Read on to explore how two other organizations are utilizing Everyone Counts resources to spread awareness of this critical issue through art, storytelling, and more.

Uniting people through storytelling

Honeymoon Israel (HMI) is one organization making the most of Everyone Counts. HMI, which provides immersive trips to Israel for cohorts of couples, aims to help young couples feel welcome in the Jewish community and inspired to deepen their connections to Jewish values and traditions on their own terms.

The group serves a diverse audience, says director of educational talent, Lynnley Miller, and that’s what makes Everyone Counts such a good fit. “It feels like an accessible entry point for everyone,” she said. “It features deep Jewish wisdom and values presented in a way that all participants – both Jewish and non-Jewish – can really engage with.”

The staff used the resource, “Every Human has a Story,” which leverages storytelling to share more about individual hostages and highlight common values. Now, they plan on adapting it for a virtual program featuring Rachel Goldberg, who will share more about her son, Hersh, beyond the pain of his captivity. The storytelling format is well aligned with HMI’s priorities, says Emma Dunn, midwest regional director of community engagement.

“We want to tie the lives and experiences of the hostages and those who love them to a story that people can easily remember,” she said. “We want our community to recognize that there’s so much more to their stories.”

Central to the toolkit is the biblical concept of Pidyon Shvuyim – the redemption of captives. The mitzvah has deep roots in Jewish history, and the HMI team wants to further explore it with their community through storytelling. The facilitators also plan to close with ways U.S.-based audience members can advocate for the hostages’ release, and recite the prayer for redeeming captives.

Miller says the resources have already inspired deep conversation. “They’ve given us an entry point into engaging with a topic that is very important,” she says.

Inspiring action for hostages through art

Another educator who has found creative ways to connect her students with Everyone Counts is Professor Marion Gribetz, who is a Kol HaOt faculty member and Kol HaOt Teacher Institute for the Arts mentor, as well as a Hebrew College faculty member. Moved by the installations at Kikar Chatufim – Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, as well as those across Israel, she began photographing them. Soon, she had photographed a whole series, and written reflections to accompany her shots, but she wasn’t sure what to do with them. When she heard about the opportunity to contribute to Everyone Counts, it clicked.

“I knew I wanted to use these pieces in some way to inspire action, inspire emotion, and inspire people,” she said. “Art is a great way to express feelings and bring awareness and knowledge.”

Her photos are featured in the resource, “Every Person is an Entire World,” which asks participants to consider how artistic expressions can inspire us to remember the hostages. Not only did she contribute, but Gribetz is also using it as a tool in her own teaching. For the online course she teaches on spirituality and Jewish education, she uploaded the toolkit’s lesson plan and resources directly to the course materials.

“I’m asking graduate students to reflect on how art can help activate people’s spirituality and care and connection to the Jewish people,” she says.

Gribetz is hopeful that it will inspire her students to care for others, feel connected, and aspire to make the world a better place. As active educators teaching in Jewish settings themselves, she expects to see some of them bring the resource into their own classrooms.

“I believe the message transcends this particular horrible moment in Jewish history,” she says.

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More than 130 Israeli hostages still remain in captivity in Gaza, necessitating ongoing and pervasive awareness and activism. Everyone Counts provides educators, community leaders, families, and organizations across diverse denominations and affiliations the tools to guide learners toward immediate, effective, and sustained advocacy, dialogue, and action around the Mitzvah (imperative) of Pidyon Shvuyim (hostage liberation).

The initiative kicked off during a webinar on January 14, 2024, the day that marked 100 days of captivity. Rachel Goldberg, mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken hostage on October 7th during the Nova Music Festival with a severe injury that severed his arm, shared a special message with the webinar participants about the importance of this continued and unrelenting activism.

“There are still 136 Israeli hostages in Gaza who have had no communication with their families and without access to medical care, and we must continue to advocate for their immediate release,” said Rachel Goldberg. “Since October 7th, we have reached millions of individuals with our call to action to free our son Hersh and all the hostages, and each time, we’ve gotten the question, what can we do to support you? With Everyone Counts, communities across the world have a powerful and growing collection of resources to use as access points to inspire action and call for the hostages’ release.”

“Through its wide network of Jewish educational leaders, M² is poised to empower activism to free the hostages across diverse institutions and communities,” said Shuki Taylor, CEO and Founder, M². “Pidyon Shvuyim, the mitzvah of freeing hostages has never been more urgent, and we are here to support the Jewish people in this most meaningful, critical way. We must keep this cause top of mind at all times. This is not only about our community. It is about humanity. Use this toolkit, share and distribute, and join as a partner. We are also encouraging organizations to contribute resources to the website, allowing us to add more voices and perspectives.”

