Maury Grebenau is Principal of South Peninsula Hebrew Day School. He was previously Associate Principal at Yavneh Academy of Dallas. Rabbi Grebenau earned a BA in Mathematics, Semicha, and a Master’s in Education, all from Yeshiva University.

Maury Grebenau describes how one school empowered its Jewish studies department to start from scratch and reinvent itself based on the needs of its student body.

For seven years, beginning in 2005, I was part of the teaching staff and administration at Yavneh Academy of Dallas, a co-ed Modern Orthodox high school. A few years after joining the staff of the school a number of changes were put into place based on a desire to restructure the Judaic program into a more defined and curriculum based program. Both parents and teachers felt that there was a need to create an approach which would serve the diverse student body in a way which was in line with our Modern Orthodox mission. As the head of Judaics left the school, the head of school decided to allow the Judaic department to function on its own as a team reporting to the head of school. This was an unusual decision given the relatively young staff but it empowered us to really take ownership over our process.

In the summer of 2008, the entire Judaic staff worked together with an outside consultant to begin creating a Judaic curriculum from scratch. Our challenge was to create a curriculum which would reflect the ideal graduate given the diverse makeup of our student body. Among the population of the school approximately 40% self-identified as Modern Orthodox, with the rest of the school made up of Conservative, Reform and unaffiliated Jews. With such a diverse population it was difficult to create a single model of an ideal graduate. Additionally we had a wide variety of background and skills among our students, ranging from those who had been in Orthodox day schools since they were young to those who had joined us midway through high school from public school having no prior Judaic schooling at all.

Including the entire Judaic staff in these discussions was empowering and unifying. It enabled us to craft a curriculum which we were all proud of and we all bought into the importance of each class.

Process & direction

We began the process with a rich discussion of what a graduate should look like. Each faculty member brought a description to a meeting where we recorded all the ideas and hotly debated some of the fundamental issues. This was an eye-opening and necessary exercise which laid the groundwork for what type of curriculum we would need to map out. When there was disagreement about the curriculum, later in the process we were frequently able to return to our picture of a graduate to be able to clarify the right approach. Once we had a picture of the type of student we wanted to produce, we grappled with the question of how the curriculum would map to these goals and how we could assess success.

One thing which was clear was that for many of our students, their formal Jewish education would not continue beyond high school. This reality forced us to us evaluate what kind of learning would most likely create an appreciation of the corpus of Torah which we hoped would encourage them to continue to educate themselves Jewishly beyond graduation. We needed a goal which would be appropriate for all our graduates regardless of background and affiliation. We chose to focus on creating committed Jewish leaders. We recognized that while denominational affiliation was a personal and family decision, regardless of that affiliation they should be committed and active Jewish leaders within their chosen contexts. This definition fit well with the graduates we could point to proudly – those who were making a difference on college campuses and beyond. Our interest was less in what the student looked like upon graduation but on what the emerging adult would be doing two, five and ten years down the line. And while we were far from being able to assess that long-term success, that was to be our goal.

To accomplish this we felt that it would be necessary to put significant energy and instructional time into hashkafah (Jewish ideology) and experiential learning. In strengthening these two areas we hoped to be able to give students a strong foundation for understanding the importance of Jewish practice and a positive experience of that practice. For example, instead of a traditional halakhah class in which students learned from photocopied pages of Mishna Berurah, we created an internal curriculum which blended the “what” and the “why” across the areas of Jewish thought and law which we felt were the most critical for our students to be exposed to and which served as fertile ground for them to gain the skills (textual and analytical) needed to continue this learning in the future. The first year focused on interpersonal laws, the second on laws between man and God, the third on the Jewish lifecycle and kashrut, and the final year incorporated a variety of topics including Israel advocacy, Biblical criticism, business ethics, medical ethics, and more. The goal was for the content to reflect 60% hashkafah for years one and two (and 40% halakhah) and the weight reversed for the second half of high school.

The choices of topics and even the focus within those topics were chosen for their potential for future Jewish engagement and appreciation of a Jewish ethic. For example, when teaching about Shabbat the focus shifted from the prohibitions of Shabbat to its positive mitzvot (lighting candles, Kiddush, etc.).

Sacrifices

Given our new focus, it became necessary to sacrifice other areas which did not support our central goals, and we were inevitably faced with the question of with what we would need to dispense. We recognized that which classes are offered and which are required will shape how much hashkafah a student has access to and how much they are guaranteed before they leave high school. We had important discussions about the appropriateness of Torah Shebe`al Peh (Oral Law) for all students, especially those coming from public school in the middle of high school. Could we expect them to gain enough Gemara skills to warrant spending that much of their Judaic time over the next two years? Our prior experience led us to believe that they would be better served using that time to get a foundation in Humash and hashkafah. What about our higher level students who get double the Gemara at the expense of some other staples? Should a student finish high school without a solid grasp of what is contained in Humash? Could we expect that once they have the skills to approach Gemara, they can certainly approach any other text?

One of the sea changes in our program was shifting away from requiring all students to take a class in Torah Shebe`al Peh to the offering of electives in Grades 11 and 12. The course offerings were the result of a collaborative effort between teachers and students, and enabled us to refocus our energies on our key goals.

Another substantive change was the addition of a Nakh (Prophetic writings) class. Our approach to Nakh was also related to the drive to have more hashkafah in the curriculum, and this, too, affected the choice of books to cover and also the manner in which they were covered. The books of Iyov and Kohelet were chosen as texts for their ideological content, despite the difficulties they present in language. We found that students were excited to finally deal with some of the main issues which troubled them. They were eager to discuss their own, and Judaism’s, thoughts on why bad things happen to good people, how involved God is in our daily life, and many other issues. We engaged these topics while recognizing that we were sacrificing skills in reading and analyzing texts in the original.

While we believe that the dramatic changes we made will have long term impact on more students, particularly those with weaker backgrounds, it is clear that some of the other students will be handicapped by it. For example, whereas in the past, the more advanced students had a double period of Talmud, effectively preparing them for post-high school yeshiva study, that path was now optional. Students choosing the “easier,” non-Talmud option would be less prepared for post-high school study should they decide later to choose that route.

Conclusion

Despite the difficulties in measuring the long range goal of producing Jews who are committed to their communities, defining this goal helped to shape our educational vision and program and gave rise to an engaging curriculum which focused on the bedrock ideas for leading a Jewish life. Although it was the diversity of our student body which led us on this path I believe that both the content and the process of deciding these goals have value for other day schools.