Education

Educ tion

Here’s How Jewish Schools Found Creative Ways To Maintain Community During Covid Lockdown

By Sara Ivry

Eighth-graders from the Chicago Jewish Day School toss their caps in the air during the school's graduation parade and end-of-year celebration, June 11, 2020. (Jen Minkus)

As soon as it became clear in sense of community at a time when March that COVID-19 would force everyone was shuttered at home. school closures around the country, Community is one of the raisons Jewish day school administrators d’etre of Jewish day schools, and faced a conundrum that went often why families stretch thembeyond the question of how to conselves financially to afford them. tinue educating students. With everyone apart, what could

The challenge: how to maintain a schools do to alleviate the sense of

isolation and stress among staff, students and families?

For Yeshivat Noam, a Modern Orthodox elementary school in northern New Jersey with some 800 students, the challenge of commencement exercises brought those questions to a head.

“We didn’t want the class of 2020 to conclude as someone clicks ‘end meeting’ on a Zoom screen,” said Rabbi Chaim Hagler, the head of school.

So the school built a parade float festooned with Israeli and American flags and labeled “Bringing Graduation Home” that traveled to the houses of each graduating eighth-grader for surprise commencement ceremonies. Family members, neighbors and friends gathered in lawn chairs to watch as their local graduate, decked out in cap and gown, received their diploma while “Pomp and Circumstance” played.

“COVID-19 was trying to say: ‘Let’s not let these guys have a graduation,’” Hagler said in one of his speeches to a graduate. “But we said, ‘No way!’”

Staff used a leaf blower to scatter confetti, loudspeakers to blast music and a Nissan Titan pickup truck to pull the “Class of 2020” float. To get around social distancing measures, each student posed for pictures with a life-size cutout image of the principal.

“The kids were thrilled, so excited,” Hagler said. “Basically, each one had their own individual opportunity to be recognized as special.”

The school conducted 85 of these ceremonies over two days.

It was one of the myriad ways that Jewish day schools nationwide used the pandemic not just to adopt creative methods of teaching, but to maintain the sense of community that underpins the schools.

“That’s a feature of day schools — that community is strong, that we connect a lot — and I think it’s been vital to how day schools have gotten through this successfully,” said Paul Bernstein, the CEO of Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools.

Bernstein’s own children attend the Leffell School, a two-campus K-12 institution in suburban Westchester County, New York. Earlier this year, Leffell turned its spring fundraiser into the Bathrobe Ball, a free online event with a live auction, an interview with comedian

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and alum Nick Kroll, and musical entertainment by singer Neshama Carlebach, a school parent. The school enlisted a catering service to make fancy reheatable TV dinners that some 700 attendees ordered and picked up in advance.

“Community is a major value for us anyway, so how do you expand that sense of community and maintain it even when you can’t be physically together?” said Michael Kay, Leffell’s head of school.

While being physically remote represented a challenge, using Zoom enabled the school to connect in ways it had never considered. Leffell held schoolwide Zoom sessions for the services that bookend the Sabbath, Kabbalat Shabbat on Friday night and Havdalah on Saturday night. Grandparents were invited to join, which hadn’t really happened before. The school did a series of lunch-and-learns for adults. It even launched a music program for toddlers — to build ties with future students, Kay said.

At the Chicago Jewish Day School, a multidenominational primary school, educators coordinated a car parade to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day.

“Families parked on the street during it, and then after they didn’t want to leave,” said Jen Minkus, the school’s marketing and communications associate. “The school is in a very diverse area, and we had so many Israeli flags and had Israeli

Yeshivat Noam, a Modern Orthodox school in Paramus, N.J., organized a graduation float that visited students’ homes so that members of the class of 2020 could celebrate safely amid the coronavirus pandemic. (Courtesy of Yeshivat Noam)

music blasting, and there were cars driving by that weren’t from our school who were honking and waving.”

For Yom Yerushalayim, which celebrates the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, the Striar Hebrew Academy in suburban Boston created an interactive game on Zoom in which students joined their grandparents in “breakout rooms” for games and activities.

“Grandparents called with tears saying ‘We hadn’t been able to see our grandkids,’” recalled Rabbi Jordan Soffer, the head of school at Striar, which has students in pre-K through the fifth grade.

By contrast, marking Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, posed a challenge. Striar held a Zoom meeting in which students listened to a memorial siren and a reading of “The Butterfly,” a poem written by Pavel Friedmann, a Czechoslovakian poet who died at Auschwitz. The poem ends, “Butterflies don’t live in here/In the ghetto.”

“We had everyone go out in their own homes and decorate a butterfly and hang it in their window and write ‘Butterflies live here,’” Soffer said.

Students from other day schools who heard about the initiative, as well as the local police department, put such signs in their windows, too.

At the Manhattan-based Yeshiva University High School for Boys, or MTA, school officials made a conscious effort to avoid words or phrases that imply remoteness. Rather than “remote learning,” for example, the school inaugurated the “MTA at home” era and spoke of being “socially appropriate” rather than socially distant.

Meanwhile, there was a full roster of gradewide and schoolwide programs. MTA hosted a special Zoom dinner for seniors. Faculty surprised students with in-person visits, delivering goodie bags to graduates’ homes. As at other schools, there was a Zoom color war.

“The goal was, how can we maintain a sense of community?” said Rabbi Joshua Khan, MTA’s head of school. “Yes, we want social emotional growth and academic growth, but it is all related to community.”

This story was sponsored by and produced in collaboration with a foundation that wishes to remain anonymous, and is part of a series titled "On the Bright Side: Stories of innovation and resilience from Jewish non-profits.” This article was produced by JTA's native con

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Hailey Diamond celebrates her 2020 graduation from the eighth grade on the Yeshivat Noam float. (Courtesy of Yeshivat Noam)

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These Services Are Helping Older Jews Master Technology And Stay Connected In Isolation

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Jewish groups are making special efforts to help seniors use technology to access services and stay socially connected during the pandemic (Antonio Saba/Getty)

Until April, Gail Lipsitz had never heard of the popular videoconferencing platform Zoom.

