Source: The Covenant Foundation
Three Jewish educators are recipients of the Covenant Award, cited for innovation, inspiration and impact on Jewish education and community. Peter Geffen, Founder and Executive Director of KIVUNIM in New York; Gitta Jaroslawicz-Neufeld, Director of Education at Allegra Franco School of Educational Leadership in Brooklyn; and Karina Zilberman, Director of Jewish Family Life and Culture at 92nd Street Y in New York were named today by The Covenant Foundation to receive the Award, among the most coveted honors in the field of Jewish education.
The three recipients join 63 other Jewish educators honored with a Covenant Award since the Foundation established the citation in 1991. Each will receive $36,000, and each of their institutions will receive $5,000.
The Foundation and the Jewish community will honor them on Nov. 11 at a gala dinner and award ceremony in Baltimore during the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America.
Peter Geffen, Founder of KIVUNIM and The Abraham Joshua Heschel School in New York, has devoted his career in Jewish education to elevating Jewish identities informed and driven by social justice, creating educational models in which knowledge of Jewish communities around the world propels individual and collective growth and community building for next generations.
Gitta Jaroslawicz-Neufeld, Director of Education at Allegra Franco School of Educational Leadership in Brooklyn for the past seven years, has leveraged the power of Jewish education to redefine students’ lives, ensure community continuity and tradition, and affect social structures.
Karina Zilberman, Director of Jewish Family Life and Culture at 92nd Street Y in New York since 2007, is the creator, founder and leader of Shababa Community, an immensely popular and vibrant Jewish family education initiative that is stamped with her passions for creativity, arts, performance and community building.
The Covenant Foundation is a program of the Crown Family Foundation and the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA).