Uncategorized
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.
—
The post As day school educators gather, focus is on investing in leadership and creativity appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Iranian Lawmakers Compare Trump to ‘Pharoah,’ Judiciary Chief Vows to ‘Punish’ US President
Cars burn in a street during an anti-regime protest in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 8, 2026. Photo: Stringer/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Amid soaring tensions with the United States, Iranian lawmakers on Monday cast President Donald Trump as a modern-day Pharaoh and hailed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Moses, framing the nation’s worst domestic crisis in years as a battle of biblical proportions.
During a parliamentary session, Iranian lawmakers vowed that Khamenei would “make Trump and his allies taste humiliation.”
“Our leader would drown you in the sea of the anger of believers and the oppressed of the world, to serve as a lesson for the arrogant world,” Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was quoted as saying by local media.
Ghalibaf also described the widespread anti‑government protests that have swept the country for weeks as an American‑Israeli plot and a “terrorist war,” claiming the unrest was being orchestrated to destabilize the state.
Tensions between Tehran and Washington have surged sharply in recent weeks, as Iranian security forces struggle to quell anti-regime protests and officials face mounting international pressure over the government’s brutal crackdown.
The nationwide protests, which began with a shopkeepers’ strike in Tehran on Dec. 28, initially reflected public anger over the soaring cost of living, a deepening economic crisis, and the rial — Iran’s currency — plummeting to record lows amid renewed economic sanctions, with annual inflation near 40 percent.
With demonstrations now stretching over three weeks, the protests have grown into a broader anti-government movement calling for the fall of Khamenei and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and even a broader collapse of the country’s Islamist, authoritarian system.
On Sunday, Pezeshkian warned that any attempt to target the country’s supreme leader would amount to a declaration of war, accusing the United States of stoking mass protests that have thrown the nation into turmoil amid reports that Washington is weighing moves against the regime’s leadership.
“If there are hardship and constraints in the lives of the dear people of Iran, one of the main causes is the longstanding hostility and inhumane sanctions imposed by the US government and its allies,” the Iranian leader said in a statement.
The regime has escalated its threats following repeated statements by Trump, who has called for an end to Khamenei’s nearly four decades in power, labeled him “a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people,” and warned of possible strikes if the government’s brutal crackdown continues.
In response to Trump’s threats and mounting pressure, Iran’s judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, has declared that authorities will seek to prosecute not only individuals accused of fueling the recent unrest but also foreign governments he blames for backing the protests.
“Those who called for it, those who provided financial support, propaganda or weapons — whether the United States, the Zionist regime or their agents — are all criminals and each of them must be held accountable,” Ejei told local media.
He even threatened to target Trump specifically.
“We will not abandon the pursuit and prosecution of the perpetrators of the recent crimes in domestic courts and through international channels,” the judiciary chief posted on the social media platform X. “The [resident of the United States, the ringleaders of the accursed Zionist regime, and other backers and supporters — both in terms of armaments and propaganda — of the criminals and terrorists behind the recent events are among the perpetrators who, in proportion to the extent and scale of their crimes, will be pursued, tried, and punished.”
Iranian officials have also dismissed Trump’s claims about halting execution sentences for protesters as “useless and baseless nonsense,” warning that the government’s response to the unrest will be “decisive, deterrent, and swift.”
Meanwhile, government officials have hailed victory over what they called one of “the most complex conspiracies ever launched by the enemies of” the country, while expressing deep gratitude to the “smart, noble, and perceptive” Iranian people.
However, the protests have not ceased, with violence continuing and tensions escalating.
The US-based group Human Rights Activists in Iran has confirmed 4,029 deaths during the protests, while the number of fatalities under review stands at 9,049. Additionally, at least 5,811 people have been injured the protests, and the total number of arrests stands at 26,015.
Iranian officials have put the death toll at 5,000 while some reports indicate the figure could be much higher. The Sunday Times, for example, obtained a new report from doctors on the ground, which states that at least 16,500 protesters have died and 330,000 have been injured.
The exact numbers are difficult to verify, as the regime has imposed an internet blackout across the country while imposing its crackdown.
