Cafe Ivrit: Hebrew Conversation & Connection for Supplemental School Students
Jessica Rosenblatt is an experience designer and game designer currently teaching Hebrew and creative electives in the supplemental Religious School at Congregation Beth Elohim (Acton, MA). She has an MFA in Interactive Media from the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California and a BA in History from Carleton College. Ms. Rosenblatt has worked on interactive and immersive experiences for theme parks, museums, and retail spaces, and has designed digital, mobile, and location-based games for a wide variety of audiences.
In supplemental school settings, there is so much for our students to learn in so little time. With a focus on learning Jewish traditions and preparing for Benei Mitzvah services, students often interact with Hebrew as an ancient language used in prayer and the Torah. It can be challenging for educators to allocate additional preparation and class time for students to experience Hebrew as a modern, spoken language.
Congregation Beth Elohim (Acton, Massachusetts) is an independent synagogue of about 200 families. We strive to foster a warm, welcoming, and inclusive environment that fulfills the ever-changing needs of our Jewish community. Our supplemental Religious School includes students from kindergarten through 10th grade. We seek to create a learning environment that is warm and engaging, and to create a love of learning and a strong Jewish connection that will stay with our students throughout their lives.
Goals
I joined our Religious School staff in 2024 and began looking for ways to incorporate conversational Hebrew into my classes. My students responded very positively to this experience, but I was only able to work with a few of the classes for a short amount of time each week. For the 2025-2026 school year I proposed an additional conversational Hebrew program to CBE’s Education Director, Cindy Kalish, that could take place during lunchtime after Sunday school. The primary goal of this program would be to provide the opportunity and support for students to practice speaking conversational Hebrew. The secondary goal would be to build connections: between program attendees (students and teachers), and between attendees and Israel as a modern country with a vibrant, diverse, and contemporary society. Over time, the welcoming combination of food, conversation, and mutual support would hopefully build a community of Hebrew-speaking students who would then have a greater opportunity to feel at home if they are able to visit Israel in the future.
Ms. Kalish agreed that this would be a valuable opportunity for our students. Not only did she think it was a strong idea, but she knew there was interest in conversational Hebrew from current students as well as from parents of new and prospective students. And so, Cafe Ivrit was launched in September 2025. The program is held twice each month and is open to all students in Grades 4-10. No prior experience with conversational Hebrew is required, and students can attend whichever sessions work with their schedule.
Experience Design
I brought my professional background in experience design into the creation and facilitation of Cafe Ivrit.Each session focuses on a simple theme that is easy for students to engage with (such as food, weather, or movies) and is 
accompanied by a “menu” of words for our students to practice using in conversation with teachers and each other. These curated sets ofwords work as building blocks that the students can put together in different ways to talk about the topic. For example, at our session about weather students learned related vocabulary and also worked with yeish (“there is”) and ein (“there isn’t”) to talk about what types of weather do and do not occur during different seasons in different parts of the world. Even though most of the material was new for the students, they were quickly able to pick up the patterns and use Hebrew to answer questions and build sentences.
While other components of our school’s Hebrew instruction emphasize reading the written language, Cafe Ivrit focuses on making speaking as accessible as possible. One way we do this is to have the word menu include transliteration in addition to Hebrew and English translation. Over time, the sessions reinforce the material as students use it repeatedly and in new ways. The atmosphere of Cafe Ivrit is intentionally relaxed and supportive, encouraging students to practice speaking Hebrew in a space where it is safe to try things and make mistakes. For this reason, so far we have not invited parents to attend as we know this could cause stress and self-consciousness for some of our students. Cafe Ivrit is also an inclusive space for our LGBTQ+ students and teachers, where we help everyone navigate the gendered aspects of Hebrew grammar by sharing preferred pronouns and including non-binary options in our word menu (using the Nonbinary Hebrew Project as a resource).
How’s It Going?
