Jewish Day School Standards and Benchmarks: Enhancing Instructional Leadership

JDS Standards & Benchmarks Staff

Charlotte Abramson

is the Founding Director of the Jewish Day School Standards and Benchmarks project, affectionately called “S & B” to this day!
 
In 2003, Charlotte directed the crafting of the first Tanakh Standards and Benchmarks Document and proposed a systematic program for in-service learning for day school Judaic studies faculties and their Judaic studies leaders, preparing them in how to enact the standards as a means for advancing the teaching and learning of Tanakh. In addition to the in-service learning for faculty, the program included coaching and mentoring as well as a series of three professional learning institutes for JS heads, affectionately called “ILS's” (Instructional Leadership Seminars).  
 
In 2012, she proposed the development of a Rabbinics Standards and Benchmarks Compendium, which has come to fruition under the able leadership of Rabbi Sheryl Katzman.  Charlotte credits the TECs for continually improving the program’s offerings, for their unwavering support for their cohort schools, and inspiring faculties and leaders alike. 
 
Charlotte’s passionate involvement in education began with her career as a teacher of Judaic studies at Hillel Day School of Farmington Hills, Michigan. She served as Dean of Studies at Golda Och Academy, Upper School, and as principal of its middle school.  Charlotte earned her BS degree at Columbia University, her BJed from Boston’s Hebrew College, and an MA in Jewish Education and Principal’s Certification from JTS.  She is the 2013 recipient of the Hebrew College Benjamin Shevach Award for distinguished achievement in Jewish educational leadership and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Jewish Education from JTS and the Jewish Educator’s Assembly in November 2015.

Now heading into a well-earned retirement, in her decades of stellar service, Charlotte has taught, trained, and inspired many others in the field, and has been a founding architect of the professionalization of Jewish education.

Rabbi Maccabee Avishur

currently serves as the Academic Dean and General Studies Principal at Heichal HaTorah in Teaneck, NJ as well as a senior director at Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools. where he consults with schools on leadership development, governance, placement, faculty, curriculum, differentiation, and 21st century learning. A cornerstone of Maccabee’s work is providing a bridge between school leadership and instruction.

In addition to his work at Heichal and Prizmah, Maccabee serves as a TEC for the LHILI Standards and Benchmarks project and was a member of the advisory committee for the creation of the Rabbinics standards and benchmarks.

Previously, Maccabee served as both a senior school leader and classroom teacher in California, Texas, and Michigan. Maccabee is a graduate of Brandeis University and the University of Cambridge as well as a Musmach of Dayan Ephraim Greenblatt, zt”l. He did postgraduate work in Near Eastern languages and cultures at UCLA, and is currently in the dissertation phase of a doctorate in educational leadership at Yeshiva University.

Bianca Barquin

is the Director of Human Resources of the Santa Ana Unified School District in Santa Ana, CA. Prior to her current position, Bianca was Principal of the MacArthur Middle School in Santa Ana.  She began her career in education teaching middle school students in a parochial school prior to moving to the public school arena first as an elementary school teacher then as a Curriculum Specialist coaching and training teachers and administrators in reading, writing and English Language development strategies.

Rabbi Elazar Bloom

​has been involved in Jewish education for almost 20 years. Most recently he has served as the Rav Ruchani and Tanach curriculum coordinator at Brauser Maimonides Academy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. On several occasions he has been recognized for his unique contributions to Jewish education, notably, with the North American Grinspoon-Steinhardt award for excellence in Jewish education. Rabbi Bloom is also a licensed psychotherapist in private practice specializing in couples and families. He, his wife Rivkah and their 5 children live in Hollywood, Florida. ​​

Rabbi Dr. Jane Kanarak

is Associate Professor of Rabbinics and Associate Dean of Academic Development and Advising in the Hebrew College Rabbinical School. She received her rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. An alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, she is the author of Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law and the co-editor of Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How It Happens and Motherhood in the Jewish Cultural Imagination, both of which were finalists for the National Jewish Book Award. 

