Hundreds of teachers, supervisors and educational technology directors converged on the MOFET Institute in Tel Aviv on November 11, 2014 to participate in the third Global School Twinning Network Conference. They were joined by tens of Jewish educators from around the world who participated in the conference virtually via online broadcast from the Israel Ministry of Educations website.

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.

This study presents the cases of two teachers in a Jewish supplementary school whose experiences as learners in a year-long professional development (PD) program shaped their teaching practice. The PD program, based in a theory of havruta text learning, immersed the faculty in the very pedagogy they were being encouraged to use in their teaching and gave them tools to enact it to meet their classroom learning goals

Inspired by Taglit-Birthright’s free trips to Israel for college students, a brand new program will bring Jewish newlyweds from North America on heavily subsidized honeymoons to the Holy Land. The program, Honeymoon Israel, has just obtained initial funding to finance two pilot trips this spring, each of which will bring 20 couples on nine-day tours of the country. The first trip will target couples from Los Angeles and Phoenix, and the second one, couples from Los Angeles and Atlanta.

The Szarvas Fellowships program is accepting applications for summer 2015. The fellowships offer students completing 10th and 11th grades an opportunity to attend the largest international Jewish camp in Szarvas, Hungary with a pluralistic group of teens from across the United States and Canada. This program will explore issues of Jewish identity, Pluralism, Jewish peoplehood and more. Camp Szarvas has campers from 20-25 countries around the world.