So far this year we’ve had a small but consistent group of students attending Cafe Ivrit, representing Grades 4 to 9. The program is a unique opportunity within our Religious School for students across those grades to interact and learn together as peers. Students find the topics engaging, enjoy the opportunity to speak Hebrew, and value the interactive nature of the program. Some students have asked for more exercises where they can practice directly with each other in addition to answering questions from the teacher, so we will design future sessions with that in mind. In my regular weekly Religious School Hebrew class, I have observed that students who attend Cafe Ivrit have stronger recall of Hebrew vocabulary. While I am the facilitator for Cafe Ivrit sessions, other teachers and the rabbi will sometimes stop by for a slice of pizza and jump into the conversation as well. This is a fun, informal environment for these interactions, which is also unique within our school.
What’s Next?
The pilot year of Cafe Ivrit has so far been positive, and we plan to develop it further. We hope to find ways to encourage more students to drop in and check it out. We also plan to solicit feedback from the students who have attended this year in an effort to retain current participants and recruit new attendees. We want to offer sessions more frequently to reinforce the material as often as possible; so far this year, scheduling changes and snow days have unfortunately resulted in gaps of 2-3 weeks between some sessions. One of our teachers has a partnership program with a classroom in Haifa, so we may explore ways to make the Cafe Ivrit program even more accessible to her students; their increased comfort with conversational Hebrew would help strengthen their connection with their Israeli counterparts. I have been approached by parents and other adult members of our synagogue community who have expressed interest in an adult session of Cafe Ivrit, so that may be a possibility as well.
Conclusion
We are pleased with our initial launch of Cafe Ivrit and the engagement of participating students. It has also been an energizing topic of discussion with our teaching staff, clergy, and synagogue community members as it is currently our only modern Hebrew program. In addition, Cafe Ivrit has inspired teachers of younger grades to incorporate more conversational Hebrew into their lessons in an effort to engage the students with a broader Jewish identity. People are excited about it and we are too. We hope to continue to develop the program: recruiting more participants, making the content as engaging and stimulating as possible, and establishing a welcoming, supportive, and fun environment to build a relationship with the living Hebrew language and the rich culture of modern Israeli society.
Jessica Rosenblatt is an experience designer and game designer currently teaching Hebrew and creative electives in the supplemental Religious School at Congregation Beth Elohim (Acton, MA). She has an MFA in Interactive Media from the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California and a BA in History from Carleton College. Ms. Rosenblatt has worked on interactive and immersive experiences for theme parks, museums, and retail spaces, and has designed digital, mobile, and location-based games for a wide variety of audiences.
From The Editor: Spring 2026
By the time I entered the elementary school I attended, it had been around for nearly 50 years and was already in decline. Despite the challenges, there were two things which left a lasting impression. The Jewish studies, which occupied the first half of the day, were all conducted in Hebrew, Ivrit beIvrit; some of the teachers were dedicated, die-hard Hebraists who provided me with a very solid foundation. The Hebrew that I learned gave me access to Israeli songs popularized after the Six Day War and to classic Jewish texts—the siddur, Humash, and even to Gemara (yes, Aramaic and Hebrew are closely connected). The language enabled me to act as a translator when my father’s cousin came to visit from Israel, and even enabled me, years later, to attend a regular Israeli yeshiva—in Hebrew.
Aside from the Hebrew language, the school was suffused with Israeli culture.
Hebrew, Achievement, and Educational Leadership: The Process of Building Depth and Durability
בבתי ספר יהודיים בתפוצות, הוראת עברית נעה זה שנים בין שני קטבים: מחד, שפה של זהות, רגש וחיבור לעם ולמדינה; מאידך, מקצוע הנאבק על מקומו מול תחומי דעת הנתפסים כ”ליבתיים” ובעלי יוקרה אקדמית. כמנהל מחלקה לעברית וכמורה בבית ספר יהודי־ציוני, מצאתי את עצמי שואל לא פעם: האם תפקידי הוא להגיב לציפיות משתנות של תלמידים, הורים והקשר פוליטי, או שמא להציב חזון חינוכי ברור—גם במחיר של חיכוך, עומס ואתגר מערכתי. מתוך התבוננות בזהותי כמחנך עברי־ציוני ובחיבור לערכים שעליהם גדלתי, בחרתי לראות בעברית לא רק כלי זהותי אלא תחום דעת מלא: שפה חיה, תרבות עשירה, וספרות ושירה הראויות להילמד ללא התנצלות ובסטנדרטים אקדמיים ברורים.
