In July 2021, M² has celebrated a major milestone – our first-ever immersive multi-day in-person seminar in Israel, paving the way for new and exciting developments for M² in Israel. We are thrilled to have collaborated with the Be’eri Program of the Shalom Hartman Institute and with Israel’s Ministry of Education for an intensive and enriching four-day seminar, which brought together 25 impressive educators in picturesque Zichron Ya’akov.
Among the activities on the schedule was a glassblowing workshop generating discussion about the complex and delicate process of creativity and education; the fragility, the easily broken potential, and the importance of adaptability and teamwork.
How The Initiative Was Born
Alon More, Director of the Be’eri Program at the Shalom Hartman Institute, was a member of the third cohort of M²’s Senior Educators Cohort (SEC 3) when he first got the idea of bringing the M² approach to an Israeli audience. He suggested the idea to M²’s CEO, Shuki Taylor, who embraced it.
In early 2020, the idea grew into a collaboration with the Hartman institute with the mutual goal of creating a supportive, engaged group of teachers, educators, and leaders. Shortly after, it expanded even further as we welcomed Israel’s Ministry of Education to the project.
“The Value in Values” seminar was led by Shuki Taylor, CEO of M²; Assaf Granot, M²’s Director of Israel Programs and a graduate of SEC 3; Shuvi Hoffman, Diaspora Education Manager at the National Library of Israel and a graduate of SEC 4; and Alon More.
This impressive team has known each other for a long time. Assaf and Alon are graduates of the same SEC cohort, and Alon and Shuvi were previously colleagues at Be’eri – and Shuvi participated in SEC 4 following Alon’s recommendation.
The seminar was attended by national teaching instructors from the Be’eri Program, as well as instructors in the field “Jewish-Israeli Culture” from the heritage department of Israel’s Ministry of Education, led by Superintendent Yuval Seri.
Bringing Values to Life
“When we speak about Jewish Values Education, educators tend to teach about a value: its significance, its contexts, and its purpose. Less often, educators teach in ways that allow their students to experience the value itself. In this seminar, we focused on the shift from learning about a value to experiencing the value. We explored how values come to life, how they are embodied, and how they drive who our students might become. Beyond engaging in these theories, seminar participants experimented with putting the theories to practice, allowing them to sharpen the skills and the tools necessary to integrate these ideas in the educational Israeli system”, says Shuki Taylor, M² CEO. “We hope that this will allow students to not only know the values, which their importance cannot be overstated- but to also experience them”.
Alon More said: “While I was participating in the M² Senior Educators Cohort a few years ago, I was already thinking about how this worldview could be brought to Israel and be applied by Israeli educators – and what the similarities and differences would be.”
“Now that ‘The Value of Values’ has finally taken place, I can say that the M² way of thinking works well for an Israeli audience. Of course, values always come in a specific context, not in a vacuum, and the context in Israel is different – Israeli educators face very different challenges and problems. It was a great seminar, and the group is already applying what they’ve learned and bringing the terminology to their organizations”, says More.