Spending  a weekend with teens who are excited to learn about engaging with Israel is an exhilarating, and for me at least, almost a spiritual experience. I’ve just returned from The iCenter’s MZ Teen iConnect with Israel conference. Eighty teens from all over North America explored how they could make Israel more a part of […]

Bruce Springsteen gave the keynote address at the just ended South By Southwest (SXSW) Music Conference and Festival  in Austin.  The Boss’s remarks focused on the meaning of music  in his own musical development.  His entire talk can be found here at NPR.  As I listened I heard him say something that gave me pause […]

A little over a month ago, I started taking an online course called “Connected Coaching” offered by Powerful learning Practice- Professional Development for 21st Century Educators.  I discovered this learning opportunity  in a tweet posted by Caren Levine (@jlearn20).  It’s making quite an impact on me because when I started the course I had no […]

Technology Covenant

Milken Community High School

 

Rabbi Gordon Barnat Kunin

Rabbi Sara Brandes

Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer

 

As a member of the Milken Community, I commit myself to the following:

 

A few weeks ago I learned on NPR about a collision between 21st century technology and early 20th century classical music.  It seems that in the middle of a particularly moving portion of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony someone’s cellphone began to ring.  The conductor lowered his baton, silencing the orchestra, and waited for the offending device […]

It’s that time of year when lists seem to abound: Best Music of 2011; Most Trending Topic of 2011; Person of the Year; Top Movies of 2011 and on and on and on. This prompted me to think about what were the past year’s most influential ideas in Jewish education. When I asked colleagues what […]

I have the good fortune to be working with a nationally based group of educators and teens associated with the iCenter’s MZ Teen Israel  Internship. The purpose of this program is to follow up on teens’  Israel summer experiences, through a framework consisting of  a series of yearlong educational and social activities.  The young people […]

Something has been bothering me lately. Where are all the congregational educators? Let me back up. If you’ve read my previous posts, you know that I’ve been taking part in on-line conversations about Jewish education. They’ve been great. They’ve opened doors that lead to a bevy of potential Jewish futures. But there’s one element that […]

The universe is expanding.  That’s the core of the Big Bang Theory. As the cosmos gets older, everything in it moves apart.  Not to delve too much into such esoterica like Hubbles Law, I need to affirm – אני מאמין – I’m a believer.  In the last week I experienced something akin to this phenomenon in […]

Of all the recent retrospectives of the late Steve Jobs, the one that has had the most impact on me contained the observation that he “hated traditional market research”.  It was a comment made by one of the guests (advertising consultant, Cindy Gallup) on the public radio show “The Take Away” on Friday, October 7. […]