Recession Bites As Jewish Educators Downsized

This article was first published in The Forward.

Abra Greenspan

It is no secret that Jewish communal organizations have taken a beating in the ongoing economic recession. Educational institutions, including schools and synagogue programs, have had to slash budgets, and bureaus of Jewish education have either scaled back or closed their doors altogether.

Less apparent is the impact on individual lives. In the wake of the downsizing and restructuring, many middle-aged Jewish education professionals in mid-level management positions have found themselves unexpectedly unemployed. Having completed their professional training in the 1980s and ’90s and worked steadily and successfully ever since, they never imagined they would find themselves without work at this stage of their lives.

Bebe Jacobs

As a recent article in The New York Times put it, “It’s a baby boomer’s nightmare. One moment you’re 40-ish and moving up, the next you’re 50-plus and suddenly, shockingly, moving out — jobless in a tough economy.”

So, what’s a knowledgeable and experienced Jewish educational leader to do when she (because Jewish educational staffers are usually “she’s”) hits a major, debilitating road bump in her career? There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. While one person might seek to beef up her technology skills, another might give up entirely on the chance to find new work within the Jewish community. Here are the stories of five women, each moving forward in a different way.

Technology Is the Future

Debby Jacoby

“It’s not fun to lose a job,” said Debby Jacoby. “But to be honest, I think that if I didn’t have as much confidence in my tech skills set, I would really be panicked right now.”

Jacoby, 51, was until last month the director of the Center for Educational Leadership at San Francisco’s Jewish LearningWorks (formerly known as the Bureau of Jewish Education), the central agency supporting all aspects of Jewish education in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2008, she relocated for the job to California from Cleveland, where she had worked for 25 years as an educational leader in synagogues and on Jewish community projects.

Michelle Brooks

In August 2012, Jacoby’s position was cut back from full-time to half-time, but she had begun to see the writing on the wall even earlier than that. The news that she was losing her job “due to changes in funding,” as her layoff letter indicated, came as no surprise.

Knowing what might be coming down the pike, Jacoby made a significant investment in learning about technology and education over the last year and a half. “I really began to appreciate the value of expanding one’s colleague network, and of using social media to help you go to the next level of thinking on something,” she said.

“I am really interested in exploring how to leverage technology when working on the professional development of Jewish educators,” Jacoby continued. She hopes to find a new position in this field, but won’t settle for something small. “I don’t want to just teach or administer a project,” she said. “I want to go bigger.”

Michal Morris Kamil

Jacoby thinks about starting her own initiative, but in the meantime, she is looking for a position at a university or institute that would allow her to put to use all that she has learned about technology and education. She believes running a technology fellowship program or developing a collective of tech-focused day schools would be right up her alley.

With existing models of Jewish education proving to be too expensive nowadays, Jacoby is convinced that new ones must be developed, and that baby boomers need to get with the 21st-century program. “We’ve got to be looking at hybrids that blend technology and traditional in-person, brick-and-mortar approaches.”

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

A Red Hot Yiddishe Mama

This article was first published in The Times of Israel.

Burlesque performer and Jewish educator Minnie Tonka (photo by Clint Hild)

Alyssa Abrahamson, like so many other Jews around the world, is hard at work right now preparing for the upcoming Passover holiday. But while others are trying to figure how they will retell the story of the Exodus this year in a way that will keep people’s attention, Abrahamson has a surefire audience-captivating plan. She’ll be donning her pasties and G-string to recount the journey of the Hebrews from slavery to freedom through striptease in “The Burning Bush vs. The Second Coming: A Hot and Holy Burlesque Showdown” in Midtown Manhattan.

Abrahamson, 39, is mainly known these days by her burlesque moniker, Minnie Tonka (a tribute to her hometown of Minnetonka, Minnesota). Possibly the only burlesque performer to have a Masters in Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary and to have studied at other leading Jewish institutions in the US and Israel, she brings a unique Jewish flavor to her solo act, as well as to her work as one half of The Schlep Sisters duo, in which she performs with a partner known as Darlinda Just Darlinda.

Following many years of thirsting for Jewish knowledge and searching for Jewish identity after a childhood devoid of a Jewish education or bat mitzva, Abrahamson feels that she has finally arrived at the right place for her.

In an interview with The Times of Israel in a café near her home in Brooklyn, Tonka, as she likes to be referred to, said that at this point her burlesque persona is “who I am.” To her, this makes complete sense, given that for the past couple of years she has focused mainly on burlesque, after having worked full-time for five years as the Director of Arts and Jewish Culture at the 14th Street Y, followed by a year-and-a half stint with Birthright Israel NEXT.

She still does some educational consulting to a number of New York-based Jewish institutions and organizations. “There’s not a lot of money in burlesque,” she admitted.

Tonka’s journey into burlesque has been gradual. “It took me three years to get down to a G-string,” she shared. “It’s kind of like public speaking — the more you do it, the easier it gets,” she said, referring to getting used to taking her clothes off in public.

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© 2012  Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Hip Hop Help

For all the old fogey Jewish educators like me (ie. anyone over the age of 30), it’s a relief to know that help is on the way.

Photo of mural from bedstuybanana.blogspot.com

We know that it’s important to meet our students where they are, to speak their language. But that can be problematic when we are not well versed in their cultural vernacular. For instance, it is common practice these days is to have students explore a topic or demonstrate their understanding of material through modes of expression that are familiar, that come naturally to them. One such mode is rap and/or hip-hop music (I am not one to know the finer nuances between the two) – one that the kids feel totally comfortable with, but which many of us pre-Millennials can barely understand (I mean literally – I’m lucky if I can make out every fifth word in a rap song).

Well, we teachers need no longer avoid this musical genre for fear of making fools of ourselves in front of our students, or worry about depriving them of an authentic hip hop Jewish educational activity. We just need to call out, “Bible Raps to the rescue!” (or better yet, contact them through their website), and leave it to the professionals to give the kids the rap experience they deserve. What a mechayah to just sit back and relax and let Matt Barr, Ori Salzberg and team do their thing and help the members of your class (or family education group, or Hillel house, or…) study traditional Jewish text and turn their understanding and interpretation of it into a quality hip hop recording (video or mp3).

Here are two of their impressive productions. Both are with Camp Ramah groups, and both show some serious Jewish learning taking place:

For more information on The Bible Raps Project and its supporters, visit its website at www.bibleraps.com and www.biblerapsnation.com.

© 2010 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.