“While we don’t have the power to directly influence Hamas to release the hostages, that does not absolve us from the deep responsibility to do everything in our power to work towards that goal. Both Jewish and universal values drive the real imperative to move people to action on their behalf and save these lives. We deeply believe in the power of education and community, to mobilize and create change in the world. The goal of this project is to provide the content and the tools, in a creative, thoughtful, and deep way, to raise awareness, and to bring about that change”, says Elyssa Moss Rabinowitz, CEO and co-founder of Kol HaOt.

Everyone Counts features actionable resources that focus on the following values: freedom and justice, peoplehood and community, responsibility and leadership, human dignity and compassion, and Jewish moments.

Explore Everyone Counts >

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About M²
M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education helps educators and organizations design compelling educational experiences that help their learners find meaning and relevance in Jewish life. For more information, please visit ieje.org.

About Kol HaOt
Kol HaOt ignites meaningful Jewish learning and living through the creative arts. They create immersive experiences- exhibits, workshops, performances; design professional development programs for artists and educators as change agents; and develop physical and virtual creative educational toolkits and resources. For more information please visit: www.kolhaot.com.

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My family and me at the March for Israel Rally

View of the National Mall – crowds extending towards the Capitol and back towards the Washington Monument

The US Capitol juxtaposed with the Israeli flag and a poster with photos of all of the hostages (the entire sign was designed to look like a US flag)

Left – US and Israel flags in the foreground, with the Washington Monument and crowds in the background.
Right – The sun beginning to set over the National Mall – with large crowds still gathered.

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And Dr. Alexandria Fanjoy Silver, a Jewish history teacher at the Anne and Max TanenbaumCHAT Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, is at the forefront of upending how these conflicts are taught. Much of that is thanks to her experience participating in M²’s Senior Educators Cohort (SEC) — and particularly M²’s focus on values and conflict pedagogy — which she says, “revolutionized” her approach to teaching.

Teaching the Holocaust through the lens of the perpetrator

For decades, most Holocaust education and storytelling in the Jewish community has been focused on those caught in the tightening Nazi noose: who they were, what they did, and how some survived.

But Silver believes there should be a larger shift in the way educators approach many conflicts in Jewish history. Silver wants to start teaching about the Holocaust by focusing on a more contentious topic — the stories of the perpetrators, from the Nazis to willing participants in the occupied countries.

“I know this can be a controversial position,” said Silver. “But I argue that where the real lessons of the Holocaust lie are in the stories of those who chose to participate. Victims so often did not have agency, or the ability to choose their life path. If we believe in the goal of ‘Never Again,’ we need to take a closer look at the people who did this.”

Much like the famous Primo Levi quote, “Here, there is no why,” little attention was paid to “why” previously ordinary men engaged in wholesale mass murder, painting them in vague brushstrokes as just “evil people.” It’s a simplistic approach to say that all of the functionaries were inherently ‘willing executioners,’ explained Silver.

“The Nazi leadership who conceived of the Holocaust were absolutely evil. But they never could have implemented these plans without the thousands of people beneath them who carried out their orders,” she said. “These people were often not by definition evil people, but people who made a lot of horrible decisions.”

Making history relatable

“The stories of the perpetrators are especially relevant right now, when all this antisemitism is bubbling up and suddenly becoming acceptable again,” Silver said. She pointed out that right before World War II, low-level antisemitism was a completely acceptable worldview for communities across Europe.

Hitler, for example, rose to power on a strong business platform. There were many Germans who disagreed with his racial theories, but shrugged their shoulders and countered that he was ‘good for the economy.’

Across North America, many forms of anti-Jewish and antisemitic behavior are on the rise. In the last number of years, groups (protestors and otherwise) that co-opt the symbols of the Nazis are more common.

Studying the Holocaust from this perspective encourages students to dig deep into questions of citizenship, governance, and identifying and addressing hatred within the society. It forces students to ask questions: How did the perpetrators justify their actions? How did they dehumanize their victims? Researching and answering these questions can help students recognize issues like antisemitism or discrimination against Jews and other minorities today.

Getting kids interested in ancient conflicts

Using M²’s conflict pedagogy and value-based education, Silver also revamped the curriculum about ancient and medieval Jewish history.

