Beyond Jewish Education

By David Bryfman

Nov 14, 2025

In which Dr. David Bryfman maintains that Jewish education must shift from transmitting content to experiential opportunities to enable Jews to find meaning and inspire action.

But first, let’s get to know the person behind the piece: David Bryfman

David is one of the Jewish People’s leading educational thinkers and pedagogical innovators, and we had a chance to meet him years ago when he first joined the Jewish Education Project in New York. Since then, we’ve followed David closely through his articles and podcasts, and continually found inspiration in his ability to both hold on to the needs of the present while challenging the assumptions our educators make so as to prepare our community for the future.

Since we believe that education is the key towards building the foundations for a better future, we sought out David’s contribution - and are grateful for the opportunity to publish them in these pages.

Read David in Issue 1's ebook

Beyond Jewish Education

By David Bryfman

One of the major issues when talking about education, even Jewish education, is that everyone has their own educational experiences as their reference point for starting a conversation. Regardless of whether you attended Jewish day school, Hebrew school, summer camp, youth groups, all or none of the above, it is important to consider the broad variety of settings that constitute Jewish education - as well as not to apply the same expectations on each of them.

Beneath this sits another barrier: the dominant paradigm that shaped Jewish education throughout the twentieth century, and still guides much of the organized and philanthropic world, was about making “more Jews more Jewish.” This was once dressed up as “Jewish continuity,” but essentially it meant survival—encouraging in-marriage and resisting assimilation. I have tried my best to move away from this survivalist mentality. Good education, for it to be enduring, must be motivated by an internal desire, especially in today’s era of choice.

I believe the purpose of Jewish education is to create Jews who are becoming better versions of themselves, who live in stronger communities, and who make the world a better place. These three goals—individual thriving, stronger communities, and improving the world—are not uniquely Jewish. Any values-based organization should aspire to them. But I believe we, as Jews, have excellent answers to all three objectives. Instead of saying “make more Jews more Jewish,” I would frame it as “make more Jews more of who they could be.”

If we are to accept this reframing, we also need to acknowledge that we have not managed to train enough educators to adequately articulate why being Jewish can help people become better versions of themselves. This will require a rethinking of what education itself consists of. I am not sure that acquiring more knowledge is the most necessary or important part of education anymore. After October 7, many blamed the lack of knowledge for the inability of Jewish students to respond on campus. I am not convinced that more knowledge would have solved that problem. In fact, in some cases, knowing more might have turned young people against traditional Jewish-Zionist narratives.

The balance between knowledge and experience needs to be recalibrated. Experiencing a Shabbat will always be more impactful than simply learning about Shabbat. That principle can be applied to almost every dimension of Jewish life. For too long, we have emphasized the nishma—the commandment to hear or understand—without equal attention to the na’aseh—the commandment to do or to act.

The mindset of the Jewish community throughout much of the twentieth century, flowing into the twenty-first and now exacerbated by October 7, is one of fear and scarcity. We tell ourselves that the whole world is out to get us, that we have no friends. This mindset paralyzes us, makes us risk-averse, and keeps us from changing even when it is obvious to outside observers that change is necessary. Most of our institutions—schools, Jewish Community Centers (JCCs), camps, congregational schools, youth movements—were created in the 1950s and 60s. They were good for their time, but they have not been reimagined at scale for new or current realities.

Part of the challenge lies in how leaders think about their role. One of my teachers, Mike Rosenak of Hebrew University, described the tension between authority and relevance. Do leaders acknowledge where people are and try to move them somewhere else, or do they meet people where they are and create experiences for their current needs? Too often, Jewish institutions have operated by telling people what they ought to be—more Jewish, more Zionist, more like us. Young people are telling us something different. If you keep saying, “I know what’s best for you; if you were more like me you’d be better off,” they will walk away.

Leadership is in need of renewal. In the 1950s and 60s, Jewish communal life produced leaders whose names and ideas shaped the future. Today, leadership looks different. You do not need to run a major institution or have your name on a building to effect change. Influence is networked, distributed, and often informal. Yet our institutions still operate as if leadership is only valid when recognized at the top of a hierarchy. Meanwhile, younger leaders—under 50, often under 35—are the ones driving real change, but too often they are sidelined. The field of education is dominated by women as practitioners but disproportionately led by men. Succession is blocked, while eldership is undervalued. We need pathways for transition and models that honor elders while opening space for new leadership.

