Makom Community NEWS
Creating Opportunities for Agency
A few months ago, I posted a vlog about how the third and fourth-grade learners in my kvutzah (cohort) were crying out for agency in the classroom, as well as my attempts to balance giving them that agency while still meeting our learning goals. As we near both the culmination of this project (the development of a classroom student-led leadership…
Building on Learning Throughout the Year
What does l’dor v’dor (from generation to generation) mean? How is Torah passed from generation to generation? Our final unit for the year is focusing on uplifting women’s voices and perspectives that are generally left out of the Torah and other Jewish texts. As a queer man I have also had the experience of feeling left out of certain spaces….
Accessing Critical Discourse through Prophetess Text Study
Women of TaNaKh are often overshadowed by their spouses and male counterparts. It’s difficult to find text that focuses on female narratives, but that makes it all the more necessary to do so. Why? Aside from the obvious need for egalitarian study, exploring female-focused narratives offers us different lessons, perspectives, and biases to consider critically. For the third unit of…
A Letter from our Executive Director & Founder
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 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