The three 2010 Covenant Award recipients, who have made significant marks in their communities, and have designed and used innovative educational approaches, are: Jan Darsa, Director of Jewish Education at Facing History and Ourselves in Brookline, MA; Beth Huppin, a Judaic Studies teacher at the Seattle Jewish Community School; and Dr. Bernard Steinberg, President and Director of Harvard Hillel.

The award, considered by Jewish educators and community leaders to be among the most prominent citations on the Jewish landscape, goes to three educators every year after a rigorous selection process. Including the 2010 awardees, 60 Jewish educators have received a Covenant Award since its establishment in 1991, and this year’s honorees were selected from more than 130 nominees.

“In small and large ways, each of the educators who have received the Covenant Award has helped to make a Jewish educational renaissance not only imaginable, but possible,” said Eli Evans, chairman of the board of the Foundation, in remarks to hundreds of guests at the event. “Award recipients cannot be characterized easily. They do not share one denomination, pedagogical approach, or definition of teaching. The one commonality among these uncommon people is their abiding love of Judaism and the Jewish people and their devotion to the perpetuation of our Jewish heritage.”

The Covenant Foundation was founded in 1990 in a partnership between the Crown Family Foundation and JESNA. Members of the Crown family – including Renee Crown, Lester Crown, and Steven Crown – presented the three educators with the Covenant Award at a special event during the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America.

Each of the three Covenant Award recipients will receive $36,000, and each of their institutions will receive $5,000.

In their acceptance speeches, each of the three Covenant Award recipients spoke of the passions that have shaped and propelled them, and the primacy of Jewish education in ensuring community engagement, continuity and vitality.

Jan Darsa, Director of Jewish Education at Facing History and Ourselves for the last 15 years, is a trailblazing advocate for – and practitioner of – framing Holocaust education in a modern, actionable and relevant way.

The organization, based in Brookline, MA, is a leader in developing programs and curricula promoting tolerance and understanding, and utilizes education as a tool to strengthen civil societies of conscience throughout the world. The group aims to move students from being passive bystanders to being active upstanders with the confidence to speak out and act on the Jewish imperative to not stand by idly.

As Director of Jewish Education, she has built an original and dynamic Jewish framework for examining the Holocaust, history and human behavior with curricula, activities and resources that incorporate and explore issues of Jewish history, ethics, and identity.

“To be honored here tonight in the field of Jewish education is humbling, exciting and quite frankly miraculous,” she said after accepting the Covenant Award from Renee Crown and describing how her love of Judaism and education began at a young age, when her father read biblical stories to her.

Turning to her work at Facing History and Ourselves, she described the imperative of using the Holocaust not only as a history lesson, but a pathway to tolerance and participation.

“Using our materials and pedagogy, teachers tap the moral philosophers in each of their students as they encourage them to become good citizens who will learn to recognize the dangers of indifference and the need for social action.”

“Thank you to Covenant and to all of my colleagues. Everyday you exemplify a great optimism by having full faith and commitment to education.”

Beth Huppin has taught day school Judaic Studies at the Seattle Jewish Community School since 1995 and is currently a fifth-grade teacher there. She is also a middle school and adult education teacher at Congregation Beth Shalom in Seattle.

She is widely recognized by colleagues, students, parents and others in the community as an inspiring teacher and leader who puts her stamp on Jewish education by injecting Jewish values and action – both in and out of the classroom – into curricula and the lives of her students.

“Treating others with compassion is all that really matters in our lives since that is what will accompany and define us for all eternity,” she said after receiving the Covenant Award from Steven Crown. “The purpose of Jewish education is to help our students understand and act upon this. Kind, generous behavior must be the topic of every lesson, no matter what the subject, every day.”

Not satisfied with transmitting information, she regularly calls her students to action. Once a month, for example, she takes her fifth-grade students at Seattle Jewish Community School to serve meals to homeless persons, and participants have described the experience as transformative.

“Being a teacher is an awesome responsibility and opportunity, day in and day out, to teach about the importance of the way we treat each other … Human relationships can be profoundly complicated. As teachers, we recognize this and we guide our students to find their own unique gifts that they can contribute to the world through serving others.”

Dr. Bernard Steinberg has served as President and Director of Harvard Hillel since 1993. He is known across the field of Jewish education for an entrepreneurial and expansive vision that has strengthened institutions and enlightened and empowered new generations of Jewish youth to shape the Jewish people, become leaders and improve the world.

At Harvard Hillel, which serves the cultural, religious, educational, social and political needs of the undergraduate and graduate communities, Steinberg is credited with solidifying it as the central address for Jewish life at the university. He has cultivated pluralistic and interfaith initiatives, emphasized rigorous Israel education, increased student participation, and developed programming integrating Jewish study with leadership development.

In accepting the Covenant Award from Lester Crown, he paid homage to the centrality of Jewish education to the community and the recognition that it deserves.

“I am particularly honored to receive this honor from the Covenant Foundation because when I was growing up, the very idea of the Covenant Foundation and what it stands for was absolutely unimaginable – that Jewish education would actually be put in the heart of our community, that Jewish education would be understood as something that demanded a practical necessity, that excellence was not something to be seen as elite, but something that the entire community in its diversity deserved.”

And he framed education as a sacred partnership between teacher and student.

“Over and over and over again I discover that my own growth and my very well being depends on my students. Although I have students of all adult ages, most of my students are young adults at a crossroads in their lives. Although at different plays in life, they and I walk the same path. We share the quest to discover and to articulate personal meaning, to build vibrant community, to build lives of purpose. These aspirations, like humility, are lifelong works in progress that presuppose and generate relationships of trust.

“It is an enormous privilege to be trusted by young people, to be invited into their lives, to sing with them and laugh with them and sometimes cry, to listen to their voices and to join their conversation. For me, it is as if I am joining a conversation with the future.”

“The Covenant Award gives deserved recognition to those doing extraordinary, innovative and impactful work on the ground,” said Harlene Winnick Appelman, Executive Director of The Covenant Foundation and 1991 Covenant Award recipient. “Their daily work, often uncelebrated, touches Jews of all ages seeking inclusion and fulfillment in Jewish life, immeasurably strengthening Jewish community and continuity. Each of our 2010 awardees has made it his or her life’s work to call students to action and encourage them to live lives of engagement.”

For guidelines on nominating an educator for a 2010 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 Foundation and the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA).