Creating an Organizational Ecosystem

In his biblical commentary, the 16th century Italian sage R. Ovadiah Sforno noted that God evaluated the sixth day of creation differently than the first five days. Focusing on the addition of the word מאד “very” in Genesis 1:31, Sforno states that “the goal of creation as a whole is very much better than the purpose of each component individually.” This medieval rendition of the Aristotelian concept of “the whole being greater than the sum of the parts” can be particularly insightful for smaller Jewish organizations looking to enhance their impact through collaboration with others within their “organizational ecosystem.” Through leveraging both shared and discrete assets, overlapping and disparate institutional goals can be more effectively realized.

For the past four years, Beit Rabban Day School, a community ECC-5th school, and Mechon Hadar, an institution of higher Jewish learning, based on the Upper West Side of Manhattan which draws students from all over North America, have had a deepening educational partnership that has operated under this premise. We believe this partnership has some valuable lessons for how day schools can thrive by drawing on the strengths of other communal institutions, particularly those focused on Jewish text learning.

A Day School-Yeshiva Partnership

The Beit Rabban-Mechon Hadar partnership has had several key elements.

Facilitated Havruta Study at Beit Rabban. Hadar fellows (recent college graduates) spend four hours a week facilitating havruta-based learning at Beit Rabban. Beit Rabban educators assign texts as part of their lesson plans and Hadar fellows work in small groups with the students, getting them to work through the material on their own. Aside from the pedagogic benefits of this approach, the role modeling is powerful: students encounter full-time students of Torah who are not their teachers and to whom they can relate in a more informal way. Having more than one adult in the room during discussion also reinforces for students the legitimacy of multiple perspectives.

Afterschool Enrichment Opportunities. Over the years, several students have spent time learning in Hadar’s Beit Midrash in the late afternoons, experiencing first-hand the power of immersive text-learning environments and seeing young adults enthusiastically embrace a culture of lifelong learning.

Professional Development for Faculty. Several times a year, Hadar faculty run a session for Beit Rabban faculty members. These sessions draw on the expertise and knowledge of the Hadar faculty and provide opportunities for Beit Rabban educators to further their own personal learning. A select group of Beit Rabban educators also attend a weeklong intensive for day school teachers during Hadar’s summer session, which allows for much deeper interaction with the Hadar faculty.

Community Educational Events. Hadar and Beit Rabban collaborate to create evenings of learning for parents and the broader community. These events serve as potential recruitment opportunities for prospective parents, help cultivate relationships with current families and generally promote the school as a center of serious learning not just for children, but for all.

The Next Phase

Our shared institutional priorities are obvious: the cultivation of new generations of highly educated and committed Jews who will serve as leaders of the Jewish world of tomorrow. As an organic growth of our first phase of partnership, we are excited to take the next step. This summer, we are launching a new initiative anchored in a joint staff position: a Director of the Jewish Curriculum Project at Mechon Hadar and Jewish Studies at Beit Rabban. The initiative will advance Beit Rabban’s agenda of raising the bar further on Jewish Studies at the school while simultaneously aiming to contribute to a national conversation about goals for Jewish education in classical texts.

Our goal is to integrate two central projects: intensive teaching and supervision in the classroom at Beit Rabban, and articulation of standards and benchmarks for fluency in Jewish learning in the early childhood and elementary years (N-8). By developing this second element within the context of a “lab school,” the outcome will be informed by the dialogue between the material, the teachers, the students and the other key stakeholders of the school.

We recognize that day schools around the country are diverse, and different communities have different needs and goals. This initiative therefore aims to offer a vision of an a priori aspiration for fluency in Tanakh and rabbinics that can serve as the foundation for deeper learning in high school and beyond. The 21st century American Jewish community must educate Jewish students not only in Jewish identity and basic Jewish literacy, but must also train a cadre of learned Jews who will be culture bearers of our great tradition and be able to be original contributors to it as adults. Those aspirations require ambitious standards starting from the earliest ages.

