Director’s Message: Exploring the Depths of Professional Learning and Growth
Dr. David Farbman, Project Director, The DEEP Consortium
Welcome to the inaugural issue of The DEEP Dive, the quarterly e-journal of professional learning for Jewish day school educators, leaders, and their supporters, published by the DEEP Consortium. In our first issue, we’ll explore how Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls in New Jersey worked intensively with Lifnai Vlifnim to help teachers transform their pedagogy and inspire students to draw upon Torah texts to learn about themselves and each other.
For each issue of The DEEP Dive, I’ll offer a few words about why we chose to feature this example of excellence in professional learning. Since this is our first issue, however, I want to focus instead on the name of our journal itself and, for this, I call to mind the midrashic account of Nachshon ben Aminidav in the midst of the exodus from Egypt.
We can all picture the dramatic scene just days after Pharoah reluctantly agreed to let the Israelites leave. As they approached the shores of the Yam Suf (Sea of Reeds), the former slaves stood frozen between the Egyptian army now bearing down on one side and the sea’s raging waters on the other. Enter our hero, Nachshon, who had the presence of mind and strength of heart to dive into the sea. He ventured forth into the unknown, emboldened by his faith that HaShem would show the way forward. And, as we know, once Nachshon proved his own faith, HaShem parted the Red Sea, and the Israelites followed, exultant in their burgeoning freedom and heading gradually toward the Promised Land.
So, too, we are asking you to join The DEEP Consortium on our deep dive into stories of professional learning and growth. These stories, too, reveal moments of challenge and uncertainty, but they also highlight how good judgment, unwavering persistence, and sheer faith pay off with renewed strength to head toward better outcomes for teachers and their students. We are excited to share these stories with you in the hopes that they inform and inspire, expand possibilities and catalyze action. Together, we can elevate Jewish day school education and we invite you on the journey to imagine how our faculty can grow to reach their full potential.
SUMMER 2024 l In this Issue
Introduction: What is Lifnai Vlifnim?
Jewish day school and yeshiva professionals often hear that our educators excel at developing students’ abilities to “do Judaism”—practice mitzvot, learn Torah, or say the words of tefillah. Yet, they struggle to offer something more vital— ways to develop students’ internal personal connection with God and their Jewish selves.
Twenty years ago, Rav Dov Singer at Yeshivat Makor Chaim in Israel developed an innovative approach to addressing this challenge. He launched Lifnai Vlifnim,which considers the entire faculty/student encounter in the Torah learning process. To enhance the students’ emotional dimension in learning Torah, Lifnai Vlifnim also focuses on enriching educators’ own spiritual experiences. Through directed conversations, the program encourages teachers to build and deepen connections with themselves, their colleagues, Torah and God. Lifnai Vlifnim coaches teachers to implement a specific method and set of activities to actualize its philosophy of experiential education.
Two core concurrent structures serve as the engine for learning and culture change in the school. These reflect the parallel teacher and student experiences that are essential to the program’s approach:
- The Faculty Chaburah: Faculty meet once every two weeks in a protocoled discussion to learn together, harnessing their own reflections, connections, and growth.
- Lev HaShavua: Students typically meet for one period each week during which their teachers facilitate a protocol similar to the one they, themselves, use in their chaburah.
Both the teacher and student sessions include three components:
- Bracha Rishona: tone setting, presence-building activities that encourage heightened self-awareness and trust;
- Avodah Pinimit: reflective Torah learning that asks participants to personally connect and draw upon their emotional selves to discuss Torah texts; and
- Parnasut: an individual shares a story or relevant dilemma they are grappling with, while all others respond using structured protocols that emphasize listening and learning about the presenter, without providing advice or rendering judgment.
While individuals may join Lifnai Vlifnim’s seminars and virtual introductory course, its deepest work is with partnering schools who join the School Cohort Program. The program includes individual coaching and seminars for school-based leaders who, in turn, lead the faculty group in their school. Teachers are invited to two annual seminars and are provided resources that are shared across schools in the program to support their implementation.
