Prizmah Podcasts: Podcasts by Prizmah Center for Jewish Day Schools

Prizmah's Director of Knowledge, Research, and Data Odelia Epstein discusses three timely studies transforming how we understand Jewish day school education today: • An early preview of findings from the first full census of Jewish day schools since 2018-19, revealing Prizmah network schools trends in enrollment. • A study showing that new families post-October 7 are turning to Jewish day schools. • A new look at day school alumni...

Tune in to this Prizmah Podcast Live with The Epstein School in Atlanta's Idit Bendavid and David Welsher to hear how the school built its own Hebrew program—one that puts students at the heart of the learning process. Explore the shift from a rigid curriculum to a student-centered, proficiency-based approach that prioritizes real-world communication. From the perspectives of students, teachers, parents, and school leadership, we w...

How do you help your school's lay leaders become knowledgeable about your school, obtain the skills they need, and gain inspiration to step up their game? Avery Joel of the Fuchs Mizrachi School describes a cohort program they developed to accomplish precisely that. This Podcast Live episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the Prizmah Conference in Boston on February 3, 2025.

Rabbi Dr. Avery Joel is the head of school...

What would happen if schools thought of play as not just some fun release that takes place outside of the "serious" work, but as integral to the task of education? Learn what play is and why it's so important, and explore the different ways that our schools incorporate play into different aspects of the student day. The conversation is inspired by the recent book A Moral Case for Play in K-12 Schools: The Urgency of Advancing Moral...

AI may be the greatest thing to happen to Jewish education since unicode. And it may even be bigger than that. AI is still in its infancy, and it's already allowing teachers to do so much. Join this podcast to dive into how AI can help with note-taking, studying, essay writing, and more – and why that's a good thing. We talk about how it can help teachers present information in more exciting ways. And how it can help personalize ed...

This podcast, based on the volume Teaching Israel: Studies of Pedagogy from the Field, edited by Sivan Zakai and Matt Reingold, focuses on Israel teachers in the classroom. Who teaches our students about Israel, and in what contexts? How do Israel educators think about their role--as an "explorer" or "exemplar"? What happens when a "micromoment" arises, when a student struggles to understand or is deeply troubled by something they'...

Explore an initiative that aims to address the national issue of fewer and fewer talented and inspiring adults choosing to become teachers or stay in the field of education.

This podcast dives into how the Maimonides School, a Modern Orthodox school in Brookline, Massachusetts, decided to invest in young talent, even before these talented students made the decision to work...

How have our educators been impacted by, and adapted to, the horrific attacks against Israel that took place on October 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza? The starting point for this conversation is the study "Responding to This Historical Moment: Jewish Educators, Clergy, Engagement Professionals and the War in Israel." Hear about the emotional challenges that these educators have faced, and the educational dilemmas that continue to s...

What does it take to build a school from scratch? Especially a school as sophisticated as a Jewish day school. In this podcast, we sit down with Rabbi Dr. Gil Perl, who throughout his career has taken three schools from concept to reality. Most recently, in August 2023, he helped open the Jewish Leadership Academy in Miami, Florida.

The Jewish Leadership Academy is a highly selective Jewish middle and high school dedicated to devel...

Four heads of school from the Bay Area talk about a mission they took together to Israel during the current war. They depict what it's like in their schools during this time, with heightened antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the region. Their schools are serving as places of refuge, as centers of Jewish pride where people organize opposition to pro-Hamas political proposals. The heads describe the conversations and images i...

Learn about the The Milken Way, a unique set of ideas and values that guides how Milken Community School, one of the largest Jewish day schools in North America, operates and thinks about customer service.

As Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Customer service has become the most important factor in consumer decisions. In fact,...

School mission statements articulate a hope that through our educational programs, help students gain the knowledge, skills and inclinations needed to make positive change. By putting Tikkun Olam at the core of K-8 programs, Leo Baeck Day School in Toronto has learned how to help students learn to connect their actions to Jewish values. Learn how and why the Tikkun Project at Toronto’s Leo Baeck Day School came to be and hear examp...

Where does Jewish history live in your curriculum, culture, and approach to education at your school? Jewish history is central to Jewish education, and can be a locus of meaning, authority, and knowledge for all Jewish day school students. Listen to this interesting discussion with Rachel Bergstein, Director of the Center for Excellence and Engagement in Jewish History and Jewish History Department Faculty Member at Charles E. Smi...

Learn from Rebecca Lurie and Dr. Jonah Hassenfeld how a leadership team structure that is aligned with institutional values has the capacity to effect impactful and sustained change within a school environment. Explore the process by which the organizational structure of Schechter Boston was transformed into a distributed leadership model. This Podcast Live episode was recorded in person at the Prizmah Conference in Denver, January...

How can Jewish schools ensure that their graduates go on to be stewards of democracy? And how can Jewish educators teach students to connect Jewish ethics to the practices of citizenship? The Brandeis School of San Francisco has been wrestling with these questions since the 2016 election cycle. Hear from head of school Dr. Dan Glass about how Brandeis has worked to connect Jewish ethics and democratic habits of mind, from daily cla...

Debby Artz-Mor, director of Jewish learning at the Brandeis School in San Francisco, and Rabbi David Stein, Judaics studies principal at Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles, join Sivan Zakai to discuss her new longitudinal study of Israel education , My Second Favorite Country. They consider understandings of "age-appropriate" learning that can impede educational engagement and exploration, discuss the relationship between school ...