Helping preschoolers find a way to discover their Jewish values
Mark Horowitz, executive director of the Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative, addresses a group of Jewish educators at UJC MetroWest NJ. Photo by Robert Wiener
MARK HOROWITZ is executive director of the Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative in New York, a project of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation. An advocate for strong family involvement in the Jewish education of young children, Horowitz addressed 60 Jewish educators at the Early Childhood Community of Practice Teams of the Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life of MetroWest at a gathering held Oct. 10 at the Aidekman campus in Whippany.
Horowitz spoke with NJ Jewish News after his workshop, with Partnership executive director Robert Lichtman taking part in the conversation.
Q: What is JECEI (pronounced "Jessie")?
A: JECEI was founded by a group of philanthropists who had a goal and a dream that they could create model Jewish early childhood centers around the country for people who had never considered sending their kids to Jewish preschools.
Q: How Jewish can a two- or three-year-old be?
A: The question is, if you can create an environment where a family is living out Jewish values, two-year-olds can learn to live their lives according to Jewish values. The way two-year-olds solve problems, the way they interact with each other, the way they learn, and their love of learning — if their families understand those are all Jewish imperatives and ways to think Jewishly, the entire family begins to live their lives in accordance with contemporary Jewish values.
Q: You said Jewish education is at a "crossroads moment." What did you mean?
A: The crossroads moment is the time when the parents of a young child make a decision about where to send their children and what communities they will get involved with. If we can engage families at this moment on a pathway of Jewish journey, then they will — if we do our jobs correctly — continue on that path. They won't drop out at the age of four and come back for that child's bar mitzva.
Q: You spoke of a "Jewish imperative." What is that?
A: We can say that the kinds of values we are creating in our schools — how to be a nice person and how to treat others well — are human values. But in Jewish schools, our Torah teaches us there are ways to behave and ways to teach and ways to think. The Jewish imperative is, why not use those ways to explain to parents so they feel what they are doing is part of a Jewish life and a Jewish lifestyle? Instead of parents who say, "I don't really care about the Jewish stuff as long as they teach the kids to be nice to each other."
Q: What's wrong with that?
A: Nothing, except we have in our Jewish traditions words and actions and commandments and texts to say, "This was important to us more than 2,000 years ago, and so why wouldn't we use this to enrich our lives?" These are values you want your children to have, but we are going to talk about them in a Jewish context.
Q: What is Reggio Emilia, and why is it such a key part of your educational philosophy?
A: Reggio Emilia is a town in Italy where a movement was founded by Loris Malaguzzi, a partisan in the Second World War. After the war, he looked around his country and realized that one reason Italy got involved in the war was because people were not thinking and having conversations; they were being led. He wanted to find a new way of educating families and children that would allow them to question and be critical inquirers about life. So he began in the 1950s to form this movement of municipal schools that go from zero to eight years old, this whole network of schools that are built on relationships between parents and teachers and the value and dignity of children as human beings, understanding that children do not come into schools devoid of everything.
Q: How do you translate that philosophy into a Jewish context?
A: First of all, the dignity of every human being and the right of every human being to be educated and loved. We have this wonderful midrash that when we are in our mother's womb we have all the knowledge we are ever going to need. We have everything we need inside, and people have to come to guide us.
Q: What are the biggest problems in early childhood Jewish education?
A: The practical ones are adequate salaries and benefits for teachers, having enough time for teachers to be able to study and learn and be paid for it.
Q: Is early childhood Jewish education the flavor of the month?
A: At this moment and over the last three to five years, the window has been opened. The question of whether it has been opened forever is whether we and the others working in our movement are successful.
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