On Monday, National Police Chief Ahmad-Reza Radan issued an ultimatum to protesters involved in what authorities called “riots,” warning they must surrender within three days or face the full force of the law, while urging young people “deceived” into the unrest to turn themselves in for lighter punishment.
Those “who became unwittingly involved in the riots are considered to be deceived individuals, not enemy soldiers, and will be treated with leniency,” Radan was quoted as saying by Iranian media.
Uncategorized
Former Biden Antisemitism Envoy Condemns Harris Campaign’s ‘Antisemitic Inquiry’ of Jewish Gov. Josh Shapiro
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro delivers remarks at a bill signing event at Cheyney University, an HBCU in Cheyney, Pennsylvania, US, Aug. 2, 2024. Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers via Reuters Connect
The Biden administration’s deputy special envoy for combating antisemitism accused Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign of antisemitism following new revelations that the vetting process to determine her running mate for vice president involved grilling Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, on whether he was a “double agent” for Israel.
Jews should be “treated like any other American, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or race. That Gov. Josh Shapiro wrote that he was asked if he was a double agent of the world’s only Jewish state is an antisemitic inquiry,” Aaron Keyak, who also served as the “Jewish engagement director for the Biden-Harris presidential campaign in 2020, said in a statement.
Keyak suggested that Shapiro was “targeted by the staff of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee” because of his religion, lamenting that the accusation represents a long line of incidents in which federal officials filling roles have “applied a double standard to American Jews during the vetting process.” He added that he had “personal experience” with being asked similar questions and that he has “heard from too many being asked similar questions over many years.”
The statement came after it was revealed that Shapiro was asked during the 2024 Democratic vice-presidential vetting process whether he had ever acted as a “double agent” of the Israeli government, a question he described as deeply offensive and emblematic of a broader problem in how pro-Israel views are sometimes treated in US politics.
In his forthcoming memoir, Where We Keep the Light, Shapiro reflects on being questioned by members of then-US Vice President Kamala Harris’s vetting team about his ties to Israel, including questions of whether he had ever communicated with Israeli intelligence or acted as a “double agent.” Shapiro writes that he immediately pushed back, telling the vetting aide that the question was “offensive” and echoed long-standing antisemitic tropes questioning Jewish Americans’ loyalty.
According to Shapiro, he was told the questions were standard procedure. But the governor, one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent Jewish elected officials, says the experience left him unsettled, particularly because of the historical baggage attached to such accusations.
Shapiro portrays the encounter as “unnecessarily contentious” and suggests in is memoir that no other candidate would be asked whether their faith or foreign policy views made them a secret agent of another country.
“Had I been a double agent for Israel? Was she kidding? I told her how offensive the question was,” Shapiro writes.
“Remus was just doing her job. I get it. But the fact that she asked, or was told to ask that question, by someone else, said a lot about some of the people around the VP,” the governor continues, referring to Dana Remus, a former White House counsel and member of the vetting team.
Shapiro claims that he felt bothered that the Harris team pressed him on his overarching worldview rather than the substance of his positions.
“It nagged at me that their questions weren’t really about substance,” Shapiro writes. “Rather, they were questioning my ideology, my approach, my world view.”
Shapiro also alleges that the Harris team asked whether he would be willing to apologize and walk back condemnations of pro-Hamas protesters on Pennsylvania college campuses. In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, activists organized demonstrations celebrating the massacre and venerating the Palestinian terrorist group. Shapiro vigorously denounced the protesters, comparing them to the Ku Klux Klan. His response drew strong criticism from progressive corners of the Democratic Party, which accused him of harboring “anti-Palestinian racism.”
The controversy comes amid heightened political tensions in the Democratic Party over Israel following the Oct. 7 atrocities and the ensuing war in Gaza, which has intensified scrutiny of pro-Israel politicians, especially within progressive Democratic circles.
“The more I read about [Shapiro’s] treatment in the vetting process, the more disturbed I become,” Deborah Lipstadt, the former antisemitism envoy in the Biden administration, said in a post on X/Twitter. “These questions were classic antisemitism.”
Former longtime leader of the Anti-Defamation League Abraham Foxman echoed these condemnations on social media, calling the episode “very disturbing.”
