Makom Community NEWS

Creating This Year’s Communal Brit (Two-Way Promise)

Drumroll please! I proudly present to you, the Makom Community Brit (two-way promise) for the 24-25 school year. These are the promises or community agreements we’re making to each other in order to help everyone at Makom feel safe, loved, and ready to learn. At Makom Community we… Help people when they want it. Listen to each other. Respect each…

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Universality of Tzedek

Starting the school year off by chasing after tzedek (justice) can be a challenging feat to accomplish, but this year especially our Makom Lab School is in a prime position to do this first hand! Being in the third week and going into the fourth week of teaching at Makom, things are finally starting to fall into place, but that…

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Tzedek: An Opportunity to Give

This fall at Makom, we’re starting out the year by doing a deep dive into tzedek, the value of justice. Tzedek comes up over and over again in Jewish wisdom, most famously in Deuteronomy 16:20, which calls upon us to view justice as something that “you will chase after, that you may live and own the land that Adonai your…

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A Letter from our Executive Director & Founder

Beverly Socher-Lerner

Beverly Socher-Lerner

Dear Families and Jewish Educators,

Thank you for visiting Makom Community online! We are a makom (place) where kiddos and their families experience a joyful community that embraces them and their whole family for exactly who they are! We envision a future where Jewish Education is joyful and accessible for all who want to partake. In Jewish tradition, a makom is the kind of place where someone grows into who they CAN be. We hope our makom will be that kind of place, too.

You can expect warm, personal, and playful experiences for your child or grandchild at Makom Community. Makom Community is a living laboratory for a new model of Jewish Education. We strive to create a high-quality experiences for urban families who are on a shared adventure that prioritizes empathy and connection in a durable way and brings Jewish learning into our lives.

At Makom Community, our educators are guided by our unique pedagogy, Jewish Placemaking. Jewish Placemaking encourages learners to ask mind-boggling questions, invites kiddos to co-create an environment with their educators and friends that invites questions and meaning-making from Jewish wisdom, and welcomes families as interpreters of Jewish wisdom, regardless of the way they came to be a part of the Jewish community. Our learning is focused on the social-emotional skills our tradition teaches, which we live each day in our community.

Our work is not limited within the space of our Lab School and family-centered community. We are constantly researching, enhancing, and expanding tools to support our pedagogy. We then take these lessons and provide professional development and support to educators across the country who are also doing the holy work of adding children and their families voices to generations of Torah. We call this Makom Making.

We warmly invite you to explore all that Makom has to offer and we look forward to forming relationships with you that will help shape Makom Community for years to come!

Warmly,
Beverly