While many institutions nationwide are forced to downsize due to budgetary restraints, the Jewish Theological Seminary is thriving, thanks in part to a recent donation of $3.7 million.
The grant is part of a $12 million award to be distributed over the course of five years to schools across the country by the Jim Joseph Foundation—an organization that supports the education of Jewish youth. The foundation will distribute the additional $8.3 million between Yeshiva University, which will receive $4 million, and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which will receive $3.7 million.
According to Dr. Barry Holtz, dean of JTS’s William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education, JTS Chancellor Arnold Eisen helped score the grant money for Davidson through a process that began last year. Despite the welcome relief from widespread economic woes, Holtz noted that the timing of the grant applications and the financial fallout was purely coincidental.
The first of the grant’s two parts is a fellowship for students, for which all three schools will receive comparable amounts. The second part is a planning grant, of which Yeshiva will receive more than JTS, Holtz said, because Yeshiva is a full university with a larger budget.
Three major indicatives have been laid out to put the grant money to good use at JTS. Currently, cantorial and rabbinical students both spend a year abroad in Israel, but the education students do not. Part of the grant will go towards sending Davidson students there to connect to Israel and improve the quality of their Hebrew.
“In order to be an effective Jewish educator,” one “needs to experience Israel and needs to kind of translate that in educational terms, and you can’t do that by studying in textbooks,” noted Shuly Rubin Schwartz, dean of JTS’s Albert A. List College and Irving Lehrman research associate professor of American Jewish history.
The other two initiatives of the grant are informal education and early childhood education. Dean Holtz plans to foster the existing track in the master’s program for informal education with the school’s close connection to Camp Ramah, a nationwide organization of Jewish summer programs, then “investigate and plan a new track in our master’s program for training early childhood Jewish educators.”
The Davidson School will distribute $700,000 annually over the next five academic years for student fellowships in its master’s and doctoral programs. “The timing is especially exciting to be able to think about growth and supporting new students coming into the program,” said Dr. Michelle Lynn-Sachs, assistant professor of Jewish Education at the Davidson School.
Lynn-Sachs expects applications for the Davidson School to multiply in the coming years, given the incline in fellowship money. “To be able to offer competitive funding…is critical.” She noted that the diversity of the applicant pool would change. The grant “allows us to expand the scope of who[m] we’re able to reach.”
Students and faculty remarked on the common goals of the Davidson School focus and the Jim Joseph Foundation. “Approximately two-thirds of List College students want to pursue a long-term professional career in the secular realm,” said Ariela Wenger, GS/JTS ’13.
Shana Zionts, Davidson ’10, added. “If the charity wanted it to go to further Jewish education, Davidson makes the most sense.”
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