YOUTH & FAMILY EDUCATION
At Beth Adam, we take a BOLD approach to Judaism. We are bringing that boldness to our newly redesigned religious school known as Our Village, offering an innovative strategy grounded in cutting edge education theory.
Our educational approach is student-centered as well as content-oriented. We want every child in Beth Adam to feel empowered as a member of the Jewish community, while also proudly embracing a world view and philosophy based on science and reason, rather than supernatural theology.
At Our Village, we are preparing our students to be kind, confident, collaborative, critical thinkers for the 21st century and beyond.
Students are encouraged to be change-makers; social and environmental justice advocates. Jewish history, tradition, and culture provide the framework within which our children develop their individual moral and ethical decision-making processes. One of the most obvious examples would be studying the Holocaust not only as a devastating tragedy in our communal history, but also as a lens through which to view all bigotry, prejudice, human cruelty, and the psycho-social origins of human destructiveness. Similarly, we teach the Jewish Festivals not only as cultural traditions and rituals, but also as environmental lessons in our relationship, interdependence, and responsibility for all living organisms.
Every segment of our curriculum is taught experientially, and students have the opportunity to access various media to explore the academic content; storytelling, videography, arts, music, dance, drama, and more. Rather than being presented with “projects” to complete, our students collaborate with their classmates and teachers to create projects that will become a part of the curriculum, and a part of Beth Adam, for the future. Every wall in Our Village displays the living, interactive, and ongoing products of our students’ creativity. Our unique learning space is designed to support this process.
Beth Adam’s Our Village embraces the idea that learning is a complex process. We strive to engage all of our students’ senses, promoting and deepening their emotional attachments to the joys of Jewish culture.
If you would like to learn more about Our Village please feel free to email Rabbi Werber, at RabbiWerber@BethAdam.org.