ENGAJE Long Island participants at the Brookhaven Labs Science Learning Center.
by Linda Saslow Special To The Jewish Week
The challenge on the table was: how to engage families with young children into a more active Jewish life? Early childhood directors at SAJES, the central agency for Jewish education in the Long Island region, were concerned about the disconnect between families with children in pre-school and their synagogues. Rabbi Tracy Kaplowitz, the community rabbi-in-residence at SAJES, explained, “The time when Jewish children begin to get their education is normally from age 3 to 5, when parents send their children to early childhood Jewish schools. But at age 5, there is a fairly large dropout rate, and while many come back to prepare for their bar mitzvahs, others never return to the synagogue. We wanted to help families connect better to their synagogues and
to provide a gateway for families to an active Jewish life.”
The solution? ENGAJE Long Island. The acronym stands for “Enrich, Nurture and Grow through Aligned Jewish Education.”
The professional team at SAJES, a UJA-Federation of New York beneficiary, agreed that if teachers of 2- to 5-year-olds gained more Jewish knowledge and background, they could become the bridge to parents of preschoolers and guide them towards more involvement in synagogue life.
The two-year pilot, which just marked its completion, included five Long Island synagogues and Jewish community centers: Dix Hills Jewish Center, Midway Jewish Center (in Syosset), Mid-Island Jewish Center (in Plainview), Shelter Rock Jewish Center (in Roslyn) and Temple Beth David (in Commack). During the two years of the program, early childhood teachers from the five participating centers met with mentors, top thinkers and clergy to study Jewish texts, history, holidays and values. They also explored ways to bridge what they learned in their Jewish studies into their pre-school classrooms. Finally, each center created a task force of parents, teachers and members of the congregation to participate in strategic planning sessions, directed at finding solutions to create better linkage with early childhood families. At Temple Beth David, a Reform synagogue with a pre-school of three classes comprised of 35 families, members of the task force agreed that the staff needed to learn together, and then reach out to the community to share that information, in order to help the community become more involved. A Shabbat program and Tot Shabbat before regular services were started, to include parents.
Michelle Finkel, the director of the early childhood center, said, “They made a tremendous difference. The feeling in the building is much different; it’s no longer ‘them’ and ‘us.’ ”
The task force at Midway Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue, found that there was a need to find ways to create a better sense of cohesiveness among the nursery school, Hebrew school and the synagogue.
Jennifer Kam, a member of the task force whose 4-year-old son is a student at the nursery school, said, “The nursery school is on one side of the parking lot and the synagogue on the other. We realized that we needed new ideas to bring parents of the nursery school more into the fold.”
Some of those new ideas have included adding a component for preschool children to synagogue functions and forming a Parent Association within the nursery school, which Kam said “have energized everybody and brought a greater sense of cohesiveness and community to the synagogue.”
Debby Friedman, executive director at SAJES, said, “Many of the programs were unique to the specific needs of the individual communities. At Shelter Rock, for example, members of the task force recognized that their community needed more bilingual education, and they added Hebrew to some of the components of their early childhood program, including their Mommy & Me. In Dix Hills, the members created a lounge for parents, to help them feel more comfortable at the synagogue.”
Looking back over the two-year project, Rabbi Kaplowitz said, “We believe we have laid a groundwork that they can maintain on their own.”
Kim Schepps, of Commack, a mother of two children in the nursery school program at Temple Beth David, said, “The efforts of the ENGAJE program definitely helped us to feel less isolated and more connected to the synagogue. This year, we had a hands-on Passover service for the children, parents and teachers, and other activities like the Tot Shabbat program have made a huge change in how involved we now feel in the synagogue.”
SAJES officials are now planning to expand the program to families with children from birth to 3. And with the expanded vision will come a new name for the program: Metro ENGAJE.
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