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In a spirit of exploring opportunities for collaboration and learning, nineteen providers of adult Jewish learning gathered recently in Newton, MA. Co-sponsored by Hebrew College and the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning, the Summit for Leaders in Adult Jewish Learning opened a long-overdue conversation about how to advance the place of adult learning in today’s Jewish communal landscape. Forty leaders crossed the boundaries of their own silos to consider common challenges, learn from respected faculty, and discuss the role of adult learning in building our Jewish future. Veteran organizations represented by Drisha Institute, Rohr Jewish Learning Institute, Hebrew College’s School of Adult Learning, Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning, and the Wexner Heritage Program were joined by representatives of newer initiatives like Ayeka, Chai Mitzvah, Global Day of Learning, Kevah and Mechon Hadar. Our dialogue was enriched and cross-pollinated by a diversity of perspectives and multiplicity of goals, from engaging first-time learners to empowering adults to find relevance in deep and substantive text study.

In recent days, Jack Wertheimer and Steven Cohen have offered a salutary reminder that non-Orthodox American Jews are “standing on a demographic precipice.” And backing away from the cliff’s edge, they tell us, will require focusing squarely on the young. According to their prescription, a return to Jewish flourishing will be secured by stressing the importance of day schools, residential summer camps that offer “serious Jewish content,” Israel trips “for sixteen and seventeen year-olds,” youth groups, organized campus activities, and efforts to stimulate in-marriage or convert gentile partners. It is hard to dispute that these are top priority agenda items – as they have been for some time. And Wertheimer and Cohen are right to sound the alarm; with the ground moving fast under our feet, it is too late for complacency.

Rabbi Ari Sytner, director of Community Initiatives at Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future has designed and recently launched #EmpoweredLearning, where different YU scholars introduce profound and intriguing questions in a 10-minute video presentation, leaving viewers with sources and texts which will empower them to discover their own answers. During the week, participants can discuss the questions in an open online forum, until the following week when the presenter’s answer is revealed in three-minute video, followed by a new presenter posing a fresh set of questions. The project is centered on the Jewish holidays and it is only fitting that the first few installments are being released in the three weeks leading up to Shavuot.

At the Schechter School of Long Island, we know that the education we provide our students will enable them to be passionate and literate Jews when they enter adulthood, Jewish exemplars for the next generation. However, a day school does not exist in a vacuum, and the opportunity exists for day schools to be embedded in what Gail Furman calls the “microecology” of their community, where the school is central to “the creation of local community”. In other words, if Jewish communities want to expand their commitment to Jewish learning, the day school can be a central institution in promoting that value community-wide.