Alliance for Continuing Rabbinic Education

ACRE - Mission, Vision and Values Statement

On December 17, 2008, the Alliance for Continuing Rabbinic Education Steering Committee approved the Alliance for Continuing Rabbinic Education Mission, Vision and Values Statement.

ALLIANCE FOR CONTINUING RABBINIC EDUCATION

MISSION, VISION AND VALUES STATEMENT

12/17/08—20 KISLEV 5769

The Alliance for Continuing Rabbinic Education (ACRE) is dedicated to advancing the field of continuing rabbinic education in order to enrich the communal, spiritual and educational life of rabbis, and through them, the entire Jewish community.

Vision of the Alliance for Continuing Education

Rabbis, congregations, congregants, organizations and philanthropists and other stakeholders recognize the need for a continuum of education for all rabbis. As such, it is expected that rabbis will spend the Alliance-recommended, additional designated time in continuing rabbinic education learning experiences beyond their seminary training. Those who employ rabbis are willing to budget the time and expense for continuing rabbinic education and will not count such study time as vacation or personal days.

The Alliance will serve as a clearing house for CRE information as offered by rabbinical schools, rabbinical organizations and other providers of continuing rabbinic education. The Alliance member providers will regularly share these listings of continuing rabbinic education opportunities with one another by posting the information on an open access website. Moreover, the organizations of the Alliance will meet annually to assess gaps in continuing rabbinic education programs and, where feasible, collaborate in developing initiatives which fill those gaps.

The Alliance will endeavor to foster a cooperative interchange regarding the recruitment and training of faculty for continuing rabbinic education experiences. The Alliance will develop guidelines for what constitutes high quality continuing rabbinic education, based on research and evaluation. The Alliance will advocate for securing additional funds for research and evaluation. While unable to evaluate every program and experience, all members of the Alliance agree to devote resources to assessing the impact of key programs and sharing that information with one another through conferences and publications sponsored by the Alliance.

Through the Alliance, CRE programs will help rabbis remain current on cutting-edge academic Judaic research and enhance practical rabbinic skills which rabbis acquired during their years of seminary education. For rabbis, CRE will provide a sense of ongoing educational, spiritual and collegial renewal so that they might be energized to create dynamic Jewish experiences on a regular basis with their congregants and organizations. Additionally, through CRE, rabbis will acquire new skills to meet the evolving and complex challenges of congregational life and as such find their own sense of spirituality nurtured through their continuing education experiences and through the colleagues they encounter from within and outside of their other organizational affiliations.

Through the Alliance, continuing rabbinic education will become the norm for rabbinic, organizational and congregational life. Indeed, the impact of continuing rabbinical education programs will become evident throughout local communities. Through their own continued study, rabbis will be role models for the individuals whom they serve. Thus, congregations, organizations and philanthropists will be encouraged to devote resources to ensuring that rabbis immerse themselves in ongoing learning throughout their congregational experience.

Organizational Values

As a diverse alliance of stakeholders of continuing rabbinic education, we will be guided in our working relationships with one another by the following values:

ללכת בדרכיו Lalekhet bederakhav - seeking constantly to deepen and renew our devotion to God, to love and serve God with a whole heart and humble spirit, we will be better able to love and serve our communities, leading them to deeper devotion to God and Torah.

(תלמוד תורה (כנגד כולם Talmud Torah (k’neged kulam)—raising the profile and accessibility of talmud torah for rabbis of all religious streams

כבוד הצבור K’vod ha-Tzibbur—engaging in study that responds to the spiritual and educational needs of the communities we serve

אהבת ישראל Ahavat Yisrael—following our sage, Hillel, and lovingly accepting people where they are with regard to their learning, curiosity and desire for knowledge.

כבוד הרב K’vod ha-Rav—while honestly acknowledging our religious differences as rabbis, working together in a way that respects our shared aspirations for learning and for the Jewish people.

כבוד הבריאות K'vod ha-Bri’ot—respecting the diversity of the rabbinic community by fostering different paths of continuing education.

קירוב Keruv—however we define it, understanding that we have the sacred task of drawing people closer to Torah.

פנים אל פנים Panim el Panim—meeting face-to-face; gathering together periodically in real-time to foster a rabbinic community dedicated to the goals of the Alliance.

שמחה של מצוה Simcha shel Mitzvah - celebrating our opportunity to work together on this endeavor.

