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Looming Jewish teacher shortage prompts new accelerated training in well-known Jerusalem program
When Rabbi David Wallach was looking for an institution to help him become a better Jewish day school teacher, he was frustrated to find that most of the places he researched offered either training in Jewish studies or general teacher training. It was hard to find both.
Then he discovered the Pardes Teacher Fellowship in Jerusalem, where he ended up getting his master’s degree in Jewish education.
“Pardes is the only place that integrated for me both the Jewish studies and the pedagogy,” said Wallach, now 32 and a teacher and assistant director of Jewish studies at Les Ecoles Azrieli Herzliah High School in Montreal, Canada. “It wasn’t that you learn Judaism in one place and learn education in another. This entire program is about the pedagogy of Jewish learning. That approach is unique, powerful and invaluable for me.”
More than 270 Jewish teachers and educators-in-training from North America have gone through the Pardes Teacher Fellowship, a two-year master’s program that offers participants intensive Jewish learning, Jewish educational pedagogy, practical student-teacher training and mentoring in North American day schools.
A mainstay for over two decades, the well-known fellowship is being redesigned for next year to make some key changes that administrators believe will better serve the future teachers of Jewish day schools: Instead of requiring two years in Israel with monthlong student-teaching stints along the way, Pardes is offering an accelerated program that requires just one year of intense study in Jerusalem followed by a second year of teacher training in schools in North America.
The program is funded, so students’ expenses are minimized and they receive a stipend, and at the program’s conclusion they obtain their master’s degree. Pardes is currently accepting applications for the fall.
“This is a unique opportunity to study pedagogy with spectacular teachers in Jewish education,” said Aviva Lauer, director of the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators.
There’s another reason for the changes at Pardes: a looming crisis in Jewish education to which the Jewish world hasn’t fully woken up, according to some educational leaders.
“The crisis that we knew was coming is here. Jewish day schools, early childhood centers and part-time congregational schools across the country face a shortage of educators to fill multiple openings for lead teachers, assistants and substitutes,” wrote the authors of a recent piece in the online publication eJewish Philanthropy published by leaders from the Association of Directors of Communal Agencies for Jewish Education. “This is no longer simply a ‘challenge.’ Rather, it is a crisis because of continuing trends in the overall job market, exacerbated by the pandemic.”
The shortage is related in part to low salaries in the profession. A recent report by the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education showed that fewer new teachers are entering education and more current teachers are leaving. As a result, many Jewish schools are hiring staff without appropriate training.
“We are looking for teacher candidates who love Jewish text, Jewish living, and Jewish tradition, recognize that the children are our future, and want to serve their communities as role models for the next generation,” said Rabbi Avi Spodek, director of recruitment at the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators.
Rabbi Jordan Soffer, head of school at the Striar Hebrew Academy in Sharon, Massachusetts, used his training in the Pardes Teacher Fellowship to enhance his classroom teaching. (Courtesy of Pardes)
Pardes’ revamped fellowship program tightens its format with a more modular structure that offers more credit for the pedagogy courses students take in Israel and credit for some courses online. The purpose of the change is to enhance the practical training and enable those who can only get away to Israel for a single academic year (plus two summers) to participate.
“The new format is a soft easing-in to teaching,” Lauer said, giving students time to immerse themselves in a school before becoming full-time teachers.
The principle that guides the Pardes approach is subject-specific pedagogy, according to Lauer: “Not just how to be a teacher but how to be a Jewish studies teacher. It’s learning how to integrate and balance textual content with what we call ‘meaning-mining.’ It’s about introducing our students to varied lenses through which they might teach Jewish texts, and helping them explore what will be important and meaningful to them to teach their future students.”
The Pardes program boasts a star-studded staff, including Yiscah Smith, Rabbi Meesh Hammer-Kossoy, Judy Klitsner, and Rabbi Zvi Hirschfield for Jewish studies, and Rachel Friedrichs, Reuven Margrett, Sefi Kraut, and Susan Yammer for the pedagogical components.
