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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 Warns of More Strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island, Pressures Allies to Secure Oil Chokepoint
An LPG gas tanker at anchor as traffic is down in the Strait of Hormuz, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Shinas, Oman, March 11, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo
US President Donald Trump threatened more strikes on Iran’s main oil export hub Kharg Island and said he was not ready for a deal with Tehran to end the war which has shut off the vital Strait of Hormuz and caused chaos in global energy markets.
With the US-Israeli war on Iran in its third week, Trump said US strikes had “totally demolished” much of the island and warned of more, telling NBC News on Saturday, “We may hit it a few more times just for fun.”
The comments marked a sharp escalation from Trump, who had previously said the US was targeting only military sites on Kharg, and dealt a blow to diplomatic efforts to end a war that has spread across the Middle East and killed more than 2,000 people, most in Iran and Lebanon.
Trump called on countries that have been impacted by the choking off of oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz to join efforts to reopen shipping lanes. The Financial Times reported that European Union foreign ministers would discuss widening of the EU’s regional Aspides naval mission.
Washington has brushed aside attempts by Middle Eastern allies to open talks, three sources told Reuters, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday they had fired more missiles at Israel and three US bases in the region.
Trump, who has made a series of varying demands, including a say in choosing Iran’s leader and an end to its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, told NBC News that Tehran appeared ready to make a deal to end the fighting but that “the terms aren’t good enough yet.”
In his interview with NBC, Trump raised the possibility that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may have been killed, but Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Khamenei was in full health and managing the situation.
WAR, ENERGY CRISIS LOOK SET TO PERSIST
As missile and drone exchanges continued on Sunday and shipping remained blocked, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he expected the war to end within “the next few weeks,” bringing a swift rebound in supplies and lower prices.
But with global air transport heavily disrupted and no clear end in sight, Iran’s ability to choke off traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas, has emerged with increasing urgency as a decisive threat to the global economy.
Although some Iranian vessels have continued to pass, the passage has been effectively closed for most of the world’s shipping since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28 at the start of an intensive bombing campaign that has hit thousands of targets across the country.
Khamenei, who succeeded as supreme leader after his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the attacks, has said the Strait of Hormuz should remain closed.
The International Energy Agency said last week the closure of the narrow passage along Iran’s coast had triggered the largest disruption to global oil markets in history, and was expected to cut around 8% of global supplies in March.
Underlining the impact the war has had on energy infrastructure in the region, the global ship-refueling hub of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates was closed after barrages on Saturday but resumed oil-loading operations on Sunday, a Fujairah-based industry source said.
With crude oil prices above $100 a barrel and expected to rise further next week, the issue has hung over Trump’s Republican Party, which faces a major test at midterm elections in November.
Trump himself has dismissed worries about spiking gas prices for American consumers, saying they will fall back quickly. But he has called on China, France, Japan, South Korea, Britain and others to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz to ensure shipping can pass.
“The Countries of the World that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage, and we will help – A LOT!” Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. “The U.S. will also coordinate with those Countries so that everything goes quickly, smoothly, and well.”
The FT said EU foreign affairs ministers holding a regular meeting on Monday would discuss potentially widening the EU Aspides naval mission that protects shipping against Houthi attacks in the Red Sea to include the Strait of Hormuz.
France has been seeking to assemble a coalition to secure the strait once the security situation stabilizes, while Britain is discussing a range of options with allies to ensure the security of shipping, officials have said.
Araqchi told his French counterpart that countries must refrain from anything that could escalate the conflict. He also said Iran would respond to any attack on its energy facilities.
ISRAEL DENIES TALKS WITH LEBANON
Araqchi denied Iran was targeting civilian or residential areas in the Middle East and said it was ready to form a committee with its neighbors to investigate the responsibility for such strikes. Gulf countries have suffered damage to energy facilities and residential areas during the two-week war.
But as the standoff continued, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it had fired more missile and drone barrages at targets in Israel and at US military bases in the region, where Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted 10 attacks.
Israel said its jets hit more targets in western Iran, including headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia forces in the city of Hamadan.
A source briefed on Israel’s military strategy told Reuters that Israel had begun targeting roadblocks and bridges it believed Revolutionary Guards commanders were using. Iranian security forces detained dozens of people accused of sharing information with Israel, Iranian media reported.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar rejected claims that Israel had told the United States it was running low on interceptors and dismissed a report that it could soon hold direct talks with Lebanon, where it has resumed its campaign against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement.
In Iran, at least 15 people were killed when an airstrike hit a refrigerator and heater factory in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the semi-official Fars news agency said on Saturday. The Revolutionary Guards promised further retaliation for workers killed in Iran’s industrial areas.
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IDF Says Brother of Michigan Synagogue Attacker Was Hezbollah Commander
FBI agents work on the site after the Michigan State Police reported an active shooting incident at the Temple Israel Synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, US, March 12, 2026. Photo: Rebecca Cook via Reuters Connect
i24 News – The IDF said the brother of Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, who carried out last week’s attack on a Michigan synagogue, was a Hezbollah commander who managed weapons operations and was killed in an Israeli airstrike last week. The IDF added that the Hezbollah unit Ghazali served in had launched hundreds of rockets toward Israel.
