The Grand Conversation: The Machon Siach Podcast: Recent Episodes
Machon Siach
The Grand Conversation: The Machon Siach Podcast
Machon Siach @ SAR High School, honoring the memory of Belda K. Lindenbaum, z"l, is the research arm of SAR HS where faculty bridge theory and practice on matters of Jewish education, curriculum, and culture that are central to the Modern Orthodox Community. The Grand Conversation podcast features the fellows of Machon Siach discussing their papers and the research process.
Host: Shmuel Hain, Rosh Beit Midrash at SAR HS and Co-Director of Machon Siach.
Producer: Avi Bloom, Director of Technology at SAR HS
American Jews and Higher Education:
This series will explore the experience of American Jews in higher education, and consider some of the challenges raised in recent years by shifting campus culture and changes in law and policies around admissions, discrimination, and free speech on campus. As a school committed to the "grand conversation between Torah and the world", the majority of whose graduates continue on to secular college, how are we thinking about some of these issues, and what work do we need to do to prepare our graduates to engage them?
Episode 1: Past is Prologue
In this episode, Rabbi Shmuel Hain interviews Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz about the history of Jews' experiences on American college campuses, from the arrival of waves of Eastern European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century, through decades of exclusions and quotas through greater acceptance on campuses after World War II. How was higher education once seen as an essential component of American Jews' "making it"? And how has shifting campus culture, and shifting cultural and educational norms, in the last part of the 20th and early 21st century, affected that acceptance, and Jewish students' comfort on campuses?
In this episode, Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz speaks with two individuals who understand how to gather and use data to offer insight into schools' successes and areas for improvement. Her first guest is Rabbi Joseph Beyda, principal of the Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School, who discusses his use of data to take the measure of his school community and assess the effectiveness of its programs. Her second guest is Jake Trumbo, project coordinator at Bach Harrison, who oversaw the three administrations of the survey gathering data about substance use among Modern Orthodox adolescents. He discusses the process of surveying, and what it looked like from his side.
This is the second episode in our new series: Substance Use among Modern Orthodox Adolescents: Identifying Problems, Implementing Solutions.
For the past six years, Machon Siach has been working to understand the scope of the substance use problem among Modern Orthodox adolescents, and to identify and implement evidence-based interventions to address that problem. This eventually led to the implementation of the Guiding Good Choices parenting program for all 9th grade parents. In this work, we have been guided by Dalene Beaulieu, an expert from the University of Washington's Social Development Research Group. Listen as we explore what we learned from her, and what she learned about our community, over these years.
This is the first episode in our new series: Substance Use among Modern Orthodox Adolescents: Identifying Problems, Implementing Solutions.
In this episode, Rabbi Harcsztark and Dr. Sarit Kattan Gribetz discuss Dr. Kattan Gribetz's book and research on Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism. Key questions include: What do we learn from how the rabbis conceptualized time and how can we translate some of these insights and values to our high school students? How do we deepen our understanding of gendered time including the differences between men and women in Jewish law rooted in the conceptualization of time? What is the relationship between the academic study of Talmud and the religious engagement of Talmud Torah?
This episode features an eye-opening discussion between Rabbi Tully Harcsztark and Rabbi Dr. Daniel Roth- the director of Mosaica, an Israeli NGO focusing on insider religious mediation.
What exactly does the work of insider religious mediation look like during a war?
Is there ongoing dialogue between religious leaders in Muslim and Jewish communities in the Middle East at this terrible time?
What should we as high school educators be teaching our students about the role of religion in this seemingly intractable conflict?
This special episode of the Grand Conversation, recorded at the end of October, is devoted to important, complex, and ongoing issues being discussed in our community in this Post-October 7th world:
How can we meaningfully connect with and support our alumni on college campuses, and how are we helping parents and current SAR HS students navigate the college guidance process?
Our guest host is Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz, Associate Principal of SAR HS and Director of Research and Program Development at Machon Siach. Our two guests are leaders of SAR High School’s College Counseling team, Mr. Michael Courtney, Director of College Counseling at SAR HS and Ms. Michelle Biller-Levy, Associate Director of College Counseling at SAR HS and Director of Post-Graduate Initiatives, at Machon Siach.
This special episode of the Grand Conversation emerged from the meaningful UJA mission to Israel that our Founding Principal Rabbi Tully Harcsztark was fortunate to join. On that mission, Rabbi Harcsztark ran into Effie Shoham- Shteiner in Jerusalem, an historian specializing in Medieval Jewish History. He is an associate professor at Ben-Gurion University in Be’er-Shevah. Since October 7th, Effie has not been pursuing his academic interests. Instead, he has been volunteering around-the-clock on behalf of the citizens of Medinat Yisrael, especially those from the south who were most directly impacted by the October 7th attack. We are honored to share with you Rabbi Harcsztark in conversation with Effie about the work he has been doing since October 7th.
This special series of the Grand Conversation is devoted to the topic of Gemara Education. Our guest host is Rabbi Tully Harcsztark, Founding Principal of SAR HS and Dean of Machon Siach.
In this first episode of the series, Rabbi Harcsztark and Dr. Elana Stein Hain have a timely discussion on whether and how to teach the talmudic sugya of redeeming captives in the aftermath of the Hamas terror attacks and taking of some 200 Israeli hostages. They also discuss Dr. Stein Hain's research (and soon-to-be-published book Circumventing the Law) on legal loopholes in rabbinic literature and how to teach this subject to high school students and adults.