“The teachers are so special,” said Josh Less, a current fellow. “They are all unique in their own ways and have a great grasp of their subjects.”
Pardes attracts students from a diversity of Jewish denominational, cultural and professional backgrounds. The program’s alumni include six heads of school, five principals, 12 Jewish studies department chairs and six directors of Jewish life, among scores of Jewish teachers.
Less, 28, who recently completed a round of teacher training at the Milken School in Los Angeles, said the Pardes program has given him critical classroom experience and essential Jewish study skills that he learned in Pardes’ beit midrash, or Jewish study hall. He plans to become a full-time day school teacher but first wants to get his rabbinical ordination.
“My advice to someone thinking about this program is: Definitely do it!” Less said. “The program is such a blessing for the right person who wants to do intense learning and teaching. It’s intense but indispensable.”
Wallach said the most valuable thing he took away from the Pardes program was how to connect learning to practice. When he teaches about Passover, for example, Wallach turns his classroom walls into an art gallery, hanging dozens of images of the Seder’s four children drawn from different haggadahs and asking his students to explain which images speak to them. That gets them talking. Once they’re done analyzing, he asks the students to create their own images of the four children.
“This kind of exercise always gets them. They are intrigued by it. They are involved,” said Wallach, who has been teaching for seven years. He credits Pardes with showing him this kind of approach to learning.
“It wasn’t just: Here’s how to teach, in theory. It was about how to teach this specific Jewish studies text, the pedagogy of it,” he recalled. “We practiced it, and we had a chance to actually live it, both with our peer training and the teaching.”
Wallach added, “All the best teachers I know went through Pardes.”
Having excellent teachers is critical for the future of the Jewish people, Lauer said.
“Our goal is to give our fellows outstanding training – for their own sake, for the sake of the schools that will hire them, for the sake of the children and for the sake of the future of the Jewish people,” she said. “People who graduate from our program are avidly sought-after and seen as stars in the field. We are hoping to find the new stars. The Jewish world needs new stars.”
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The post Looming Jewish teacher shortage prompts new accelerated training in well-known Jerusalem program appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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AIPAC to halt direct campaign contributions and candidate endorsements
(JTA) — The American Israel Political Affairs Committee has announced that it will no longer make direct campaign contributions or endorse candidates, instead focusing on mobilizing individual donors.
The pro-Israel lobby disclosed the change in a letter to its members on Wednesday, as first reported by Jewish Insider. The letter stated that the lobby would still operate its super PAC, the United Democracy Project, which was launched alongside AIPAC’s PAC in 2021, ahead of the 2022 midterms.
The strategy shift occurred in an increasingly tense environment in which AIPAC has become a boogeyman among many progressive politicians – particularly among members of the Democratic Socialists of America in their Democratic congressional campaigns.
“We will prioritize increasing direct, organized contributions from individual Americans to candidates – expanding upon our current efforts – and maximizing the emerging political fundraising tools,” the AIPAC letter stated.
“Endorsements, direct PAC contributions, and earmarking will no longer be part of our approach so we can expand individual giving and utilize new tools to help our friends win,” the lobby added.
The letter detailed the lobby’s accomplishments in this political cycle, saying it helped 290 pro-Israel candidates secure election wins nationwide and prevented 29 “detractors” from winning.
Looking ahead, the letter noted that “the 2028 cycle will demand an even stronger commitment by our activists to pro-Israel politics.” As a result, the lobby said it would be important to adopt new fundraising strategies and ensure that individual member contributions are being used as effectively as possible.
“Our mission and strategy remain the same,” AIPAC spokesperson Deryn Sousa told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement.
“Our goal is to build support for the U.S.-Israel relationship,” Sousa added. “AIPAC members gave more than $90 million directly to candidates this cycle, and that organized, direct giving from our members will continue and increase.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post AIPAC to halt direct campaign contributions and candidate endorsements appeared first on The Forward.
