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<\/a><\/p>\nA student’s illustration of the concept of God’s “beyondness,” indicated by the Hebrew word l’eilah, from a class in North Carolina about the names of God. (Courtesy of Rebecca Ben-Gideon)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s an oy vey,\u201d said Sharon Freundel, managing director of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge (JEIC), which conducted the survey in 2017. Her organization has been working for several years in small and mid-sized communities to help Jewish educators bring God into the classroom in a systemized and organized way.<\/p>\n
This spring the organization \u2013 which was founded in 2012 by the Maryland-based Mayberg Foundation to improve Jewish day school education through innovation, experimentation and collaboration \u2013 held an Innovators\u2019 Retreat in Seattle.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe aim is to help kids develop their own relationship with God, or whatever they deem God to be,\u201d Freundel said. <\/p>\n
\u201cKids and adults alike today are thirsting for a spiritual connection to something larger than themselves,\u201d Freundel said. \u201cWhether you call this nature, or global community, or universe, or \u2014 as we do \u2014 God, we want to help schools and teachers facilitate this relationship formation for each of their students.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea is that connecting to God will assist children in their Jewish identity formation and help ensure they\u2019re more committed lifelong Jews, according to JEIC.<\/p>\n
Over the past few years, some 200 schools have received some form of support from JEIC, in part to facilitate God-centered learning \u2014 from Reform schools to nondenominational ones to Orthodox yeshivas.<\/p>\n
God-centered learning can take myriad forms: pairing off students for discussions, using technology to get kids to think, asking students to meditate or sit in nature, having students listen to music or create art. What\u2019s important, educators say, is to create a lesson plan whose goal is to get students to think about and talk about what God means \u2014 or doesn\u2019t mean \u2014 to them.<\/p>\n
In New York, JEIC worked with the Manhattan Day School to create a program that uses a digital prayerbook app to help students make Jewish prayer more personal. In the program, called Tefillah ReImagined and created with support from JEIC, students are encouraged to highlight passages, write questions in the margins, or even add pictures or doodles. Then, in weekly meetings with a prayer adviser, the students discuss what they added to their prayerbooks and how to make routine prayer more meaningful. <\/p>\n
Chaya Elishevitz, head of school for the Chabad MMSC Day School & Seattle Jewish Montessori, said God-centered learning at her schools begins among the youngest students. <\/p>\n
Preschoolers are taught \u201chow lucky we are that we have God in our lives, that He\u2019s there for us, protecting us,\u201d and as students get older they learn that \u201ca relationship with God is not simple,\u201d Elishevitz said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of room for questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
At B\u2019nai Shalom in Greensboro, North Carolina, Rabbi Rebecca Ben-Gideon and Eliana Light piloted and developed a program with the help of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge in which middle schoolers focus on names \u2014 both their own and the many names used for God.<\/p>\n
First, students complete worksheets about themselves, including their given names, whom they\u2019re named for, nicknames, character traits they\u2019re known by, traits they\u2019d like to have and \u201cspecial names that people call you,\u201d said Ben-Gideon, now an educational coach. <\/p>\n
The point is that \u201cyour name\u2019s not the same as who you are; it captures part of who you are,\u201d Ben-Gideon said. \u201cThe same is true about God. God has many names, but God\u2019s names are not the same as God.\u201d<\/p>\n
She notes that the Kaddish prayer uses the word \u201cl\u2019eyla\u201d \u2014 \u201cbeyondness\u201d \u2014 for God: \u201cJust like love, which we can feel but find hard to put into words, our understanding of God goes beyond what we can put into words,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Yehuda Chanales, director of the Lifnai Vlifnim, a Jewish organization that supports schools in developing spiritual growth, worked with the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge on ways to encourage youngsters to develop a relationship with God through active listening. He recommends pairing off students and having one tell about an experience or a story while the other simply listens. <\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone is listening to you. You\u2019re learning how to talk and feel heard without someone saying anything,\u201d he said. \u201cThen, take it up a level and say: Now, let\u2019s talk to God.\u201d<\/p>\n
OpenDor Media\u2019s Unpacked for Educators series, which provides teachers with tools to make Jewish spiritual learning accessible and substantive, created 10 videos with JEIC\u2019s support focused on various Jewish aspects of spirituality, including God, the afterlife, prayer, and why Judaism has so many rules. Alex Harris, senior educator for the program, suggests asking students to try \u201chitbodedut\u201d \u2014 the practice of solitary personal meditation and prayer pioneered by the late 18th century sage Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. <\/p>\n
\u201cGo outside, ask them to go into a quiet place, sit, walk around, think and talk to God,\u201d Harris said. \u201cHaving a conversation with God is the idea, not to have anything scripted.\u201d <\/p>\n
Children should talk about what they\u2019re seeking, what they\u2019re thinking about in their lives, what their worries are, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone, including young students, has a capacity to have these really deep, important conversations \u2014 whether it\u2019s about prayer, whether it\u2019s about free will, whether it\u2019s about God, about Shabbat, but oftentimes they don\u2019t have the language to do so,\u201d Harris said. <\/p>\n
The aim of the exercise is to give them the tools for what he called \u201ca lifelong process.\u201d<\/p>\n
When over 90 Jewish educators, leaders and funders from around the country came to the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge\u2019s recent retreat in Seattle, which was co-sponsored by the Seattle-based Samis Foundation, they focused in large part on discussing how to implement God-centered learning in their schools. A 2026 retreat is scheduled for Atlanta.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to look different in every single school,\u201d Freundel said. \u201cIf God is infinite, as we believe, then God-centered learning can have an infinite number of manifestations.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was sponsored by and produced in partnership with the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge, a bold initiative to radically improve the quality of Jewish education in day schools across North America. This article was produced by JTA\u2019s native content team.<\/p>\n