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OTS Newsletter - Winter/Spring 2006Teaching the Teachers: Ohr Torah Stone is delighted to announce the Ethel and Adolph Beren Educators Institute, designed to strengthen Jewish communities in Israel and abroad by providing them with engaging, dedicated Judaic studies teachers.
One of the crises in Judaism today is the lack of qualified teachers, especially modern Orthodox teachers, for Jewish schools,” declares Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the dynamic founder of Ohr Torah Stone. “We need teachers who, in a meaningful way, can go into communities and secular school environments in Israel and in the Diaspora and really make a difference.” The Ethel and Adolph Beren Educators Institute was established specifically to address this challenge. Over the course of two years, the program trains committed and inspired students to convey to today’s Jewish youth an excitement about connecting with their heritage and an understanding of the importance of their continuing the Jewish tradition. In addition to formal and informal pedagogy, Beren Institute participants are also trained in communications, educational psychology, and Jewish studies. “There is a crying need in secular schools for teachers to teach Bible and Jewish history and to generally inspire Jewish culture,” elaborates Rabbi Riskin. “Both Israel and the Diaspora desperately need this new type of educator, who can teach and engage students with warmth and openness, without coercion. Our rabbis in communities all over the world have successfully adopted this approach on the level of spiritual leadership; after receiving numerous requests for educators from those same communities, the creation of the Beren Educators Institute was the next natural step for Ohr Torah Stone,” he concludes.
Michael Rosenfeld, a 27-year-old participant of the program, said he chose the Beren Institute because it will provide him with the tools necessary to contribute to the transformation of Jewish education and the strengthening of Jewish identity in the Diaspora. “Education is the bottom line in giving people something to hold on to,” Michael says. “There’s a general lack of spirituality and yiddishkeit in the Jewish world; fixing that is the job of the educator.” Students in the Institute are trained to accomplish this in two ways. “On the one hand, you have to teach Torah, because that’s the foundation of our heritage,” explains Michael. “But on the other hand, you must have the skills to relate to people who live in the modern world in a language that they understand, and you have to be able to appreciate what is important to them.” Michael also believes that students learn by example, stressing the importance of setting a personal model in one’s everyday behavior, as well as the benefits of opening up one’s home. “Good teaching feeds the brain,” he asserts. “But being invited to experience Shabbat in a traditional Jewish home – that feeds the soul.” In addition to preparing male educators like Michael to go out into the world and spread the light of Judaism, the Ethel and Adolph Beren Institute plans to open a program to place motivated female teachers in Jewish communities across the globe. Like their male colleagues, these women will become intimately involved in the school environments and communities they will serve, becoming exemplary role models of Jewish scholarship – as well as positive female role models for the modern Jewish world. “Ultimately, the key to Jewish continuity is a solid education,” says Rabbi Riskin. “We must elevate the profession and equip the most gifted and inspiring of teachers for this important task.”
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