Rabbi Sheryl Katzman

is the Rabbinics Initiative Leader of the Legacy Heritage Instructional Leadership Institute.  She leads the professional development program for enacting the Rabbinics standards and benchmarks in Jewish day schools, and is directing the development of the Rabbinics Standards and Benchmarks Compendium with a distinguished group of scholars and educators.  Sheryl began working with the Jewish Day School Standards and Benchmarks Project as a Tanakh TEC (Tanakh Education Consultant) in 2011 and has had the privilege of working with a wide spectrum of Jewish day schools across North America. 
 
Rabbi Katzman began her career in Day School education at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Metropolitan Chicago where she had the privilege of serving as the Rabbi in Residence, Middle and Elementary School principal. 
 
After earning a BA at the University of Michigan, Sheryl attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where she concentrated in Tanakh and earned rabbinic ordination and a Masters in Jewish Education. ​

Rabbi Alvan H. Kaunfer

was the founding Director of the Alperin Schechter Day School in Providence, which he headed for 13 years. He also served as a Rabbi at Temple Emanu-El, Providence, where he was responsible for educational programming and supervising the School and Youth Directors. Rabbi Kaunfer is a graduate of Brandeis University, Teachers’ College of Columbia University, and ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, from which institution he also holds a Doctoral degree in Education focusing on teaching Midrash in day schools.

​Rabbi Kaunfer has taught courses in Jewish Education at the Davidson School of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and at Hebrew College in Boston. He has published articles on education and on midrash in several professional journals and books.  Rabbi Kaunfer has been a TEC for the Standards and Benchmarks Tanakh Project for eight years, and a Rabbinics TEC for two years. Rabbi Kaunfer is married to Marcia Lapidus Kaunfer and he has two sons, Elie and Oren and six grandchildren.

Marcia Lapidus Kaunfer

served as a curriculum writer for Melton for many years, producing materials in the areas of Bible and Holidays.  A 1992 Covenant winner, she was head writer for the Matok Tanakh curriculum from 1999 until 2009.  She served variously as teacher, Assistant Director, and Head of Judaic Studies at the Schechter / JCDSRI School in Providence, Rhode Island for 28 years. 
Since 2008, Marcia has served as the TEC at several different schools: Kehilla Schechter Academy (formerly the South Area Solomon Schechter Day School) in Norwood, Massachusetts, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston, the Gesher Jewish Day School in Fairfax, Virginia, The Primary Jewish Day School of the Nation’s Capital in Washington, D.C., Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School in Chicago, the Rodeph Sholom School in Manhattan, and Middle School of the A. J. Heschel Middle School in Manhattan.  For the past four years she has served as the TEC at the A J Heschel Lower School and as TEC-At-Large.
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A native of Brookline, Massachusetts, Marcia holds degrees from Hebrew Teachers College, Brandeis University and Harvard Graduate School of Education. In addition to her work in Jewish education, Marcia is a Hebrew calligrapher, and the writer and producer of “Beatle Torah,” a musical based on the book of Bereisheet. She and her husband, Rabbi Alvan Kaunfer, are proud Sabba and Savta to six young Red Sox fans.

Dr. Marjorie Lehman

is associate professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at The Jewish Theological Seminary.  Her research in the field of Talmud and Rabbinics centers on four areas of study: Talmudic aggadah through a study of the sixteenth-century Ottoman collection of aggadic material, the EnYaaqov; Jewish gender studies through a commentary on Tractate Yoma; the history of the Hebrew book through an extensive project in the digital humanities; and the scholarship of teaching through a focused study of how students learn to read and critically analyze rabbinic texts.  This summer Dr. Lehman will be a fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, a fellowship also sponsored by the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University. There she will join a cohort of scholars who, like her, are working on a feminist commentary on the Babylonian Talmud.  She and Dr. Jane Kanarek (Hebrew College) are editing a volume, "Motherhood in the Jewish Cultural Imagination" (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization), which will be the sixth volume of a series focused on Jewish Cultural Studies. She also joins Dr. Jane Kanarek in editing a volume, “Learning to Read Talmud: What it Looks Like and How it Happens.”

