Your Daily Phil: Preschool teacher training program ElevatEd expands
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we sit down with the executive director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy at the organization’s recent conference in Oxford, England, and feature an opinion piece by Josh Levy and Meredith Lewis about boosting digital safety measures at Jewish institutions. Also in this issue: Jay Solomon, Col. (res.) Golan Vach and Shari Redstone. We’ll start with the expansion of the early childhood education program ElevatEd.
The early childhood education initiative ElevatEd is expanding to seven new cities beginning this school year with the goal of training hundreds more preschool teachers in the coming years, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
The new cities are: Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, Pittsburgh, Seattle and St. Louis. The expansion to those cities is being supported by their local Jewish federations, as well as an anonymous private foundation.
ElevatEd, which is run jointly by the JCC Association of North America, Jewish Federations of North America and the Union for Reform Judaism, launched last year in five cities: Boston; Denver; Houston; East Bay, Calif.; and Long Island, N.Y. While each of the participating cities financially supports the initiative, the bulk of the funding comes from the Jim Joseph Foundation, Crown Family Philanthropies and the Samuels Family Foundation.
The goal of the three-year pilot program is to train an additional 300 early childhood educators — 30 in each community — in an effort to address the national shortage of well-trained preschool teachers.
“We are thrilled to partner with seven new cities across the country for the second cohort of ElevatEd, as we continue to refine our talent and recruitment strategies and adapt our curriculum based on valuable feedback from the first cohort,” ElevatEd’s executive director, Orna Siegel, said in a statement.
The shortage of early childhood educators is not only a problem in Jewish schools but is a national issue, one that was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent study by the National Institute for Early Education Research.
Under the program, participants without teaching credentials start a year of study, as well as an 18-month period of mentorship and receive “funds to support their work toward a credential in early childhood education,” according to the JCC Association. Mid-career teachers in participating schools will also take part in a “research-based mentor training program” to support the new educators in their schools,” the organization said.
“We’ve also incorporated unique learning tracks that accommodate the diverse Jewish knowledge of our educators,” Sasha Kopp, senior director of ElevatEd education and engagement, said in a statement on Monday. This includes an introductory course for those unfamiliar with basic Jewish concepts, an intermediate course focusing on Jewish holidays and an advanced track for educators in schools that teach Torah or the weekly parsha.
MIND THE (IS)GAP
Expert on global antisemitism: Rising hatred offers U.S. Jewry a chance for rejuvenation
The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy recently brought together some 100 academics from across the world in Oxford, England, to discuss ways to tackle discrimination and hatred against Jews – especially when it crosses into the ambiguous zone of anti-Zionism – and provide them with a forum to learn together how to better teach others about the implications of discrimination against the Jewish people, reports Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Equipping educators: ISGAP’s founder and executive director, Charles Asher Small, told eJP that the rise in antisemitism in the United States caught the American Jewish community unprepared. “They didn’t have best practices or the right policies in place and they were really caught off guard,” he said.
Silver linings: In the face of adversity, however, young Jewish life is also being rejuvenated, he said, with “more going more to synagogue, putting mezuzahs on their doors and they want to be proud and more engaged than ever.”
SAFETY FIRST
Securing our future: Digital safety for Jewish communities in a polarized world
“Jewish tradition calls for deep introspection as we enter the month of Elul. We reflect on the past year, considering what we’ve done well and where we need to improve, and confront uncomfortable truths we might prefer to ignore,” write Josh Levy, founder of Klal Digital Safety, and Meredith Lewis, senior director of impact at the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Tech teshuva: “Among these truths is our digital behavior: Many of us continue to engage in practices online that leave us and our institutions vulnerable, such as reusing passwords and leaving social media accounts unprotected… While JFNA’s recent study found that the vast majority of Jews feel safer when they can see a visible security presence at Jewish institutions, digital security is often invisible to most of our community.”
A critical moment: “In addition to the physical attacks and vandalism we read about in the news, Jewish institutions are increasingly targeted by hacking, doxxing and other forms of cyber harassment. These digital threats aim to disrupt and undermine our communal operations and sow fear within our communities.”
