OnLion

A bit about me…Now let me hear from you

In 1978, I returned home after spending a year in Israel and began teaching in my synagogue’s religious school. The principal handed me When a Jew Celebrates and The Holocaust: A History of Courage and Resistance. A year later, I entered rabbinical school and taught Hebrew school in the Philadelphia suburbs. In my first job, the principal handed me A Child’s Introduction to Torah. As my education progressed, so did my responsibilities, until soon, I was the principal handing out textbooks. Not surprisingly, I selected books that I had taught, and which I trusted would be effective. Thus, for my 4^th grade teachers, I chose Child’s Introduction to Early Prophets; I gave Journey Through Jewish History to my 5^th grade teachers, and my 2^nd grade Hebrew teachers received Sam the Detective (which I also used to teach my own children). Looking back, I realize that my association with Behrman House has been long and satisfying.

As the new Executive Editor, however, I’m more interested in looking forward, and what I see excites me. After one month at Behrman House, I see

• an organization that recognizes the educational potential of media convergence, a term that describes the flow of content across multiple platforms; hence, resources such as  iMah Nishtanah (an iPhone app available early March), Customized Family Haggadah, Kol Yisrael Hebrew Series with integrated digital activities, and Siddur Mah Tov with accompanying music CD (coming in April)
• a vibrant publishing house that never forgets that books provide an essential part of a creative classroom experience; hence, an editorial pipeline filled with stimulating textbooks, such as The Prophets: Speak Up for Justice (coming in April), Jewish Guided Imagery (revised and coming in July), My Jewish Stories: Traditional Folktales and Midrashim Retold for Young Children (coming in July)
• a company committed to Jewish literary culture; hence, the publication of The Prophet’s Wife (coming in March), the unfinished novel by Rabbi Milton Steinberg, z’l, the brilliant author of As a Driven Leaf—also a Behrman House publication
• an edutainment powerhouse hip enough to understand youth culture and intelligent enough to relate it to Judaism’s eternal truths; hence, the new Behrman House partner, www.babaganewz.com

Although Tu B’Shevat has recently passed, I can’t resist connecting my personal experiences with Behrman House to the fruit we ate at the Tu B’Shevat Seder. As a classroom teacher, I mainly appreciated the physical product, the colorful textbooks that caught my students’ attention and helped me do my job. This corresponds to fruit with hard outer shells, like almonds and walnuts, which represent the material world.   

 When I became a principal, I no longer saw only books; I recognized the beauty of the underlying curricular structure. This parallels the fruit we eat with inner pits and soft outer skins, like dates and olives. They represent the non-material world of perfect forms. Finally, as a staff member at Behrman House, I see the equivalent of the highest level of the non-material realm, where the first impulses of creativity stir. To symbolize this level at the Tu B’Shevat Seder, we eat fruit with neither pits nor shells, like figs and grapes. This domain corresponds to the deep commitment to Judaism and Jewish continuity that the staff puts into every project.

Wait Wait—what about books, for the rest of us

Alan Sufrin wrote a most intersting reply to one of our Facebook posts.  I’ve reprinted it below.  It’s about making sure that we use all the technologies at our disposal, all the media.  Making sure that however our children want to engage in education, that they have a vehicle for doing so.

Here’s what Alan had to say:

Alan Jay Sufrin I definitely agree. I think what you’ve described here is the most pressing struggle in today’s classrooms, and while it’s mostly generational in nature, it’s also a matter of classism. And where economic/social class isn’t an issue, preference is. What if our schools or students don’t have access to these technologies? What if they don’t want them? It’s a struggle we’re not likely to solve any time soon, but I’m not sure we want to, either.  As you put it:

“There are so many possibilities. We cannot, and we should not, hold back the tide; let’s ride it instead.”