Potential Promise for Smaller Schools

Our two institutions are blessed to share many types of proximity, including a commitment to a serious and open approach to Jewish learning and actual physical proximity on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We also realize that our location provides access to a range of educational resources and talent to draw upon as this initiative moves forward. Opportunities to field-test material or observe other approaches at different day schools, or the ability to sit with other thought leaders engaged in the development of curriculum, textual analysis and the like are often either a walk or short drive away.

We also understand that many schools, including many smaller schools outside of large metropolitan areas, may find themselves either in a more limited organizational ecosystem or without the personnel, financial resources, or time to develop such a curriculum on their own. An important component of our educational vision is to build a collaborative relationship with such schools that allows these schools to include this work and our team as a part of their ecosystem. Having been developed and tested in small school that is intentionally nondenominational and envisioned as a flexible and user-friendly resource, we would hope that this may help other schools deepen their own Jewish studies program and further the educational aspirations of school leaders, parents and the community.

Lessons Learned About Collaboration

To this endeavor, we also bring some lessons learned over the past few years of our partnerships that can be applied to other types of collaborations that may be helpful and preempt misunderstandings or frustration.

Ensure clarity of organizational vision and mission. We found it quite important to both identify the overlapping areas of our vision and mission that could serve as the starting point for collaboration, and just as clearly identify differences, which can either serve the project or inspire individual work outside of the collaboration.

Define the scope of the project. If two Jews bring three opinions, two organizations with big aspirations can generate an ever-growing initiative that may quickly outpace organizational bandwidth. This is particularly true when developing a new project that will need to be supported while both partners need to attend to their ongoing work. Having a shared sense of the scope of the initiative or framing it initially as a first phase with discrete expectations can strengthen the possibility for a successful outcome, lead to a potential second phase, and keep everyone sane.

Give the initiative a home. While a collaboration should look and feel like a true partnership, the administrative and logistical support should be clearly located within one of the organizations. A formal agreement should be developed to ensure clarity of who does what, where outside funds are to be donated and tracked, and what phone rings when someone wants to know more about the program.

Plan for ongoing evaluation and communication. Partnerships almost always involve some risk and new initiatives need some time to coalesce. It is critical that a schedule and program of ongoing evaluation and internal communication be in place to allow for the collaborators to make midcourse adjustments and refinements and to effectively assess program.

Engage stakeholders. Internal stakeholders, whether faculty, administrative staff, clients or lay leaders, often develop a high level of commitment to a single organization and its missions. A successful partnership requires them to expand their loyalties and commitments to another entity. It is important to have a plan for internal communication and buy-in that creates opportunities for understanding about the collaboration and how it furthers the agendas of both institutions.

Share the success equally. There is a Hebrew idiom that suggests that if something is done but not reported upon, it is as if it did not happen. Make certain that there is a marketing plan in place to let external audiences know about the program and about the partnership. Both institutions should make certain to be reinforcing the mutuality of the initiative and raising the importance of partnerships within the broader Jewish community.

Add new partners. An important outcome of a well implemented collaboration that is shared with others is that it can lead to others wanting to join the effort. This can include additional organizations, new communities and new donors who will find compelling efforts that allow each dollar to have a multiplier effect and where the opportunity for organizational efficiencies and impact is expanded.

Organizations like RAVSAK create framework for collaboration within the field, and HaYidion serves as an important platform for the sharing of ideas, successes and approaches that can inform the discourse within this important sector of the day school world. We hope that both the experience of our expanding partnership and this new initiative will help inspire others to look to others in their community and beyond to dream together, leverage one another’s assets, and accelerate innovation in the field. Having more of us working together truly creates a world that is very good indeed.♦

Rabbi Andrew Davids is the head of school at Beit Rabban Day School in New York City. [email protected]

Rabbi Ethan Tucker is rosh yeshiva at Mechon Hadar in New York City. [email protected]