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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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Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie team up to strip US-Israel military tech cooperation from defense bill
(JTA) — In one of the latest examples of political extremes converging over Israel, Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie joined forces this week to challenge a provision expanding U.S.-Israel defense cooperation.
Khanna, a progressive California Democrat, and Massie, a Kentucky Republican, both said over the weekend that they would seek to remove a provision from the House’s annual defense bill that would expand U.S.-Israeli defense technology cooperation.
“If the provision in the NDAA to integrate/synchronize the U.S. and Israeli militaries (section 224) makes it out of committee, I’ll offer an amendment to strip it from the bill on the floor,” Massie, who lost his bid for reelection last month against a President Donald Trump-endorsed primary opponent, wrote in a post on X. “We are a sovereign country…”
The section of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2027 that Khanna and Massie have taken aim at would require the Secretary of Defense to designate an “executive agent responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, including bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation.”
The cross-ideological alliance marked the latest instance of the progressive Democrat and libertarian Republican finding common cause on Israel-related foreign policy, after the pair previously teamed up to oppose U.S. involvement in Israel’s war in Iran last year.
The pledge by Massie, a leading anti-Israel Republican in Congress, was quickly joined by Khanna, who has been staunchly critical of Israel’s conduct during the war in Gaza and recently opposed American funding for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
“And I will be offering an amendment in the committee itself to strip section 224 out, @RepThomasMassie,” Khanna wrote in a post on X. “Trump can’t kill the Massie/Khanna partnership no matter how much he posts on Truth Social.”
Khanna lamented Massie’s primary loss on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last month, telling the outlet that he had been “taken out” because of the pair’s collaboration on opposing the war in Iran and the Epstein Transparency Act.
“Thomas is a real friend. He’s a good man, and he was taken out for two reasons,” Khanna said. “One, he had the courage to go after some very powerful people in working with me to get the Epstein Transparency Act passed. As he mentioned, that’s historic bipartisan legislation that finally got justice for the survivors, and he had people spend millions of dollars, and had the President of the United States after him. And second, he worked with me to stop this war in Iran.”
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Hasan Piker blames Israel after UK bars him from entry, citing ‘potential risk’
(JTA) — Leading British Jewish groups are applauding the UK government’s decision to bar the influential anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker as well as his controversial uncle Cenk Uygur from entering the country.
The British interior ministry revoked Piker’s and Uygur’s travel authorizations on Monday, saying in a statement that “their presence in the UK may not be conducive to the public good.”
The ministry’s statement did not specify its concerns about the men but added that decisions to refuse or cancel ETAs are based “solely on an assessment of the potential risk an individual may pose to UK society.”
The revocations follow advocacy by Jewish groups against Piker’s planned appearance this week at the South by Southwest London festival, where he was due to speak on “How the American Left Learned to Speak the Internet.”
A number of Jewish groups urged the government to block Piker’s entry. The Community Security Trust said that he “has a record of promoting rhetoric that includes antisemitic themes, denial of well documented atrocities and apparent support for extremist groups.” Last week, a lawmaker from the Labour party, David Taylor, publicly called on the Home Office to revoke Piker’s visa.
Piker has also drawn sharp opposition from U.S. Jewish groups in recent months, as he has played an increasingly prominent role in advocating for progressive Democrats. His critics note that he has said he prefers Hamas to Israel and said “I don’t have an issue” with Hezbollah. Hamas and Hezbollah are considered terrorist groups under UK law.
In social media posts, both Piker and Uygur blamed Israel for their being barred from entering the UK.
“I’ve been banned for criticizing Israel. Are we free anymore?” Uygur tweeted, in one of multiple posts making the claim. “This is oppression of Western citizens by our own governments on behalf of a different country!” He later said it was “an honor to have made Israel’s enemies list.”
Piker responded to his uncle’s post on X, saying, “The uk has revoked my visa as well. all at the behest of israel. the west is betraying ‘liberal values’ for a genocidal fascist foreign government. soon we will all become Israel.”
The revocations come as the British government is under extreme pressure to demonstrate strong opposition to antisemitism, following a string of attacks that have unsettled British Jews. In recent weeks, the government has allocated new resources for security in Jewish communities and canceled the travel authorization for Ye, the American musician with a history of antisemitic remarks and a recent single called “Heil Hitler.”
Multiple Jewish leaders said they were pleased that the government had moved to block Piker’s entry.
“The government is right to ban those who seek to spread hatred from entering the UK,” the Jewish Leadership Council’s director of public affairs, Russell Langer, said in a statement. He added, “When Jews are being stabbed on the streets of London and Manchester, we should not be importing more antisemitism into this country.”
The acting president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Adrian Cohen, applauded the decision in a statement. “Where there is clear risk of individuals breaking UK laws and stoking community tensions, by showing support for banned terrorist groups or inciting hatred, and where event organisers have failed to show responsibility, it is right that government step in,” he said.
And the CST said that while criticizing Israel can be legitimate, Piker had exceeded the bounds of acceptable discourse.
“There must be consequences when public figures cross into hate speech,” the group said in a statement. “Piker has a record that goes far beyond robust or controversial political speech, including rhetoric that contains antisemitic themes, the denial of well-documented atrocities and language that risks fuelling antisemitism.”
The interior ministry said anyone who has an ETA revoked can apply for a visa, which would afford them a reconsideration.
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New York’s Israel Day parade was a shanda — but not because of Mamdani
Mayor Zohran Mamdani made the right decision in skipping the city’s annual Israel Day Parade — because of the specific Israeli officials the parade honored.
