Michelle Shapiro Abraham, Director of Program Development for the Campaign for Youth Engagement at the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), as well as a consultant for the Foundation for Jewish Camp, and a clinical faculty member in the HUC-Jewish Institute of Religion Executive MAJE Program; Dr. Sandra Ostrowicz Lilienthal, Curriculum Developer and Instructor at The Rose and Jack Orloff Central Agency for Jewish Education of Broward County in Davie, FL; and Amy Meltzer, Lead Kindergarten teacher at Lander-Grinspoon Academy in Northampton, MA, are the three Covenant Award recipients for 2015.

The Covenant Award is among the most prominent citations in the Jewish community, and is awarded to three educators every year after a rigorous selection process.  Including this year’s awardees, 75 Jewish educators have received a Covenant Award since its establishment in 1991.

“Each year this special evening gives us the opportunity to celebrate and honor excellence,” said Eli Evans, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation, in his introductory remarks. “We encourage Jewish educators to dream beyond their classrooms, and to treat those classrooms as laboratories in which their best ideas can be tested and shared with the wider world.”

The Covenant Foundation is a program of the Crown Family Philanthropies and members of the Crown family – including James Crown, Jordan Goodman, and Sara Crown Star  – presented the three recipients and bestowed the Award.  Each of the 2015 recipients received $36,000, and each of their institutions, $5,000.

Accepting the Covenant Award, each recipient spoke about the holy work of Jewish education, and their individual commitments to continue working to ensure that future generations feel the impact and inspiration that creative and dedicated teachers can have on Jewish life.

MICHELLE SHAPIRO ABRAHAM, receiving The Covenant Award from James Crown, said that overcoming her own learning challenges as a child and young adult instilled in her a passion for creativity and inclusivity that empowered her to design and introduce bold initiatives that have altered the educational landscape.

“I stand with incredible gratitude on the shoulders of all of those teachers and mentors who saw potential and possibilities,” she said. “They taught me that anything is possible if we are willing to imagine new ways of doing things, if we dedicate ourselves to creative solutions, and if we are willing to challenge our assumptions about what has always worked.

“Whether it is a little girl who needs to learn to spell with her fingers in sand, or a child who needs us to reimagine Jewish summer camp to meet his interests, or parents who long since walked away from Jewish education and need us to create new approaches to synagogue learning, or teens who left after B’nei Mitzvah and need pathways back in … we need to be open to difference.”

Her roles – and resulting effect – within Jewish education are many and varied, including author of children’s books, writer of curricula, director of a synagogue school, and creator of summer camping programs, among others.  Abraham’s multi-faceted professional career reflects a closely held belief that Jewish education itself must transcend labels, boundaries and silos in order to make the most lasting impression and generate the greatest short- and long-term rewards.

As Director of Program Development for the Campaign for Youth Engagement at URJ since 2014, and before that as a consulting partner there, Abraham has created educational experiences that have transformed the lives of thousands of Jewish youth, and altered approaches of camp staff and educators.

In her role at the Foundation for Jewish Camp, she was instrumental in designing Jewish values-based curricula customized for URJ specialty camps. As manager of the URJ Service Corps program, she works with college-age camp staff to bring camp-type experiences to synagogues during the off-season, building a continuum of exposures throughout the year and solidifying community.  She helped develop the Kivun program, offering professional development opportunities for camp specialists.

For 12 years, Abraham served as Director of Education at Temple Sholom in Fanwood, NJ, where she designed and oversaw educational approaches and programming for the religious school and for the congregation as a whole.  She is created a new approach to family and congregational learning that engages the entire synagogue in the same topics concurrently, fortifying community and cross-generational ties.

“Thank you for all of you who join me on this journey – as my teachers, my mentors, my partners,” she said in her remarks.  “I am humbled and honored by the work we do and it is truly a joy to walk into the world of possibilities with you.”

DR. SANDRA OSTROWICZ LILIENTHAL, accepting the Covenant Award from Jordan Goodman, described her dedication to adult Jewish education and the critical place it occupies on the continuum of Jewish continuity and community growth.