Dr. Cindy Reich

is the Academic Director of Jewish Day School Standards and Benchmarks.  Since 2007 Cindy has been a Tanakh Educator Consultant (TEC) with the program, serving in community, Conservative, and Orthodox day schools across the United States and Canada. Prior to her work with Standards and Benchmarks, 
Cindy was the Director of the Talmud Torah of St. Paul Day School, a community school in Minnesota, where she also taught Jewish Studies and Hebrew for many years. Cindy has also worked as an independent consultant and coach on programs in general and Jewish education focusing on professional development, curriculum design, leadership, assessment, and evaluation.
 
Cindy holds degrees from Brown University, Hebrew Union College, and University of Southern California. She completed a doctorate in Evaluation Studies at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development in the College of Education and Human Development in 2015.  She is married to Rabbi Harold Kravitz, a Conservative congregational rabbi in Minneapolis. Her daughters, son, and daughter-in-law are all day school graduates.

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Judith Shapero

is the Associate Director, educational consultant, and head of Educational Technology at JDS Standards & Benchmarks.  Judith is a seasoned senior educational leader, having been Principal, Vice Principal, Curriculum Developer, teacher, and Department Head at Jewish day schools in the Toronto area, and has been a Course Director at York University. As Vice-Principal at TanenbaumCHAT, she spearheaded the Tanakh and Rabbinics Standards & Benchmarks curriculum enhancement projects as well as the Science & Religion and TanenbaumCHAT University initiatives. She has also worked in the community as a teacher at the Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning, as a Nehama Leibowitz Conference Director, Limmud presenter, and as the developer and teacher of a USCJ award-winning Family Education program. She is experienced in academic research, pursuing a Ph.D. at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and having worked in research at the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University.

Judith has won numerous awards and recognitions for her contributions to the fields of Jewish studies and innovative education.  These include the Gold Solomon Schechter Award for Jewish Family Education from USCJ, the Fannie and Robert Gordis Prize in Bible, the Revson Fellowship for Doctoral Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and York University’s Division of Humanities Excellence in Teaching Award.

Aviva Silverman

is the Field Services Director of Jewish Day School Standards and Benchmarks. Having joined the project in its first year of implementation, she has consulted with over 30 schools across denominations, in Canada and the United States. Aviva has earned degrees from the Jewish Theological Seminary, Hebrew University and the University of Toronto. She also was deeply involved with various Camps Ramah, in Canada, the United States and Jerusalem.


Aviva has held positions of leadership as Principal of Jewish Studies at Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit, as Director of Camp Ramah Day Camp in Jerusalem, as a member of the original writing team for the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, and as the first educational consultant and teacher in the Tikvah program for special needs campers at Camp Ramah in Canada.
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During her career as a Jewish Educator, Aviva has taught, developed and published curriculum, supervised, mentored and coached students, teachers and administrators in a wide variety of Jewish educational schools and settings. Together with her husband, Dr. Mark Smiley, and by co-parenting children with wildly different learning styles, Aviva continues to seek and appreciate the “tzelem ehohim” in every individual.

Dr. Alex Sinclair

is a Jewish educational thinker, teacher and writer.  He is the Lead Educational Consultant for Educating for Impact, an initiative, funded by several European Jewish philanthropies and the Government of Israel, which works with Jewish day schools throughout Europe.  He grew up in London, England, and received an MA (Oxon) from Balliol College Oxford.  He received his PhD in Jewish Education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was thereafter, between 2002 and 2019, a faculty member, either full or adjunct, for the Davidson School of JTS, creating and directing its ground-breaking Israel education short- and long-term programs. Along the way, he has taught or worked for the Hartman Institute, the Schechter Institute, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Hebrew Union College, and the Jewish Agency (Makom). He has run workshops for adults on Israel education, and also has extensive teaching experience in a wide variety of K-12 contexts, including synagogue school, day school and summer camp.  He has published several academic articles on Jewish education and Israel education, op-eds in Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post, and is the author of “Loving the Real Israel: An Educational Agenda for Liberal Zionism”.

Alex has been involved in the Legacy Heritage Instructional Leadership Institute from its inception, as a writer as well as a consultant to schools. He lives with his family in Modiin, Israel, and is very partial to chocolate (British or European only, please).