Rather than look at it as one single tide, why not include some low-tech options in these ‘many possibilities’? When all is said and done, I believe that some people learn better by paying more attention to the teacher than their netbooks. Others learn better by using the iShma app. …

It’s an important point, in fact more fundamental than the post he was replying to.  Just as we’ve learned to accommodate different types of learners—aural, experiential, kinesthetic—we need to take advantage of all the technologies available to reach children.  We need to be as accessible, as open and available, as we can be for all of our children.

Which brings me to books.  Books?  I hear you ask.   Who wants to talk about books?   Everyone’s talking about computers:   Facebook. Twitter.  Re-tweeting (wow, what a wierd word.)  And words we don’t even understand, like virtualization, cloud computing, and fuzzy logic.

Once in a while, in the excitement of new technology, and love of new gadgets and toys (I’m a guy—forgive me for loving that stuff), we forget the importance of books.  And it’s not just that we are “The People of the Book.”  It’s way, way more.

Books create conversations in the classroom.  A good book, with its art and its photography, its activities and its critical thinking questions, help children explore.  Good textbooks create interactions among students.  They develop collaborative skills.  They provide places for the teacher to hold a conversation with kids—to assess learning, to explore issues more deeply, to verbalize what is implicit in the material.

Books provide a hub for a dynamic, creative, engaging classroom experience.

And, books are easy to use for everyone.  We don’t need a laptop at every desk.  We don’t need an electrical outlet.  We don’t even need to know how to type.

Let’s not forget this.  Let’s not forget the key role that books and other written materials play in most classroom experiences.  It may be that the Star Trek world will be upon us sometime in the future, perhaps even soon.  It may be that the Kindle, the Nook, or the e-Reader will supplant the book in the classroom someday.  But that day has not yet arrived.

Are They Paying Attention to Us?

Terry Kaye was in Los Angeles last week, in part to present to the Principals’ Council retreat organized by Janice Tytell.  She reports that for the first time at one of these sessions, many of the participants were on laptops and handheld devices throughout the session, taking notes and looking real-time at the websites and other digital resources she was referring to in her talk.

Terry was both enthusiastic—it’s great to see that kind of engagement—and a bit disconcerted.  After all, one expects participants to be paying attention, just as we want our students to pay attention in class.

Cut to the Wall St. Journal. The Journal reported in an article the day after Terry’s presentation that the research efforts of the Large Hadron Super Collider near Geneva, Switzerland require 2,900 scientists from 34 countries, and that they’re using 100,000 computers (that’s one hundred thousand!) to process the data.  Talk about a collaborative effort.

As the Journal put it,  “Once a mostly solitary endeavor, science in the 21st century has become a team sport.”

So what do these two things have to do with each other?  How can a presentation in Los Angeles be possibly linked to the European Super Collider?

It has to do with technology and with teams.  With collaboration and with what we expect from our students.  With the description “once a mostly solitary endeavor, science in the 21st century has become a team sport.”  (Sound familiar?  Can we apply it to education as well?)

I was trained (from early childhood through law school) through traditional classroom instruction.  And when I give presentations, or when I’ve taught classes, as I have at HUC and JTS, I’ve come to expect those in attendance to pay attention to me.  After all, that’s what I did when I was a student.  That means listening, responding, and asking questions when appropriate.

But that’s not always how it works in today’s world.  Fourteen of the 16 students in my son’s 9^th grade English class have laptops.  They take notes directly into their machines.  Are they on their email at the same time?  Who knows?  Are the education students I teach at HUC and JTS on their laptops?  They sure are.  And I know that it doesn’t feel as secure, it doesn’t feel as orderly, as it did 10 years ago.

And yet I also know that when I’m in a class, or at a presentation, I want to write directly into my laptop.  It’s faster. It’s neater (I have poor handwriting). And it’s easier to organize.  And yes, sometimes I’m on my email.  Sorry.