“Jewish education is holy work,” she said. “I have the privilege to work with people who, as adults, felt that something was missing in their lives, who are searching for meaning and for answers to life’s difficult questions, who want to become an integral, active, part of this chain of tradition.  I can relate.  I only came into Jewish education as an adult.

“Adult learners understand that if they know an aleph, they have the obligation to teach an aleph.  They become role models for their friends, spouses, children and grandchildren. They promote intergenerational engagement and contribute … to building the Jewish future.”

Affiliated with Orloff CAJE since 2006, Lilienthal has transformed the agency, its educational impact, and the face of adult Jewish education in South Florida. She has done this through not only her dedication to teaching and her students, but also by designing and using new curricula and approaches that fuel personal and community growth through Jewish knowledge and perspective.

Central in Dr. Lilienthal’s toolkit is Pillars of Judaism, a four-module, 50-session curriculum that she wrote and designed. The depth and success of the curriculum has gained national recognition and interest by other agencies as research indicates it generates stronger Jewish identity and more meaningful Jewish experiences.

In addition to her affiliation with Orloff CAJE, where she has also created course materials for the Midrasha Graduate program, Dr. Lilienthal is an adjunct professor at Gratz College and is an instructor for The Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning.

“I am forever grateful for this opportunity and for what it will lead to,” she said. “I shall work hard to continue being deserving of this award, as well as to inspire younger generations to join our ranks.”

AMY MELTZER, presented with The Covenant Award by Sara Crown Star, turned the energy and exuberance emanating from her kindergarten class into a metaphor for the possibilities of creative and inspired Jewish education.

“Joyful, engaging Jewish education creates joyful, engaged Jews,” she said in her acceptance speech. “There is a growing trend to make kindergarten look more like the rest of school.  Instead, we should be making the rest of school – and all our learning experiences – look more like kindergarten.

“Am I suggesting that learners of every age should create midrash out of toilet paper rolls and pipe cleaners?  No, not necessarily.  But no one ever fell in love with learning, or with Judaism, from workbooks, cookie-cutter art projects or flashcards.  It’s so crucial that all our learners, from youngest to oldest, have the opportunity to create, to design, to take risks, and even to play, on a regular basis.”

As lead Kindergarten teacher at Lander-Grinspoon Academy (LGA), Meltzer has designed and implemented programs and project-based learning experiences for her students that are tangible, unique and exciting, and that reflect her standing at the corner where education, community building, family engagement, the arts, Jewish identity and Jewish values meet.

Meltzer created a popular, resource-rich blog at the school as a two-way mode of communication with parents and offering information about children’s learning and resources and ideas to bring lessons and traditions into homes and the community.

She also pioneered family programming for the kindergarten class to actively engage parents in the curriculum and Jewish life, and to offer a portal for their own immersion into Jewish knowledge and practices.  Believing that children at the youngest ages should practice Jewish values, Meltzer fostered relationships with surrounding social service agencies to engage students in community life and gemilut chasadim, acts of lovingkindness.

One of the biggest manifestations of her integrated approach is the annual Gan (Kindergarten) Opera, an original production and an initiative cited as an exemplary model of arts-based education by the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA.

She has envisioned, designed and led numerous programs for families with young children in the Northampton area and nationally, oversees a monthly program for pre-school families in partnership with PJ Library, and she has led tot and family Shabbat and High Holiday services at local synagogues. She travels to schools, synagogues and JCC’s throughout the country to lead programs based on her two children’s books, The Shabbat Princess and A Mezuzah on the Door.

Meltzer is also a founder of the Teva Learning Center, where she imagined, designed and directed environmental education experiences for day school students.

“All of us in this room understand that both learning and teaching are forms of avodat hashem, of doing God’s work in the world,” she said in her acceptance speech. “The question we need to ask is how to make this work deeply joyful for both students and educators.”

For guidelines on nominating an educator for a 2016 Covenant Award, and to view a list and biographies of past recipients, visit www.covenantfn.org.

The Covenant Foundation is a program of the Crown Family Philanthropies