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Future Directions for ATID
Spring 2001
ATID-The Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions is an
independent, privately funded foundation which aims
to foster new and significant thought on the
crucial issues facing Jewish education among future
leaders in the field-students, young educators, and
other professionals who will serve as lay leadership - and to develop
effective and implementable
pedagogies and strategies for improving Torah
education in the modern world.
ATID strives to...
- Raise the level of sophistication and
professionalism in Jewish education, helping to
transform the field into a more creative and
effective force in impacting on world-wide Jewry.
- Prepare outstanding professional and
lay leadership for Torah education-in Israel and
the Diaspora-who have the ability to grapple with
the profound challenges facing our community and
our people, and who have the skills to promote
effective education.
- Attract committed, talented and well-trained
personnel to the field of Jewish education.
- Act as a partner to leading institutions in
Israel and the Diaspora who are looking to raise
their own level of effective educational practice.
- Serve as a resource to the profession and
community in dealing with the critical issues,
topics, and problems facing the Jewish world-
solving problems through developing creative and
effective educational approaches.
- Forge the necessary links between the practical
and theoretical realms that ought to interact in a
more dynamic way in shaping the world of Torah
education.
As ATID prepares to enter its
fourth year of innovative activity on behalf of
Jewish education, we announce our commitment to
both continue and to expand our programs into the
areas described below:
ATID Fellows
Combine the most talented and
promising young Jewish teachers and leaders, team
them with the most distinguished senior educators
in Israel, and challenge them to develop innovative,
effective, and implementable solutions to the
challenges facing Jewish education in the
contemporary worldand you have the ATID Fellowship
program.
Each Fellow works on a field of
specific research of their choice associated with
an issue in Jewish education, and is paired with a
senior educator who acts as mentor to the project,
but who also serves as a resource and guide as the
Fellow processes the content of the whole program
to his or her own personal and professional life.
The research studies are disseminated in print, and
are available from our website at
http://www.atid.org/journal/journal.asp.
As a group, the ATID Fellows have
focused on developing innovative pedagogies and
solutions for issues such as: the challenge of
creating a meaningful Tefillah experience,
character education in the modern world, developing
engaging curricula for teaching Gemera, and
creating commitment to Israel and Zionism in the
"post-Zionist" age. Through the group seminars and
projects, ATID serves as the ultimate "teacher's
room"-fostering creative interaction, supportive
critique, and growth-oriented collegiality.
The ATID Fellows come from a variety of
backgrounds: those working in Israeli classrooms,
those teaching Diaspora students in the many
yeshivah and seminary programs in and around
Jerusalem, and those not in the classroom, but
informal or adult education or school
administration. In a few cases ATID Fellows are not
professionally involved in education, but come from
fields such as law, business, or psychology, and
will be assuming roles as lay leaders. By including
a select number of outstanding professionals from
outside of the world of formal education, ATID
shows its commitment to the fact that the players
in Jewish education are found in many varied
arenas-from the classroom to the boardroom, schools
and homes, yeshivot and universities.
In the coming year, the ATID
Fellowship program will continue its work,
refocused through the component of senior fellows
and full-time associates who will work closely with
the young educators and guide the research of teams
which will examine the critical issues facing Torah
education in Israel and the Diaspora, and work
toward developing specific strategies and resources
to improve the field. ATID fellows receive a
stipend for their in-service participation in our
program of seminars and group research, and benefit
from contact with a distinguished faculty of senior
educators and from creative interaction with
colleagues.
Zionism & Jewish History
ATID has established a task force
of creative educators, policy makers, and thinkers
to help clarify the challenges of inculcating
commitment and connection to the State of Israel
and the Zionist enterprise, in the face of
contemporary, so-called "post-Zionist" challenges
to those goals. The task force will prepare
curricular material which will serve as useful
resources, both in Israel and the Diaspora, toward
addressing from a Torah perspective issues such as
Israel's role in the world, the challenge of
building a moral and just society, defining
national identity, the relationship of Diaspora
Jewry to the State and vice-versa. Through our new
initiatives working with Diaspora schools, we will
make a real impact in communicating these core
values to worldwide Jewry.