So what does this have to do with you, and me, and education?  At the very least, we all need to come to accept these devices into our lives, and into our classrooms.  And begrudging acceptance is a second-best solution, for these are the tools of modern collaboration.  They allow our students a broader network, a more diverse set of contacts and collaborators, than has ever been the case in history.  These devices allow them a breadth of research and learning unheard of in human history.  Just see the recent Pew Internet and American Life Project for some examples.

So that’s where we need to go.  Invite your students’ iPhones into your classroom and ask them to try out our free iShma app, which is in beta-test.  Devise some web-based research inquiries that they can do in groups.  Have a contest—see who can find the best (funniest, most meaningful, most informative) YouTube video for the upcoming Jewish holiday, and have them share it with the class.  There are so many possibilities.  We cannot, and we should not, hold back the tide; let’s ride it instead.

Staying Connected With Our Kids

There’s an interesting study out on internet usage, by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.  It sheds  light on, and has implications for, the work you and I do.

What does it say?  Surprisingly, people who use digital technology and social networking—email, blogs, twitter, text messaging, etc.—tend to have wider social networks that those who don’t.  Rather than restricting our horizons and interactions, digital technologies are expanding them.

Maybe we’re not bowling alone.  Maybe we’re just goinging to a different bowling alley.

So, what does this mean for us?  Probably a lot of things; so far I’ve only ve figured out a few.

I was in Chicago last month.  A highly-experienced principal I met with won’t hire teachers who don’t use email. Her reason is simple, and sensible: she’s using email more and more with her teachers, and she’s asking her teachers to communicate with parents that way too. Without email, a teacher is cut off from these conversations.

And there’s another benefit to her rule, something more profound: imagine a teacher who has made it to 2009 without a computer, without email, without the resources of the internet that we take for granted (think about Google alone!). How broad is their perspective?  Do they know what’s going on in the world?  And what messages—what role modeling—does that provide our children?

The Pew study tells us that people with social networking skills tend to reach out more often beyond their immediate family, and their immediate community.  They have a wider array of conversation partners available to them.  They interact with others who are geographically, socially, and intellectually more diverse.  They hear a broader range of viewpoints; they have opportunities for a richer set of experiences.  And, they can bring that breadth and richness to our children.

By itself, that would be enough reason.  But there’s more.

Technology will keep marching forward.  Some day, maybe soon, we won’t be able to imagine hiring a teacher without a personal webpage.  Or maybe a blog.  Maybe a Twitter account.

(Now, not everything’s for everyone.  I’m not much of a Twitter guy—having gone to law school I’m pretty much unable to express any coherent thought in 140 characters or less.  But it’s great for other things, and emails and blogs are a great way for me to enrich my community.  And maybe someday I’ll learn to use Twitter effectively as well.)

The Pew effort is a reminder to all of us—we need to keep moving forward with technology.  Not just to keep up with the kids; not just to be able to appear to be hip or have “street cred.”  (By the way, according to Jessica—our Behrman House street cred assessor—mine is in negative territory!)  It’s also so that we can have a rich, diverse set of conversations and experiences, in order that we may become wiser ourselves, and help convey that wisdom to our children.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Behrman House Goes to the Movies:
Helping Create Period Fiction Means a Trip Down Memory Lane

It’s exciting to be involved, even peripherally, in the making of a movie. When the call came in last year for help dressing the set of the Coen brothers’ latest film, A Serious Man, we were all abuzz. They needed stuff—stuff to evoke growing up Jewish in the 1960’s. I was assigned—assigned?  I was first in line to volunteer!—the task of digging out appropriate stuff.

After a year of anticipation, I finally got to see the movie this past weekend. And I have to say, I saw it with a completely new appreciation for the level of detail that goes into making a piece of period fiction.  I found myself spending most of the film’s running time focused on the background—those ashtrays! (Just like the ones in my dad’s office.) That lamp! (Just like the one my grandmother had in her den).

I think I’ll have to see it again just to be able to sit still and give my full attention to the characters.

In searching out appropriately vintage materials, I had the opportunity to sift through Behrman House’s history as I combed through our library and the Behrman House archives. It was a little like going into your family’s attic. Lots of bits of nostalgia.

Some of the books and materials that had cameo roles in A Serious Man

I found books from a variety of sources, including some we had published ourselves, lo those many years ago. I ended up sending over seven cartons of books and materials out to Minneapolis, including first edition hardcovers of our own As a Driven Leaf and Rabbis’ Bible; a multi-volume set of the 1909 edition of Funk & Wagnall’s Jewish Encyclopedia; and several scholarly works on Talmud with beautiful lettering on the spines. The Coen Brothers used it all; even the multiple sets of blank blue books, still tied in their original twine, which can be seen on a bookshelf in one rabbi’s office, and a decoupage print of Elias M. Grossman’s “Man with a Prayer Shawl” which  landed on a shelf in another’s.

My most challenging task, however, was to find textbooks circa 1967 in the classroom quantities that the set dresser requested. Although we have kept many classic reference books in print since as early as 1945, our classroom materials are very rooted in today, an anachronism that might have ruined the mood. Ultimately, I was able to put together a number of Practice, Drill and Review workbooks (first published in 1966) and multiple copies of The Traditional Prayer Book with its distinctive gold-embossed black cover (still in use in Orthodox and some Conservative synagogues across the US, and with their own cameo appearance in a Gilmore Girls episode a few years ago).

Finally, the production also needed materials for the classroom walls and the various desks and drawers, such as letters, calendars, and catalogs. This research gave me a new appreciation for the place Behrman House has staked out, even from its earliest years, at the very forefront of innovative Jewish education. For, while some materials can become dated (who among us has not changed since 1967?), one’s approach to developing them can remain as innovative as ever.

Actual letters from and about Behrman House in 1967 helped Rabbi Ginsler’s desk look authentically 1960’s Jewish.

As I pored over boxes of archive files, I stumbled over a poster from 1967 of our famous “Growth of the Child” developmental guidelines, excerpts of which are still among the materials most frequently requested by educators around the country for their insights into the ages and stages of intellectual and emotional development in children.

I found letters to Behrman House from educators and rabbis praising the “modern and inviting” feel of a new prayer book, or rejoicing that a new Bible text “Is the most creative text book published in many years and you can quote me.”

I found notes about Jacob Behrman’s vigilance to provide “joyously Jewish” material “with meaning for today”, stressing “relevant values,” and “crisp, powerful writing.”

More than research for a movie, this assignment became a trip down memory lane; a trip that made me even more proud to be a part of the house that was then, and is now, the premier publisher of Jewish educational materials. And when you’re the best, and best known, you get the call to participate in fun stuff, like the make believe world of the movies.

Vicki Weber

(Publicity stills from A Serious Man courtesy of Working Title Productions)

Movie-Making Fun

Some days it’s just plain fun to work at Behrman House.  This was one of those days.

Summer day in August 2008: the Coen Brothers call us out of the blue.  You know them: No Country for Old Men, Fargo, Blood Simple, Raising Arizona.  They’re making a movie, they said.  Set in the 1960’s, they need props to “dress” the set of a synagogue from that time period, including the rabbis’ offices and the classrooms.

Why call us?  Why Behrman House? How did they hear of us?  I’m not really sure.  I’m told the set decorator said “We asked around and everyone sys you’re the people to call.”  Maybe they asked some of our friends in the field.   (Maybe they asked you.)

So, we asked, what’s was the movie about?  (We were curious, and we wanted to know how our books would be used.  After all, we remember that woodchipper in Fargo.)  But they wouldn’t show us the script (we asked).  They eventually told us the storyline and good news: no woodchippers anywhere.)  So off we sent seven cartons, filled with everything they asked for:  “30 of the traditional prayer books in 1960 hardcover and 30 of the Practice, Drill and Review softcover workbooks from 1966.  We are also interested in as many linear feet of the appropriate books that you could provide…. In addition could we borrow your wooden and brass menorah, a Behrman House 1960’s catalog, and miscellaneous Behrman House promotional materials from the sixties.”

