Color it Dismal, Color it Hope

...Happily, however, all that is in the future...

...Reference Group 3 is being led by Dr...

...we taste apples and honey on Rosh Ha-shana...

...Following a line of speakers who have greeted us all on behalf of etcetera on the occasion of this historic and so forth, Jerry Benjamin and Chene Koller-Fox step up to the mike: "Why are we here...

...None of the alternatives seems overly complicated...

...These kids have already had a full day," she is telling the teachers in her class, "they've been sitting and listening and they're tired and bored...

...We can't only talk about technique...

...Danny Grossman, a partially deaf teacher who works with deaf students in sign language, offers to "sign" any song for a bid of five dollars or more, and gives a free rendition of Sounds of Silence to start the ball rolling...

...Not yet enough, to be sure, but at least a new—and powerful—beginning, a sense, at last, of real possibility...

...We were on our way...

...All have been tried, with studies to prove their effectiveness...

...Bob (Dylan) Zimmerman We've all heard the cynical wisecracks: "Hebrew teaching...

...It rented a minuscule office in New York...

...Along corridor walls there are booths selling books, games, political views right and left...

...Later, at my Reference Group meeting, I learn that we will be asked*to vote at the Plenary Session that evening on a resolution that the Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education be established as the North American Association for Jewish Teachers...

...A pile of vanilla ice cream covered with fruits and nuts and marshmallow sludge...

...The ballot, along with nominations for the national board, is presented to the assembly for a vote...

...A fledgling organization, with a surplus of enthusiasm and manifest organizational skills, must still cover a deficit of budget and other resources...

...My group meets, and we send thirteen points to the meeting of Reference Group representatives...

...Art Waskow sells off his "Yinglish" alphabet, a chart delineating the new language he has created from Yiddish and English...

...Eleven people elected to tackle the problem of organizing a larger, more expansive conference for the following year...

...We're here because during our lifetime, we will touch the lives of one million—one million—Jewish children...

...There were about fifty people there, and we were exploring new directions—how to get funding and for what, how to make an impact on the Jewish community, what new projects to tackle, and so on...

...The publicity wasn't terrific—mostly word of mouth—but we attracted 350 very motivated and enthusiastic participants...

...Evening, the first day, supper in the plush RIT dining hall, and then the first session...

...More money for Jewish education...

...I am the bearer of those points, and I proceed to the meeting at which thirty representatives will meet with the Continuations Committee to do the work...

...There is resentment in the air, and the Plenary, when it happens, is acrimonious...

...Eppy," as he is called, checks everyone's name tag, and then we play a name game to learn who we all are, where we come from and what we do...

...In order to succeed, the Coalition will need the active cooperation of local bureaus of education, and, ultimately, of Federations...

...Who knows...

...we smell the spices at Havdalah...

...That meant more than money...

...She had just written an article for Response, and was suddenly very excited by the fact that so many Network people were actively engaged in Jewish education in one way or another...

...Nobody likes what's happening now, so it's easy to generate grass roots enthusiasm for "change...

...Since the campus is officially closed, they must all be for the Conference...

...The rabbi is leading my first module, "Intensive Education: The Answer to Jewish Education...

...Appropriate, I think: I am headed for the Rochester Institute of Technology, where the clouds are scheduled to part with the opening of the Second Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education...

...and, to provide an organized way for participants to give on-going evaluation and feedback to conference planners...

...There is an ongoing coffeehouse...

...Somewhat disoriented—the drive, the sun, the crowd, the catalogue—I decide to walk around the campus...

...In the spring of 1971 I attended an expanded steering committee meeting of the North American Jewish Students Network, in New Jersey...

...That's where kids first learn antipathy to Judaism...

...An international conference is planned for 1979...

...It will be a long meeting, I know...

...In the middle of the orange-carpeted lounge, Seymour Epstein stands on a wooden stool auctioning off materials, talents, services, to the highest bidders...

...At last, we have a ballot...

...An RIT security guard approaches, and says, "Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to say that although the Rochester Institute of Technology has enjoyed your company, and we love you very much, this building closes at 1:00 a.m., and it is now 1:30 a.m...

...Specifically, a new coalition of teachers and administrators has emerged, and has moved beyond diagnosis of why it is things don't work right, beyond analysis of how complex the problems are, has moved directly to the construction of an irrigation system that will water the parched educational territory we had come to take for granted...

...an educational talent pool is being formed, from which various communities can draw...

