The Project InCiTE Blog

Inside the “We believe in Israel” conference - Seph Brown

2011-05-18T08:17:00.000-04:00

Seph Brown, the UK Director of Prosper Palestine, reports from the We believe in Israel conference, held at a location in central London yesterday.Scott Copeland and others from Makom represented well the conference, attended by over 1500 people in the UK Read More

Education is key in a changing U.S. Jews-Israel relationship

2011-04-06T14:33:00.000-04:00

Educating Israel’s political leaders about the American Jewish community should be the start of a larger effort aimed at teaching Israelis as much about American Jews as the latter learn about them. Read More:

The Anti-Creativity Checklist - from Harvard Business Review

2011-03-30T09:25:00.000-04:00

Here's a question for you: If you had to come up with a checklist for your organization that was guaranteed to stifle imagination, innovation, and out-of-box thinking...a checklist designed specifically for people who want nothing to do with disruptive change...what would it look like? Read More:

Youth Group Recruitment, Membership and Retention: It takes a village!

2011-03-30T08:05:00.000-04:00

by Hope Chernak Director of Youth and Informal Education at Temple Shaaray Tefila, New York, NY For those of us in the field of Informal Jewish Education, we face the uphill battle every year recruiting students for our youth programs. We spend a good deal of our energy on retaining our students and another chunk of our time trying to get new members. While many of our congregations have fancy

Show and Tell: 4 Principles of Effective Storytelling - by Lisa Eisen

2011-03-29T08:21:00.000-04:00

Adapted from the author’s remarks during the 2011 Jewish Funders Network Plenary: The Power of Narrative to Drive Change It all started on a blind date in 1961. He was an hour and a half late. She was getting ready to leave when he finally showed up. Less than a year later, they were married. Read More:

Roger Waters and BDS - by Kobi Oz (From the Makom blog)

2011-03-22T08:35:00.000-04:00

Dear Mr. Waters,I was deeply disappointed to learn that you have decided to build a wall between yourself and your Israeli fans. We love you here in Israel. Surely, you must know that from the warm reception you received when you performed here five years ago at the Jewish-Arab village of Neve Shalom. Read More:

Reflections on our Jewish Digital Future: by Lily Lozovsky

2011-03-08T08:09:00.000-05:00

Right now, we are living through a fundamental shift in the structure of our society. Digital media and portable connective devices are transforming our world by eliminating the transaction costs that once acted as barriers to offline activism. The reality that has emerged is networked and transparent. As evidenced by the recent chain of uprisings in the Middle East, groups of individuals can

The Apartheid Analogy by Gideon Shimoni

2011-03-07T13:21:00.000-05:00

The writer is Professor Emeritus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose published works include Community and Conscience: The Jews in Apartheid South Africa. “Apartheid,” today's prime stigmatic code-word for racist evil, has become a potent weapon for delegitimizing and demonizing Israel, especially since it evokes the precedent of powerful external pressure in the form of boycott and

Gender Balance in the Jewish Spotlight - by Naomi Less

2011-03-01T08:33:00.000-05:00

Naomi says she has been blogging for years with discouragement about women's under-representation in Jewish communal endeavors and initiatives.This time she means business... Read More:

How We’ll Fund Innovation and Sustainability

2011-02-28T08:25:00.000-05:00

It’s time to solve a fundamental problem that plagues progressives everywhere – the lack of seed money to get innovative projects off the ground and the absence of workable funding models to scale up the ongoing efforts to create systemic cultural, economic and political change. We need a new paradigm, which is starting to emerge in the forms of collaborative consumption, crowdsourcing and

Louis CK: Everything is amazing right now and nobody is happy

2011-02-17T12:47:00.000-05:00

Love this !! My grandmother used to spend an entire day doing the washing, and another entire day doing the ironing......Watch this youtube clip....

