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 Grants Received | Contact Us UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK, LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE FOR CONGREGATIONAL SCHOOL PRINCIPALS - $1.8 MILLION The Leadership Institute for Congregational School Principals, a joint project of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) and The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS). Initiated by UJA-Federation of New York's Commission on Jewish Identity and Renewal (CoJIR), this grant marks an important trans-denominational effort to address the need for professional growth in Jewish educational leadership. The goal of the Institute is to build leadership capacity in Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist congregational and communal schools in New York, Long Island, Westchester and the greater metropolitan region that serve nearly 35,000 students. Forty congregational school directors will be selected to participate in the two-year program. The core faculty will be drawn from the scholars and educators at JTS and HUC-JIR. The mission of the Institute is to ensure that congregational school principals master critical competencies in the core areas of Judaism, leadership and pedagogy, and develop the attitudes and skills for further professional development. HUC-JIR and JTS will approach this Institute with mutual respect, a shared inquiry into the commonalities and differences between the movements and a commitment to early resolution of potentially problematic issues. EXPERIMENT IN CONGREGATIONAL EDUCATION-RE-IMAGINE - $350,000 The ECE is an innovative project with over 10 years of pioneering experience in synagogue transformation. The ECE guides congregations to revitalize them by bringing Jewish learning to every aspect of congregational life. This new grant supports a 24-month project to engage congregations in a systemic process of re-imagining their congregational education, focusing specifically on the religious school through a combination of Internet-based distance education and management tools with print materials and direct consultation. The goal is to develop and test a scalable model to reach more congregations of various sizes across denominations. COMMUNITY SERVICE AND LEARNING IN ISRAEL - $50,000 Community service has long been a required part of the first year in Israel curriculum, whose courses, special seminars and field study programs stress the concepts of achdut and areivut - Jewish solidarity and mutual responsibility. HUC-JIR believes these are foundational values for individuals preparing for positions of Jewish leadership. A service fair sponsored by HUC-JIR at the beginning of the academic year for its first year students has showcased many social welfare agencies and non-profits that serve poor, elderly and immigrant Israelis from all walks of life and which seek volunteers. Students and volunteer placements have been coordinated through the Jerusalem School's Office of Student Services. Last year, the Jerusalem School began to rethink its approach to its community service requirement based on: (1) the creation of an integrative core curriculum for the Rabbinical Program which takes a new look at how students learn and develop their personal vision for Jewish life; and (2) the presence of a first year rabbinical student, who prior to matriculation, had trained and managed volunteers at two agencies serving poor people and communities in the United States. A plan was developed to reshape Jerusalem's community service activities after American models for service-learning programs, which do not commonly exist in Israel. Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion received $50,000 for a two-year grant, through Federation's influential Solelim Venture Philanthropy Group - to implement this plan. The grant includes resources for a coordinator dedicated to the project. CHARLES AND LYNN SCHUSTERMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION, FSU RABBINICAL INFUSION PROGRAM - $200,000 This grant, based at the HUC-JIR Jerusalem campus, supports development of an internship program and short-term infusion activities to promote liberal Judaism in the Former Soviet Union. It is a follow-up to a successful planning project, also funded by the Schusterman Family Foundation, to determine the feasibility of rebuilding Jewish life in the FSU. This Program will enable targeted Russian-speaking Israelis who are matriculated at HUC-JIR's Israel Rabbinic Program in Jerusalem to complete placements in congregations and communities within the FSU. This initiative will benefit under-served Jewish communities in the FSU while strengthening the professional skills of our students. Israeli rabbinical students are required to complete a field placement within an Israeli synagogue or community institution, as part of professional development requirements for ordination, as do their counterparts in HUC-JIR's stateside Rabbinical Program. The Immersion/Internship Program will enable Russian-speaking students to begin to acquire professional skills while serving communities in the FSU lacking rabbinical leadership. |