...If you can create a working coalition for Shabbat, why not for Jewish education...

...Most important, for educators of all kinds, there was suddenly hope...

...When will Hebrew schools, one asks rhetorically, catch up with the times...

...A kosher kitchen, a day care center, a multitude of booths, displays, happenings, and, to top it off, a goal: to make education the highest domestic priority of the American Jewish community...

...As the catalogue points out, the participants in the Conference will teach a total of 24,000 years before they're done, and what the Conference made clear is that they will not settle for 24,000 dismal years of continuing frustration...

...Peace happens, and possibilities are born...

...And the biggest surprise, of course, is that the Conference did accomplish just about everything that its headiest promoters had predicted...

...Obviously, getting kids at the end of the day and trying to force-feed them Jewish language, culture and traditions within the few allotted hours is not working terribly well...

...A purple sheet is distributed, explaining the intent, and it takes people by surprise, it suggests that the outcome of the Conference has been decided even before the Conference has been convened, certainly without adequate consultation with the participants...

...The Rochester Institute of Technology, a bricklayer's paradise, solid, modern, substantial...

...It is past midnight when a messenger arrives with the final tally, and the names of those elected to the board are read to general applause and cheering...

...answers Cherie...

...Rabbi Mitchell Smith offers to the highest bidder "A fifteen minute massage by a rabbi," in honor of his father, "the oldest member of the Jewish student movement...

...At long, long last somebody is doing something about it...

...It is early afternoon, Wednesday, August 25...

...The Reference Group was conceived with three goals in mind: to allow every participant to get to know at least fifteen people...

...And that loses by only seventeen votes, fewer than the total number of BJE and Federation people present who, it is assumed, are not much in favor of unionization...

...Troen puts us through a series of exercises designed to limber up our brain cells as well as our bodies...

...And so, an Orthodox minyan, an egalitarian min-yan, a havurah-style minyan, an "alternatives to prayer" meeting, a women's service, and more, just as the catalogue has suggested: "Think of this as a Galut version of the Kotel Hama'aravi...

...The speaker is Rabbi Morris Kippur, formerly rabbi of a large Miami congregation and now Director of High School in Israel...

...Then follows a list of the night's events, scheduled to end at midnight...

...More money down the drain...

...Finally, because everyone has a stake in the success of the enterprise, it is decided that the Reference Groups will meet and will propose ideas for inclusion in a Conference document, and that each Reference Group will delegate one member to work on hammering out a final statement...

...Criss-crossing the country, Jerry stopped in Rochester to visit with Sharon and Neil Norry, a couple they had met at the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds General Assembly some months before...

...asks Jerry...

...Judaism is not stoicism...

...Everything, it seems, has gotta have a theme...

...Our objective is to have something coherent to present to the Plenary Session, and it takes us six and a half hours—to 4:30 in the morning—to accomplish it...

...That is the glad news from Rochester...

...Thunderous applause...

...You can tie these exercises to Bible, or Holidays, or the alphabet, she says, demonstrating...

...It is a Lehr-haus called Teacher Training in Theatre Related Disciplines...

...The auction has raised nearly five thousand dollars, an important achievement...

...Vivian Troen, actress, Hebrew teacher, ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, and curriculum specialist, is demonstrating how to get kids into a different frame of mind—a more relaxed one—when coming into Hebrew school at the end of a day...

...The handout at the door reads "Welcome to The Happenings—a chance to share ideas, collect teaching materials, see the latest audio-visual materials and films, sing and dance, shmooze and nosh, make and create your own games and crafts projects, and more...

...The scheduled evening program—a Yiddish movie, social gatherings—has been rearranged in order to give the Reference Groups a chance to hammer out their proposals, and then to develop the consensus statement we are all eager to accept...

...Upstairs a big shaggy man named Arthur Waskow is giving a drash on Creation, assisted by his two children...

...The subjects range from "Creative Prin-cipaling" to "The Application of Kohlberg's Moral Dilemmas to Jewish Education" to "Multisensory Approach to the Teaching of Beginning Hebrew" to "Reach Out: The Cults and What We Can Do About Them...

...On a typical summer Erev Shabbat there are Yemenites, a dozen varieties of Hassidim, Ashken-azim, all types of kipot, Reform Jews, non-observant puzzled tourists, Sefardim of every color, and soldiers...

...Here's how to energize them...

...most have simply resigned themselves to the peeling walls and the dank smell of distress...