When Hebrew Became a Lifeline: Teaching Language, Culture, and Identity After October 7
A few days after October 7, I received an email from the parent of one of my students. The message itself was simple: a link to a video of the prayer for the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, set to music. But it was the words, written by the student, that stayed with me:
I’m sure you’ll like this video because you are Israeli. It’s a good song, very encouraging. I hope Hashem will watch over all our soldiers and bring them home safely so there will be peace.
This was not an assignment. No one had asked her to do this. It was an instinctive act of connection—a student using Hebrew, prayer, and music to reach out to her teacher and to Israel. In that moment, it became clear to me that Hebrew in my classroom had changed. It was no longer only a subject to be mastered; it had become a lifeline.
Successful Shelihim
Jewish Educational Leadership: What do you see as the real value of shelihim?
Bini Krauss: Ivrit beIvrit has long been a central pillar of what we believe in. I know that there are fewer schools doing that today than there were twenty years ago, for sure, but it’s still something that’s very important to us. So the first thing is that if we want to do it properly, it’s probably good to have people who speak Ivrit as their native language. It’s not the only way to do it, but I believe that it is certainly the best way. Many years ago, I taught at the Yeshivah of Flatbush. I was not a native Hebrew speaker, but I think that I was pretty good. Nonetheless, it is much better for students to interact regularly with those for whom Hebrew is native.
From Exposure to Expression: A Schoolwide Model for Increasing Hebrew Production through Joyful Culturally Rich Pedagogy
Despite significant growth across nearly all curricular areas in recent decades, Hebrew language instruction remains a persistent challenge in many Jewish day schools. While schools throughout the diaspora have sought to address this issue by employing shelihim from Israel, this model has raised ongoing concerns, including a lack of continuity due to frequent staff turnover, uneven pedagogical training, differing cultural assumptions about teaching and learning, and questions of quality control. At the Moriah School (Englewood, NJ), these long-standing concerns converged with a broader question that many school communities face: How could it be that a child could spend twelve years in a Jewish day school and still struggle to speak Hebrew?
This urgent question became the catalyst for our recent initiative. The school’s leadership felt that the moment had arrived for a bold, systemic rethink. Student outcomes in many subjects were improving, yet progress in Hebrew remained stagnant.
Teaching Hebrew in a Changing World
אולי נתחיל בשאלה פשוטה מאוד. למה זה חשוב שיהודי בתפוצות ילמד עברית, ואיך זה משפיע על חייו?
אני חושב שהיא באמת שאלה מאוד מורכבת, מכיוון שאחד מהאתגרים הגדולים שיש היום בתפוצות הוא להתמודד עם השאלה “למה עברית?”. אני חושב שלכולם די ברור למה צריך לעסוק בתכנים יהודיים—בחלק מבתי הספר קוראים לזה מקצועות הקודש, בחלק מבתי הספר מגדירים את זה אחרת—אבל לכולם מאוד ברור שבית ספר יהודי צריך שתהיה לו זיקה ליהדות. אך מבחינת העברית יש היום הרבה מאוד סימני שאלה גדולים. ה”אני מאמין” שלי, והוא שלי בלבד, זה שאנחנו מלמדים עברית משתי סיבות. אלף, מתוך זה שהעברית היא חלק מהעולם היהודי. אי אפשר לנתק את העברית מכל ההיסטוריה היהודית. העברית היא הערך הבסיסי ביותר של היהדות.
Hebrew as an Identity Anchor in Diaspora Supplementary Schools: A Response to a Secular-Israeli-Jewish community
הוראת עברית כעוגן זהותי בחינוך המשלים בתפוצות: מענה לצורך הקהילה הישראלית-חילונית
מאת: אליאנה גורדון, נירית פריקורן וטל זילברשטיין פז
תקציר
מאמר זה מציג מודל פרקטי ליצירת תחושת שייכות וטיפוח זהות ישראלית-יהודית רב-שכבתית בקרב ילדים להורים ישראלים החיים בתפוצות, בדגש על קהילתיות ועל יחס ליהדות כתרבות חיה ומתפתחת. המאמר מתמקד באופן שבו בית ספר לעברית משלים יוצא מגבולות המוסד הלימודי וממסגרת השיעור הפרונטלי והופך לעוגן קהילתי, תרבותי, וחיוני עבור הקהילה המקומית כולה.
