Bess Adler is passionate about Jewish education
August 21, 2008
West Orange resident Bess Adler has been elected to a top professional position of a national support network for Hebrew high schools.
As vice president of the North American Association of Community Hebrew High Schools, Adler said, she hopes to organize a clearinghouse for the best ideas in the field of supplementary Jewish education.
“The Jewish community needs to work more together,” Adler said. “Really, the most beautiful thing about NAACHHS is that it works — it really works — and we really are all there for one another. None of us has to reinvent the wheel time and time again, and no one’s alone in what they’re doing.”
‘High-level academic Jewish education that is absolutely relevant to the lives of our teens — that is our mission.’
NAACHHS, appropriately pronounced naches (“pride”), provides member schools with programs, curricula, professional development, and other resources in order to enrich the Jewish education they purvey.
Adler is the principal of the Rebecca and Israel Ivry Prozdor High School at the Jewish Theological Seminary and a doctoral candidate in the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at JTS.
She staunchly believes that NAACHHS is the most important professional organization she has belonged to, adding that her colleagues feel the same.
“What we do at NAACHHS is we work together to better the field,” Adler said. “High-level academic Jewish education that is absolutely relevant to the lives of our teens — that is our mission in a nutshell.”
For Adler, these are the keys to successful supplementary Jewish education programs.
At the same time, Jewish educators know that it is often a challenge to get young Jews after their b’nei mitzva to continue their Jewish education.
“Once Jewish education becomes a choice — both from the parents’ perspective and the child’s perspective — it is absolutely imperative that it be of the highest academic quality,” Adler said. “Kids have many opportunities to connect socially with other Jews through youth groups, etc., but for them to continue their Jewish education, it must be on par — or higher — than the secular education they are receiving but at the same time relevant to the lives they are leading.”
Adler said she aims to create a database of course titles and descriptions, organize regional trips for students, and help schools incorporate more experiential learning experiences for younger teens — keeping with a new trend of supplemental Jewish education.
Adler, a Cherry Hill native who made aliya in her senior year of high school in 1987, served in the Golani Brigade of the Israeli Defense Forces and earned her bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate from Hebrew University. During her nine-year stay in Israel, Adler taught high school and served as an English teacher at the Ramot community center.
Upon her return to New Jersey in 1996, she taught Judaics and Hebrew in congregational religious schools through 2003, including at Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex in Caldwell. She also taught middle school at Hillel Academy in Passaic in 1998-99. In 2004, Adler became the assistant principal of Ivry Prozdor, coordinating its Millburn branch, and then the principal in 2005.
Adler is passionate about teen education. “We’re modeling for them that Jewish education doesn’t end at the bar or bat mitzva; Jewish education is for life,” Adler said. “There is so much to learn that in high school they really only touch the tip of the iceberg. We encourage them to go on in their studies during their college years.”
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