...It's after supper and I'm sitting in my first Reference Group meeting (RG No...

...Jay Bender, a groovy California politico type, started agitating for Network to organize a conference...

...Most, but not all...

...Herewith, a report on the flavor of change...

...Just a mandate from the participants in the first conference who wanted another one...

...Rochester began to look like a very good idea...

...Color it dismal: for all the talk about the importance of Jewish education, there is a widespread perception that our Sunday schools and Hebrew schools are sterile failures...

...And we talked about the need for organizing Jewish teachers, whatever that meant...

...years in which they resentfully march off to acquire the wisdom of the generations will be to explain to them, over and over, that Hebrew school is not a punishment, but an opportunity, a position we come to out of a sense of duty rather than on the evidence...

...Later, over tea and cake, Jerry provides some background on the Conference...

...But a test which, if passed, would contain its own message of hope...

...Who'll start at chaiT' The pencils go, followed by books, posters, candles, calendars, and the last two Tree Shirts from the conference inventory...

...What am I bid for chai dozen pencils...

...We're here—seven hundred strong—because IT IS TIME...

...Other priorities arose, however, and it wasn't until 1976 that the first conference actually took place, at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island...

...A Jewish security guard...

...We play out the Jonah story (I win the part of God), injecting personal experiences...

...He is leading the Lehrhaus "Strategies for Teachers in Effecting Changes in Schools...

...All the plans and all the projects may not be enough to make Jewish education whole again...

...You have to build—organize—a system by which you can challenge individuals in Jewish education to fulfill your needs and objectives, which are: 1. re-evaluating the present curricula and institutions, and opening up channels for alternative programs, and 2. making a priority of the pro-fessionalization of Jewish teachers and educators because you have to have a livable wage so that people feel that they want to get into Jewish education...

...A tough test: how to program a Shabbat for so diverse a group...

...Might it not fracture the Conference, serve to remind everyone of the divisions and schisms which mark the community...

...I go to my room, to prepare for supper and to confront the catalogue...

...Sunday afternoon...

...But change is most certainly in the wind...

...The Conference will vote on whether or not to form a Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish education, to establish a national board of twelve members, to open membership to all who are concerned with the transmittal of Jewish tradition, culture and beliefs, to assess each member ten dollars, to empower the board to execute a list of 13 programs, including the controversial promotion of unionization...

...It is late, and we adjourn thankful that we are no longer bogged down, that the desire to conclude constructively has outweighed the irritation...

...It's working—I now know someone at the conference...

...Occasionally, a student will beat the system, will thrive despite its limitations...

...It ran from place to place, scraping up money, organizing talent, speaking to groups and individuals, beating the drum...

...That mandated Network to organize a conference...

...Lailah tov...

...Sharon and Neil had provided working capital, as well...

...And, after a bit, exhausted, to bed...

...A report on the Conference has been distributed and future conferences planned...

...The only program on the 13-item list to be defeated is the concept of promoting unionization (as a national organization...

...Lailah tov...

...The Jerry and Cherie Show...

...Their own stake in change is higher than anyone's, except our children's stake...

...But the bureaus and the Federations have not been willing advocates of change until now...

...I'll lend you some money," said Neil, and wrote out a large check...

...After the Lehrhaus, we talk a bit about the plight of Jewish education...

...I stop at a table to make myself a "Biblical Sundae...

...They want more, insist on more...

...Not an easy task...

...After lunch, I decide to take it easy, and join a Lehr-haus called "Myths and Facts in the Middle East: Arab Propaganda and the Educators' Response...

...The Coalition has already established that it is not a fad, an experiment, an acting-out by people with time on their hands and rebellion in their heads...

...There was no money...

...For administrators looking for innovations, there was an overflow...

...I shall have to choose which of 78 modules (intensive study sessions ranging in length from three hours to twelve hours) and 109 Lehrhaus sessions (less intensive, one and a half hours each) I will participate in...

...The RIT parking lot is a mass of automobiles, license plates from all over the country...

...Clearly, change is not going to happen overnight, or even overyear...

...These are professionals, these are our professionals...

...husband Martin is making spice-boxes...

...A large-size promise...

...We've got to talk about structures as well...

...one doesn't associate sunshine with Jewish education...

...Yet the very idea of change is so threatening that resistance to their implementation remains pervasive...

...Then Friday, and suddenly Shabbat, a problem, an opportunity...

...The assembly adjourns to the lounge for a fundraising auction, and to wait for the election results...