Initiative for Torah Art Education
The relationship between Judaism
and the arts is both ancient and complex. The
ability of the world of art and music to both
enhance and represent the religious experience
is one which often goes unmined in contemporary
Torah education. ATID will establish a serious
learning environment to train teachers who will
be able to integrate these fields through
innovative pedagogical techniques. In its initial
stage women with a strong Torah study background,
as well as talents and interest in the arts, will
participate in Beit Medrash study on the interplay
of the fields. Ten young women (both from Israel
and abroad) who have shown promise as creative
teachers will be selected for the initial phase
of the project. Experts from the world of classical
Torah study, artists and art teachers, and master
pedagogues will accompany the participants on their
journey to process the material and synthesize the
disciplines as they develop educational strategies
for enhancing current teaching. The participants
and faculty will together create courses and
curricula for implementation in secondary schools
and seminaries both in Israel and the Diaspora.
The focus will not merely be on how to teach art
from a Torah perspective, but also how the study
of art, music, and other creative disciplines can
and should enhance our study of Torah, and enrich
our lives as Torah-practicing students and adults.
The program will lead to a degree or certificate
for teachers in the school systems.
ATID Abroad
ATID has begun work with leading
institutions in the Diaspora that wish to undergo a
rigorous examination and refinement of their
vision, goals and methods. The ATID faculty serves
as on-site consultants to help facilitate systemic
change, vision-building, curricular review and
development, and staff training and enhancement.
Although custom tailored for each school, the main
task of each program will be the development of
implementable pedagogical, administrative and
programmatic strategies which will enable each
Yeshiva to move from their articulated vision into
educational practice. This will include careful
curriculum analysis and design planning, but will
extend well beyond the business of the classroom
to work on the school experience in total. Each
site serves as a "laboratory school"-becoming a
model for institutional change, growth, and
excellence.
A work plan is developed at the
outset of each project, and typically lasts up to
18 months for the initial phase. During that time
ATID makes several on-site visits, and the school
administration and faculty members undergo an
intense Summer Seminar at ATID's Jerusalem
facility. Throughout the experience ATID serves
as a partner and resource to each client school,
and is available at all times for the provision
of resources and consultation in the on-going
implementation of each project.
Projects have been launched
at the Yeshiva High School of Boca Raton,
Florida, and at the Immanuel College in London.
Please contact ATID to discuss designing a program
for your school.
Publications
ATID will continue to disseminate
its studies and materials both in print and
electronically via the Internet. We have
contracted with a Urim Publications to produce a
volume of essays on Torah education, and are in the
first editing stages. We will also be launching a
series of pamphlets-each focusing on a specific
educational challenge-that record the deliberations
undertaken in ATID, which will both suggest reforms
and articulate new positions on issues with which
schools often wrestle. These publications put forth
new thinking on age-old issues as well as
contemporary challenges. They are an endeavor to
draw a wide audience of Jewish educators, leaders,
and policy makers into the necessary deliberations
on the issues that ought to be guiding our work.
These published studies and research monographs
capture the vibrant and fresh debate that the ATID
fellows undergo in our weekly seminars, and invite
each reader to undergo the same rigorous process of
thinking critically about how he or she approaches
their own holy work.
The first volume in our monograph
series, currently in press, focuses on "Educating
Toward Serious Tefillah."
Recent Titles from the ATID JOURNAL:
Visit
http://www.atid.org/journal/journal.asp for over 30 recent studies,
pamphlets, and monographs.
| Rabbi Chaim Brovender President |
Rabbi Jeffrey Saks Director |
ATID is a tax-deductible charity in the United States through the American Committee for the Advancement of Torah Education in Israel, Inc.
For more information please contact us at
+972-2-567-1719 or atid@atid.org
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