If we could look twenty-five years into the future and imagine Jewish education done right, the first step would be to build a way to train educators outside of ideological or denominational institutions. At present, no such place exists. This would not matter if those movements were still relevant to mainstream Jews, but they are losing traction. We need to create a massive cohort of educators who can teach a new understanding of meaningful Jewish life.

Where would they teach? Institutions like JCCs are calling out to become centers of Jewish learning. The platform exists, the scale exists, but they do not know what to fill it with. If we invest in transforming JCCs and other accessible institutions, we could create spaces where Jews encounter the rhythms and practices of Jewish life not as obligations, but as experiences that help them become their best selves. Take for example the much-maligned Bar and Bat Mitzvah as a hook. The majority of non-Orthodox Jewish kids in America still go through it. Most complain about the process, but the fact that it exists provides an opportunity. We need to transform that experience into something memorable and meaningful, rather than something to be endured.

A further shift requires rethinking how we conceive of Jewish identity itself. Too much of Jewish education has been built on the assumption that Judaism is primarily a religion. But Jews are not only a religion. We are a people, a culture, a nation, a heritage. Congregations struggle to adapt because they are bound to a religious framework, even as religious movements worldwide are in decline. The vast majority of non-Orthodox Jews in North America, and globally, understand themselves as part of a people and a culture more than a religion. Jewish education that fails to embrace this reality will continue to falter.

We can also learn from other contexts. In Israel, there has been a resurgence of cultural Jewish experience that is not confined to religious practice. Jews from the former Soviet Union were cut off from religious life but often maintained a strong cultural Jewish identity. These models offer inspiration for American Jewish life. We cannot ignore the global forces shaping knowledge and identity today, particularly the rise of artificial intelligence, which will transform how people access and process information in ways as consequential as the invention of the printing press. Jewish education will have to adapt to that reality.

I believe we must pay attention to the trends we cannot fight. Some have unrealistically suggested banning Jewish kids from platforms like TikTok because of the hostility toward Israel they encounter there. Instead, our task is to equip young people with the skills to discern good information from bad, and to respond thoughtfully when they encounter antisemitism or bias. Jewish education cannot eradicate antisemitism, but it can give young people the tools to recognize it and the confidence to respond.

Israel, too, must remain integral; it is home to half the world’s Jewish population and where the Jewish origin story takes root. No Jewish educator can avoid engaging with Israel in a meaningful way. I understand the dissonance when Israel’s government acts in ways that contradict the values many Jews hold dear. But to sever Jewish education from Israel is impossible. The rules of the game have changed—there is more space for diverse opinions, and more acknowledgment of the complexity—but Israel remains at the heart of Jewish life and education.

To move forward, we must also prove the value proposition of Jewish education itself. We need to articulate clearly to young people why it matters, not in abstract terms but in ways that connect to their lives. For example, guiding Jewish youth through spiritual journeys is far more relevant today than teaching them how to pray in a specific way. The Federation system once drove change at scale, but for the past two decades, large-scale initiatives have depended on philanthropy. The question now is how to train a generation of funders to invest long-term in systemic change, to move beyond episodic projects and short-term crises.

The resources exist. What is missing is thought. Too few places in the Jewish world are dedicated to research, reflection, and innovation tied directly to practice. Without intellectual investment, we keep replicating what we already know. Change needs to be driven by ideas and research, and then applied at scale. Birthright Israel is often cited as the great success story of recent decades. Its real innovation may not have been the trips themselves, but the collective initiative that brought together funders and the Israeli government. That model can and should be replicated in other domains.

The future of Jewish education will not come from clinging to old structures or outdated definitions. It will come from cultivating educators who can help Jews flourish as individuals, live in stronger communities, and repair the world. It will come from transforming existing platforms into spaces of culture and experience, from engaging with Israel in all its complexity, from articulating a clear value proposition, from investing in intellectual infrastructure, and from redefining leadership for a new era.

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