...While it is true that they are all doing their own thing, most of them have one eye on everything else that is going on...

...There is dancing, singing...

...As I pull off the Turnpike the clouds part, the warming sun appears...

...Nine other members of the Continuations Committee are seated near the microphone, and each is acknowledged, but it is Cherie and Jerry—she with her appeal for unity and accommodation, he with a contagious and cheery enthusiasm— who bring us to our feet...

...A young girl stands up and offers to contribute a small sum "in the memory of my best teachers—my mother and father...

...On the subject of alternative structures, Dave Tu-lin has a great deal to say...

...From time to time, a new program will sparkle, and work, and the rest of us will wonder why it can't happen in our school, with our children...

...Maybe it can happen...

...Not much came of it then, but it was the first time Network took up the subject...

...In mid-winter, they say, there are days that classes are cancelled, not because of the snow, but because of the winds...

...Grass roots" was a term heard again and again...

...But we know that the greater likelihood is that they will be overcome by boredom, that our own task during the Paul Wesel is a freelance writer...

...And, apart from the political problems, it will, sooner or later, have to confront the question of just what is meant by the catch-all word "alternatives...

...We're here because Jewish teachers cry out for the professional recognition which they have earned— and which they deserve— but which is being denied them...

...Maybe too large...

...Seven hundred teachers, educators, administrators, of all religious sectors and personal persuasions, are to gather for five days of intensive sessions, workshops and presentations, prepared not by an established bureaucratic agency but by something called the "Continuations Committee," a non-organization that didn't exist two years ago...

...Look at our tradition...

...Rules and goals of the Reference Group are explained, we exchange biographies, then split to the Alumni Union building for an evening of "happenings...

...And, with the Coalition established, they may now have reason to expect more as well...

...A newsletter is being funded...

...That's not surprising...

...But when "change" gets to be defined, specified, delineated, the good will that has brought the coalition this far may dissipate...

...The Continuations Committee has clearly misjudged...

...We learn through all the senses, not just one or two...

...It was to be called a Conference on Radical Forms in Jewish Education—everything we did in those days had to have "radical" attached to it—and the resolution got passed...

...I pick my way through the cars in the lot, the people in the lobby, find the right table (T-U-V-W-XYZ) for registering, get my plastic badge, a sheaf of papers, the one hundred page Conference catalogue, and, at modest cost, buy a Tree Shirt, emblazoned with the Conference symbol and already adorning many of the people I see...

...So come . . . take part . . . and enjoy...

...Then, in 1973, as I was finishing my term as chairperson of Network, Cherie Koller-Fox, then just Koller, came to address the group on the subject of Jewish education...

...I have to ask you to leave...

...Our Havdalah—we light the candles we had made earlier in the week—is a loving re-connection, and there is a readiness to get on with the job...

...There is a proposed agenda now scheduled through 1980...

...We're here because we want to remove the feelings of isolation which separate each of us from our colleagues...

...Hebrew schools...

...I amble over to the World Zionist Organization to discuss the ups and downs of Breira with David Tulin, one of the members of my Reference Group...

...Expecting more, they improve the odds on getting more...

...Still more mood than method, but an excitement that can, in time, spread across the nation, restoring pride and dignity and ultimately achievement to Judaism's most honorable, least honored, profession...

...In its desire to create something enduring, it has neglected issues of process, ignored the strongest resource with which to build—the camaraderie, the chavershaft, of the Conference members...

...Out of that first conference came the Continuations Committee...

...The technical problems of organization would be enough to defeat more seasoned planners, and the sheer number of participants, as well as their diversity, makes it extravagantly ambitious to suppose that the intended harmony can be achieved, let alone the substantive goals of the Conference...

...How can we talk about the beauty and ethic of kash-rut when our kids go home to eat lobster Newburg...

...the Conference cost was $85,798, and it is $5,760 in the red...

...At least one supposes that there are...

...We know full well that years from now, they will remember the long gray hours of not learning Hebrew, of not learning history, of restless passivity, with resentment —just as we do...

...What to do, what to do...

...No institution in Jewish life—not the synagogue, with all its problems, not the nursing homes, with all their scandals, not the press, with all its weaknesses—is subjected to so persistent and consistent a barrage of griping criticism...

...The Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education is voted into existence...

...Now and again, our children will encounter teachers of uncommon talent, teachers whose love and whose skill can make a difference that will last a lifetime...