The Gradual Transformation of Judaic Studies Education
By Rabbi Dr. Jay Goldmintz, Judaic Faculty and Lifnai Vlifnim Program Leader, Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls
Even with my successes in Tefillah education, I knew that we needed to do more in Jewish studies classes to speak to students’ inner world, to empower them to make personal connections to the material we were learning. We needed to talk about God a lot more than we were. To engage students in deeper, more intimate, conversations would mean undertaking a significant adjustment to pedagogy, an adjustment which, in turn, would require a change for faculty and the professional and school culture. And if I have learned one thing as an administrator, it is that reshaping culture, especially when it involves multiple stakeholders, needs to be done gently and incrementally.
Beginning the Process
So, I began by conducting a simple survey of the student body probing students’ thoughts on how their studies and their teachers addressed and influenced their religious development over the previous year. The results were sobering. Too many students spoke about their classes being intellectually rich but spiritually poor. Too many felt that their Jewish studies classes did not have enough of an impact on their relationship with God or their religious growth, a response that convinced faculty of the need to address the lacuna. So, at subsequent faculty meetings, I presented a theoretical framework for articulating and addressing the needs unearthed in the survey. The ideas resonated with faculty and the term “personalizing Torah”–the term I had used to describe what we were seeking–started to become a part of the lingua franca of the teachers and administration.
We began our work with a small group of five teachers. Though the transition in instructional methods and approach had its bumps along the way, the ultimate result was extremely positive. We now had a group of frontline teachers who adopted a new way of thinking about their teaching. In turn, this small group of educators became ambassadors at department meetings, which began to discuss how all teachers could do this kind of work more effectively. That work continues to this day.
Discovering Lifnai Vlifnim
In the meantime, my interest in spiritual education led me to the work of Lifnai Vlifnim. This program seeks to create a culture in which faculty and students learn how to be more open about their inner lives, both personal and religious, in ways that impact relationships and learning. I was able to participate in an initial training session in Israel, and I was intrigued by the possible impact it could have on our students at Ma’ayanot.
Guided by the principle of incremental implementation, I came back to school and experimented with the approach with two of my classes. The results were powerful. Students spoke about developing a more personal connection with classmates with whom they had already spent years but whom they now felt they knew much better. They found common bonds and struggles and ways to support one another. They felt more ready to speak about their faith and the accompanying challenges. And through it all, I was not only a guide but a participant. Most intriguing was how what we learned through the weekly Lev HaShavua spilled over into the culture of the classroom during the rest of the week. These lessons helped facilitate and intensify the personalizing Torah agenda with which we had begun.
Scaling Up Our Success
Based in part on my experience, the head of school decided to implement Lev Hashavua schoolwide. As part of Lifnai Vlfinim’s School Cohort Program, three teachers and the school’s dean of students attended a weeklong summer workshop in Israel while almost all other Judaic studies teachers participated in workshops locally.
The teachers who participated began the school year with a mix of excitement and trepidation. By the end of the year, however, that anxiousness had disappeared and these same teachers felt much the same way that I had. (For more on why this happened, see Ma’ayanot and Lifnai Vlifnim: Partnering to Build Lasting Change.) They were empowered and energized by the new and better ways in which they got to know their students and deepen their relationships. They watched the class coalesce as a group. They shared parts of themselves that an academic curriculum would normally not allow. They gained new insight into themselves and their teaching. Through that process, they added a new layer of “personalizing” which they had previously resisted.
Key to the success of Lev HaShavua in the classroom has been the parallel sessions taking place among the faculty. Once every two weeks, we have a scheduled meeting as a group to undergo our own Lev HaShavua. At these sessions, faculty open up with one another on a personal level, just as our students do. This openness then prompts teachers to adopt the same attitude with our students and also enhances collegiality.