From Immersion to Deliberation: A Model for Hebrew Identity Education
In recent years, we have found ourselves returning to a question that feels both old and new: If early Zionist thinkers believed that reviving Hebrew could reshape Jewish life, how might they have imagined teaching it in communities far from the land where it would be revived? We are not historians of Zionist pedagogy, and we do not pretend to reconstruct their educational blueprints. But reading figures such as Ze’ev Jabotinsky alongside other early twentieth-century voices forces us to pause and plan intentionally. For them, Hebrew was never meant to function merely as a school subject. It was imagined as atmosphere, as music, as discipline, as shared inheritance. It was something that would seep into consciousness and form character.
Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement and the Betar youth organization, is often remembered for his political writings and sharp polemics. Yet woven throughout his speeches and essays is a sustained concern with formation.
Language Defines Identity: A Literary Unit on Multilingualism and Multiculturalism
אירועי השבעה באוקטובר ומה שאירע בעקבותיהם היו שבר שהשפעתו עדיין מהדהדת בכול. לא רק שערעור תחושת הביטחון, האמון, והאמונה שלי עצמי הקשו עליי לעמוד בכיתה וללמד ״כרגיל״, גם תלמידיי בצפון קליפורניה הרחוקה והבטוחה חשו שמשהו נסדק. בימים הראשונים שלאחר הטבח, תלמידים אמרו לי שלראשונה בחייהם הם נחשפים לגילויי אנטישמיות וחוששים לביטחונם האישי, או לעסק בעל הנראות היהודית מאוד של משפחתם. הדהימה אותי העובדה שגם בתיכון היהודי הקטן שבו אני מלמדת (180 תלמידים), תלמידים, אנשי סגל ומשפחותיהם הכירו אישית חטופים, ניצולים, לוחמים וחללים.
בשנת הלימודים 2024-2025, תכננתי ללמד את ההקבצה המתקדמת שלנו (כיתות ט׳-יב) קורס בספרות עברית. היחידה שעמה החלטתי לפתוח את השנה עוסקת ברב-לשוניות ורב-תרבותיות, נושא שמעסיק אותי בחיי האישיים והמקצועיים כאחד.
What Would Jabotinsky Expect from a Hebrew Program Today?
In recent years, we have found ourselves returning to a question that feels both old and new: If early Zionist thinkers believed that reviving Hebrew could reshape Jewish life, how might they have imagined teaching it in communities far from the land where it would be revived? We are not historians of Zionist pedagogy, and we do not pretend to reconstruct their educational blueprints. But reading figures such as Ze’ev Jabotinsky alongside other early twentieth-century voices forces us to pause and plan intentionally. For them, Hebrew was never meant to function merely as a school subject. It was imagined as atmosphere, as music, as discipline, as shared inheritance. It was something that would seep into consciousness and form character.
Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement and the Betar youth organization, is often remembered for his political writings and sharp polemics. Yet woven throughout his speeches and essays is a sustained concern with formation.
Resilience in Jewish Education Begins With Hebrew
כמעט שמונה עשורים מהווים בתי הספר “המלך דויד” (King David) ביוהנסבורג רשת של בתי ספר יהודיים, הפועלת תחת חסות ועד החינוך היהודי בדרום אפריקה. הרשת כוללת ארבעה קמפוסים ומציעה חינוך מגיל גן ועד תיכון, במסגרת משותפת לבנים ולבנות, ובה לומדים כיום כ־2700 תלמידים ומלמדים כ־385 מורים. בתי הספר פועלים ברוח אורתודוקסית-מסורתית, תוך פתיחות וקבלת תלמידים ממשפחות יהודיות מגוונות. לצד חינוך כללי ברמה גבוהה, מושם דגש משמעותי על לימודי עברית ולימודי יהדות, כחלק מתפיסה חינוכית הרואה בשפה, במסורת ובקשר למדינת ישראל מרכיבים מרכזיים בזהותם של התלמידים. במסגרת קהילה יהודית מגובשת ובעלת ציפיות ברורות, בתי הספר שואפים לחנך תלמידים בעלי זהות יהודית וציונית, תחושת שייכות, ואחריות כלפי הקהילה והחברה.