...A Hebrew teacher for seven years, he was the organizer and president of the Professional Hebrew Teachers Organization of Philadelphia, one of the country's first Hebrew teachers' unions...

...Shabbat was the test of the dream," says Jerry...

...The Committee hired a conference coordinator, Debbi Tsadok, the only paid staff member...

...You can't expect children to learn—never mind like it—if you lock them into their seats and force them to read from a blackboard...

...We're here because in this room we represent 24,000 years of Jewish teaching experience, and that experience hasn't been shared in any meaningful way since 1941...

...Seymour Epstein...

...We broke into small groups, and talked about a whole bunch of stuff...

...it meant respectability, an imprimatur—and a pool of enthusiastic helpers from the Rochester Jewish community...

...Few would be more expensive than present systems, most less...

...I title it Destruction of Sodom, and it receives the honor of being photographed with a color Polaroid which is stuck on the board behind the table...

...We enroll our children, those of us who do, in the vague hope that something good will come of it...

...Suddenly, unexpectedly, after all the idle talk and the whiney complaints, somebody is doing something about Jewish education...

...in so doing, it will have to be careful that it is not coopted by the very agencies it seeks to reform...

...the corridors smell of failure...

...others have dropped out...

...RG meetings (there are 30 reference groups, to which membership is randomly assigned) are scheduled throughout the conference...

...When it comes to effecting change, he's had a bit of experience...

...In a deft double play which must have a story to it, he then became director of the Philadelphia Board of (Conservative) Jewish Education...

...What kind of a career is that for a nice Jewish boy...

...No organization...

...In a week of surprises, why not...

...If teachers would organize—and I don't necessarily mean a union, although I would prefer that—begin to raise their own consciousness as to what their plight is, the first people to become interested would be the rabbis, the school committees, the boards of the congregations, and all of a sudden all those who never cared that much about teachers in the first place would become concerned...

...There's a mini-Jewish Film Festival going on in one corner, Israeli dancing in another...

...One of the subjects was Jewish education...

...I am lying on the floor, eyes partially closed, body relaxing to the mesmerizing voice of Vivian Troen...

...A woman songwriter offers to compose an original song, and record it on cassette, for the highest bidder...

...But today is a day for the smell of marigolds, and Conference people are limbering up on the tennis courts outside the quadrangle where we are quartered...

...The alternatives we're talking about here are helpful," Vivian says, "but let's be honest...

...Rabbi Kippur's solution is a flexible system of weekends, vacations, chunks of afternoons as well, teaching in a more intensive mode than is now permissible...

...there is a brisk business in Torah games and Tree Shirts...

...A woman buys one for her son's Bar Mitzvah...

...Final results of election to the twelve-member board will take some time to be announced, since a large number of ballots has to be counted...

...It's filled with the joy of living, and it's our job to bring the joy of Judaism to every child who comes to us...

...But it is no secret that for the most part, Jewish education is a demoralized institution...

...Shai Mintz, a principal in Buffalo, starts a scholarship fund with a hundred dollars of his own money...

...Of course Jewish education is in terrible shape...

...What's surprising is that for 50 years we've been saying Jewish education is in terrible shape, and nothing has happened...

...Task forces are being created to deal with a wide variety of programs such as teacher centers, publications, retraining programs...

...I am driving west on the New York Turnpike, slippery pavement underneath, weepy sky above...

...Luggage—everything from knapsacks and nylon ditty bags to matched sets of Louis Vuitton—is piled on the sidewalk...

...For some, day schools have become the answer...

...Regional meetings are now taking place from coast to coast...

...For teachers searching for a new idea or five, there was more than enough to choose from...

...The Sunday night Plenary Session is unified, harmonious and efficient...

...And it works...

...I think the conference is a wonderful idea," said Sharon, "and Rochester would be a great place to hold it...

...The Jewish community would lend you a lot of support...

...Even better when the Rochester Bureau of Jewish Education recommended to the Jewish Community Federation that $10,000 be granted as seed money, and the recommendation was accepted...

...Here and there, of course, there are Hebrew schools that work...

...Joan Benjamin-Far-ren is helping people make Havdalah candles for Saturday night...

...It's a mitzvah to hear the sound of the shofar...

...A temporary diversion, my own private matching of sets: who goes with which luggage...

...The curriculum is thin, the students sullen, the teachers worn out...

...Our four hours are spent discussing the possible variations, applied to specific situations as outlined by some members of the group taking the module...

...to create a vehicle for small group discussion...