A So-Called ‘Lost’ Jewish Family - by Shannon Sarna

2011-02-17T08:42:00.000-05:00

Almost eight years ago I traveled to Israel for the first time on a Birthright Israel trip through Hillel. Recently I returned with my husband, brother and uncle to visit my sister, who is spending the year there on a Young Judaea Year Course. At first glance this hardly sounds different from the experiences of any other Jewish professional. Read More:

An Entirely (Surprising?) Other Side of Birthright Rights - by Marc Belzberg

2011-02-16T13:22:00.000-05:00

I warmly applaud Stephen Muss for his well-argued and, in my view, eminently justified plea on behalf of the birth-rights of Diaspora high school age Jewish teens to a meaningful Israel learning experience at least in equal measure with their college and post-college age counterparts (in his February 7, 2011 opinion piece: “The Other Right of Birthright”). Read More:

Viral Videos: The Next Wave In Online Advertising

2011-02-14T11:04:00.001-05:00

Banking on the success of viral videos, many companies are opting to use social networking and other Internet sites to promote their product. Read more: Our Project InCiTE fellow Carine Warsawski, has piloted this marketring approach. Take a look at one of the particpants in her project talk about their experience on a summer trip!

What’s in a Name? by Robert Sherman, Jewish Education Project

2011-02-10T11:00:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, our newly merged agency (Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York and SAJES), took on a new name to match its newly rebranded identity: The Jewish Education Project. Read More:

New Digital Learning Opportunity for Day School Students

2011-02-09T11:02:00.000-05:00

The Jewish Education project is excited to announce the launch of http://www.digitaljlearning.org/ , a new website created to support North American Jewish Day Schools exploring implementing online learning into their general studies classrooms. Online learning can enhance student knowledge through individualized instruction and might improve Jewish Day Schools by providing a potentially cost

Johanna Blakley: Social media and the end of gender

2011-02-09T10:35:00.000-05:00

Great TED talk about the how social media has and will continue to change the dynamic of our social structures. ReadMore

The Innovation Buzzword? by David Cygielman

2011-02-01T11:43:00.000-05:00

Innovation has certainly been a very popular buzzword over the past two years. Not just in the Jewish community, but in every aspect of promotion and advertising, we continue to hear about the benefits of innovation. Ranging from car commercials to the President’s State of the Union, innovation is clearly seen as a huge benefit. Read More....http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-innovation-buzzword/

Jon Stewart's Moving Monologue

2011-01-20T11:36:00.001-05:00

The Next Level - A cooperative Experiement of Where We Might Take Jewish Education Next posts a moving monologue on the Arizona shooting by Jon Stewart

Coffee Rendering of the Mona Lisa

2010-12-23T11:39:00.000-05:00

Last year the Rocks Aroma Festival in Sydney, Australia welcomed more than 130,000 coffee lovers to the day-long java celebration. The undisputed toast of the town was the 20'x13' rendering of Leonardo DaVinci's Renaissance masterpiece. Created using cups containing long blacks, flat whites, and lattes, the coffee sculpture delighted visitors from across the world by capturing the spirit of the

DIASPORA? KEEP OUT! - from the MAKOM blog

2010-12-22T13:21:00.001-05:00

"I find the need of Jews living outside of Israel to enlighten me on our complexities incredibly patronizing. What is their investment level in this social and political dilemma? If it's zero, then that's what their opinions are worth." Katie Green takes the gloves off with her own personal and passionate take on UK Jewish leaders openly critical of Israel. Come and join the debate here.

In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm

2010-12-21T11:43:00.003-05:00

Via NYT | Mind- Bending At Jump’s corporate seminars, group stretch comes before groupthink. One of the original premises of Project InCiTE was experimenting with the notion of teaching innovation as a teachable skill -- SIT (Systematic Inventing Thinking) guided us on this path. There is a company that also teaches others how to think -- and for a hefty fee they will even do the thinking for

What a Long (Not Strange) Trip it's Been: A Youth Worker's Reflection by Hope Chernak

2010-12-14T10:27:00.000-05:00

Hope Chernak Director of Youth and Informal Education Temple Shaaray Tefila, New York, NY In 1983, NFTY reintroduced the NFTY Convention for teenagers to its biennial schedule. In 1999, they added a youth advisors' professional training conference to run concurrently with NFTY Convention. Read more:

