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With expert advice and experience garnered from congregations throughout North America, shows how transformative change is possible. A complete resource for all of us involved in, or interested in, energizing our spiritual communities.
About the author
Isa Aron, PhD, is professor of Jewish education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion's Rhea Hirsch School of Education. Founder and former director of the Experiment in Congregational Education (ECE), she now serves as senior consultant. She holds a PhD in philosophy of education from the University of Chicago, and her writing on education and congregational renewal has appeared in such journals as the
American Journal of Education, Tikkun and the
Journal of Reform Judaism. She is also author of
Becoming a Congregation of Learners: Learning as a Key to Revitalizing Congregational Life and The
Self-renewing Congregation: Organizational Stragegies for Revitalizing Congregational Life. Isa Aron, PhD, is available to speak on the following topics:
- Synagogue Change (or Synagogue Renewal)
- Jewish Education
- Moral Education
Summary
How can my congregation transform itself? How can we re-dedicate ourselves to learning?
Improving spiritual connection in our communities takes work! Combining expert advice and experience garnered from congregations throughout North America, Becoming a Congregation of Learners shows us how transformative change is possible. A complete resource full of ideas, information and support, this is a guide for those of us involved in, or interested in, energizing our spiritual communities.
Isa Aron, director of Hebrew Union College's Experiment in Congregational Education (ECE), offers concrete, practical information on how to bring about change and revitalization, and helps us make learning a vibrant, integral part of congregational life.
Additional text
Isa Aron, Becoming a Congregation of Learners. Jewish Lights, 2002. This volume can be viewed as a companion publication to Rabbi Jacobs' book on social action. The author is a prominent educator on the faculty of the Los Angeles branch of Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. It is the product of an 8- year experiment in congregational education, a project HUC-JIR designed to study how congregants of all ages are engaged in Jewish learning, and then on developing concrete practices that will help congregational leaders insure that serious Jewish learning can flower in American synagogues. The forward by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, codeveloper of Synagogue 2000 (now Synagogue 3000), integrates this material, specifically directed to learning, into the rest of the Synagogue 3000 program. Both this and Rabbi Jacobs’ book address central challenges facing our congregations. Professor Aron has assembled a rich treasury of vignettes out of her years of experience, together with how precisely congregations can avoid the pitfalls that are almost inevitable in projects of this kind. We must be grateful to the publisher, Jewish Lights, for both volumes.
