Over the past few months, Hebrew at the Center staff ventured out into the field to visit with our Amitei Ivrit Year-Round fellows in their settings, and found them doing some extraordinary things!
Each site visit revealed a new exciting way our fellows were expanding the learning of Hebrew in their settings. At The Temple, in Atlanta, Rebecca Good guided fifth graders to create an exhibit in her program’s Jewish Museum to teach Hebrew to K-3rd grade students using Hebrew at the Center’s “Table Top” Hebrew learning games. At Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue, in California, Michelle Geft welcomes all her students each week with a kinus opening session in which she prompts them to respond in Hebrew using various signs to let her know how they are feeling, what the date is, and answer other queries. In Manhattan, at Park Avenue Synagogue, teachers used Hebrew at the Center’s Hebrew word card decks to have first grade students identify Hebrew letters on the cards that are also in their Hebrew names. In Atlanta, at Shearith Israel, Sharon Graetz’ students opted into a scavenger hunt elective in which they had to identify in Hebrew the various rooms and objects that make their school and sacred space special.
In each of these ways, and many others by the other fellows in the Amitei Ivrit year-round cohort, this group of educational leaders is deepening and expanding the role and presence of where Hebrew lives in our students’ lives. They are determined to bring Hebrew as a language, as part of Jewish culture, as central to religious behavior out of the academic oriented classroom and into the experiential and organic environments of informal education. In doing so, these students will see Hebrew as more than just a language to learn for a B’nei Mitzvah, or to use singularly on a trip to Israel. They will know and feel how Hebrew connects them to Jews in their own city and around their world. They will understand how Hebrew offers access to both exciting contemporary culture and the wisdom of Jewish literature that is thousands of years old.
In these months, we witnessed the returns of the efforts to invest in training and coaching educators and providing them the resources and support to give them the space to dream, experiment and learn how Hebrew can elevate their mission and vision for Jewish education.
Interested in bringing Amitei Ivrit fellows to your school? Click here to learn more about the program.
