Program Clearinghouse

With a $15, 000 grant, the AJE hopes to promote
new adult Jewish education opportunities.

JULIE WIENER
Staff Writer

0

riginally, it asked the Jewish
Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit for $100,000 in
order to transform itself into
a clearinghouse for adult Jewish edu-
cation.
Then, when Federation's planning
division suggested it redirect the
request to the Max M. Fisher Jewish
Community Foundation, the Agency
for Jewish Education cut the proposal
to $25,000. Now, settling for a
$15,000 grant, the agency still hopes
to launch' an ambitious project to pro-
mote adult Jewish learning.
And with the AJE's most veteran
staffer at the helm, the project —to
publicize learning opportunities while
promoting cooperation among the 70-
plus local providers of courses — just
might succeed. Nira Lev, the AJE's
director of Hebrew programs, is coor-
dinating the new project while contin-
uing her full-time teaching and
administrative load.
"This is going to bring to the fore-
front adult education and hopefully
encourage people to take classes," said
Lev, who has been teaching Hebrew in
the community more than 20 years.
"My belief is that if there is no adult
education, there is no teen education.
The teens won't learn if they don't
have a model."

Looking
For A Match

The Agency for Jewish
Education's search
committee begins
interviewing candidates
for executive director

JULIE WIENER
Staft"Writer

O

0

Nira Lev:
Coordinating
a new adult
education
project.

The project entails printing a
monthly page in The Jewish News
(which is donating space) that high-
lights learning opportunities, printing
and circulating a semi-annual catalog
of courses available for the coming
semester and eventually developing a
Web site. Lev also plans to field calls
from potential learners in order to
match them with appropriate courses,
and hopes to pass on community feed-
back to education providers.
AJE's adult education chair, Bernie
Mindell, hopes the project leads to
more cooperative efforts among the

patchwork of synagogues and agencies
that offer classes, enabling them to
consolidate offerings and better utilize
community resources.
"It seems to me that it must be
difficult for each synagogue to provide
adult education opportunities without
stretching their resources," said
Mindell. "If [Temple] Shir Shalom
runs a Hebrew course with eight peo-
ple and Temple Israel has a similar

ct'\

T

. months after the
Agency for Jewish
Education's executive
director, Howard
Gelberd, announced he would be
leaving, a search committee is busy
looking for his replacement.
Over the next two months, the
10-member search committee --
composed of AJE board members,
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit lay leaders and rabbis --
will conduct preliminary interviews
with candidates, said search com-
mittee chair Jim Jonas.

course with nine people, there might
be a way to cooperate and create bet-
ter education opportunities."
Both Mindell and Lev dream of
a day when the AJE's Midrasha Center
for Adult Jewish Learning will offer
extensive courses of its own.
Currently, while the Midrasha offers
numerous Hebrew courses and spon-
sors a lecture series at the West
Bloomfield Barnes & Noble book-
store, its offerings of semester-long
Judaic studies courses are sparse.
"Ultimately one would hope this
could lead someday to a Jewish adult
learning center, which would be a very
exciting concept," said Minden.
Meanwhile, the AJE is focusing on <
smaller goals, like simply getting the
project off the ground. Even the Web
site will not appear for at least six
months, with development not sched-
uled until after the first listings appear
this fall in The Jewish News.
"We want to implement this pro-
gram before we go online to make
sure it works and is done well," said
AJE Administrative Manager Ellen G
Krivchenia.
Is $15,000 enough? Norman
Pappas, chairman of the Max Fisher
Foundation, thinks so. "We agreed
this was an important program to
fund, but we felt they could do what
they described with $15,000," he said.
Mindell called the $15,000 grant "a
beginning."

Jim Jonas, chairman of tbe search
committee looking for a new AJE
executive director

So far, some ten people — three
from the Detroit area
have
applied for the position. said. Jonas.
Although he said the search was
going "wonderfully," Jonas conced-
ed that it would be challenging to
find someone appropriate for the
post. 'There are more openings
than there are candidates," he said.
"It's not as if there are hundreds of
highly qualified people \Vaiting to
take the job."
The committee hopes to find
someone with "a great deal of cre-
ativity, interpersonal skills, the abil--

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4/17
1998

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