כאשר התחלתי להוביל את תחום העברית בבית הספר, הבנתי שהשאלה איננה כמה שעות עברית נלמדות (למרות שאף זו שאלה חשובה), אלא איזה מעמד יש לעברית בתרבות הבית ספרית.
Shinshinim in Schools: An Insider View
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Jewish Educational Leadership: Many of our readers are familiar with what a shinshin is, but not all. Can you tell us briefly?
Shira Rafalovitz: Sure. Shinshin is short for shenat sherut, a year of service. It is a year of volunteer work that some Israelis do before they start the army. Most people do their sherut in Israel, volunteering in lots of different places, but some of us choose to go overseas to work in schools or Jewish communities where we think that we can help build bridges between Jewish communities around the world and Israel. I got placed in Detroit, where I did most of my work at Frankel Jewish Academy, the high school. I also did some teaching in a Sunday school with younger kids and with a synagogue.
Preparing Shelihim for Transformative Educational Leadership
Ben Porat Yosef (BPY) is an Early Childhood-8th grade Modern Orthodox yeshiva day school (Paramus, NJ). The school was founded 25 years ago, initially as a Sephardic educational institution, and shortly thereafter shifting to our current model as a dual-curriculum Sephardic and Ashkenazic school, where students who hail from either heritage and tradition are welcomed and celebrated. Moreover, the educational program trains our students in the laws, customs, and culture of the varied Sephardic and Ashkenazic traditions.
The other core element of our mission is to develop in our students a love for Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael, and Medinat Yisrael. This is executed in a variety of ways, and two central components are our Hebrew Immersion model and our shelihim program.
Many Diaspora day schools aspire to effectively teach Judaic Studies in Ivrit, for both philosophical and educational reasons. However, there are several significant challenges that have likely contributed to less-than-ideal implementation in the broader field.
Critical Conceptual Tools with Practical Application for Strengthening Hebrew Language Instruction and Learning
Over the past several years, I’ve found myself in the same conversation again and again with teachers, department chairs, and school leaders who care deeply about Hebrew but feel stuck. Not stuck because of a lack of passion, and not even because of a lack of resources, but because of something harder to name: a lack of shared clarity.
The questions come in different forms: What is the role of Hebrew in Jewish day schools today? Why teach Hebrew? Why learn Hebrew? What is Hebrew meant to accomplish? What should a graduate of a Jewish day school know and be able to do in Hebrew? Who is an effective Hebrew educator? What does effective Hebrew language teaching and learning actually look like?
At first, these questions may sound abstract. However, strong frameworks can help shape very real decisions: how time is used, how teaching is approached, which curricula are chosen, and how educators are supported.
Hebrew 2.0- A Language that Shapes Reality: Hebrew as a Catalyst for Developing Thoughtful, Engaged an Influential Youth
The transformations of the 21st century bring with them fundamental changes in the way we understand second language acquisition processes. Social, cultural, and economic shifts are creating a reality in which intercultural and multilingual interactions are becoming central to our daily lives. In this reality, researchers and educators who teach languages are called upon to be attentive and open to change, and to adapt instruction to evolving contexts, to prepare learners to navigate a complex and unpredictable world. Accordingly, there is a growing need to adopt an updated perspective on second language acquisition, one that is suited to a dynamic reality and reflects the broad cultural and identity-related contexts within which language learning takes place.
Many education systems are now aware of the need for reforms and the renewal of content and teaching methods, so that these may incorporate, as an inherent part of the learning process, the new skills that students require in the 21st century: communication skills, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration.
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