Prizmah Podcasts: Podcasts by Prizmah Center for Jewish Day Schools Prizmah:CJDS

How have our educators been impacted by, and adapted to, the horrific attacks against Israel that took place on October 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza? The starting point for this conversation is the study "Responding to This Historical Moment: Jewish Educators, Clergy, Engagement Professionals and the War in Israel." Hear about the emotional challenges that these educators have faced, and the educational dilemmas that continue to shadow their work in the classroom, during these traumatic times featuring guests Clare Goldwater, Dr. Ezra Kopelowitz, Dr. Alexandria Fanjoy Silver, and Rabbi WIll Keller.
 
Clare Goldwater is chief strategy officer at M²:The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education. She is based in Jerusalem.Ezra Kopelowitz is the CEO of ReST: Research, Success, Technologies and a fellow at the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education.Dr. Alexandria Fanjoy Silver is a Jewish history teacher at TanenbaumCHAT, a Jewish high school in Toronto.Rabbi Will Keller is the head of school at the Hebrew Day School of Ann Arbor in Ann, Arbor, Michigan.

What does it take to build a school from scratch? Especially a school as sophisticated as a Jewish day school. In this podcast, we sit down with Rabbi Dr. Gil Perl, who throughout his career has taken three schools from concept to reality. Most recently, in August 2023, he helped open the Jewish Leadership Academy in Miami, Florida.
The Jewish Leadership Academy is a highly selective Jewish middle and high school dedicated to developing the skills, curiosity, and potential of Miami’s most ambitious students for a life of purpose, commitment, and service. Hear lessons learned from Rabbi Dr. Gil Perl, and stories shared from each of his successful schools.

Rabbi Dr. Gil Perl is the CEO of the Ades Family Foundation and the founding head of school of the Jewish Leadership Academy in Miami. A nationally sought after speaker and award-winning teacher, Rabbi Perl earned his bachelor’s from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s and Ph.D. from Harvard, and rabbinical ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University. He is the author of the book The Pillar of Volozhin: Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin and the World of Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Torah Scholarship, as well as numerous articles on the history of Modern Jewry, contemporary Jewish education, and Modern Orthodoxy.

Four heads of school from the Bay Area talk about a mission they took together to Israel during the current war. They depict what it's like in their schools during this time, with heightened antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the region. Their schools are serving as places of refuge, as centers of Jewish pride where people organize opposition to pro-Hamas political proposals. The heads describe the conversations and images in Israel that are seared in their memories, the people they met who are "the traumatized serving the traumatized." They share what they have been communicating with their school since their return.

Learn about the The Milken Way, a unique set of ideas and values that guides how Milken Community School, one of the largest Jewish day schools in North America, operates and thinks about customer service.
As Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Customer service has become the most important factor in consumer decisions. In fact, recent studies have shown that 73% of people point to customer service as a key factor in significant decisions. Yet rarely do schools invest in customer service as a primary function of their recruitment and retention strategies. Learn about the customer service model of the Milken Community School in Los Angeles, and how it’s implemented across campus, in everything they do.

School mission statements articulate a hope that through our educational programs, help students gain the knowledge, skills and inclinations needed to make positive change. By putting Tikkun Olam at the core of K-8 programs, Leo Baeck Day School in Toronto has learned how to help students learn to connect their actions to Jewish values. Learn how and why the Tikkun Project at Toronto’s Leo Baeck Day School came to be and hear examples of the powerful learning that emerges when students think critically about themselves and their responsibilities to the world around them.

Listen to a far-ranging podcast and expand your understanding of what Jewish arts education is and can be. Explore how one teacher sets up an artists beit midrash, and how students go about creating art from tefillah. Hear how students at another school pass through a collaborative, multilayered iterative process from study to the creation of objects. Explore the way that a rabbinical school teaches Biblical narrative texts and Talmudic Halakhic passages through the embodied learning of circus arts experiences. Discover how these programs conceive of the relationship between the social and individual aspects of creativity.
 
Presenters
Dr. Ora Horn Prouser is the CEO and academic dean at the Academy for Jewish Religion, an accredited, pluralistic rabbinical, cantorial, and graduate school located in NY but serving students throughout the US and internationally through our distance learning program. She is the co-editor of Under One Tent: Circus, Judaism, and Bible, which is an extension of sacred arts work at AJR. AJR is now home to a Center for Sacred Arts. 
 

Ayal Prouser is a circus artist, choreographer and academic. He is founder & director of Time Flies Circus.


 
Linda Parmet is Hebrew content dean and director of interdisciplinary Jewish studies at The Weber School in Atlanta, Georgia. She also serves as a mentor on the staff of The Teacher Institute for the Arts run by Kol HaOt. Linda and her students study Jewish sources, values and concepts then use creative design and visual arts to illuminate their thoughts and express their insights. Follow this link to see the class portfolio of Torah, toolkits and power tools. 
 
Ahuva Winslow is the director of visual arts at Yeshivat Frisch in Paramus, New Jersey. She teaches the 9-12th grade art track, which includes artist beit midrash, as well as a 12th grade Biblical portraits Nach elective.