In this episode of The Grand Conversation, Rabbi Tully Harcsztark Rebecca Wolf, and Yossi Ben-Harush discuss several important questions about Israel Education at S.A.R. High School, including: How has our approach to teaching Modern Israel evolved over the years? How do we navigate critical discussions of Israel current events in our history classrooms? How do we educate our students to participate in difficult discussions about Israel as insiders? What role does advocacy play in Israel education?
In this episode of The Grand Conversation, Rabbanit Lisa Schlaff joins Rabbi Shmuel Hain to discuss the goals of high school gemara education, recent trends in gemara education in post high school yeshivot and midrashot, and how teaching Torah Shebe'al Peh at S.A.R. High School has changed since the school's founding twenty years ago.
In this episode of The Grand Conversation, Dr. Jeffrey Rubenstein and Rabbi Tully Harcstark join Rabbi Shmuel Hain to discuss methods and tools which are valuable in teaching gemara to high school students, including both academic and conceptual/lomdus approaches.
In this summer edition of Inside the Conversation, "An In-Depth Look at Grading'', we share the important work of the Machon Siach Faculty Beit Midrash on Grading. The Grading group researched the history of grading and examined its impact on our school culture. Several members of the group explored a number of possible alternatives to standard grading. This edition features three papers produced by Faculty Beit Midrash members and a recording of Machon Siach's recent convening on The Grading Ecosystem.
We invite you to READ. WATCH. SHARE.
In this Grand Conversation Podcast episode, Ms. Chana Krasnjanski joins Rabbi Shmuel Hain to reflect on the importance of authenticity and spirituality in the classroom. They discuss the distinction between personal and private information as well as the potential differences and parallels between the secular studies classroom and the Judaic studies classroom.
Welcome to INSIDE THE CONVERSATION, an in-depth exploration of topics in Jewish education and Modern Orthodox culture, published by Machon Siach.
Machon Siach at SAR High School, honoring the memory of Belda K. Lindenbaum, z"l, is the research arm of SAR High School providing faculty fellows the opportunity to bridge theory and practice in Modern Orthodox education.
INSIDE THE CONVERSATION invites the broader community to engage with Machon Siach research in a variety of ways, to deepen and further advance the Grand Conversation.
This issue of INSIDE THE CONVERSATION is the second in our series on Spirituality and the Modern Orthodox Yeshiva High School. How can we help students create and deepen their inner spiritual lives? How can we utilize research on spiritual development in adolescents to encourage Jewish practice that is imbued with meaning?
We invite you to READ. LISTEN. SHARE.
In this episode of Inside the Conversation podcast, Rabbanit Lisa Schlaff and Dr. Gillian Steinberg share perspectives on spirituality in yeshiva high schools along with personal reflections on the role of spirituality in adolescents and adults.
In this issue of INSIDE THE CONVERSATION In this issue of Inside the Conversation, Rabbi Nati Helfgot, TSBP Department Chair at SAR HS and a member Machon Siach's Gemara Education Faculty Beit Midrash, examines the topic of "Women and Birkat Hamazon." The Gemara Education Faculty Beit Midrash seeks to develop a discourse for engaging Modern Orthodox high school students in Torah She-be'al Peh by making sense of challenging texts and topics.
On this episode of The Grand Conversation podcast, Dr. Tammy Jacobowitz and Ms. Shira Schiowitz join Rabbi Shmuel Hain to discuss the Makom B'Siach Research Group. Formed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the alignment of the entire SAR community around individual and communal health, this group of teachers, parents, and alumni explored other areas of potential alignment and tension between the values of school and home.
In this special episode, Rabbi Tully Harcsztark and Professor Avi Helfand join Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz to discuss their Enounter trip and the Machon Siach research group formed to explore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a range of disciplines. How do we as American Jewish educators think about and teach the conflict, especially when current events make it even more charged?
School administrators often muse that the lack of data regarding our students and parent body creates a gap in our understanding. It's not that we don't know our students; we work hard to know them well. Still, we often guess their overall direction—in terms of their religious observance, mental health and personal values. To fill the void, we project and hypothesize based on the personal experiences we have with our students. The problem is, "the plural of anecdote is not data." And if our hypotheses are inaccurate, our responses will be misguided.
Rabbi Shmuel Hain welcomes the Honorable Robert Wexler and Rabbi Tully Harcsztark to discuss Machon Siach's partnership with The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace on the Yeshiva High School Educators Cohort, a pioneering program for Yeshiva High Schools principals and educators to engage in deep exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In this Grand Conversation episode, Rabbi Nati Helfgot joins Rabbi Shmuel Hain to discuss his paper and to examine pastoral, communal and theological perspectives on Homosexuality in the Orthodox community.
Following the 2016 election, Machon Siach convened a research group to take a step back and examine several core questions: What aspects of citizenship should be essential to American Modern Orthodox Jews? How do we educate our students towards broader civic engagement in addition to advocacy for parochial concerns? What impact does our commitment to religious Zionism and Medinat Yisrael have on our obligations as citizens?
How do we foster strong identification with Medinat Yisrael while simultaneously teaching history critically and comprehensively? Ms. Adina Shoulson and Dr. Laura Shaw Frank join Rabbi Shmuel Hain to explore this question from a number of perspectives. The podcast also discusses a number of recent topics relating to Israel education including Seth Rogen's critique of his Israel education and the question of how to present the question of annexation in the classroom.
Rabbi Tully Harcsztark and Rabbi Shmuel Hain discuss the unique challenges and opportunities of Gemara education in Modern Orthodox Yeshiva high schools.
The Grand Conversation Podcast where Dr. Steinberg explains her passion for analogical thinking and the use of metaphor in discussions about homosexuality and racism.