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The missing ‘peace’ in Israel’s election campaign
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – There’s a short video clip that’s been circulating on Israeli social media channels in recent days showing a massive crowd of jubilant young Israelis at a music festival singing along on repeat to “The Song of Peace.”
The scene, using an anthem forever associated with assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and the peace momentum that surrounded him in the 1990s, feels ironic today. As Israelis prepare to vote on Oct. 27, peace – the idea at the heart of the song and that was once at the heart of the political debate in Israel – is strikingly absent this time around.
More than three years of war have reshaped the country, but few candidates are offering a vision for relations with the Palestinians, let alone a path toward resolving the conflict.
Meanwhile, rising settler violence in the West Bank and mounting international pressure to resolve the decades-old intractable conflict with a two-state solution are making the costs of that political silence increasingly difficult to ignore.
“Objectively, this is just not the main issue in this election,” Prof. Gideon Rahat, a political scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a recent interview.
In contrast to the years leading up to Rabin’s assassination in 1995 – and even those that followed – the divisions in this election have little to do with the question of peace with the Palestinians.
Rather, said Rahat, they are more about the fundamentals, the future character of the state and security. For the past four years, the government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought to overhaul the country’s judiciary, while a burgeoning ultra-Orthodox population has avoided compulsory military service even though Israel has been fighting a relentless war on seven different fronts.
And while there has been an attempt by Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party to frame the debate as one between right-wing and left-wing, pro-and-anti-Palestinian statehood, Rahat said this was misleading.
Most of the parties making up the opposition – those seeking to oust Netanyahu and the current government – are a mix of center-right and right-wing parties. Only one Jewish party in the bloc, the Democrats, appears open to addressing the Palestinian issue.
Rahat pointed out that Hamas’s attack on Israeli civilian communities in southern Israel and at a music festival had served to harden even those who previously thought a peaceful solution with the Palestinians might be possible.
Surveys published in recent years had already shown that support for a Palestinian state, or even a process to reach some kind of solution, had been steadily decreasing even before Oct. 7.
According to Tel Aviv University’s Peace Index, which has published regular data on Israeli attitudes toward peace with the Palestinians since the first Oslo Accords were signed in September 1993, in July this year only 29% of the Jewish public in Israel now supports any form of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian leadership governing the Palestinians in the West Bank.
Broken down into right-wing vs. left-wing voters, the divisions on the issue of the peace process still appear to be sharp, with only 7% of those who identify as right-wing saying they support negotiations, compared to 83% of those on the left. Yet this is somewhat misleading as overall, the percentage of people who identify with views traditionally associated with Israel’s peace camp and the left has been steadily shrinking.
Following a historic low turnout for the two traditional left-wing parties, Labor and Meretz, during the last election in 2022, the two factions joined forces to form The Democrats, now headed by former IDF general Yair Golan. And while the Democrats believe in pursuing separation from the Palestinians through a diplomatic and regional process, Golan has refrained from talking about the position throughout the election campaign.
Additionally, former prime minister Yair Lapid, who heads the center-left Yesh Atid Party and has stated in the past that he supports a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, has cooled on the idea.
He has teamed up with former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who is emphatically against the concept of two democratic states side by side, and is saying that the Hamas attack had postponed the possibility of Palestinian statehood at least for now.
“I don’t think the idea is dead. I think it will be delayed significantly because we need to find ways to secure the safety of our people,” Lapid reportedly said in an interview to a London-based Saudi Arabian newspaper in December 2023.
On the issue of settlements in the West Bank, recent surveys show that the majority of Israeli Jews support the concept. A poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute this month shows that around 55% of Israeli Jews support the policies of various governments to allow, and even encourage, the establishment of settlements. Only 32% think that settlement expansion was not correct, the research found.