Steps to start with: “It’s vital that we communicate the value and importance of investments in digital security, and that we take a communal approach where resources and knowledge are shared to build a stronger, more resilient network of Jewish organizations… Long-term solutions such as investing in cybersecurity infrastructure, developing incident response plans and drafting internal cybersecurity policies are essential; but there are also actions we can take right now that will go a long way toward keeping our organizations and staff safe.”
Worthy Reads
Call It What It Is: Targeting Jewish students because you are against Israel is antisemitism, writes Hillel Ontario’s Jay Solomon in the National Post. “Jewish students from TMU [Toronto Metropolitan University] Hillel had set up a booth designed to welcome students back and distribute giveaways to the entire community. This was a celebration — an opportunity for TMU’s Jewish students to be like every other member of the campus community and take part in frosh week activities. As Jewish students gathered at the Fair, proudly proclaiming their cultural and religious pride, they were singled out and accosted by a group of angry protestors chanting hateful slogans with a megaphone and holding up signs reading ‘Zionism off our campus.’ … Protesters could have easily chosen to picket in front of the Israeli Consulate several blocks away from TMU. But they didn’t. They chose to come to a campus program, to stake out space directly across from a Hillel gathering, to try to drown out expressions of Jewish pride and to harass and intimidate Jewish students (and those who support and socialize with them)… Make no mistake: when protestors target Jewish campus programs, as they did at the TMU Clubs and Services Fair last week, calling for the blacklisting of Zionists (i.e., Jews), they are occupying a position far outside the bounds of acceptable Canadian campus discourse and values. We must — and will — call it out for what it is: Jew hatred.” [NationalPost]
Embrace the Encounter: In a blog post for Jewish Family Services Seattle, Rabbi Will Berkovitz reflects on his son Idan’s summer adventure working on a rodeo in rural Oregon. “To my knowledge, he [had] never been close to a cow, let alone an irritated bull, so it is not clear to me what skills he listed on his application, beyond possibly walking our dogs (and even that would be an exaggeration). Yet there he was, in work boots, flannel, and baseball hat, pushing the cattle through the chutes and into the ring. Idan returned unshowered, unshaven, and glowing as he shared stories of the people he met… I could tell that his understanding of who makes up the tapestry of our country was expanding. I am reminded of Idan’s experiences as I reflect on an invitation I received to speak at the University of Washington on the importance of civil dialogue even when you may disagree… Idan met people from a completely different part of society and saw them, not as caricatures, but as thoughtful, multidimensional people from whom he could learn. That is what we need more of right now — to see people as complex and multifaceted, and to stay open to listening, learning, and exchanging ideas with civility rooted in a desire to understand and connect more deeply.” [JFSSeattle]
The Middle Man: Funders are increasingly utilizing intermediary organizations to take care of their grant-making, but research by the Center for Effective Philanthropy finds that grantees have some concerns, reports Stephanie Beasley in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.“As a whole, nonprofits found intermediary funders to be slightly more open to grantees’ feedback about their grant-making strategies and slightly more willing to engage in frequent contact with grantees, the CEP report said… Intermediaries were seen as understanding less about grantees’ work than originating donors and were less likely to provide multiyear or unrestricted funding, grantees reported. That is likely because intermediary funders are constrained by the type and duration of funding they received from the original donors and may face their own fundraising challenges, CEP noted. The results were ‘surprising,’ said Elisha Smith Arrillaga, CEP’s vice president for research, because funders often choose ‘to use intermediaries because it can help them get closer to communities. It can help them align better with their equity strategies. It can help them take on different kinds of risk. But the data really shows that it depends a lot on who you choose.’” [ChronicleofPhilanthropy]
Around the Web
Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, Jewish National Fund-USA and the U.S. Embassy in Israel are hosting a Sept. 11 memorial service at the 9/11 Living Memorial Plaza in Jerusalem, one of the few such ceremonies held outside of the United States…
