Rabbi Jim: Still Learning

  It’s been on your To-Do List for a long time. It’s not a small task you can simply hand off, so you continue to cut and paste it onto each new To-Do List. You promise yourself you’ll deal with it. But you don’t. I get it. I’ve been there. You run through the reasons you haven’t dealt with it: too much work, politically dangerous, too expensive, difficult to implement, people won’t accept it, you’re already juggling a million balls; maybe it’s not that important – or – maybe it’s only important to just a few people. Perhaps you’ve made a few small moves that have bought you some time and lowered the temperature. But it’s still on your list for a reason. And there are costs to leaving something this important unresolved. ·       The people who need this product, service, or program are still waiting for you to act ·       You carry the professional and psychological weight of knowing there is something important you need to address. · ...

“Economics” is commonly defined as the study of how people allocate scarce resources. Educators, school finance professionals, and Board members in Jewish Day Schools live that definition – not just daily, but year after year. Schools can neither raise tuition dramatically to cover rising costs; nor can they say “yes” to every new initiative. With a few computer keystrokes, one can balance a budget, but good people might lose their jobs, dreams of educational upgrades will be put on hold, and donors and parents will either be thrilled or upset (or both!). In addition to building endowments, it is no wonder that Jewish communities around the country have also been looking at state and federal funding for day schools to give them not just some breathing room, but opportunities to expand their programs and increase salaries and benefits for teachers. Depending on the size of the endowment, and the amount and duration of government funding, a school’s budget process will continue to re...

While studying at Teachers College, I took a class on Education Law that was co-listed with Columbia Law School. For those of us in the education program, the professor provided additional readings and took the time to explain foundational legal concepts such as contracts, torts, and property law. He also offered a simple yet elegant framework for analyzing legal cases : The Three P’s - Power, Process, Product. In some cases, the key question revolved around power - who had it, who didn’t, and whether authority or jurisdiction had been properly exercised. Other cases turned on process – the procedures, steps, or barriers that determined how actions were taken or blocked. Finally, the product referred to the outcome or judgment—the relief granted and its potential implications for future cases. The Three P’s are deeply interrelated. Power shapes process. Process influences product. And product can change reality, including power and future processes. This approach helps explain wh...

My career in Jewish Education began as an inexperienced, underpaid camp counselor. My training consisted of someone telling me that if I could be a Dugmah Isheet – a role model – and be passionate about being Jewish, I’d be a good counselor. Years later, while pursuing education degrees, I realized, of course, that being an educator is a much more complex endeavor.  In fact, as I worked as a Head of School, attended conferences, read education journals, and called colleagues for advice, it became very clear that I, as an educator, was forever destined to be a work in progress. The various skill sets I needed to run a school – budgets, personnel, curriculum, board work, fundraising, technology, public speaking, and marketing – developed with time and experience and continue to do so. But from those early years, through several decades in the field, I’ve come to realize it’s not just what an educator knows or can do , but who they are as an Educational Leader . What is a Jew...

Rabbi Jim Rogozen   Almost every Jewish day school has a Mission Statement. It usually appears on the school’s web page and in marketing materials. It explains what the school is about, its target audience, and the nature and goals of the school. Some of these Mission Statements are very specific about the families they serve and the religious nature of the school, while others are broader in scope, hoping to attract families with a wider range of Jewish practices and beliefs. A school’s religious policies, curriculum, program, and faculty will (or should) reflect what’s contained in the Mission Statement. A school’s ability to accomplish all the elements contained within its Mission Statement depends on several factors: enough students to constitute each grade of the school, sufficient revenue from tuition and fundraising, a group of qualified teachers and specialists, trained administrators, a facility that supports the school’s program, and the support of the Board and p...

For many people in the world, no matter how Israelis fight back against Hamas (and Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad, Iran, etc.) they will be accused of genocide. Expelling Hamas from Gaza comes with the price of lives lost on both sides; a price that is extremely high because of the way Hamas has used its citizens as human shields. But the way protestors frame their opposition to Israel’s war on Hamas in such a narrowly focused way (genocide), ignoring larger context and realities (as well as the death cult that is Jihadism) speaks to a troubling belief system. In a way, it’s a new kind of idolatry. We usually think of idolatry as worshipping idols, but in the history of religious thought, there are deeper understandings of idolatry. When we see only one side of a person and mistake that for the whole person, we ignore the full reality of who they are. When we take a small part of the world and say, “This is God,” or “This is the meaning of life,” we elevate that one part, and mistake it for ...