Families in the Iris Family Center for Early Childhood Education at Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel in South Orange enjoy a Shabbat celebration; they will have a chance to meet other synagogue families and celebrate Shabbat together in their homes in a program sponsored by a LaZuz Grant from The Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life.
Photo courtesy Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel
New blood and next steps
According to Joan Bronspiegel Dickman, director of the early childhood initiatives program for The Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life, the LaZuz Grants support programs that feature:
- Jewish experiences outside the institution;
- programming that is open to any families in the area with young children, beyond the preschool community; and
- built-in “next steps” to encourage families to consider Jewish education for their children beyond the pre-school years.
The preschools were also encouraged to include the synagogue’s professionals so that parents could interact with rabbis, cantors, and principals, and to lower the barriers to newcomers to help them feel more welcome.
July 17, 2008
On the first day of Shavuot, 30 preschoolers celebrated the holiday at a backyard party in South Orange. They splashed in a pool and played on the swing set, but at the slide, there was a twist: They were asked questions about Jewish life; with each correct answer, they ascended one rung of the ladder.
As they reached the top, they were presented with their own plush stuffed Torahs to keep before enjoying the ride down. They also enjoyed tales spun by a Jewish storyteller and sang Jewish songs.
Though the children may have perceived the afternoon as fun and games, it was a carefully crafted event attended not only by the preschool director but also by the rabbi, the cantor, and the education director.
“It was an opportunity to make the celebration of this often overlooked holiday available to people who might not otherwise celebrate it,” said Sandy Sachs, director of the Thelma K. Reisman Preschool at Beth El, which hosted the afternoon, known as “Meet Me on the Mountain.”
In fact, there were many prospective members in attendance who are not regulars at synagogue services, she said. With the participation of the religious school director, “it offered a bridge from the preschool to the religious school.”
Families also received packets including Shavuot recipes and information about the holiday to help them celebrate it at home as well.
Beth El is one of three local preschools planning events that take place outside traditional Jewish spaces with the help of a LaZuz Grant from The Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life. Named “LaZUz” — literally, to move — the grant is intended to move Jewish experiences outside traditional spaces. The modest grants are intended as a spur to innovation in Jewish schooling.
Funding for the grants is provided by Tova and Howard Weiser, through the Fund for Innovation at The Partnership, in memory of their relatives who perished at Auschwitz.
“The whole idea is to say you can do Jewish outside the classroom, outside the synagogue,” said Robert Lichtman, executive director of The Partnership, the education agency of the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ. “The focus of the Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life is to bring Jewish learning to life. We want to connect Jewish learning to other areas of life beyond the classroom.”
Also receiving grants were Child’s Way*Derech HaYeled, a Jewish Montessori school housed at B’nai Shalom in West Orange, and the Iris Family Center for Early Childhood Education at Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel in South Orange. Their programs will run later this summer and in early September, respectively.
The grants are offered as a 1:2 match, with a maximum grant of $300. Acknowledging the small size of the grants, Lichtman said, “The idea is to give educators already thinking about these kinds of programs just a little bit of the nudge they needed to get them to do it.”
Children at Child’s Way*Derech HaYeled, a Jewish Montessori school in West Orange, play a game together. The school will host an ice cream social later this summer through a LaZuz Grant, where they will introduce themes of tzedaka and pair up new and old families as buddies.
Photo courtesy Child’s Way*Derech HaYeled
Child’s Way will use the grant to incorporate elements of its tzedaka curriculum, and enhance that program, at its annual ice cream social on July 27. Parents of new students will be buddied with those of returning children. As families decorate their own tzedaka boxes, the school’s founder and director, Rabbi Susan Lazev, will explain that while their child’s class will be collecting tzedaka as a group, each child is also expected to collect tzedaka at home.
As the child’s birthday approaches, the boy or girl selects a mitzva project to participate in, and the child will ultimately donate the tzedaka from the box at home to this project, and present the whole project to the class.
Finally, the school is undertaking a third level of tzedaka, building a connection with preschoolers on Kibbutz Erez in Israel. To that end, they will be holding a benefit concert in October and inviting other area schools to join the effort. Any school that registers will, in turn, receive a tzedaka box kit, enabling students to decorate pushkes for the event.
Lazev said that while all of these ideas had been floating in her head, the grant gave her “the momentum, opportunity, and timing to move her ideas forward.”
Meanwhile, Sharey Tefilo-Israel will focus on helping families celebrate Shabbat at home. Families will gather at the synagogue, where assistant rabbi Ellie Miller will teach them how to make the appropriate blessings and read a story about Shabbat. There will also be a Shabbat-related craft activity. Families, paired with hosts, will receive a packet of materials about Shabbat and return to the host’s home to enjoy Shabbat dinner together. The program is designed to take place before the High Holy Days, to help new families gain a level of familiarity with the congregation.
“Few people in our area are living near immediate family. Our goal is to help bridge the gap so that new people can have more seasoned people to hang out with on holidays. Nobody wants to walk into a place where they don’t know anyone. This program will help them get comfortable with the clergy, get comfortable with other families, and take home the program so they don’t have to rely on the preschool. Once they have had dinner together, the guest family can call the host family and say, ‘Hi. That was fun. Why don’t you come to my house and we can do it again?’” said Iris center director Carol Paster.
The grant for this first cohort was made available only to those of the eight schools participating in the PJLL’s Community of Practice, a kind of think tank for the area’s preschools. Each school is required to document the project, creating a model that others can follow.
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