Again this year, the MOFET Institute's International Channel is offering activities in the field of Teaching Hebrew as an Additional Language to a variety of populations in Israel and around the world. In January 2017, we will be holding an international online seminar in Hebrew titled: 'Educating Learners of Hebrew according to their Characteristics and Needs: Tailoring Programs and Teaching methods to Various Populations of Hebrew learners'. The seminar will comprise four online sessions to be held on Mondays and Thursdays at 09:00 p.m. Israel time. The lecturers at the seminar are all experts in the field.

Welcome to the first Prizmah edition of HaYidion! Collaboration is a natural theme to begin this new issue of HaYidion, under the auspices of Prizmah. The merger of the five organizations has unleashed creative energies, surprising synergies, and the sense of tremendous promise in the ways that we can collaborate with each other and the thousands of day school stakeholders. HaYidion itself is of course a collaboration, representing the remarkable generosity of dozens of day school stakeholders and other contributors who are willing to share their knowledge, experiences, initiatives and insights for the benefit of the larger field of Jewish education. Articles in this issue demonstrate an eagerness to embrace new educational paradigms, to rethink the foundations of day school education and revamp programs in ways large and larger, to dream big and do the patient work to follow through.

A new Jewish educational center opened Thursday in Petersburg, Russia, marking an exciting step in the city’s Jewish history – constructed on behalf of the Jewish community in 1896, the building was returned to them in 2005 and took another 10 years to restore. The new center, symbolically named ‘Sinai’, will host a kindergarten, a girl’s school and dormitory, and an entire floor dedicated to youth programs and activities, clubs and events

The LaHaV curriculum takes a bold departure from traditional modes of Talmud and Tanakh instruction, and has pioneered an approach to communicate the richness and relevance of our tradition by weaving together a rich tapestry of rabbinic texts and ideas. Yet we’re not just transforming Judaic studies for our own students. We’ve created a groundbreaking digital curriculum app that serves as the basis of a fully connected network of Jewish educators who share training, resources and methodologies in order to improve Jewish education across the world. We’ve developed this curriculum from the ground up, tested it in all grades and levels at Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles, CA, and are currently working with schools across the US, Israel, and Australia to implement it across a wide range of classrooms and student demographics.

This study is an in-depth examination of two synagogue education programs, one a conventional “Hebrew School” structure and the other an alternative program modeled after Jewish summer camp. Through the lens of the teaching of Bible to children in the Grade 3-5 age range, I provide thick descriptions of an alternative and a successful conventional congregational supplementary education program and compare them in order to gain insight into what distinguishes the two models, where they are similar and the impact these similarities and differences might have on the proliferation and/or staying power of one or the other type of models. The programs are presented as case studies organized according to four domains of curricular function: the educating institution, the educational leadership, the teacher (or unit head) and the observed classroom/camp session. How do the organizations or individuals associated with each of these domains understand the teaching of Bible in their respective program structures? In what ways does the programmatic structure influence the choice of content knowledge and pedagogy?

Within the larger domain of adult Jewish learners there is a smaller cohort that continues to study regularly over the course of many years. They have stayed motivated to learn until a point where the study itself becomes part of their lives and regular practice. As a result of their experience these long-term learners have a tremendous amount to say about what makes the learning important to them, how it took hold, and how it affects their lives. This dissertation is a qualitative study of these learners, drawing from their reflections to portray their day-to-day experiences in the classroom.