Section archive - Education & Administration

The Jerusalem Unity Prize named Limmud, the international network of Jewish learning communities, and its first non-Jewish winner. Limmud was awarded in the Diaspora category and Dr. Janaan Frajj Falah, who has worked to advance initiatives that bridge social gaps between women of diverse backgrounds in Israel’s North, was one of two winners in the local category. Falah was joined by Kehilat Hadar, based in Haifa, which promotes social and cultural harmony between local groups of various religions and ethnicities. The national prize winner is Tzav Pius, a group that works to bridge the religious-secular divide in Israel.

While we start the month of Adar -- a time of happiness in the Jewish calendar, this past week has been anything but for the Jewish day school community. Day schools from coast to coast, along with other Jewish institutions, were targeted with bomb threats. As you can imagine, this had a significant effect on those school communities and their students. One class had just concluded its ceremony conferring the first Siddur (prayer book) to its first grade class; some were in the middle of reading the Torah; others were celebrating Rosh Chodesh, the new Jewish month; while others engaged in the daily tasks of learning. These threats also have a multiplying effect: our entire community of schools now suffers from the anxiety and fear that these threats engender, whether their schools have been the direct target or not.

Beef and beans stew, meatballs baked in hummus and other dishes that are rather foreign to the common Israeli teenager are what's on offer at the cafeteria of the Tichonet High School in Tel Aviv, which recently joined Chef Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. The Cafeteria Project, led by the city's Innovation Team sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies, was launched in an effort to lower food costs at schools while at the same time offering healthier food to students. The project seeks to create a new model for the cafeterias in Tel Aviv's high schools that would allow them to offer students healthy, nutritious and delicious food at affordable prices.

The San Francisco-based Koret Foundation has given the Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot in Tel Aviv a $10 million grant — the largest from a U.S. philanthropic foundation in the museum’s 40-year history. The grant will establish the Koret International School for Jewish Peoplehood, the museum said in a statement. The school will expand the work of Beit Hatfutsot’s International School for Jewish Peoplehood Studies and offer individually tailored personal and professional educational programs for visitors, online users, students, educators and community leaders, according to the museum.