing the values with which I most closely identify, personally and professionally, and in contemplating the world I want to pass along to future generations — through our students, through my child, and, indirectly, through what my students, and my daughter, will teach their children.”
Tal Grinfas-David, who led a session at the conference on creative leadership and Israel, said it’s important for leaders to take risks. More often than not, she noted, leaders can be “risk averse to placate, to take safe pathways.”
Grinfas-David, who is vice president of outreach and pre-collegiate school management initiatives at the Atlanta-based Center for Israel Education, turned to Israeli history for examples of leadership that educators could emulate.
“What I wanted them to see was examples of courageous leadership and risk taking and where that could lead,” Grinfas-David said. “Hopefully, they see that leaders of Israel have had to strengthen the future of the state regardless of the circumstances, just as the school leaders need to leave behind a legacy of a stronger institution.”
Bernstein, Prizmah’s CEO, said that the recent gathering underscored how important collaboration is to Jewish education — and that regardless of location or denomination, colleagues have a lot to learn from each other.
“What we are seeing is that when Jewish day school leaders come together, whether you are Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, pluralistic, or nondenominational, whether you are from the Southwest or the Northeast, from the U.S. or Canada and beyond — there is so much more that unites than divides,” Bernstein said.
Prizmah’s next conference will be held in the winter of 2024.
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Trump Plans to Announce Gaza Funding Plan, Troops at First Board of Peace Meeting, US Officials Say
US President Donald Trump speaks during a charter announcement for his Board of Peace initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts, alongside the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
US President Donald Trump will announce a multi-billion-dollar reconstruction plan for Gaza and detail plans for a UN-authorized stabilization force for the Palestinian enclave at the first formal meeting of his Board of Peace next week, two senior US officials said on Thursday.
Delegations from at least 20 countries, including many heads of state, are expected to attend the meeting in Washington, DC, which Trump will chair on Feb. 19, the officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The details on Trump‘s plans for the first meeting of his Board of Peace for Gaza have not been previously reported.
Trump signed documents in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 23 establishing the Board of Peace. The board‘s creation was endorsed by a United Nations Security Council resolution as part of Trump‘s Gaza plan.
While regional Middle East powers, including Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, as well as major emerging nations such as Indonesia, have joined the board, global powers and traditional Western US allies have been more cautious.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday during his visit to Washington that Israel has joined the board.
Trump has stirred concerns that the Board of Peace might try to resolve other conflicts around the world and compete with the United Nations. The US officials said the meeting next week will focus solely on Gaza.
They said a central part of the meeting will be Trump‘s announcement of a multi-billion-dollar fund for Gaza, which will include monetary contributions from participating board members.
One official called the offers “generous” and said that the United States had not made any explicit requests for donations.
“People have come to us offering,” the official said. “The president will make announcements vis a vis the money raised.”
STABILIZATION FORCE
Deployment of the International Stabilization Force is a key part of the next phase of Trump‘s Gaza plan, announced in September. Under the first phase, a fragile ceasefire in the two-year-old war began on Oct. 10 and Hamas has released hostages while Israel has freed detained Palestinians.
Trump will announce that several countries plan to provide several thousand troops to the stabilization force that is expected to deploy in Gaza in the months ahead, the officials said.
A primary concern for now is disarming Hamas fighters who have refused to give up their weapons. Under Trump‘s Gaza plan, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries, under the plan.
The Board of Peace meetings will also include detailed reports on the work of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, which was established to take over the day-to-day civil administration of Gaza Strip from Hamas. The committee announced its members and held its first meeting in January.
Other updates will cover humanitarian aid for Gaza as well as the Gaza police, the officials said.
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Israel’s Netanyahu Says Trump May Be Creating Conditions for Iran Deal
US President Donald Trump talks with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset, Oct. 13, 2025, in Jerusalem. Photo: Evan Vucci/Pool via REUTERS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said he hoped that US President Donald Trump was creating the conditions to reach a deal with Iran that would avoid military action.
Netanyahu, who met Trump for talks in Washington on Wednesday, said he had expressed “general skepticism” and said that if an agreement was reached, “it must include the elements that are vital to Israel.”
They include a halt to Iran‘s nuclear program, limits on its ballistic missiles, and Iran’s proxies, he added.
Wednesday’s meeting was the seventh between Trump and Netanyahu since Trump returned to office last year. Netanyahu – whose visit was more muted than usual and closed to the press – was looking to influence the next round of US discussions with Iran following nuclear negotiations held in Oman last Friday.
