Classrooms Without Borders invests year in day school educators before taking them to Israel
'After Oct. 7 we learned how much help the Jewish day schools need'
Teachers are about to hit the books in preparation for international travel. Beginning this fall, 15 Pittsburgh Jewish day school educators will spend the academic year exploring Jewish history, Zionism, the Arab-Israeli conflict and antisemitism before heading to Israel for further study.
Designed and administered by Classrooms Without Borders, the seminar will bolster teachers’ understanding of Israel and related topics in order to help their students address contemporary challenges.
This past year demonstrated the need for educators to develop expertise in issues concerning the Jewish state, according to CWB founder and executive director Tsipy Gur.
“After Oct. 7 we learned how much help the Jewish day schools need,” she said.
With students asking myriad questions about the present and the past, Gur continued, educators must be able to supply answers.
The yearlong seminar has three primary foci, Gur said: The “unbroken relationship” between the Jewish people and the land of Israel from antiquity through now; the origins of antisemitism and its current manifestations in the U.S.; and the rise of Zionism, establishment of the state of Israel and the complexities of regional conflicts.
The Pittsburgh cohort will include five educators from each of the city’s three day schools. Instruction will be delivered in person and online by Avi Ben-Hur, CWB’s scholar in residence. The Brooklyn native, who moved to Israel in 1983, previously served as director of the Archaeological Seminars School for Israeli Tour Guides, participated in rewriting the curriculum of the National Guiding courses for the Israeli Ministry of Tourism and taught in Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies.
Casey Weiss, Community Day School’s head of school, is eager for CDS staff to join the seminar.
“Pittsburgh is one Jewish community and this trip is just another example of that,” she said. Participating staff from the schools are going to “build their own cohort, and they’re going to build their own kind of community, which to me is our shared goal.”
Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh Principal Rabbi Sam Weinberg said he is excited for Hillel staff to learn alongside Jewish day school colleagues, and urged the cohort to recognize the sizable task ahead.
“Now more than ever we need to make sure all of our teachers understand the full breath of Jewish history and our relationship to Israel,” he said. “I think a lot of our teachers — growing up in society today — are presented a one-sided view of Israel and the political situation there, and the only way to truly understand our relationship to Israel, our beliefs and Weltanschauung is to have them study and send them to Israel.”
Recent polling points to generational divides regarding Israel.
A February study from Pew Research Center about the Israel-Hamas war found that 14% of adults under age 30 say their sympathies lie mostly with the Israeli people. Among adults 65-plus, the number is 47%.
During the past year, young people’s attitudes toward Israel have declined, according to Gallup.
Whereas 64% of 18- to 34-year-olds held a favorable view of Israel in 2023, the number plummeted to 38% in 2024, researchers found.
Students in the city’s three day schools are younger than those polled, but teachers are not, and the trends must not be ignored, local administrators explained.
Teachers often fight an uphill battle when it comes to addressing Israel and Jewish history, Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh CEO Rabbi Yossi Rosenblum said.
“Students are being bombarded by marches and attitudes,” he said. “They are watching what’s going on in Pittsburgh right now, and they need to be given the talking points, understand what antisemitism is, how it’s being expressed and what is going on in Israel and Gaza.”
CWB is investing in the community’s teachers, and the dividends must be immediately reaped, Rosenblum continued.
“They’re going to strengthen teachers but we need to bring it to the students as quickly as possible,” he said.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh contributed $60,000 to help fund the program, according to Federation representatives.
Gur said she was appreciative of the support and restressed the need to invest in the city’s teachers.
The cohort has not yet been named. Each of the day school leaders said they will determine participants in the coming weeks. PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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