So, when was the last time you ordered your books in linear feet???

And then we waited for the movie’s release.

And so it was, last weekend, that Vicki and I went to see A Serious Man. I almost don’t know the story line—I was too busy looking at bookshelves, on walls, and in the rabbis’s offices for materials that we had sent in. (“Was that Rabbi’s Bible?”  “Did you see our wall poster?”  “Was that…no, it wasn’t?”)  I’m going to have to go see the movie again.

My only disappointment is that our new materials—the modern, colorful, engaging books we put out today, not to mention our software—couldn’t be included.  It would, after all, look a bit odd to have a high end PC and CD-ROMs sitting on the desk of a 1960’s era educator.

You may have seen our movie contest which is still under way.  With the publicity over the movie, and our community’s awareness of which movie our books are in (Spoiler Alert), one of the questions is now moot.  But you can still answer the others—so take a look, and see if you can win free movie tickets!

Thank you for your support and encouragement, which has been so strong over the years.  Our commitment to you—to lead the field, to be here to help you, and to make your educational program as effective and as fun as we can, is as strong as ever.  Maybe that’s why the Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently described us as “the country’s primary supplier of books for religious schools.”   Please keep in touch, and let us know how we can help you as we move from strength to strength.

And when the next movie producer calls, we’ll be sure to let you know.

—David E. Behrman

Green Lion

We need some help.

We’re thinking very seriously about “going green” with the Open Lion—our newsletter. But we’re nervous.

The reasons to do it are clear. It’s environmentally friendly. It’s more economical, leaving us additional funding for classroom materials. It would be easier for you to send articles of interest to your teachers and colleagues. And times are changing; when we surveyed educators four years ago, 47% preferred paper-based; in a recent survey it was down to 30%.

So why not do it? Well, many of us like to take our favorite newsletters home and read them during downtime, perhaps at the dentist’s office. And some educators (4%) report that they are unlikely to read the Open Lion in digital form. We don’t want to lose them (or you).

The comment that hit home for me: “I’m 52. I prefer a paper bulletin. I get so many emails, it just gets lost in the shuffle and I delete.” Well, let me say this—I’m 54, and I know exactly how you feel. Right now, I’m carrying around our accountant’s newsletter—it always contains valuable information, and I want to spend quiet time with it. And last week I finished off three or four Jewish newspapers from around the country that I just don’t read online.

It’s hard to know what to do. The large majority of you—our friends and our customers—would at least accept the change, and many would welcome it. But a few disagree, and we don’t want to leave anyone behind.

So please, let me know what you think. Write to me at GreenLion@behrmanhouse.com, or call me at 800-221-2755. I want to hear from you.

Thanks.

David

The Web Gets Smarter

Today is an important day: Wikipedia has decided to provide editorial review for selected entries—specifically, those having to do with living people. Democracy and pluralism—something of an information free-for-all—is being enhanced with a measure of centralized quality control.

Why is this important? Many of us have come to rely on Wikipedia, and other internet resources, as a quick source of information. For our kids it’s the place to go for research. And articles in the magazines Nature and The Atlantic have found that Wikipedia goes head to head with the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica for accuracy.

So we should take note when the organizers of Wikipedia—let’s call them what they are: publishers—decide that editors are important. It’s something that all of us instinctively understand, (and try to teach our kids when they use the internet for research.) It’s all about focus and about quality control.

Something we have come to take for granted in the print-based publishing world is editorial quality control. We associate certain newspapers (perhaps The New York Times, or the Chicago Tribune) with high reliability, while others traffic in celebrity gossip and sometimes reports of aliens landing in Hancock Park. Similarly, book publishers might be known for high-quality first novels, cutting edge science, or incisive political commentary. Or perhaps for right- or left-wing screeds.