American Jews have the right to celebrate Israel’s existence, if they find it to be a meaningful part of their personal Jewish identities. But Mamdani’s specific decision not to march in this specific parade, this year, alongside far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich, Amichai Chikli and Ofir Sofer, is defensible. Those painting that choice as a sign of antisemitism have a lot of explaining to do about whose company they choose to keep.
Chikli, Israel’s minister of diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism — the man who is supposed to be the voice of diaspora Jews in Israel — has used his platform to spread hatred. He has described LGBTQ+ Pride events as “disgraceful vulgarity”; courted far-right European extremists like Tommy Robinson while parroting their Islamophobic statements; and called antisemitic dog whistles deployed against George Soros by the like of Elon Musk “anything but antisemitism” — while serving as the minister tasked with combating antisemitism.
His behavior has been so outrageous that in 2025, hostage families and Jewish community leaders across Europe signed letters calling him an “inappropriate representative,” citing his statements calling for the expulsion of people from Gaza and southern Lebanon, which they said amounted to support for ethnic cleansing.
Smotrich’s record of inflammatory statements is even more extensive. In 2023, he called for the Palestinian village of Hawara in the West Bank to be destroyed by the state, saying “I think the village of Hawara needs to be wiped out” shortly after a shocking settler attack there that some compared to a pogrom. The United States State Department decried those remarks as “repugnant” and “disgusting.”
Smotrich has since called for Gaza to be emptied of its Palestinian population, and has spearheaded the radical expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, advocating for annexation with the explicit intent of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. He himself says the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor has reportedly filed a secret arrest warrant application against him for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied West Bank.
At the Sunday parade, Smotrich approvingly told attendees that the event reminded him of the Jerusalem Flag March, an ultra-nationalist procession where participants this year chanted “Death to Arabs” and attacked Palestinian residents.
And Ofir Sofer, Israel’s immigration and absorption minister, has called for changes to Israel’s Law of Return, complaining that many new immigrants to Israel are not Jewish under Orthodox halachic standards. His vision of Israel includes no room for Reform Jews, secular Jews or partial-heritage Jews.
These are the people Mamdani was supposed to join in celebration?
Mamdani did not refuse to celebrate Jewish life. He refused to endorse these deeply problematic Israeli officials by appearing alongside them. That is not a slap in the face to Jewish New Yorkers. It is, if anything, a gesture of respect toward the many Jewish New Yorkers, including me, who find Chikli, Smotrich and Sofer an embarrassment and a threat to the diverse, pluralistic, egalitarian Judaism we actually practice.
Mamdani has stated clearly that he believes Israel has a right to exist, although not as a hierarchy that favors Jewish citizens over others. He has backed his administration’s Office to Combat Antisemitism and proposed expanded funding for hate crime prevention. He guaranteed a robust police presence at the Israel parade, spending weeks planning to ensure it proceeded, in his words, “seamlessly and peacefully” — as it did.
None of this fits the profile of an antisemite.
And those who criticized Mamdani’s refusal to participate are failing to grapple with an important truth: Mamdani’s politics, whatever one thinks of them, are not alien to American Jewish life. They are, instead, increasingly central to it.
A poll by the Jewish Voter Resource Center, released just this week, found that almost half of American Jews under 35 support a binational state: a single country in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, governed by all its inhabitants together. Among non-Orthodox Jews under 35, that figure reaches 51%.
This is not a fringe position on the left flank of the community. It is a near-majority position among the next generation of American Jews. Add to that the fact that a 2025 survey by Jewish Federations of North America — not a left-wing organization — found that only 37% of American Jews overall identify as Zionist at all, while among young Jews aged 18 to 34, the share identifying as anti-Zionist or non-Zionist has reached nearly a third.
As J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami put it: “The growing disaffection of younger Jewish Americans from Israel is a direct consequence of the policies of Bibi Netanyahu and the way the American Jewish establishment has demanded an ‘Israel right or wrong’ loyalty.”
When we ask whether Mamdani’s absence alienates Jewish New Yorkers, we need to ask: which Jewish New Yorkers? Did Mamdani marginalize himself from American Jewish life — or did the parade organizers, by welcoming these ministers, marginalize themselves from a large and growing portion of it?
The questions at the heart of this controversy — what Zionism means, whether anti-Zionism is compatible with Jewish solidarity, and how to honor Israeli independence while acknowledging Palestinian catastrophe — are genuine, difficult and deeply contested. I have colleagues I respect on multiple sides. I have family members who would disagree with everything I have written here.
But a parade is the worst possible venue for this conversation. A parade is not a symposium. It is not a town hall. It is a celebration, a statement of solidarity, an embodiment of a particular political position. Attending it is an endorsement of that position. And when the parade features ministers who demean Reform Jews, court European neo-fascists, advocate for the further reduction of Palestinian rights and liberties, and favor restricting who counts as Jewish enough to return to a Jewish state, the act of marching becomes an endorsement of those things, too.
We do need richer, more honest, more nuanced conversations about Zionism, anti-Zionism, Israel, and diaspora Jewish identity. Those conversations are happening, in synagogues, in classrooms and in the pages of Jewish publications like this one. They deserve serious venues and serious interlocutors.
Fifth Avenue on a Sunday afternoon, with Chikli, Bezalel and Sofer as honored guests, is not that venue.
Mamdani was right to decline to issue that endorsement. To the Jewish establishment that has called him an antisemite for it: I would ask you, with all due respect, to look again at who you invited to the party.
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