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I  have attended many Jewish conferences, but the URJ Biennial this year was the largest – over 5,500 Jews of all ages.  I attended this particular conference as a consultant to the URJ.  I was engaged in March 2011 to help the URJ professionals and lay leadership in a variety of capacities related to the…

There’s a different kind of marathon that I participate in – it’s not the 26.2 miles that my friends run in the ING NY Marathon, or the Disney Marathon.  It’s the 36+ awake-hour marathon I run at the GA each year.  And while the exhaustion is different than the toll a regular marathon takes, it…

Earlier today I facilitated a presentation for the national NFTY (North American Federation of Temple Youth), the youth affiliate of the Reform Movement.  I had been asked to help their staff think about how educational philosophy is an important part of youth education planning.   While many of their staff had – at one point…

Sitting at the Birthright NEXT #NEXTwork gathering in the SouthEast and the conversation about young Jewish adults feeling like they are “bad Jews” or “not Jewish enough” just emerged – prompting me to repost AGAIN. This was originally written as a paper for my EdD program for my course on Theoretical Foundations of Education Research &…

The following is a Response Lesson that can be used with learners to better understand the Jewish response to the death of Osama bin Laden.  Ideally it would be used over a 2-hour time frame, but please feel free to modify it for your needs.   Additionally, due to the immediacy and time limit, the…

This blog post was originally published on Davar Acher. I am about halfway through coursework for an EdD in Jewish Education Leadership. About 75% of my coursework is actually in secular K-12 education. As such, I am often pausing in my readings and asking myself, “How does this apply to Jewish education?” The following are…