They say that one doesn’t want to know too much about how sausage is made. Aside from the trayfe nature of metaphor, it works for our information too. We need to be discerning users of information, of magazines, of digital media, and of books. And as educators we also need to be discerning on behalf of the children we teach. Who can we trust? How was the information developed? Who reviewed it for accuracy? Is it complete? That’s what a good editor does. And, a good publisher hires a good editor.

In short, as Wikipedia is learning: who edited it?

The Wisdom of Facebook

I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of Ira Wise’s recent NATE listserv post about how students use Facebook.

We’re all struggling with the issue of what role social networking and media will play in the lives of the religious school.  Our educational community is so varied: we are populated by technically sophisticated 20-somethings, who Tweet and Post, who view email as passé, and who abhor paper and think the newspaper contains yesterday’s news.  And at the same time we are populated by people who don’t believe it if they don’t read it on the physical pages of the New York Times, read books on paper, and think of a Polynesian dessert when they hear the word “wiki.”

Ira pointed out that the media we choose should depend on the circumstance, and even how we use a particular channel should depend on that circumstance.  In particular, he noted that Facebook has lots of uses.  But “friending” people doesn’t work well with today’s teens when coming from an authority figure. Those teens don’t want to “friend” their religious school any more than they want to “friend” their parents.  But they will join a group.

They will use the Facebook channel, if we set it up properly and don’t make it too intrusive. Ira wisely notes that if we are too intrusive, we will simply encourage the children to go elsewhere to find their privacy, something that is increasingly important in the teenage years.

When I was in high school, they taught us there were 3 types of particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons.  Now there are quarks (btw, they come in six “flavors”); electrons, electron neutrinos, muons, muon neutrinos, tauons, tauon neutrinos, and more.  And now begins to emerge that that there are different kinds of Facebook experiences:  friends, group members, and different circumstances in which to use each vehicle.Who knows how many varieties of Twitter there are, and how many there will be in a year.

We need to be alert to these things, and informed about the changes taking place.  We need to know how to reach each of the groups in our congregation and our school, just as certainly as we need to know what our universe is made up of.

A Reflection on CAJE

It was a shock, and a sad day, when we learned that CAJE will not meet this August in San Antonio.Through its 33 years, CAJE has been a number of things to the Jewish community. It started as a counter-cultural experience. The “A” stood not for advancement, but for alternatives. On a college campus. Living in dorms. No curricular controls. Democracy and equal access throughout. Quite an experiment, and quite a success.

As CAJE grew, and became successful, it became part of the landscape. And as it became influential, it helped to change the established order, itself becoming part of the establishment. But throughout, it preserved its identity as the leading trans-denominational gathering place for the Jewish educational community. And we all came to count on it.

Jeff Lasday, CAJE’s new Executive Director, David Frank, Director of Conferences, and their colleagues, have made amazing strides over the past three years in improving CAJE’s signature summer conference. Higher-level programming. More thematic programming. Outreach to great speakers. A professionally staffed operation with solid volunteer relationships. They did all the right things, and as quickly as one can within a large organization like CAJE with many, many stakeholders.But the hurdles were too high; there was too much for them to do in a world where destination conferences are threatened by the web and teleconferencing, where travel is increasingly expensive, and where time is increasingly scarce. And then the economy dealt CAJE a blow from which it could not recover.

We at Behrman House will miss CAJE, personally and professionally. We saw so many of our friends at the conference, we had fun, and we got to talk about our books. There was strength and vitality in every corner of the conference; each August we would come back energized from the experience.

So now we in the Jewish educational community face a challenge: keeping our communications going, maintaining relationships that were refreshed and renewed on a different college campus each August, keeping ourselves professionally alive and making sure we continue to grow. No one can know for sure how this will work itself out. But we can start right now. Post a comment here, or write on the Behrman House Facebook page, or write to us directly at behrmanhouse.com. Let’s get the conversation going, and figure out how to preserve and nourish the community that CAJE served.