“All of a sudden, everyone was talking about and using Zoom. I had no idea how to get it and use it,” the 74-year-old Baltimore resident said.

Thanks to tutoring provided over the phone by Melanie Waxman, technology concierge from the Tech Knowledge Hub at the Edward A. Myerberg Center for older adults, Lipsitz was able to upload Zoom both to her iPhone and iPad and start using it confidently.

She’s now using Zoom to virtually attend exercise classes and classes from her synagogue, as well as Jewish educational institutions like Hadar, Pardes and the Hartman Center. Lipsitz is also tuning in to Shabbat services at her son’s California congregation, gatherings of her havurah and meetings with friends over tea.

With tens of millions of Americans staying home due to the coronavirus pandemic, many older Americans are struggling to master and use the technology younger people commonly use to stay in touch with family, friends and community.

Jewish groups have responded by making special efforts to help seniors use the technology, assisting them not just with accessing the services they may require, like online shopping, but also ensuring that they stay socially connected to the wider world.

Human connection, even if it’s online, is critical to emotional wellbeing and even physical health, studies have shown.

“Celebrating Passover virtually was an incentive to get online” for newly homebound seniors, said Katie Lehner, marketing director for the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton. “That was just the beginning, and then it snowballed in terms of the demand for more programming via Zoom.”

In addition to offering personalized guidance to help seniors learn to use virtual communication tools, many Jewish agencies are creating online programs especially for older people. The Myerberg Center, a program of CHAI supported by The Associated, Baltimore’s Jewish federation, offers 30 virtual activities weekly, including fitness, humanities and art classes. Tutorials on how to use food delivery and financial apps, such as PayPal and Venmo, also are available.

In one recent week Niki Barr, director of the Myerberg Center, saw about 740 participants in its virtual classes.

“This is just about the same number that we have when classes would meet in person,” she said. “I was blown away.”

Jewish federations and their agencies have been notifying seniors through emails, phone calls and print ads in local Jewish media that support is available for getting connected online.

Some federations are relying on volunteers to provide tech assistance. Abbie Bailey, a 39-year-old mother of two preschool-age children, has been sheltering at home in

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“I reached out to the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest New Jersey and said I wanted to help in any way I could,” said Bailey, who runs a retail store in nearby Livingston.

Through its dedicated helpline that matches volunteers with those seeking tech support, the federation paired Bailey with two women, one of them a Holocaust survivor. She has called and walked them through the steps of how to install and use Zoom so they can stay in touch with their families.

“They appreciated the help and seemed to be in good spirits and OK with sheltering in place,” Bailey said. “One of the women, who is 92, has invited me to lunch when this is all over.”

It took a while for Mitzi Kreinberg, 93, of Livingston, to log on to Zoom. After receiving support from Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest’s technology helpline, she finally figured it out and then expanded her online connections using other tools.

“I used Facebook, which I can access readily, to participate in classes, book reviews and chats,” Kreinberg said.

In Ohio, a Virtual Conversations series with local speakers has been well attended, according to Marcy Paul, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council in Dayton. Each online session begins with a short “how to” reviewing the basics of Zoom. Those needing extra help can receive it ahead of time individually.

Many seniors have taken their newfound knowledge and applied it to maintaining regular connections beyond formal offerings.

Linda Novak, 73, had previously used her computer only for email and Facebook. But she got help from Amy Dolph, program administrator for her local JCC in Dayton, to learn how to run her book club using Zoom.

“The book I had chosen was the first one up for discussion, so Amy gave me some extra help in learning how to run the meeting using Zoom,” Novak said. “Her tutorial was priceless.”

In Chicago, CJE SeniorLife, an affiliate of the Jewish United Fund of Chicago, had to quickly revamp its programming to suit the age of coronavirus.

“Before COVID, most of our programming was face to face and in person. We didn’t have much of a virtual presence,” said Cathy Samatas, manager of community engagement for CJE SeniorLife, which serves up to 20,000 individuals in its community-based and residential services.

More than half of those who access virtual programming live independently in the community, while the others are residents of CJE’s nursing home and assisted living facilities.

To make staying in touch easier during the pandemic, CJE SeniorLife created a dedicated Cyber Club landing page for its live Zoom programming, along with important information and resources related to the COVID-19 crisis. In response to requests from community members, the organization made instructional videos on topics such as how to order groceries and borrow library books online. The agency is also livestreaming its programming into its nursing home and assisted living facility.

“We shifted quickly and were up and running in a week and a half,” Samatas said. “Technology is a key to bridging this gap. It has been a blessing to be forced into this. It helps solve a lot of the isolation issues. We are actually seeing more people joining our programs now because with them being online, we don’t have to deal with transportation issues.”

The silver lining of the COVID-19 crisis is that it has incentivized Jewish federations and their agencies to develop additional ways to sustain their communities, said Dayton’s Marcy Paul. Once the pandemic has subsided, Paul foresees moving into a hybrid model of program delivery that will combine virtual outreach with in-person programming.

The shift to online communication also has provided seniors with the motivation to learn new skills and overcome their isolation.

“I hope, like everyone else, the pandemic is over soon,” said Helene Gordon, 63, of Englewood, Ohio, who recently joined a birthday party via Zoom. “But I feel these skills are so important to keep individuals connected.”

This article was sponsored by and produced in partnership with the Jewish Federations of North America, which represents 146 local Jewish Federations and 300 network communities. This story was produced by JTA's native content team. 

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