MAGEN | Shield of Knowledge: A Shield Built for a Digital Generation
Posted on 10/10/2025 @ 06:00 AM
By Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar, Executive Director of CAJE
Our teens and young adults live online. They think, learn, and connect through their phones.
Tomás Glasermann, Director of the Michael-Ann Russell JCC’s Maccabi Tzair program in Miami, Florida, knows this first-hand in his work with teens.
When I interviewed him recently, he told me:
“Every generation consumes information differently. This one consumes it virtually. That’s why we built MAGEN | Shield of Knowledge the way we did.
MAGEN, in English "shield" or "protector," is a fully online educational platform designed for high school and college students to learn about Israel and the Jewish people. They do it on their phones, in their own space and time.
After October 7th, we realized that nobody was prepared for what was happening. It didn’t matter if students went to public school, private school, or a Jewish day school — our teens were not ready to face what they will face in college.”
Creators of MAGEN | Shield of Knowledge: Monica Sichel, Jennifer Flasz Gross, Tomás Glasermann
MAGEN | Shield of Knowledge was built by Tomás, Jennifer Flasz Gross (the Chair of the MAGEN initiative), and Monica Sichel (the Chair of the Hebraica program) with the blessing of Chief Executive Officer Alan Sataloff and Chief Operating Officer Dror Gershoni— people who believed that Jewish students deserved better preparation for the conversations they’d face on campus.
Remarkably, Tomás, Jennifer and Monica launched the platform as volunteers.
“We spent months building it,” Tomás noted. “Nobody asked us to create MAGEN. We did it because we felt it was essential to do it.”
Instead of long lectures or traditional classrooms, students engage with bite-sized videos from Open Dor Media/ Unpacked, questions, and interactive exercises.
“They engage with the program at their own pace, in their own time,” Tomás explained. “We wanted it to fit their world, not fight against it.”
Each “trip” — MAGEN’s term for its courses — runs about 4.5 to 7 hours. Students watch 16-20 videos, answer about 200 questions, and then must reflect on their learning. At the end, if they’ve completed all the steps on their journey, they receive a $150 stipend per trip.
“That payment matters,” Tomás said. “It’s the community saying to them: we value your learning.”
The innovation isn’t just technological — it’s also educational.
“We’ve had Jewish and non-Jewish students take the courses,” Tomás described. “Non-Jewish students say, ‘Now I understand my roommate.’ That’s powerful. It builds allies.”
“Jewish students come back to us and say, ‘Now I understand what Hamas is,’ or ‘Thanks to MAGEN, I was able to stand up to my professor when they said something inaccurate about Israel.’ They’re proud and knowledgeable, which means they have the tools enabling them to not hide their identity anymore.”
Today, MAGEN has two trips (online courses) live and more in development. “Trip 3 is ready,” Tomás reports. “We’re just waiting for more funds to launch it. Trip 4 is in progress. By 2026, we hope to have all six.”
MAGEN | Shield of Knowledge marjcc.org/magen
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Right now, every minute of building the platform and creating the trips (courses) have been completed by volunteers (even though he’s a professional at the MARJCC, he isn’t paid for his work in MAGEN).
There have been a few donors who have come forward to fund the stipends for the students, but the amount they are willing to give is limited, and thus, the number of students who can participate is limited as well.
To scale this innovative idea, Tomás acknowledged that more donors would need to be found, both to offer more stipends for more students as well as to hire a professional to oversee the growth of the program as it hopefully expands within Miami-Dade and beyond.
“It’s not easy asking for money,” Tomás admitted. “But to my mind, we are giving donors a chance to make a real impact in a student’s life.”
For Tomás, this is more than education — it’s about instilling courage: “Our kids should never have to hide their Magen David. They should be proud and knowledgeable. And it’s our job as a community to help them feel that way.”
When I asked him to dream about the future, Tomás was very clear: “I want MAGEN to become the standard of preparation for all Jews and as many non-Jews as possible worldwide. Every person should go through it before college.”
When Dr. Carly Orshan, CAJE’s Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Teen Education and I over the summer studied what Tomás and his team at the JCC had created, we were duly impressed.
Since it’s CAJE’s job, we gave them feedback to make the initiative even better, but it was clear to us the program is an extraordinary achievement already.
This is the future of Jewish education — agile, accessible, and deeply rooted in our Zionist community values.
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