Mandel graduate Mohammad Kundos, principal of the Yad B’Yad School in Kfar Saba, speaks with fellows in the Educational Leadership program.
The Educational Leadership Program’s Approach to Israel Seminars
How do we prepare Jewish educational leaders for the challenges of Jewish education in a post-October 7 world? In the words of Israel education researcher Sivan Zakai, since October 7 “every Jewish educator is an Israel educator.” In a webinar hosted by Brandeis University’s Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education, Zakai emphasized that, while educators may have entered the field due to a passion for Torah learning, Hebrew language instruction, or something else, within a week of October 7, the most profound questions students bring with them are about Israel. How do we equip our educational leaders for this reality?
The Educational Leadership Program’s March seminar in Israel offers a possible response to this question. While recognizing the importance of history, sociology, and geopolitics, our program explores the diversity and complexity of Israeli society through face-to-face engagement with the people shaping the future of the country: its educators. Our aspiration is to bring our fellows beyond the headlines and into real conversation with educators from the rich tapestry of Israeli society—to experience Israel as the pluralistic, textured, complex place that it is.
The Trip in Review
During our seminar, we visited eight different schools and educational organizations representing the diversity of Israeli society. We sat in on classes, explored the physical spaces, heard musical performances and admired student artwork. We spoke with principals, teachers and students, inquiring about their approaches to teaching and learning and their aspirations for the future. In our conversations with school leaders, we were particularly interested in the relationships between education and society. We asked: What kind of society and citizen is this school or program trying to cultivate? What is the intervention it seeks to make in Israeli society or in the particular community it serves? The responses to these questions were illuminating, yielding a wide range of understandings of Israeli society and aspirations for its future.
Through these multifaceted experiences and probing conversations, a picture of Israeli society as seen through the eyes of educators and students, began to emerge. The visit to the Rogozin School in South Tel Aviv, where the student body is comprised of asylum seekers and the children of foreign workers, opened fellows’ eyes to the realities of migrants in Israeli society. At Himmelfarb, a National Religious high school, fellows watched student-produced films about the impact of the ongoing war on their lives and spoke with teacher Jeremy Stavisky about his efforts to cultivate a sense of service and responsibility in his students. At Sindiana, an elite high school and youth village for Arab students, principal Andeera Beidasa spoke about the pain of the ongoing war, and her efforts to develop young leaders who can build a better future for Arab/Palestinian Israelis. Visits to Bina: The Home for Israeli Judaism and Netzach Yisrael, a Haredi school in Beit Shemesh, were equally revealing.
Site Selection
In selecting the schools we visited, we endeavored to engage with a wide spectrum of Israeli society, but also to choose sites with inspiring leaders and compelling educational visions that would enrich our fellows’ educational thinking. After our visits, fellows reflected on the ideas and models of leadership they encountered, such as Principal Beidasa’s conviction that students with solid identities are more open to learning about the identities of others, or the belief of Hoshea Ben-Fridman, co-founder of the Beit Yisrael Pre-Army Preparatory Program, the educators should strive to be like gardeners, not like sculptors.
Fellows also met with fellows from the Mandel School for Educational Leadership and the Mandel Social Leadership Program for Principals in the North, sharing their visions for the field and the leadership challenges they face. These conversations helped both Israeli and North American fellows better understand the context and challenges of their counterparts and sparked new educational ideas.
Moving Forward
Our hope is that our fellows emerged from the seminar with a deeper, more nuanced understanding of Israeli society, the real human beings that comprise it, and the varied competing visions for its future, all through an educational lens. This grounding in Israel’s humanity and complexity, we believe, lays a strong foundation for the deep, thoughtful Israel education that our current moment demands.
-Jethro Berkman: Program Director, Educational Leadership Program