All rabbis are engaged in the sacred task of increasing kedushah in the world. Therefore, it is incumbent upon them to develop their teaching and leadership skill through continued study. While we may never reach the state of complete knowledge and perfection, we must strive towards an ever higher level of knowledge through a continuing learning process.

לא עליך כל המלאכה לגמור, ולא אתה בן חורין להבטל

Lo alecha hamlacha ligmor, v’lo ata ben chorine l’hibatel memenah.

Conference Summary

For those of you that were at the Conference and those who were unable to attend, I have made available several documents about the conference proceedings. On the right, there is a list of the Conference schedule with links to information about each session as well as a 75 page summary. In addition, I have made available an Executive Summary of the proceedings. Download Executive Summary.

Using Technology in Rabbinic Education

            In 1990, I visited my friend Rebecca at MIT. As we walked the halls, she described a form of computer communications which she and her friends used to share homework or to set times to meet for pizza. Puzzled, I wondered why they didn’t just walk down the hall and knock? Two years passed and Rebecca, still at MIT, spent an evening showing me around her computer account. Loading a rudimentary program, she asked me to envision a newspaper that could focus stories about subjects I was particularly interested in, such as Israel. I simply could not see the value.

Nothing in our tradition speaks against technology. On the contrary, some innovations, such as the printing press and movable type, have played important roles in enabling more Jews to own and access the wisdom of our teachers. In many ways, these most recent innovations have a very familiar feel. The listservs that are favored by many in the rabbinic community resemble the letter writing that previous generations used to seek rabbinic counsel. And the hyper-linking of the web resembles nothing so much as a page of Talmud, which (while lacking the speed of point and click) uses key words and phrases to direct us to other relevant texts. The web is filled with treasures of Jewish knowledge, and the miracles of modern databases have been a blessing to all of us who search through rabbinic and scholarly materials.

In the almost twenty years since I first learned about email and the web, I have come to embrace these technological developments as essential tools, not just for communication and shopping but real Jewish learning. Over last the few years, the HUC-JIR/CCAR Joint Commission for Sustaining Rabbinic Education has had hundreds of rabbis study in one of more than two dozen online courses. I love that we are helping rabbis in small and large communities get access to the best in scholarship and study in a way that fits into their busy lives. Beyond my professional role, my personal study relies on materials that I receive weekly through the internet from another organization committed to continuing rabbinic education.

My difficulty in understanding what my friend Rebecca was proposing all those years ago was largely based in my assumption that this technology was meant to replace existing structures. To some degree it did and does, but much of the value of the web comes from capacities that I did not truly appreciate because I did not then envision the needs it could fulfill. True, you can call all your friends and suggest you go out for pizza, but you can email all of them at once to come to a group agreement on a time and place with amazing efficiency. As we consider how to utilize technology in our continuing rabbinic education endeavors, we should not expect the internet to replace or supersede traditional modes of learning and study, but to augment and expand the existing frameworks.

Quality content is essential for creating programming that will engage rabbis, but we need to go beyond simply replicating modes of learning or methods of presentation that exist offline. I recently participated in a class that billed itself as a webinar, but was nothing more than a live audio lecture. While I appreciated the opportunity to hear a great scholar who lives across the country, I found myself folding laundry, checking email and not really learning that much. I was left wondering why the organization had not chosen to take full advantage of some of the unique combinations of possible elements of a webinar, such as live video feed, interactive slides, live and typed question and answers, to create a engaging experience.

In creating educational opportunities that use technology, we need to acknowledge its limitations and embrace them. Teaching in a classroom provides us only partial control over what our students hear or how they interact with the content we share. Yet, when we sit face-to-face with our students, we are aware when their attention wanders, or when a particular topic excites, and we can adjust our teaching accordingly. Even when we write a book or an article, we are able to create a beginning, middle and end that directs the reader in a particular narrative arc. But the web-like nature of the internet and the disconnect created virtual learning remove even those minimal controls and modes of feedback. There is nothing to stop us from creating content that attempts to bulldoze through this challenge by presenting step-by-step learning, but we would be better served by creating materials that acknowledge the independence of the learner, encouraging each individual to put together their own narrative interpretations. Online, serious Torah learning cannot and should not replace the experience of opening a book or learning with your rebbe, rather it should stand as a complementary and or alternate educational experience.