Further, every other week, we meet voluntarily to work on our facilitation skills and to problem-solve together. Now, we are creating a curriculum of sorts that is developmentally appropriate in religious and social-emotional terms for each grade. Success feeds on itself; as teachers experience the growth of students, they begin to feel their growth and thus become even more invested in taking the program further.
Accessing the Emotional Connection to Torah: The Effect on School Culture
By Mrs. CB Neugroschl, Head of School, Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls
Yes, we uphold an expectation of academic rigor in our community which demands that we aspire to only the highest levels of learning, and this expectation necessitates that we prioritize content and skills. However, I have never met a successful and admirable Torah teacher who would suggest that academic rigor was her ultimate goal. Rather, our primary purpose in learning the Torah text is to ensure that we can live Torah wholly and with holiness. But this goal is not always easy to achieve, so our constant question is how do we get to that summa bonum? At Ma’ayanot, we realized that we would not be able to meet these three objectives of covering content, building skills, and ensuring that learning Torah is a time that we use to deepen our relationship with Hashem without fundamentally changing our approach to teaching.
As soon as we became acquainted with Lifnai Vlifnim’s Lev HaShavua, this ever-present dilemma faded. We could now conceive of how to meet multiple objectives at once and overcome the uncomfortable sacrifice of one goal for another. Using the framework of Lev HaShavua, Ma’ayanot has built a model that prioritizes our goal for the deeply personal, providing our students access to their spiritual side and a means for working on their avodat Hashem (service to God). Every week, every student and every Torah teacher has the opportunity to learn how to listen and to share, to connect with and to value the inner world where we hold and face our challenges and our triumphs.
The Implementation Process
The adoption of this new model of Torah study did not happen instantly. Ma’ayanot began exploring this new pedagogical approach under the leadership and expertise of Rabbi Jay Goldmintz whose “Personalizing Torah” initiatives guided our limudei kodesh (Judaic studies) professional development over the last four years. After a number of training opportunities for Ma’ayanot’s limudei kodesh team members, we chose to dive into the Lifnai Vlifnim program. We also decided to have our guidance team’s expertise, led by Rebbetzin Bailey Braun, anchor a broad approach to integrating the new instructional components that are the essence of the Lifnai Vlifnim model.
Using protocoled weekly discussions and limmudim (lessons), which we aptly call our avodah penimi, or A.P. for short, we have been able to integrate our Torah goals with our social-emotional goals for our students. At Ma’ayanot, we’ve developed a map to guide our shared journey towards increasing our comfort and capacity to discuss the contours of our avodat Hashem with each other and with our students. We’ve learned to acknowledge and talk together about the challenges that we face. Developing those social-emotional muscles makes our community a stronger network of support and a space where the inner worlds that animate so much of our lives become more visible. This willingness to be vulnerable has, in turn, shaped a culture where we are talking about our relationship with Hashem and exploring our spirituality together.
A New School Culture
The result of the work of our educators and their widespread embrace of Lev Hashavua has changed our school culture significantly. It is our weekly Lev Hashavua classes that capture our students’ hearts and souls and create a buzz of positivity. Our school community has been transformed by the connections forged and the lessons learned in the short two years that we’ve been implementing the Lev Hashavua classes.
We still discuss how to balance delivering content, building skills, and increasing student engagement. However, we now have a way to develop a deeper connection between teachers and students, students and their peers, students and their own selves, and students and Hashem. There is a new trust that we share as we recognize that we each face challenges and each share our hopes and our brachot with one another. In doing so, we continue to build our community in a way that is newly attuned to our spirits and to spirituality. And, that has made all the difference.
Helping My Students Learn Torah and About Themselves
By Suzanne Cohen, Tanakh Chair; Director of Israel Guidance, Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls
When I was told about our school adopting the Lifnai Vlifnim program, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was excited about the idea that this would help the students build connections with each other and with their learning while developing their own personal relationships with Hashem. However, as a very private person, the idea of creating a space within which students — and their teacher! — were expected to be vulnerable seemed intimidating. Additionally, I doubted whether the time dedicated to this discussion would actually accomplish what it was supposed to, or whether it would just be one ”free” period a week which would end up taking away from our learning.
