Prizmah Podcasts: Podcasts by Prizmah Center for Jewish Day Schools

ADDRESSING THE PIPELINE PROBLEM: MAIMONIDES FELLOWS PROGRAM Explore an initiative that aims to address the national issue of fewer and fewer talented and inspiring adults choosing to become teachers or stay in the field of education. This podcast dives into how the Maimonides School, a Modern Orthodox school in Brookline, Massachusetts, decided to invest in young talent, even before these talented...

How have our educators been impacted by, and adapted to, the horrific attacks against Israel that took place on October 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza? The starting point for this conversation is the study " Responding to This Historical Moment: Jewish Educators, Clergy, Engagement Professionals and the War in Israel ." Hear about the emotional challenges that these educators have faced, and the ed...

What does it take to build a school from scratch? Especially a school as sophisticated as a Jewish day school. In this podcast, we sit down with Rabbi Dr. Gil Perl, who throughout his career has taken three schools from concept to reality. Most recently, in August 2023, he helped open the Jewish Leadership Academy  in Miami, Florida. The Jewish Leadership Academy is a highly selective Jewish middl...

Four heads of school from the Bay Area talk about a mission they took together to Israel during the current war. They depict what it's like in their schools during this time, with heightened antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the region. Their schools are serving as places of refuge, as centers of Jewish pride where people organize opposition to pro-Hamas political proposals. The heads desc...

Learn about the The Milken Way, a unique set of ideas and values that guides how Milken Community School, one of the largest Jewish day schools in North America, operates and thinks about customer service. As Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Customer service has become the most important fac...

School mission statements articulate a hope that through our educational programs, help students gain the knowledge, skills and inclinations needed to make positive change. By putting Tikkun Olam at the core of K-8 programs, Leo Baeck Day School in Toronto has learned how to help students learn to connect their actions to Jewish values. Learn how and why the Tikkun Project at Toronto’s Leo Baeck D...

Listen to a far-ranging podcast and expand your understanding of what Jewish arts education is and can be. Explore how one teacher sets up an artists beit midrash, and how students go about creating art from tefillah. Hear how students at another school pass through a collaborative, multilayered iterative process from study to the creation of objects. Explore the way that a rabbinical school teach...

Learn about the vital, sophisticated work of Reggio-inspired Jewish early childhood educators from two day school administrators and a field leader who is also the author of a recent dissertation. The conversation ranges from the ways that educators understand the minds of young students to the development of Jewish identity and creativity, with a glimpse into the state of the field as well.   Dr....

Where does Jewish history live in your curriculum, culture, and approach to education at your school? Jewish history is central to Jewish education, and can be a locus of meaning, authority, and knowledge for all Jewish day school students. Listen to this interesting discussion with Rachel Bergstein, Director of the Center for Excellence and Engagement in Jewish History and Jewish History Departme...

Learn from Rebecca Lurie and Dr. Jonah Hassenfeld how a leadership team structure that is aligned with institutional values has the capacity to effect impactful and sustained change within a school environment. Explore the process by which the organizational structure of Schechter Boston was transformed into a distributed leadership model. This Podcast Live episode was recorded in person at the Pr...

How can Jewish schools ensure that their graduates go on to be stewards of democracy? And how can Jewish educators teach students to connect Jewish ethics to the practices of citizenship? The Brandeis School of San Francisco has been wrestling with these questions since the 2016 election cycle. Hear from head of school Dr. Dan Glass about how Brandeis has worked to connect Jewish ethics and democr...

Debby Artz-Mor, director of Jewish learning at the Brandeis School in San Francisco, and Rabbi David Stein, Judaics studies principal at Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles, join Sivan Zakai to discuss her new longitudinal study of Israel education , My Second Favorite Country. They consider understandings of "age-appropriate" learning that can impede educational engagement and exploration, discu...

How do students internalize and act out gender narratives in their relationships to their school, to different subjects, to their teachers and other students? How do teachers sometimes reinforce gender roles in the classroom, in ways that can harm students' confidence and limit their expression? Heads of school Jason Feld (Northwest Yeshiva High School in Mercer Island, WA) and Hannah Bennett (Bri...