We need to embrace technology not just for what it is capable of doing now, but for what it might do if we experiment, build and imagine. As a Jerusalem Fellow, I was taken on a tour of Second Life, a virtual online universe. We built a persona and then went exploring. We visited a virtual synagogue and even “the kotel.” Despite some of the more absurd elements of the enterprise, like our attempts to don a kippah which kept landing on our pants, the exercise got our imagination going. Even without seeing an immediate application, we began to talk about how virtual applications might be employed in our work. Nothing that we discussed that day seemed worthwhile enough for us to explore further, but kernels of ideas were planted. Not every innovation will be useful, but with the rate of change that happens in the technological realm, we can never be sure which of today’s kernels will blossom into real possibilities in no time.

Some of our online ventures might not pan out right away. Working in new media demands patience and tenacity as well as commitment. The blog is a wonderful example. In many ways a blog is not so different from the listservs that are well used by my Reform colleagues. Yet when our commission put together a blog to complement on online course this past Spring, we did not attract the attention we had hoped to get. The posts, made by different members of the community, were thoughtful and thought provoking. We did get some modest amount of traffic, but no one who was not actively solicited to write posted on their own. It is hard to know exactly why it did not take off as we had hoped. Instead of abandoning the modality altogether, we began to imagine how we might make changes from our side. But we also recognized that opening up a new approach to communication means that we will need to educate rabbis to embrace new modes of Torah study, and we will need patience before deeming an effort a failure.

Nor should we overlook the role we can play in modeling the uses of technology. If we create classes that use You Tube clips, highlighting the way this site can help us access historic and contemporary footage of Israel or take us on virtual tour of a synagogue in Eastern Europe, we will potentially inspire other rabbis to use these modalities in their own rabbinates. My understanding of the web comes not from a book or a class, but from my own experiences and exploring. As leaders in the field of continuing rabbinic education we have a pressing opportunity to do what my friend Rebecca did for me those many years ago, to help other begin to envision possibilities far beyond what they might come to on their own.

Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder
Director, Joint Commission on Sustaining Rabbinic Education,
Central Conference of American Rabbis
Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion

 

Continuing Rabbinic Education: Separating Hype from Reality

I confess to periodically watching certain evangelical preachers on Sunday morning. They are charismatic and speak before thousands of parishioners in stadium-like seats. Their message is hopeful, individualistic, mixed with text and pop psychology. They play upbeat music and keep the service short: what could be better! These are the preachers who make the headlines because they are incredibly astute at using media. These megachurches have been portrayed over the years as the successful model of a church, while the media tell a story of decline of mainstream Protestant churches.

I remain even more unconvinced that they offer a viable model for synagogues because:

1. Megachurches are not a new phenomenon and they have been widely studied and highly publicized. If they were a good model for the Jewish community, why haven't they proliferated?
2. There are over 159 million Christians in the United States. Using a very generous count of the U.S. Jewish population, there are perhaps over six million Jews. We don’t have the critical mass to sustain this model in most Jewish communities.
3. The people who fill the pews in megachurches at least have to profess a faith in God. You can’t be a secular Christian, because faith is at the heart of Christianity. But, you can be a secular or a cultural Jew. In fact, the majority of Jews identify as secular or cultural. Therefore, the potential audience for a megachurch or mega-synagogue is even significantly smaller than our already small population.
4. Megachurches are centered on charismatic leaders. Have you looked lately at the track record of charismatic leaders in the corporate, non-profit and religious worlds? Not only do they often crash and burn, but when they do, they take others down with them.
5. The one Jewish movement which is experiencing significant growth, Chabad, operates more often out of strip malls than mega malls. They are successful, in part, because they create intimate micro-communities.

True, the positive values of welcoming, joy, responsiveness to individual needs and back-end administrative functions of megachurches merit study and adaptation. However, the fact that they have not taken root in any real way in the Jewish community despite the widespread knowledge of these institutions confirms that this model is a nonstarter for us. In fact, giving credence to it distracts us from the real story of spiritual transformation and change happening in many synagogues across the country.

I recently read a book entitled The Practicing Congregation. Imagining a New Old Church, by Diana Butler Bass. This highly regarded scholar of the contemporary church claims that the real story of transformation within Protestantism typically goes unreported. She makes the case that many mainline Protestant churches are experiencing new vitality by forming intentional spiritual communities. They are flexibly recovering traditional practice and in many cases “re- traditioning” or renewing ancient practices with more contemporary meaning. Thus, the true story of some Protestant mainline churches is not one of decline but one of renewal, relevance and revitalization.

