At a New England Catholic high school, Jewish students formed a club and their adviser was a teacher on staff — who was Catholic. The teacher, though well-intentioned, knew very little about Judaism, so when the students wanted to do something with religious content, they weren’t sure where to turn.
A program called The Curriculum Initiative was able help. Known as TCI, the organization sent a trainer to work with the teacher in providing Jewish content to the students.
“We train college and graduate students to be fellows, and depending on need, they could visit a school on a weekly or monthly basis,” said Maya Bernstein, who is heading up the new TCI effort in the Bay Area. “They find out what the students are interested in doing. The students really enjoy having the support, even if it’s just logistical, in finding a speaker or something.”
According to Bernstein, TCI is the only organization doing outreach to Jewish students in private high schools. TCI recently opened a one-person branch in the Bay Area, and Bernstein is now ready to reach out in the area’s private schools. Bernstein, who can be reached at [email protected] or (650) 852-3508, hopes to eventually train some fellows to expand her operations.
Bernstein, a 27-year-old New York native who has been working with the organization for the past two years in New England, is serving as its local regional director.
TCI is supported by a number of the biggest names in Jewish education, and locally, by the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund.
Although she’s based in the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto, Bernstein’s territory includes the entire Bay Area, and she’s already made contact with a number of local private schools to offer support to Jewish students wherever they may be.
TCI was founded in 1996 as a nonprofit dedicated to supporting ethics education and Jewish life at non-Jewish private schools.
“The cornerstone of our ethics work is our summer institute in which teachers from all across the country come to the institute to learn, for example, chevruta methodology from the Jewish tradition,” said Bernstein, speaking of the traditional way students study Torah, in pairs. They also learn what the Jewish religion has to say about topics relevant to teens, like gossip.
TCI staff keep in touch with teachers who have attended their institute, and follow up with them later.
“We try to affect school culture as a whole, by offering teachers and students the unique perspective that Judaism has to offer,” said Bernstein. “We work with teachers and the entire student bodies, to incorporate texts and techniques from the Jewish tradition but from other traditions, too.”
While in New England, Bernstein and her staff did such things as coordinate a “freedom seder” with Jewish and African American students, plan an organic vegetarian Tu B’Shevat meal with Jewish students and an environmental group, and sponsor a panel of Israeli and Palestinian college students to discuss the Mideast conflict.
For the past three years, TCI has sponsored a get-together of Jewish students from private high schools. Called “Jewbilee,” it was started by two sisters at the Phillips Exeter Academy who felt isolated at their small New Hampshire boarding school. This year’s “Jewbilee” was heldlast weekend at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut.
Bernstein said that in general, parochial schools are much more welcoming to her, as some secular institutions can be distrusting of religion.
“In some ways it’s easier for TCI to work with Catholic schools or religious Christian schools because they get religion. Secular schools tend to be very excited about racial diversity, but religious diversity is more complex.”