Senior Israeli Home Front Command officer Col. (res.) Golan Vach was seriously injured in a tunnel collapse in central Gaza and hospitalized in stable condition; Vach has played a critical role in search-and-rescue operations in Israel and around the world, notably in Surfside, Fla., following a building collapse in the town, and in Turkey following an earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people…
American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch sent a letter signed by over 20,000 Americans to the CEOs of major tech and social media companies urging them to take a stronger stance against the spread of antisemitism, support for terrorism and misinformation about Jews and Israel…
Jewish Insider interviews outgoing non-executive chair of Paramount Global Shari Redstone about what is giving her hope in the Middle East following the Middle East-America Dialogue Summit in Washington earlier this week…
A new study by Independent Sector and United for ALICE found that 22% of nonprofit employees in the United States experience financial hardships…
Annette R. Segil, a business consultant, donated an undisclosed sum to endow an eponymous professorship of education and Jewish learning at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion…
Twenty protesters in San Francisco from the Jewish-led IfNotNow group, which opposes Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and is opposed to American institutional support for Israel, demonstrated yesterday outside the building that houses the city’s Jewish Community Relations Council, Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund and other organizations.…
The University of Pennsylvania announced that it will adopt a policy of institutional neutrality in an effort to protect the school’s “diversity of thought”; Yale is creating a committee to consider a similar policy…
Pic of the Day
The families of slain hostages Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alex Lobanov and Almog Sarusi met privately on Tuesday in Tel Aviv under the banner “United in love for the ‘Beautiful 6’ who were killed together. United to bring home all the hostages.” The families did not publicly share what they discussed in their meeting.
The six Israelis were taken captive on Oct. 7 and held hostage in Gaza for 11 months. They were killed by Hamas as IDF forces closed in on their underground tunnel location. Their bodies were publicly identified by the IDF on Sept. 1.
Birthdays
CEO of NYC’s 92nd Street Y, Seth William Pinsky…
Lyricist and songwriter, together with his late wife he won four Emmys, three Oscars and two Grammys, Alan Bergman… Wisconsin resident, Janis Gershon Kohlenberg… French physicist who was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for physics, Serge Haroche … 7-foot basketball center who played for the Bulls and Hawks in the NBA, David L. “Dave” Newmark… Senior U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of Ohio based in Cincinnati, Judge Susan J. Dlott… Pediatric nephrologist, Dr. Jonathan Heiliczer… Member of the New Jersey General Assembly since 2006, he is the first Orthodox Jew to serve in the New Jersey Legislature, Gary Schaer… Television producer and executive producer, Jon Meyersohn… Global real estate advisor at ONE Sotheby’s International Realty, Rosy Lofer… Owner of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, he is the founder and president of global hedge fund Appaloosa Management, David Tepper… Director of sales and marketing at Hillcrest Royale Senior Living in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Marian Rubinstein… Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Judge, Ellen Ceisler… Co-founder of the U.K. hedge fund, Brevan Howard Asset Management, he is a former director of the U.K.’s Conservative Friends of Israel, Alan Howard… London-based CEO and founding partner of Stanhope Capital, Daniel Pinto… CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Mark Dubowitz… Israeli journalist, political commentator and investigative reporter, Raviv Drucker… Executive director at JP Morgan Chase, Daniel E. Berger… Former member of the Illinois Legislature, now the CEO of NYC’s Chevra Hatzalah Volunteer Ambulance Service, Yehiel Mark Kalish… Arbi Tatevosian… Artificial intelligence researcher and writer on decision theory and ethics, Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky… Stand-up comedian and podcast host, his YouTube channel has over 235 million views, Steven Ira Hofstetter… Author and social media personality in Israel’s religious-nationalist community, Rabbi Avraham Stav… Jessica Sebella Setless Spiegel… Co-founder and rebbetzin of the Altneu synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and news editor for The Real Deal, Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt… Media and foreign affairs advisor to Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, Betty Ilovici … Chief of staff at the Jewish Agency for Israel, Gali Gordon… Udi Ben Zeev…