“Aides focused on Israel to the extent he found it offensive. Something very troubling about our current political culture,” he wrote.
Shapiro ultimately was not selected as Harris’s running mate. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was chosen instead.
Harris, who served as vice president in the administration of former US President Joe Biden, lost the 2024 election to Donald Trump.
Uncategorized
‘Hands on Our Weapons’: Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq Threatens to Hit US Bases if Trump Strikes Iran
A vehicle carries the coffin of a commander from Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah armed group who was killed in what they called a “Zionist attack” in the Syrian capital Damascus, during a funeral in Baghdad, Iraq, Sept. 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
Kataib Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist group based in Iraq, has threatened to attack American military bases in the Middle East if President Donald Trump follows through on his threats to strike the Iranian regime in response to state violence against anti-government protesters.
“Kataib Hezbollah is part of the conflict between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and we will not stand on the sidelines. Our hands are on our weapons,” Abu Talib al-Saidi, a senior commander in the Iran-backed militia, told Shafaq News on Friday. He made the comments during a protest outside Iran’s embassy in Baghdad opposing Trump’s threats of military intervention against Tehran.
“During the 12-day war that America waged against Iran, there was a directive and mandate from [Iranian] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that we should not interfere in this war, but the situation now is completely different,” al-Saidi continued, referring to the Iran-Israel war last June, when the US struck Iranian nuclear sites following a devastating Israeli air campaign.
“The resistance’s missiles and drones are ready,” he added. “We have a high level of readiness and definitely in case the United States directs strikes on Iran, US bases in Iraq and neighboring countries will not be immune from our missiles and our planes.”
Kataib Hezbollah is part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, a group of militias that are part of an official Iraqi security institution. According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Shiite terrorist group is “the premier militia in Iraq, operating under Iran’s direct command and fielding a wide range of cells responsible for kinetic, media, and social operations, some bankrolled by the Iraqi state.” The US government listed the organization as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group on July 2, 2009, following a strike on troops in Iraq.
Al-Saidi’s warning followed repeated threats by Trump to target Iran in some manner in response to the regime’s deadly crackdown on protests, which began on Dec. 28 over economic hardships but quickly swelled into nationwide demonstrations calling for the downfall of the country’s Islamist, authoritarian system.
“We’re watching [the protests in Iran] very closely,” Trump told journalists aboard Air Force One on Jan. 4. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States.”
The president’s top military advisers reportedly warned him that additional time would be needed to prepare for a potential attack on the regime.
On Jan. 11, Trump said that the US was willing to meet with Iranian officials and in touch with opposition leaders. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said at the time that “the communication channel between our Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and the US special envoy [Steve Witkoff] is open and messages are exchanged whenever necessary.”
Two days later, Trump called on Iranian protesters to “take over your institutions” and suggested the US was prepared to take strong action against the regime.
“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” he posted on social media. “Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have canceled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA [Make Iran Great Again]!!!”
Last Wednesday, an anonymous US official told Reuters that the military had chosen to withdraw some personnel from military bases, a decision mirrored by the United Kingdom which pulled people from their posts in Qatar.
On Friday, Trump denied reports that pressure from Israel and Gulf Arab monarchies to reject a strike on Iran had influenced his decision not to strike yet. He told reporters on the White House lawn that “nobody convinced me. I convinced myself. You had yesterday scheduled over 800 hangings. They didn’t hang anyone. They canceled the hangings. That had a big impact.”
Khamenei and other Iranian officials have blamed Trump for the demonstrations.
The US-based group Human Rights Activists in Iran has confirmed 4,029 deaths during the protests, while the number of fatalities under review stands at 9,049. Additionally, at least 5,811 people have been injured the protests, and the total number of arrests stands at 26,015.
Iranian officials have put the death toll at 5,000 while some reports indicate the figure could be much higher. The Sunday Times, for example, obtained a new report from doctors on the ground, which states that at least 16,500 protesters have died and 330,000 have been injured,
Some Iraqi militia fighters, including members of Kataib Hezbollah, have reportedly aided the Iranian regime with the crackdown against protesters.