What are we trying to achieve in Jewish education? What do martial arts have to teach us about pedagogy for Jewish learning? How do we think about community and autonomy, tradition and innovation, in day schools? Brandeis education professor Jon Levisohn is joined by heads of school Stephanie Ives at Beit Rabban in Manhattan and Rafi Cashman at Netivot HaTorah in Toronto to discuss what our school...

At the center of the mission of Luria Academy is diversity as a core value. But what happens when you’ve achieved your goal and you have created a uniquely diverse community? What does it mean to be in relationship with people whose religious practice is different from yours? How do our students learn to approach one another from a place of curiosity and respect? How do we navigate political diver...

We are the story we tell ourselves. In 2019, parents and school leaders at Brandeis Marin, a K-8 Jewish day school located in San Rafael, CA, began exploring ways to create a storytelling and story-capturing culture to enable deep, authentic and consistent connection within the school community. When the pandemic hit, the Brandeis Marin school community had developed its own version of The Moth (r...

Now that Covid is waning and classrooms feel close to the old normal, what have we learned from two years of online and hybrid pedagogy? Despite the challenges and drawbacks, are there things that remote learning enabled that we might preserve as we move forward? Hear a university researcher and two day school educators reflect on what was achieved during the pandemic.   Featuring: Michal Bessler...

Alex Pomson and Jack Wertheimer, authors of the recent book Inside Jewish Day Schools: Leadership, Learning and Community, speak with two school leaders featured in the book, Erica Rothblum and Ami Neuman, about the stories that their schools tell as well as larger stories of the field. They reflect upon how to tell our stories, what stories have emerged over the past few years, and which stories...

Finding great teachers today seems harder than ever. According to a recent survey, 75% of first year teachers report that they were insufficiently prepared to meet the needs of students. At the same time, recruitment and retention challenges are leading to severe teacher shortages in schools across the country. We believe the solution for recruiting, developing, and retaining strong teachers begin...

What are Jewish schools doing to ensure that professional development is excellent and a top school priority? This conversation featuring Tammy Anagnostis, dean of Golda Och Academy's lower school, Rabbi Maccabee Avishur, academic dean and general studies principal at Heichal Hatorah, Dr. Arielle Levites, managing director of CASJE, Suzanne Mishkin, K-6 principal at Sager Solomon Schechter Day Sch...

Two directors of institutional advancement, Mandi Miller of Beth Tfiloh Dahan in Baltimore and Stephanie Bash-Soudry of Golda Och Academy in West Orange, New Jersey, delve into the nature of their role. They talk about the kinds of teamwork they perform with the administrative team and the faculty, and they discuss their work in ensuring that their schools' missions are powerful and in alignment w...

The Jewish school is positioned at the nexus of the individual, the family and the community, bringing to light the opportunities and challenges of being a committed Jew in the modern world. The school can become a center for teacher learning and research. This can give teachers a public intellectual voice and ensure a vibrant, dynamic, entrepreneurial learning community able to advance educationa...

Rabbi Shmuel Feld interviews Rabbi David Aaron, Dean and Rosh Yeshiva of Orayta in Jerusalem on how to approach conversations about God with Jewish day school students. He asserts that belief should give people’s lives greater vitality and meaning rather than disempowering them. Produced by the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge (JEIC). 

Rabbi Shmuel Feld interviews Rabbi Dr. Michael Shire, Dean of the Shoolman Graduate School of Jewish Education at Hebrew College Boston, on how to approach conversations about God with Jewish day school students. Rabbi Dr. Shire distinguishes between teaching about the essence of God and the experience of God. Produced by the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge (JEIC). 

Rabbi Shmuel Feld interviews Rebbetzin Yehudis Golshevsky, Director of SHIVITI in Jerusalem, on how to approach conversations about God with Jewish day school students. She suggests that discussing belief is not necessarily about certainty in God; belief is about helping students find meaning in living in a Jewish way. Produced by the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge (JEIC).