Makom Community NEWS

Slumber Party, Anyone?

Teaching through fun and joy is the best way to have a lesson be remembered! Our curriculum unit is currently about brachah (blessing) and reflecting on how we can choose brachah at challenging or transitional moments in our lives. We’ve been comparing two pivotal moments near the end of Moshe’s life. The first was when he failed to choose brachah…

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What is Love? Father Please Tell Me!

Parents, educators, Romans, and countrymen, how do the children under our care see us? Do they notice all of the effort and care we put into their well-being and education? How well do they really know us? In Anafim (5th-7th grade), we put these questions to the test.  The current curriculum that Anafim has been exploring is Sacred Choices. This…

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Perspectives and Places

Over the last few weeks, our Makom team has been asking, “How can multimodal approaches invite perspective-taking between learners and characters in text, and between learners and their peers?” Being able to view a situation from another person’s point of view to understand their thoughts, feelings, and motivations is a vital empathy-building skill. We already know our learners to be…

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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 for your whole family.

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 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, 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 Learning Lab 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