Because I was implementing the program with a ninth-grade class, choosing our first parnasit (student leader) was delicate. I needed to choose someone mature enough to set the right tone — someone who wasn’t too cool that she wouldn’t take it seriously, but who was cool enough that the class would respect what she said. I also wanted to ensure that this role would not hamper her making new friends. Fortunately, the parnasit I appointed did a wonderful job, telling about her life with her special needs sibling and how much she appreciates him, and saying how much we can learn from people like him. Not only did this presentation and the discussion that followed help us get to know this one student better, but she also set a wonderful tone of thinking more deeply about what we have in life, how much we have to thank Hashem for, and the value of every individual. The students even commented afterward that they had initially been skeptical of the process but the first parnasit had set such a good example of the benefits of sharing.
Following this first attempt, more students volunteered to take on the role of parnasit. Some spoke of more mundane challenges, but others took the opportunity to speak about more spiritual matters, making an effort to inspire the group to connect more with Hashem. I grew more comfortable as I saw how much the class looked forward to Lev HaShavua, how supportive the students were of each other, and how the program was helping the class really bond together.
One of my favorite prompts was to ask the class to follow up a parnasit with a sentence that began with “I also…”. Some students said things like “I also have two sisters,” but others were more open with their feelings, saying, “I also struggle with the same challenge that you are struggling with.” Developing this empathy is a critical first step in the process of drawing more personal meaning from Torah and connection with God.
When we held our last Lev HaShavua session of the year and reflected on our experience, most agreed that the sharing had brought the class closer together and had created a space in which we could discuss spirituality. Even more surprising was how many students also expressed that previously they had felt alone, or like they were the only one who struggled with a particular challenge, but Lev HaShavua showed them that many other girls struggled with the same thing or other challenges. Many students further expressed that the experience of sharing and listening taught them to be less judgmental of others. Particularly given the pervasive struggles during the adolescent years of seeking belonging and authenticity, it was moving to see the many emotional benefits of the shared spiritual community fostered by the Lev HaShauva sessions.
Ma’ayanot and Lifnai Vlifnim: Partnering to Build Lasting Change
By Rabbi Yehuda Chanales, Director of Lifnai Vlifnim Olami
Over the past three years, I have had the privilege of working with Ma’ayanot, an all-girls high school in Teaneck, in two mutually enhancing capacities. As director of Lifnai Vlfinim, I supported the school externally by coaching, designing seminars, and providing resources to the school along with the others in our school cohort program. As a faculty member of the school, I led a Lev HaShavua group with students and watched the stages of implementation and response inside the school building. Drawing upon both these perspectives, we have been able to glean critical lessons from Ma’ayanot’s success that can help us to generate whole school change, lessons that we hope others can benefit from, as well.
- Faculty Learning:
A core aspect of Lifnai Vlifnim’s approach is the belief that faculty’s personal growth and learning has a direct impact on students even when the focus is not on what the teachers will do with students. Ma’ayanot took this idea seriously and was careful to dedicate consistent bi-monthly time for the faculty chaburah that focuses on teachers’ learning and the effort to connect with each other in deeper ways. The school leadership also encouraged the entire Judaic studies faculty to join Lifnai Vlfinim seminars and released them from their classes even at the expense of students’ learning for that day. By setting the conditions where teachers could experience the power of the approach for themselves, the program leaders helped increase teachers’ buy-in and enthusiasm to facilitate a parallel experience for their students. Perhaps most powerfully, students commented on how inspirational it was for them to see their teachers participating in their own Lev Hashavua, recognizing that they too were “real people working on themselves and dealing with their own dilemmas.”
