Jewish education is “a great gift, and a gift that’s available” — whether or not you’re affiliated with a synagogue.
This is what David Waksberg, executive director of the S.F.-based Bureau of Jewish Education, says.
Waksberg, who admits that his own religious education failed to prepare him to be the kind of Jew he wanted to be, appreciates that many things have changed since his school days.
There are, in the Bay Area, a few independent Sunday and Hebrew schools that serve unaffiliated Jews, as well as Chabad schools, and at these schools education can be a lot more hands-on. Ask 6-year-old Talia Gelfand what she likes about East Bay Kinderschul for instance, and she quickly replies: baking challah.
“The best part is eating it,” she explains knowingly. “The hard part is making it.”
Talia and her older sister Rose, age 81?2, attend Kinderschul, which meets every other Sunday at the Jewish Community Center East Bay in Berkeley.
Beth Gelfand, their mother, said she’d “heard wonderful things about it for years,” and signed them up.
Open to children ages 6 through 13 (there’s a pre-kindergarten program as well), Kinderschul is a 20-year-old secular school focused on Yiddish culture. The brainchild of Director Gerry Tenney, it is modeled after schools set up at the beginning of the 20th century by Eastern European immigrants.
“We pass along the rich culture of Yiddishkeit,” says Tenney. Teaching methods focus on music, dance, stories, food and art.
Gelfand likes the emphasis on learning through art and music, noting that both of her children have participated in plays directed by Tenney.
Though Gelfand had never been particularly attracted to Yiddish, she felt the creativity of Kinderschul made it a good place for her kids. It was especially important to her that Kinderschul focused, in large part, on the importance of social service.
Gelfand says the girls’ Jewishness has blossomed — both in and out of school.
Rose, for example, played “Dreidel, Dreidel” on the strum stick while she and her father led a Chanukah program at her public school. And Kindershul’s focus on the diaspora no doubt prompted Talia one day to point to a globe and ask her father, “Do Jews live there?” “What about there?”
Another option in Berkeley is Chochmat HaLev’s Jewish Arts, Culture and Torah School (JACTS). It, too, offers drama and music, as well as Hebrew and history.
The principal, Rabbi Sara Shendelman, believes that the school succeeds because it helps students feel “connected” to Judaism. It serves preschool- through eighth-grade students.
A rabbi ordained in the Renewal movement, Shendelman says teachers use a “more spiritual approach” in the classroom. But she also notes that JACTS is a place that accommodates parents who want their children to enjoy strong Jewish identities without overwhelming commitment.
JACTS employs “creativity, music, arts, and making of ritual objects” to help kids explore what it means to be Jewish.
Corliss Lesser, whose daughter went through JACTS’ bat mitzvah program, now is an arts instructor at the school. During her eight years with JACTS as a teacher, she has enjoyed helping children express themselves through the arts.
In founding the school, (which was established before the birth of the associated Chochmat HaLev), Shendelman hoped that artists like Lesser could have freedom to teach in an inclusive and highly artistic environment.
In the South Bay, Cathy Taylor is happily entering her seventh year as director of the Palo Alto School for Jewish Education (PASJE), located at the Albert L. Schultz JCC.
Remembering when she first sent her daughter to the school years ago, Taylor jokingly admits that it wasn’t always easy.
But she believes that the education her daughter, Mia, received must have planted the seeds for continued Jewish involvement. Mia has since participated in the Bay Area’s Kohn intern program, lived in the Hillel house at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and is now heading off to Northridge, in Southern California, as the Jewish campus service representative for Hillel.
The parent-run, nonprofit PASJE is perfect for families who want involvement without having to join a synagogue, according to Taylor.
She stresses that everyone is welcome. One of the fathers involved at PASJE is a good example: He is Greek Orthodox, his wife is Jewish and wanted a Jewish education for her children, and he has created the school’s Web site.
The school, which meets Sunday mornings in the Cubberley Community Center, serves kindergarten through eighth grade, and helps to set up families with bar- and bat mitzvah tutors.
PASJE’s goal is to “keep Jewish family alive,” according to Taylor, and it has been working toward that goal for 40 years.
HOW TO REACH THEM
East Bay Kinderschul
1414 Walnut St., Berkeley
(510) 465-7911
Jewish Arts, Culture and Torah School
1743 Oregon St., Berkeley
(510) 644-2956/(510) 704-9687
Palo Alto School for Jewish Education
4000 Middlefield Rd.
(650) 855-9063