Ghazali, 41, rammed a vehicle into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, on March 12. He later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a gunfight with police, the FBI said. The agency is investigating the incident as a targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.
The FBI reported that Ghazali had large quantities of commercial-grade fireworks and several jugs of flammable liquid in his truck, which ignited during the attack. No children or staff at the synagogue and its preschool were injured. A security guard sustained injuries and was expected to recover, while police officers were treated for smoke inhalation.
Before the IDF published the confirmation of the “elimination” of the attacker’s brother, Dearborn Heights Mayor Mo Baydoun said the suspect had suffered “devastating and personal losses overseas.”
The mayor also stressed that “this is not an excuse” for the attack, adding that his actions “do not reflect our values as a city.”
Temple Israel Rabbi Jen Lader described the scene as “sheer terror” and emphasized the necessity of full-time armed security. “American Judaism is such these days that every synagogue is a target. Every synagogue is aware that we need to take precautions to keep our people safe,” she said, adding that the temple had prepared for similar incidents.
The IDF’s statement links the Michigan attack to broader Hezbollah operations and highlights the ongoing threat the group poses to Israel and Jewish communities abroad.
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After attacks, Jewish security watchdogs warn of ‘most elevated and complex threat environment’ in recent history
(JTA) — A string of recent synagogue attacks across North America and Europe has left security officials sounding the alarm bells.
“We are in the midst of the most elevated and complex threat environment the Jewish community and this country has seen in modern history,” said Kerry Sleeper, chief of threat management and information sharing for the Secure Community Network, a Jewish security organization.
Sleeper’s comment came during an SCN webinar on Friday, held in response to the previous day’s attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, where an assailant rammed into the synagogue armed with rifles and smoke bombs.
Though the attack was successfully thwarted by existing security measures, Mitchell Silber, executive director of the Community Security Initiative, said in an interview that Jewish institutions may now need additional layers of protection.
“This might be a bit of a tipping point where we’ve gone to a new level, where really what’s required to secure a Jewish institution in the U.S. starts to look like almost a Europeanization of security,” Silber said.
That would include posting multiple armed guards outside entrances and requiring increased screening before entry, he said. Many European synagogues also require attendees to go through security screening at some distance from the building, rather than at their doors.
“Unfortunately that seems to be where we are right now — the Jewish community has to up its game in terms of the external security of its locations,” he said.
Currently, a shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security since Feb. 14 is halting the review of millions of dollars in security funding for nonprofits, constraining the ability of Jewish institutions and other vulnerable groups to upgrade their security infrastructure.
The Temple Israel attack came within two weeks of attacks in Austin, Texas, and at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Those other attacks were not on Jewish institutions, but Sleeper, a former FBI assistant director, said the “various motivations of the attackers appear to be affiliated with the war between the U.S., Israel and Iran.” He added that the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran, and President Donald Trump’s stated desire to facilitate a regime change, have “contributed to the extremely high threat environment.”
Meanwhile, things have escalated outside the United States. Three Toronto-area synagogues were hit with gunfire over the last couple of weeks, and a synagogue in Rotterdam was targeted by an arson attack early Friday morning, allegedly by a group that has also claimed credit for an explosion at a synagogue in Belgium.
The flurry of attacks has the entire Jewish world on edge going into Shabbat — and some watchdogs say things could soon get worse.
“It is not entirely shocking to those of us who’ve watched this space for a long time,” said Mike Jacobson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who served in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau. “I would think things would continue to ratchet up again, at least in the short term.”
He pointed to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ activation of sleeper cells — their agents lying in wait until called to action to commit an attack — across the West, as a danger to vulnerable targets, which includes Jewish communities.
Another source of danger, Jacobson said, comes from copycat attacks.
“There’s also this mix that makes it really hard to sort out in the initial stages, where you’ve got people, not only who may be directly tied to Iran, but people who are so-called ‘inspired’ by this,” Jacobson said. “Those are often really hard for law enforcement to get advance notice on.”
Not always does the threat come from direct orders from Iran, he said. “It’s often difficult to tell: Is this something that is directly tied to the organization, or is this something that is more by someone inspired [by the IRGC]?”
He added, “They are trying to inflict pain in as many directions as they can.”
As security organizations encourage increased caution and awareness of suspicious activity, they are also emphasizing that those measures shouldn’t come at the expense of gathering in communal Jewish spaces.
“We’re not going to let the terrorists take away our confidence or the ability to embrace our religion,” said Michael Masters, SCN’s national director, during the Zoom webinar.
Masters’ sentiment is also shared by congregational leaders like Rabbi Adam Roffman, of Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas.
“Sure, security is something we think a lot about, and we’ve done our best to protect ourselves,” Roffman said. “And at the same time, the life of this community goes on.”
At Temple Israel, Shabbat services are being streamed from the nearby country club that served as a reunification center for families after the attack. The synagogue wrote on Facebook: “We’re so glad you’re joining us tonight as our community comes together to welcome this much needed Sabbath.”
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