Based on my ongoing contact with synagogues across the country, Bass’s research also rings true for the Jewish community. Some mainstream synagogues are undergoing this process with success. Like their Protestant counterparts, they don't usually make the headlines. But, along with newer, emergent spiritual communities, they are making a growing difference in the lives of many Jews across the country.

One of the values of having a Conference on Continuing Rabbinic Education, and perhaps an organization that emerges from it, is that it can help providers of continuing rabbinic education separate fact from fiction and reality from hype when it comes to what those in the pews, and those not in the pews, are really seeking. The Conference can help providers develop programs for rabbis that look at deeper spiritual trends in the community then we read about in the press.

Rabbi Hayim Herring
Executive Director
STAR (Synagogues: Transformation And Renewal)

Continuing Clergy Education Review

Although there have been few formal evaluations of Continuing Rabbinic Education programs, we can and should make use of the wealth of helpful and relevant information from the research on a close parallel, Continuing Clergy Education (CCE) in other faiths.

The downloadable PDF  contains a review of 11 different CCE program evaluations and research studies from the past decade. These address a variety of subtopics, including assisting young clergy in “bridging the gap” between training and practice, the factors affecting clergy satisfaction, and clergy renewal programs.

We invite you to make use of the general summaries provided here and to then further explore those articles that you find most interesting.

Download continuing_education_for_rabbis_final_review_of_evaluation...

CRE Steering Committee Meeting Presentation

The Steering Committee for the Conference on Continuing Rabbinic Education held its inaugural meeting on April 2, 2008 in New York. A PowerPoint presentation is available for your review.

The presentation includes:

1. The variety of positions rabbis in North America occupy.    
2. The evolution of CRE, from denominational origins with limited offerings to the current state of the field, which includes a more robust offering of denominational and multi-denominational programs.
3. An increased interest in more intense continuing education programs.    
4. An overview of the types of program providers, including Jewish, Christian, and non-denominational organizations.
5. Research, much of it from the Christian community, on the most effective models of Continuing Clergy Education and the impacts they can have.
6. The dearth of formally evaluated CRE programs, along with some noted exceptions.

Download: CRE Steering Committee Meeting Presentation.ppt

Inventory of Continuing Rabbinic Education

“Is there any easy way to find out which programs are right for me?"

Yes. We have transferred the information contained in the Program List into an easy-to-use matrix. Various components of CRE programs (e.g. “is a summer program” or “target population”) are listed across the top of the page. In one quick glance, you can locate a factor that interests you and see which of the many program options fits your needs.

Download: Inventory of Continuing Rabbinic Education.pdf

Descriptions of Program Providers

Question: “I believe in the importance of Continuing Rabbinic Education. What CRE programs are available?”

Answer: When you download the PDF you will find descriptions of over 25 programs for Continuing Rabbinic Education, spanning the interdenominational gamut, along with the website for each program.

Additionally, we have identified 10 clergy education programs from Christian and non-sectarian program providers that are open to and would be appropriate for rabbis seeking professional development. These programs are described here as well.

Finally, this document includes information about several different consultants, funders and research institutes that offer valuable resources for Continuing Rabbinic Education.

Download: Final Descriptions of Program Providers.pdf

WELCOME

Welcome to the first National Conference on Continuing Rabbinic Education!

This conference will bring together a large diverse group of leaders representing rabbinic training institutions, rabbinic organizations, existing continuing rabbinic education programs, funders, and others interested in promoting the awareness of a need and support for continued learning in the rabbinate.

Think of this blog as your one stop shop for everything you need to prepare and attend the conference. We hope you will visit and share your thoughts often. We will be updating the blog on a regular basis throughout the summer.

We have ambitious goals for this conference. It will provide a forum to:

1. Articulate and clarify the potential for developing  a formal continuing rabbinic education strategy. The strategy must meet the educational and professional needs of community rabbis to help them strengthen their congregations and communities currently, and in the future.
2. Develop, expand and share the knowledge and skills of providers of continuing rabbinic education.
3. Explore the benefits, feasibility and possible mechanisms for creating an "Alliance" for Continuing Rabbinic Education with the diverse providers of continuing rabbinic education.

The vision for the "Alliance" would be that these diverse providers who serve rabbinic populations with distinct needs can work together in specific areas to advance their own programs and the field.

Come join us as we plan a new vision and future of the growing field of continuing rabbinic education. We look forward to seeing all of you in September.