While the question of peace with the Palestinians — and the possibility of a nation-state for them in Gaza or the West Bank, which many Israelis refer to by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria — is not being discussed on the political level, violent events in that contested area are becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
On Friday, Heidi Levine, a photojournalist with The Washington Post, was brutally attacked by masked settlers, as shown in video footage. And on Saturday, a group of European diplomats said they were similarly attacked. Both incidents took place as Palestinian farmers harvested their olive crop.
An influential rabbi associated with far-right Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir had issued an edict that Jews were permitted to attack Palestinians and take their olives to “demonstrate our ownership of the land.”
Palestinians, Rabbi Dov Lior, the former chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba wrote in a decree, had “stolen land in their hands,” and really it belongs to Jews.
The phenomenon of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians is not new, but, according to human rights organizations and the United Nations, it has increased in frequency since Oct. 7. Ben-Gvir, who oversees the Israel Police has struggled, along with the military, to maintain law and order.
The violence has resulted in multiple deaths. Several governments imposed sanctions on individuals and organizations linked to settler violence. Netanyahu continues to insist that it is only a handful of disorderly youths who are responsible for the disorder.
The increasing violence has drawn condemnation from Netanyahu’s rivals and even some who support him.
Gadi Eisenkot, the former military chief, whose party Yashar leads the opposition bloc, described the attacks, in a post on X, as “Jewish terrorism, under the auspices of the Israeli government.”
He said it was “burning away the little legitimacy the state of Israel still possesses.”
Avigdor Liberman, a former defense minister under Netanyahu who is now running as part of the opposition bloc, also criticized the violence, saying it was “wiping out Israel’s last bastions of support in the United States and around the world.”
“Bibi is putting out statements in English, but the defense minister, and the national security minister are doing nothing to stop this madness,” Liberman wrote on X, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
“In the end, the damage is first and foremost to the State of Israel and the settlement enterprise. This just proves that Bibi doesn’t care about the country — he only cares about staying in power,” he wrote.
Israeli journalist Amit Segal, known for being pro-Netanyahu, wrote on X that the violence had caused great damage to Israel’s standing among its greatest friends.
Ilana Shpaizman, a senior lecturer in the department of political studies at Bar-Ilan University, said that the flare-up in violence was putting the Palestinian issue back in the spotlight in Israel and beyond.
“For many years or even decades Israeli policy in the West Bank was carried out quietly … It wasn’t like people didn’t know what was going on, but they tried to promote it as quietly as possible to maintain legitimacy to the settlement project,” she said, adding, “When we look at what has happened over the last couple of days, not only has the international community condemned it, but also Israeli politicians.
“People are starting to realize that this government’s support in the West Bank has become very dangerous,” Shpaizman said.
It’s not just Netanyahu, she said – the so-called “change” government that was in office between 2021 and 2022 also failed to address the Palestinian issue.
Shpaizman said that Netanyahu was known for being indecisive and reluctant to address the Palestinian issue, and Bennett and Lapid’s slogan was about addressing the only issues that could be solved and leaving the tougher question of peace with the Palestinians to a later time when other, domestic rifts were resolved.
But, she said, the Palestinian issue is the most explosive issue and one that “cannot be ignored for a long period of time.”
Rahat said the rising tensions in the West Bank and the increasing international pressure, which will likely rise if Netanyahu’s government retains power, could end up forcing a solution, or at least putting the Palestinian issue back on the agenda.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post The missing ‘peace’ in Israel’s election campaign appeared first on The Forward.
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In final Michigan Senate debate, Rogers says Jewish Democrats ‘afraid’ of El-Sayed
(JTA) — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers of Michigan said during the race’s final televised debate Wednesday that some “Jewish Democrats” are “literally afraid” of his opponent, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed,.
