Lydia Medwin

Jewish Service Learning: Relevance for the American Synagogue Lydia Medwin

Service learning has exploded in schools and clubs across America as a central way for middle and high school students to enact their civic duty while learning to ask critical questions of the world around them. It offers our students the opportunity to engage with "the Other" in a face to face experience, challenging and expanding their understanding of the communities in which they live and the problems they may face. When rabbis, Jewish educators and Jewish communal leaders consider the future of Jewish supplementary school education, they would do well to consider Jewish service learning - an opportunity to explore the text that define our people and our ethical imperatives; a chance for students to be together outside of formal class time and space for the formation of deep and lasting relationships; a moment of self-reflection for pre-teens and teenagers who are often too busy with school, social lives, and technology to ask themselves the biggest questions of existence. Within the context of synagogue life, service learning becomes something so much more; Jewish service learning could help make synagogues relevant to the next generation.