“I think that the conditions he is creating, combined with the fact that they surely understand they made a mistake last time by not reaching an agreement, may create the circumstances for achieving a good deal,” Netanyahu said.
The two leaders spoke behind closed doors for more than two-and-a-half hours in what Trump described as a “very good meeting.”
But the US president said no major decisions were made and stopped short of publicly accepting Netanyahu‘s entreaties.
“We share a very close, very genuine, and very candid connection,” Netanyahu said, noting the discussions focused on several issues, but primarily on the negotiations with Iran, and Trump wanted to “hear my opinion.”
“The president believes that the Iranians have already learned who they are dealing with,” he said, referring to Israel’s 12-day conflict with Iran that culminated with US air attacks on Iran‘s nuclear sites.
Trump has threatened strikes on Iran if no agreement is reached, while Tehran has vowed to retaliate, stoking fears of a wider war as the US amasses forces in the Middle East. He has repeatedly voiced support for a secure Israel.
Trump earlier this week said he believed Iran wants a deal.
Iran has said it is prepared to discuss curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions but has ruled out linking the issue to missiles.
Netanyahu also said the talks with Trump also touched on Gaza, where there is a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the entire region, and other general matters.
“It was another conversation with a great friend of the State of Israel, the likes of whom we have never had,” Netanyahu said.
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US Pulls Out of Strategic Syria Base and Hands It Over to Damascus
A satellite image shows the al-Tanf Base, in Syria, in this image taken July 20, 2025. Photo: 2026 PLANET LABS PBC/Handout via REUTERS
The US military said it completed a withdrawal from a strategic base in Syria on Thursday, handing it over to Syrian forces, in the latest sign of strengthening US-Syrian ties that could enable an even larger American drawdown.
The al-Tanf garrison is positioned at the tri-border confluence of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.
Established during Syria‘s civil war in 2014, the United States initially relied on it as a hub for operations by the US-led coalition against Islamic State terrorists who once controlled a vast swathe of territory in Iraq and Syria before being defeated in 2019.
But the base became a key foothold in a battle against Iranian influence due to its strategic position along roadways linking Damascus to Tehran. Although Washington long saw keeping the base as worthwhile, the Trump administration recalculated when relations fundamentally shifted after longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December 2024.
Syria joined the coalition battling the remnants of Islamic State last November when President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al Qaeda commander, visited the White House for talks with President Donald Trump.
David Adesnik at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think-tank in Washington questioned Syrian forces’ ability to pick up the slack following the US departure.
“And the Syrian army has incorporated thousands of ex-jihadists,” Adesnik said.
“The mission at Tanf also served as an obstacle to the operations of Iran and its proxies, who ship weapons across Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is an own goal.”
US RESOLVED TO PREVENT ISLAMIC STATE REVIVAL
Syria‘s Defense Ministry said on Thursday that government forces had taken control of al-Tanf following coordination between Syrian and US authorities.
The US military’s Central Command confirmed al-Tanf’s handover in a statement and noted that the Pentagon announced plans to consolidate basing locations in Syria last year.
“US forces remain poised to respond to any ISIS threats that arise in the region as we support partner-led efforts to prevent the terrorist network’s resurgence,” said Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads Central Command, using an acronym for Islamic State.
Reuters, citing two sources, reported on Wednesday that US troops from al-Tanf were relocating to Jordan.
The US pullout from al-Tanf follows a Washington-brokered deal to integrate the Syrian Democratic Forces – a Kurdish-led autonomy-minded group backed by the US for a decade in the fight against IS – into central Syrian institutions.
Trump has long expressed a desire to withdraw US troops from Syria, going back to 2019 during his first term in office. Prior to the US pullout from al-Tanf, US officials had estimated there were about 1,000 troops in Syria.
One person familiar with the matter said the withdrawal from Tanf could be a milestone toward a bigger pullout. The US is also winding down one of its biggest commitments on the ground in Syria – helping ensure US-backed forces guard prisons holding Islamic State prisoners captured during the conflict.
The roughly one dozen prisons had been guarded by the SDF, but U.S. forces since last month have been transferring high-level Islamic State detainees out of Syria to Iraq as control of the facilities shifts to government forces.
Daniel Shapiro, a former senior Pentagon official for Middle East issues, said it appeared Trump’s goal was to end the role of US forces in Syria and the withdrawal from al-Tanf was a bet on the Syrian government’s ability to counter ISIS.
“It’s probably the right gamble … [but] it’s still somewhat unknown if they actually live up to that responsibility,” Shapiro, now with the Atlantic Council, said.