Last month, the Jewish Education Project published a census of part-time Jewish education in North America. The survey was rife with rich data, but two core findings stood out to us at Moving Traditions: 

• First, there has been a massive decrease in the number of students in supplementary schools over the last ten years, falling 45% from 2006-2007.
• Second, notwithstanding that decrease, part-time Jewish schools are still responsible for the Jewish education of more non-orthodox kids in North America than any other venue today. 

Though these findings were published in the same study, a chasm of missed opportunity has opened because of the perceived distance between them, something we are grateful to JEP for helping to highlight. 

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For years, organizations and foundations have sensed the diminishing importance of supplementary education. Noticing a decrease in synagogue membership and recalling stereotypical stories of kids dragging their feet to Sunday schools, the attention of many in the Jewish communal world has pivoted away from funding synagogue-based supplementary education or the organizations that support them.  

And yet, even if supplementary schools are perceived by many as a sinking ship, the study reminds us that tens of thousands of preteens and teens are still onboard that ship. Moving Traditions sees those young people. And we are proud to be one of the leading and largest organizations coming with lifeboats. 

Those lifeboats contain exceptional curriculum, training and year-round support for supplementary schools and their educators, so that any part-time institution has the tools it needs to provide excellent education. 

Moving Traditions offers FIVE modular sets of curricula for institutions that need it. 

The first, and most widely-used, is the Moving Traditions B-Mitzvah Family Education Program for preteens and families. This program widens the lens we use for B-Mitzvah education beyond Torah reading and prayers. Rather, it addresses the journey preteens are embarking on as they enter their pubescent years and gives them – and their families – tools and prompts to talk about what it means to become a teen, to enter adolescence and to say goodbye to childhood. 

Our B-Mitzvah program helps participants figure out their place in the Jewish community as a preteen and as a parent, providing space and time for parents and children to have these conversations with each other, with other parents and children, respectively, and with their Jewish institution, strengthening connections along each of those chains. The approach is centered in exactly the pedagogy the JEP study recommends, “foster[ing] skills for personal meaning-making as much, if not more, as it focuses on content knowledge and delivery.”  

The second program is Kulam, a plug and play curriculum that recognizes that Jewish education must extend beyond the B-Mitzvah, and provides deep Jewish and social emotional education to 8th-12th graders in Hebrew High school. Kulam stewards young people through concentric circles – Me/The Self, Relationships/Family and Community/World, each imbued with a Jewish framing and Jewish text throughout, making the learning feel relevant to their everyday lives. This again aligns with another key design principle from the JEP study advocating that “successful programs use relationship-based pedagogies to create authentic interpersonal connections around Jewish learning experiences. They deliver learning that nurtures friendships, within classrooms and across the entirety of the community.”  As one teen wrote on our post-session survey “I liked that a lot of things we talked were relatable to my everyday life and also it made me feel more accepted because my peers feel the same way.” 

And these curricula are all new offerings in addition to our 3 legacy programs – Rosh Hodesh (for self-identified girls), Shevet (for self-identified boys) and Tzelem (for transgender, nonbinary and LGBTQ+ teens). Like Kulam, these programs provide curricula and training that create safe spaces at Jewish institutions to address the most sensitive issues teens struggle with: consent, bullying, body positivity, healthy relationships and boundaries. 

We know we are filling an unmet need as we have seen participation nearly double to over 6,000 participating young people from 2017 to 2023. The B-Mitzvah program grew exponentially over the six years since it was launched, now working with 124 institutional partners – double the number it reached in 2019-20. And Kulam has been on its own rocket-ship trajectory. It began with four partners piloting just two years ago, growing to 31 last year, and now serving 66 synagogues nationally, In addition to serving a demonstrable demand, the programs also work. Data from hundreds of end-of-session surveys confirm this:

• 95% of parents said “Today’s session helped me feel like I am a part of a Jewish community that supports me as a parent”
• 92% of Kulam Teens and 85% of B-Mitzvah teens said “Today’s session helped me feel like I am a part of a Jewish community that supports who I am”
• 92% of parents said “At today’s session I felt connected to my child”
• 91% of Kulam teens and 80% of BM teens said “The Jewish stuff in this class was relevant to my life”
• 96% of Kulam teens said “I had fun hanging out with other Jewish teens in a Jewish space today.”

We know that not all the missing teens are coming back to part-time supplementary schools – and we have been experimenting ourselves with offering our programs outside of conventional institutions. But we also know from studies of teen mental health that teens need that education more than ever as a way to connect to themselves, to peers and community, and to a sense of greater purpose. 

At a time when meaningful Jewish community can literally mean the difference between life and death for a teen, we have a moral obligation to draw them back in to all the protective factors that Jewish community can uniquely provide. At Moving Traditions, we just hope that more foundations, programmatic partners, and Jewish institutions recognize that we are providing lifeboats to do just that. 

Shuli Karkowsky is chief executive officer at Moving Traditions (she/her/hers). 

Pamela Barkley, vice president of program (she/her/hers), is in charge of overseeing the development and implementation of Moving Traditions programmatic offerings.