CONNECTING

DISCOVERING

CELEBRATING

CARING

Marlboro Jewish Center ("MJC") has an after-school Hebrew School with over 400 students. In past years the synagogue did not have adequate classroom space to provide "three day" a week programming at all grade levels. So Sunday morning classes stopped at the "Dalet" grade level (students went 2x a week for close to 2 hours per session). However, the synagogue had built a new building for nursery school and Hebrew School and room was now clearly available. The issue for the Education committee was how to expand mandatory Hebrew School hours for Dalet and Hay.

Unfortunately there was a great deal of resistance to changing the hours immediately, and the committee, under the leadership of our Principal, Dalia Luss, decided in 1996 to introduce an optional program for Dalet students. Furthermore, anyone entering Aleph that Fall would have mandatory additional hours beginning in 1999.

One of the programs that were introduced at that time was a seven-week program that required at least one parent to attend on Sunday mornings along with the child. The program was called JET, for Jewish Education Together. The objectives of the JET program include

• Encouraging families to make their homes one's that incorporate Jewish behaviors and values, by teaching them in JET
• Providing a context in which parents and children can discuss with one another and with other families issues like what makes their family Jewish and what the importance of Jewish community is
• Talk and teach about how Judaism speaks to issues that effect both their everyday lives and issues that face the world
• Sensitizing them to the Jewish calendar ü Having fun

Arleen Sternfeld, an expert in the field of Jewish Family Education, developed the JET program that was delivered at MJC and her energy and creativity help explain the enormous positive feedback of the program. However, the program is also certainly successful because it provides parents with a formal way to discuss with their pre-adolescent children their own Jewish identity, teaches them new Jewish parenting and family skills, and provides them with a network of other Jewish parents to share experiences with. Unfortunately, some people walk into the first Sunday morning class hostile at being up early on Sunday morning and others are indifferent. By the last session of the program the parents are sorry that the time went so fast.