“We’re doing exceptionally well with Jewish Democrats who are literally afraid,” the former congressman said during the Detroit debate, which was hosted by local news channel WXYZ. “I’ve talked to ones with tears in their eyes about the future of their kids and grandkids, because [of] the anger and division that he is laying out on the street.”
Rogers repeated the theme in his closing statement, insisting that Jews were among several groups of Democrats who were defecting to him because they found El-Sayed “too extreme.”
“Jewish Democrats who are afraid for their children when their daughters can’t wear their Star of David walking across Michigan’s campus, these are real,” the Republican said. “My opponent’s rhetoric, his vitriol, is having consequences.”
Rogers’ comments echoed an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency published Tuesday.
El-Sayed, a former Wayne County health director, did not directly bring up Jewish voters during his own speaking time. Israel received relatively little attention unlike in earlier debates, in which faced pointed questions about his criticism of the country..
But El-Sayed did briefly return to a familiar Israel-related theme: the deep-pocketed pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, which is planning to contribute as much as $9 million to a pro-Rogers super PAC, The New York Times reported earlier Wednesday.
While discussing Rogers’ initial support for the Iran war, El-Sayed cited the Times story, saying, “But that’s what you get when you have an AIPAC-backed politician.”
El-Sayed made AIPAC a frequent talking point during his primary campaign, when the group spent heavily to support his opponent Rep. Haley Stevens.
An AIPAC spokesperson declined to comment to JTA on the reported spending on Rogers. AIPAC also announced Wednesday that it would stop endorsing candidates and making direct campaign contributions through its PAC, while its affiliated super PAC would do independent election spending.
Asked whether Iran “poses a significant threat to the United States,” El-Sayed said “there’s no doubt that Iran has posed a threat.” He then said the threat had been “contained” by the Obama-era nuclear agreement, from which President Trump withdrew the U.S. in 2018. El-Sayed accused Rogers of “having cheered this war all along.”
In his rebuttal, Rogers accused El-Sayed of failing to condemn Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“My opponent can’t even condemn the IRGC, which is the terrorist enforcement arm of Iran, and doesn’t believe Iran is any more dangerous than Israel,” Rogers said, referencing previous comments El-Sayed had made about Iran at an earlier debate and at a campaign town hall event.
He also continued to accuse El-Sayed of having family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a growing Republican talking point based on past tweets from the candidate’s half-sister referencing their mother’s alleged time in the group. A similar question posed to El-Sayed by a GOP operative during a campaign town hall recently turned into a viral moment for the candidate.
El-Sayed denied belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, saying that it is “an organization I’ve never been a part of.” He said Rogers’ attacks originated from the fact that “my mom was a nurse in Missouri,” and said, “It’s really quite beneath you.”
A New York Times investigation into El-Sayed’s family, published Wednesday, found that his mother had worked as a nurse in Missouri for a Muslim aid group that was later designated by the U.S. government as a supporter of terrorist groups. She was a low-level employee who was accused of wrongdoing, interviewees told the Times. El-Sayed has said he had little relationship with his mother growing up.
The Times also found that El-Sayed had signed an open letter, in 2012, calling on the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, to “purge the media and police” of supporters of the dictatorship overthrown during the Arab Spring. Rogers said of El-Sayed, “He asked the new Muslim Brotherhood head, Morsi, in Egypt, to defund the police.”
Both campaigns have intensified outreach to Jewish voters in the final weeks of the heated Senate race. Some top Jewish Democrats in the state, including Sen. Elissa Slotkin, have endorsed and campaigned with El-Sayed. But some Jewish voters remain skeptical of him.
Nonnegotiable Michigan, a coalition of local rabbis and some Jewish politicians trying to push El-Sayed to more affirmatively voice support for Jews and Israel, issued another statement directed at the candidate ahead of the debate.
“We know what this Senate seat means for our country, and we want a check on the dangerous excesses of the Trump-Vance administration,” Nonnegotiable’s message to El-Sayed reads. “Yet you are making it painfully difficult for our community to vote for you.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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