NJ Melton Making a Difference: Adult Ed Program Expanding to Give Parents ‘Foundations’
Source: The NJ Jewish Standard
Starting Jan. 11, The Florence Melton Adult Mini-School is offering a new Foundations of Jewish Family Living course in NJ. The 10-week class will focus on issues of interest to parents. The new family living course will focus on values. Each week of the course will take a specific value — honor, hospitality, visiting the sick, etc. — and apply the layered text-based approach that is the Melton method. These texts include Talmud, kabbalah, and contemporary teachers from all the Jewish streams. As in other Melton offerings, participants will read the texts, figure out the values they contain, and discuss what they feel about the texts. In this course they will also discuss how they may transmit those values to their children.
For more than two decades, the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School has been providing Jewish education for NJ adults. Meeting weekly over the course of two years, the Melton program has changed the way hundreds of alumni relate to Judaism. And it has inspired many of its alumni to keep coming back for more post-Melton courses offered by the Melton program. Currently, 60 communities around the world host the Melton program.
Two years ago, the federation sought to find new sources of funding for Melton. A group of graduates of the program came together and took the case for Melton to their local synagogues. As a result, Melton is now jointly sponsored by a consortium of 19 synagogues, all three area Jewish community centers, and the federation.
Read about the new Melton course, the international Melton program and a sample lesson plan in the NJ Jewish Standard.