- Leadership within the school:
From the outset, the push to bring Lifnai Vlfnim to Ma’ayanot and the responsibility for its implementation was led by two veteran educators in the school. Rabbi Jay Goldmintz, a renowned educator and author, and Mrs. Bailey Braun, Ma’ayanot’s dean of students. Both are highly respected and beloved amongst faculty and students. They each championed Lifnai Vlifnim as the right new approach to take after they had tried other ways to enhance students’ personal connections to Torah and God. Their belief in the program’s potential impact engendered trust and allayed concerns faculty may have had about implementation. Further, the head of school’s willingness to dedicate faculty’s collaboration time specifically to the project also ensured the opportunity for them to work as a team with me. And we used this time well, including developing scripts and lessons for sessions, problem-solving issues that emerged, and providing teachers with personal guidance and support.
- Balancing gradual implementation and “jumping in”:
Ma’ayanot began Lifnai Vlifinim in its first year with a small pilot group of Judaic studies faculty engaging in a faculty chaburah every other week. The group appreciated the opportunity to focus on their own learning and connect with each other, before they needed to think about how to introduce the Lev HaShuavua sessions to their students. Their experience deepened their own appreciation for the approach and excited them to share it with other faculty members and students the following year. On the other hand, school leadership decided to move directly from this pilot to all students participating in a Lev Hashavua period in one of their Judaic classes once a week and almost all Judaic studies faculty serving as facilitators. This jump demonstrated the commitment to the program and pushed teachers and students to be part of a shared experience, introducing new language throughout the school.
- Taking advantage of external support while simultaneously customizing to school needs:
From the pilot year in 2021-22 to full school rollout last year and the second year of implementation this year, Ma’ayanot took advantage of all the training opportunities offered by Lifnai Vlifnim. Participating in these cross-school workshops not only gave Ma’ayanot teachers practical strategies but also enabled them to internalize some of the deeper goals and philosophy of the program in ways that they might not have had they thought of their own school’s experience in isolation. This larger framing facilitated teachers being able to customize and adapt resources for the school or their own classrooms. Dr. Goldmintz and Mrs. Braun even chose to apply the approach they had learned from the program to design unique content for different grades’ Lev HaShavua that other schools have been able to benefit from and adapt to their own setting.
- Success breeds success:
Beyond these supportive structures, perhaps the most important driver of the program’s success was the students’ reactions. The overwhelming majority of students adopted the Lev Hashavua language very quickly and looked forward to their time to connect with each other and their teachers. While teachers worried that students would cut or leave school during Lev Hashavua periods, students, on the contrary, asked parents not to take them out of school during Lev HaShavua.
We also found that the content and philosophy of the Lev HaShavua sessions quickly infiltrated school culture. We often heard students asking each other what happened in their Lev HaShavua, helping each other prepare for being parnasit, or simply stopping in the middle of a conversation to ask how well they were listening. Administration, teachers, students, and lay leaders chose to highlight Lev HaShavua at the school’s open house, parlor meetings, and dinner. The school even ran an evening, facilitated by Ma’ayanot faculty, for parents to experience Lev HaShavua and gain a deeper understanding of it.
These lessons that we have drawn from our experience at Ma’ayanot are essentia for guiding the Lifnai Vlifnim coaches in their work with other schools. Even more fundamentally, our posture of evolving our model based on lessons gleaned from our experiences speaks to the core philosophy of Lifnai Vlifnim: we are all learners and we must continually seek ways of improving.
Additional Resources
For some information about how to implement Lifnai Vlifnim in your school and classrooms check out the following:
- Lifnai Vlifnim Lesson “Being Pulled into Happiness”
- Protocol for Faculty Chaburah
- Protocol for Student Lev HaShavua
To hear students describe their experiences with Lev HaShavua, check out a couple of videos produced by Lifnai Vlifnim:
We Want To Hear From You
We hope you find The DEEP Dive useful and meaningful. We welcome your feedback about how we might build upon this foray into professional learning for future issues! Email me at [email protected].