New Consensus Seen Emerging On Israel Education - by Julie Weiner

2010-12-08T10:27:00.000-05:00

Centrist players now calling for more open, critical approach to teaching about Jewish state..Two years ago, when the Gaza war began, Moriel Rothman felt caught in the middle.Then a sophomore at Middlebury College, he was distressed by what he saw as the “disproportionate” number of Palestinians killed. Read more

Dixie Chicks and Bar/Bat Mitzvahs - Written by bryfy

2010-11-29T12:09:00.000-05:00

It’s been a while since I posted last so it must be something big that has brought me back into the blogosphere…. By now many of you may have already read the New York Times November 19, 2010, article: Bar Mitzvah Studies Take to the Web You may in fact be one of the 61 people to have commented on that article. Or you may have already been drawn into another person’s blog on the topic including:

The Jewish Future’s so Bright I got to Wear Blinders - Joel Lurie Grishaver

2010-11-22T12:42:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time there was “The Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York and Suffolk Association for Jewish Education Services.” The two have merged and the new organization has just re-branded itself as “The Jewish Education Project: We pioneer new approaches in Jewish Education for every age.” This is not that organization’s first name change. Before it was “The Board…” it was the “Bureau

Temple Beth Torah’s JTV Hebrew High School program takes their first steps in Pitriworld

2010-11-17T11:44:00.001-05:00

An Update fron Jodi Mishkin on the launching of her Project InCiTE project!!! Temple Beth Torah’s JTV Hebrew High School program takes their first steps in Pitriworld tonight! 5 teens, 4 at TBT and one at home, learned how to download Imprudence the platform where the Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) Pitriworld resides, customize their avatars, and explored unchartered territories. Teens

An Alternative to the GA … at the GA

2010-11-16T08:53:00.000-05:00

Forums like the Jewish Futures Conference sponsored by The Jewish Education Project (Formerly BJENY-SAJES) the Berman Foundation, JESNA, and the Covenant Foundation, bring talented individuals out and expose them to a field of Jewish leaders, including educators, professionals, entrepreneurs, students and volunteers. Read More..

The Future is our Teacher - by David Breakstone

2010-11-10T09:01:00.001-05:00

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." An appropriate choice of words for a Chief Ideas Officer, which is what Jonathan Woocher is at the Jewish Education Service of North America. Read More about the Jewish Futures Conference at the GA this week

Tel Aviv Hub

2010-11-01T14:21:00.002-04:00

Check out the Tel Aviv Hub in the Jerusalem Post - Quality Noise and Good Vibes

Carines Videos from her Summer Project

2010-11-01T14:07:00.000-04:00

We are thrilled to post vimeo footage from Carine's summer pilot of her Project -She would love to receive some feedback and comments on the content. Enjoy!Project InCITE - Carines Project - Rachel and Liz from Project Incite on Vimeo.Project InCITE - Carines Project - Maya from Project Incite on Vimeo.Project InCiTE - Carines Project - Matt from Project Incite on Vimeo.

2010-10-13T12:36:00.000-04:00

Project InCITE Mazal Tov! Good News from Project InCiTE - Beautiful baby OPHER GAL born at 5:12 pm Cotober 2 - First child of Shahar and Lee Gal - and our second Project InCiTE baby!! According to Shahar she is a good sleeper just like her dad - we wish them the best. Check out photos Opher and family belowhttp://http://picasaweb.google.com/sgal1979/vaNNIL?authkey=Gv1sRgCPTT9p6O94mjmQE&feat=email#

Chris Anderson: How web video powers global innovation

2010-09-15T10:32:00.000-04:00

TED's Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation -- a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness. And for TED, it means the dawn of a whole new chapter ...watch the video

Brave New Tech World Awaits Jewish Education

2010-08-18T12:19:00.000-04:00

David BryfmanSpecial To The Jewish WeekTuesday, August 17, 2010This year I attended a Yom Ha’Atzmaut celebration. There were hundreds of kids from Israel, San Francisco, New York and Turkey eating falafel and dancing to Hadag Nachash, Israel’s premier hip-hop band. Read More:

Launch of the Jerusalem Ambassador Program

2010-08-16T19:47:00.000-04:00

From Efron Sturmwind