By Thea Chard, other
The Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation has upheld one of the most rigorous religious school programs in the greater Seattle area for years. The Frankel Religious School is built on a curriculum designed around four pillars of Jewish Education and an ambitious three-day-a-week requirement.
However, according to Melanie Berman, Herzl-Ner Tamid’s education director, the demands of the program are getting more and more difficult for some families to manage against their busy schedules. That may deter parents from enrolling their students for Jewish education.
Berman, who is in her fourth year at Herzl-Ner Tamid, said that from her first day she heard complaints from parents that the traditional program offered was too difficult to integrate alongside work, school and extracurricular activities.
“Parents had expressed concern for many years about the challenge of bringing children here two afternoons a week plus the weekend, and they had been encouraging the leadership to come up with a plan,” Berman said.
But synagogue leadership, Berman said, was hesitant to change the program because they didn’t want a “Hebrew school ‘lite.’”
“[Herzl] has been known throughout the years for having an exceptionally solid program with high expectations and good results,” Berman said. “No one within the congregation wanted to water down or weaken the program, and so there really was this tension of how could you possibly cut down the time that the kids are here and not sacrifice the quality of the program?”
The answer came in the form of “B’Yachad,” meaning “together.” The new program, set to launch this September, is targeted toward 3rd through 5th Graders and puts a strong emphasis on family education. B’Yachad is designed to parallel the child’s Hebrew school learning through thematically structured curriculum and alternative learning methods. It is only open to families that are members of Herzl-Ner Tamid.
The new emphasis on parent and family involvement rose from a desire to create an antidote for what Berman calls the “drop-off syndrome,” while tackling the challenge of providing a strong learning experience with the convenience of fewer in-class hours.
“You drop off your kids to get their Jewish education and you pick them up two hours later and they’re Jews!” she said.
Under the B’Yachad program, children will attend lessons only twice a week and will make up for the time change with individualized learning techniques to maximize the experience.
“We’re going to try to make sure that we can differentiate learning to find exactly the right match of material and learning activities for each individual child,” Berman said.
Students in the B’Yachad program will be taught together, regardless of grade level, allowing each child to progress at his or her own pace, while benefiting from the varying group dynamics.
In addition, each family participating in the B’Yachad program will agree to participate in a minimum of seven structured Shabbat experiences and at least one parent will agree to attend lessons at an adult level seven times throughout the year.
The program will utilize recent developments in education research by incorporating art, music, movement and drama, and Berman said she is thrilled to see Jewish learning evolve into a “creative program infused with the arts.”
“We are going to pick probably two or maybe three themes a year and have material on all different levels and projects,” Berman said, “but the 5th Graders may work at a more sophisticated level than the 3rd Graders,” Berman said.
“I think what is really different about this program is the insistence on adult learning for the parents,” Berman said. “Many of the programs that have been developed nationally will have family education days, but in my experience, while family education is marvelous, there wasn’t a lot of content on an adult level.”
Because many parents come from varying backgrounds of their own Jewish learning, Berman said Herzl-Ner Tamid wanted to offer supportive adult education so the children’s learning would not be limited to the synagogue alone.
Berman said the choice to redesign this parallel programming for just this specific age group was a strategic move she hopes will help students develop a connection with Judaism early on in their Jewish education.
“We really are wanting to give the students the skills so that they can make meaning,” she said. “We need to empower the students to wrestle with the text, to realize it’s not just all on the surface and to realize that there are wonderful and powerful ideas within Judaism.”
After a year of planning, the staff and synagogue leadership are ecstatic about the new program, Berman said. There has been strong support from parents and from Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, who have been actively involved in the program development as well.
“It’s a great opportunity for us. I’m excited that for three hours on a Sunday morning there will be adults who are excited about studying Torah,” said Rabbi Rosenbaum, who will be teaching some of the adult parallel courses that he believes will be “unquestionably valuable” for both the parents and their children.
“When parents are excited about Jewish learning themselves, that attitude will carry over to the kids,” he said, recalling how he felt when his own mother decided to pursue a formal Hebrew education when she was in her 60s, regardless of the fact that she had been a practicing Jew all her life.
“Being raised Jewish, as the son of a rabbi, I wouldn’t have thought I needed any more reinforcement, and yet knowing my mother was studying Hebrew made me excited about my Jewish learning,” Rabbi Rosenbaum said. “I felt validated by her interest in the Hebrew language.”
Berman had expected to have to build from a core group of around 15 families, but was surprised when over two-thirds of the families with children in B’Yachad’s age range opted to try the program in the coming fall.
“That’s an important way to engage children confidently,” she said. “We really want the kids to look forward to coming and we can’t say that very often.”
The first day of the program, Tuesday, September 4, will also serve as the inauguration of the first B’Yachad theme, “Lifestyle and Family Heritage.”
“Each child has a personal, authentic connection to this and what we hope to do is to have the children see what they have in common with each other, how Judaism marks these very profound changes in life, and get a sense of their own family history,” Berman said, noting that the parallel parents program will be invaluable to this learning experience and will hopefully spark interfamily dialogue at home.
Correction: The original version of this article incorrectly noted that the B’Yachad program was open to non-members of Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation. Membership at Herzl-Ner Tamid is a prerequisite for enrollment.