Welcoming Israeli Educators from the COYO Delegation

Posted on 02/28/2025 @ 05:00 AM

Tags: Jewish Schools & Educational Services

This past week, CAJE’s Executive Director, Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar, and Senior Director of Strategic and Teen Initiatives, Carly Orshan, had the privilege of meeting with the COYO delegation, an esteemed group of top leaders from Israel’s foremost youth organizations.

COYO: the Israeli Council for Youth Organizations, an umbrella organization that represents a diverse network of 21 different initiatives that empower young people across Israeli society, including both Jewish and Arab communities.

Their work spans leadership development, social action, informal education, and identity formation- all with the goal of fostering a shared and vibrant future.

This half-day workshop with these Israeli educational leaders helped them better understand teen education— its opportunities and its challenges-- in America generally, and Miami in particular.

The workshop focused on sharing best practices and on research about American/ Miami community teens and the trends pre- and post-October 7th.

To share best practices, we discussed various areas of leadership, social-emotional development, and community building.

This was facilitated through peer exchange and an immersive learning opportunity that deepened the group’s conversations and allowed everyone to share successes and innovative approaches.

Through a visual mapping exercise, participants identified strengths and challenges in their respective organizations, which unearthed common themes in youth engagement that highlighted areas opportunity for further collaboration.

We explored how Miami is addressing antisemitism and enhancing Israel education in youth programming, utilizing scenario-based discussions and research-backed insights to examine different approaches and strategies.

The COYO delegation expressed immense gratitude for the experience, sharing that they “felt at home” among fellow educators and came away with many thoughts for the future.

While they regularly collaborate as a group in Israel, the immersive learning activities in the CAJE workshop created space for deeper, more thoughtful conversations.

Many reflected that the structured facilitation allowed them not only to learn with and from CAJE, but also to engage in more meaningful discussions with one another — sharing best practices in ways that strengthened their collective work.

This Israeli-American exchange reinforced CAJE’s role as a thought leader in teen engagement, creating the space for meaningful conversations that help educators refine their approaches and ensure the next generation of youth continues to flourish.

Mr. Shlomi Castro, the CEO of The Israeli Council for Youth Organizations presents Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar with a reproduction of the NY Times front page on the day State of Israel was created.

It’s always so energizing to meet a delegation from Israel, and especially so, when they are fellow educators who are devoting their lives to improving education there, just as we, at CAJE, are doing here. 

What made the workshop that Carly Orshan planned for the delegation so excellent was that it wasn’t one-sided. She orchestrated it in such a skillful way that we all learned from one another- a true partnership experience. 

The delegates were somewhat shocked, and pleasantly surprised, when I gave a short Dvar Torah on the parsha (which you can read later in this post) to begin the workshop, since that is both a CAJE and a Miami Federation custom. 

Several participants (those from the Hareidi and Arab communities) came over to me afterwards and said that I was the first female and Reform rabbi that they’ve ever met… so hopefully, it was a Kiddush HaShem for the Jewish people and the value of Klal Yisrael, in addition to helping all of us feel more connected to one another as Israelis and American Jews. - Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar

CAJE in partnership with Federation has developed a survey for Jewish teens in grades 6-12 about antisemitism that is designed to assess the experiences of Jewish teens regarding antisemitism in various settings. It is anonymous and takes about five minutes to complete.

The survey asks about:

• Demographics
• Feelings of Safety
• Experiences with Antisemitism
• Behavioral Changes (have teens modified their behavior due to antisemitism or hidden Jewish items to avoid being targeted)
• Reporting (measures confidence in schools’ ability to address antisemitism and the school’s reporting process)
• Engagement and Resources (asks what would help them feel safer and prouder to be Jewish at school, how they would like to engage in learning about antisemitism and Israel)