"The Integrating Coordinators seminar held in Jerusalem during October allowed me to spend two very intensive days with teachers from different places throughout Israel, teachers who represent different parts of our society. It was, for me, a great opportunity for personal and professional growth. I could "experience" the range of identities in Israeli society".
"As a secular person I believe that every individual conducts Jewish traditions at home as he or she best sees fit. When we speak of social Judaism, however, we mean something that breathes and lives within each and every one of us. Yehuda Maimaran, CEO of Kol Israel Haverim, spoke at the seminar about how each person is created in the Image and related to ideas of "charity and justice". I connected to what he had to say from a place of the dignity and liberty of Man, from a place of values and humanism. I will return to my school with the awareness and will to implement this with my colleagues and pupils. In this sense, the seminar provided me with not only tools and knowledge but also strengthened the need in me for renewed reflection on the type of society we wish to create, and on the kind of Judaism we seek to promote, and towards where to lead my pupils and myself."
"During the seminar I really connected to the Beit Midrash study session. It was a social process that was created by the interaction between those engaging in study and that connected the emotional, cognitive and practical. I plan to implement the content I received at school, not only at the level of sharing with colleagues; I mean to hold the workshops with the other teachers at school as part of the Teachers Room Study event to be held at Chanukah time. I hope to provide the other teachers with a Beit Midrash study experience so that they can add to its content and introduce this valuable teaching tool to pupils and their parents."
The seminar marked the opening of the Integrating Coordinators training program, which has the objectives of empowering the coordinators and providing them with the tools and skills required for school principals to lead in educational excellence in Social Zionist Judaism and in instilling sustainable and flourishing change in school.
- Iris Binyamini has been teaching for 27 years at the Ashalim School of the Arts in Rishon LeZion, where she has been vice-principal for the last two years. The school is in its second year of the Maarag program, and as of this year she will be its Integrating Coordinator.