“Sometimes, classics are a tough sell for the kids, because it’s hard to get them excited to talk about Babylon — and ancient and medieval curricula in general,” said Silver. So, she framed these ancient periods through value conflicts from the time period that are not unfamiliar to students today. Hellenism in ancient Israel, for example, is a relatable struggle between assimilation and separation, innovation and tradition.

The Maccabean Revolt can be understood as an urban vs. rural conflict. Framing these historical periods through archetypal value conflicts helped Silver’s ninth- and tenth-grade students stay engaged and create meaning. Creating these new, creative approaches to learning about history, with guidance from M², has resonated with students on a deeper and more personal level, she said.

“As the world becomes increasingly divided, education is one tool to ensure that students can identify, acknowledge, and take action against issues like antisemitism, polarization, and discrimination,” said Silver. “It’s so essential for our students to look at history and analyze the decisions people made, and compare those narratives to our lives today.”

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Dr. Alexandria Fanjoy Silver is a Jewish history teacher at the Anne and Max TanenbaumCHAT Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto and a teacher at Camp Ramah in Canada. She participated in M²’s Senior Educators Cohort 3 and recently attended M²’s 18×18 summit. Watch Alexandria’s interview about her M² experience >

The post Back to school with a timely and unique perspective on teaching Jewish history appeared first on The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education.

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Then, several years ago, the community decided to expand their kindergarten. When they turned to the Lauder Foundation for support, the organization asked them if they wanted to open a Jewish school as well.

“We had never considered opening a school before,” says Maxim Delchev, Director of Jewish Education in Bulgaria and M² Senior Educators Cohort (SEC) alumnus. “There’s a big difference between running a summer camp and an official school in the middle of Sofia.”

Pursuing the Jewish day school of their dreams

The community decided to embrace this game-changing opportunity — and Delchev, the first person to hold his position in the Jewish community since the 1930s, was at the helm of the exciting project. While it was a big leap of faith for the community to launch a school, it offered Jewish educators the opportunity to start with a clean slate and let themselves dream big.

The community spent a year working on the vision and logistics, asking meaningful questions like, what kind of Jewish education do we want to teach? What kind of leaders do we want to develop? What values do we hope to instill in our children and in our community?

In the midst of building the Lauder Day School — the first formal Jewish educational institution in decades, Delchev also joined M²‘s SEC. Alongside leading Jewish educators from across the world, Delchev found a framework to explore some of these questions and to consider the different types of education that the community could impart at camp and at school.

“There are certain educational goals you can’t achieve through a camp setting alone. While our camp was doing wonderful work with experiential education, there’s education that should happen at a school and there’s education that should happen at a camp,” says Delchev. “M² has helped me bridge the two kinds of education, experiential and formal, in ways that complement each other rather than compete.”

Delchev’s M² experience also helped him realize how much Bulgaria’s small community had accomplished on their own, and how they could continue to grow, without having to outsource their educators.

“We used to bring people from abroad to teach, but then we realized that we don’t need people to fly in, teach for a month, and leave,” Delchev says. “We need to invest in our own people and train them, so that we can strengthen our identity and grow together.”

M²’s curriculum has helped Delchev understand the educational theories behind experiential education and share those learnings with burgeoning community educators. He hopes that many more Bulgarian Jewish community members will take part in M² programming and events.

Exploring universal Jewish questions

Delchev says that because he came from a newly relaunched community, he used to feel that the Bulgarian Jewish community was “lacking,” compared to more established Jewish communities.

But the diversity of his SEC cohort helped him realize that almost every Jewish community around the world is dealing with the same questions: What does it mean to be Jewish? How do we express our Judaism, and in what ways? How do we connect Judaism to the outside world and the things that are happening around us? How do we connect to the State of Israel? And How do we stay connected to our memories and our histories?

Today, the Lauder Day School serves 200 students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The community is currently building a new campus that will house both the school and JCC, which Delchev believes will further strengthen Jewish identity and connection.

“Thirty years ago, we knew very little about Judaism,” he says. “Back then, Bulgarian Jews wanted to learn how to light Shabbat candles. Now that we know how to light the candles, we can have much deeper discussions. We can ask: What’s the meaning behind this tradition? What makes it special for my family and me? We have the opportunity to engage community members in ways that are meaningful to them.”

Maxim Delchev is the Director of Jewish Education in Bulgaria and Chair of the Central Israelite Religious Council in Sofia. He is an M² Senior Educators Cohort 5 alumnus.

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