Malky Brejt

As the weather turns crisp and fall-colored clothing are displayed in store windows, our children pack up their school bags and board the bus, headed back for another year of learning.

We send them to school to learn Chumash and math, Gemara and science, but education covers a far broader range than that. There are essential skills they’ll need once out in the real world. Knowledge is power, and prevention is the best cure.

Take a look at three different curricula that have been introduced in our schools. They don’t cover the typical topics, but they’re vital nonetheless.

Save a Life

What happens in an emergency?

A heart-stopping moment of terror. The people around look from one to the other, wondering, worrying, waiting. Who’s going to take the responsibility? What happens next?

Even for some of us who know basic first aid, somehow, in the moment of an emergency, the knowledge gets lost due to panic if there’s no real training to anchor it.

Six years ago, an article appeared in a Jewish periodical with a sensational—and frightening—story. A 16-year-old boy put his head down in the middle of class. The teacher, assuming this was a normal occurrence for an overtired teen, asked another student to tap the boy on the shoulder. The student complied and discovered that this was no ordinary case of fatigue. The boy had gone into cardiac arrest.

The entire class erupted into a state of mass panic and everyone—teacher included—ran from the room, screaming for help.

The story could have ended in tragedy, but fortunately, there was a custodian who kept his cool. He located the defibrillator, shocked the boy, and called Hatzolah.

Many people read the story, sighed, and turned the page. One took action.

A task for every age

Baila Mandelbaum, a board member of Vaad Refuah, did some research and discovered that there was a lack of preparedness in our schools to deal with emergencies. In the case of the boy who suffered a cardiac arrest, he had classmates who were lifeguards and had been trained to deal with a situation like this, but they also panicked and were helpless in the face of this emergency.

Many high schools teach CPR, but it seems like the courses offered aren’t enough to allow students to think clearly in a time of crisis.

Mrs. Mandelbaum came up with a brainstorm based on another popular school program, namely the yedios klalios program. The program builds on itself where each grade is taught a small amount of information, and the following year the old information is reviewed, and new information is added. It’s a learning style that has a high success rate in ensuring that students retain the information. What if this same idea could be applied to learning about first aid?

She envisioned a curriculum where first and second graders were taught the very basics of safety—even a first grader can dial 911 in an emergency—and then, as they got older, the early information would be reviewed, and more complex information would be taught.

Mrs. Mandelbaum reached out to Rabbi Ehrenreich of Bais Yaakov of Boro Park, and asked him for his opinion on the idea. “It’s a very important thing to do,” he told her. “Write up a curriculum, and I’ll help you distribute it.”

She wasn’t an educator, but she researched the topic extensively and created the Save-A- Life curriculum. This became a project of Vaad Refuah, a Brooklyn-based organization whose goal is to empower and educate the community regarding health-related matters.

Building blocks of knowledge

The curriculum has three levels.

Level 1 is designed for children in first or second grade. In this level, children are taught the basic first aid tips, such as what to do with a nosebleed and how to deal with burns. They’re taught how to recognize an emergency and when to call Hatzolah.

Level 2 is structured for third and fourth grade and guides children how to deal with more extreme emergency situations, such as choking or an allergic reaction.

The most recently developed level was created for fifth and sixth graders, and it teaches children how to perform CPR and how to respond to a heart attack or a drowning victim.

Every school that was contacted asked two questions: How much would it cost to purchase the program and how much time would need to be devoted to teaching the curriculum?

The answers to these questions are reassuring. The curriculum is 100 percent free for all schools. Each level has 10 chapters, so it can be taught once a month for the 10 months of the school year. The chapters are short and clearly written, so they take a minimal time to teach and learn. Each level comes with a teacher’s guide, so it’s very easy for the teacher to convey the lesson to the class.

Level 1 was distributed about six years ago, and Level 2 was distributed a short time later. Level 3 was distributed at the start of last school year.

While Level 1 is really designed for younger ages, the information contained in it is essential knowledge, and many schools have chosen to teach Level 1 to older grades, although at a faster pace, because it’s the initial building block for all emergency-related responses.

The impact

“I’ve had sixty-year-olds look at Level 1 and say, ‘I never knew this!’” reports Mrs. Leah Krausz, director of the program.

The response to the curriculum was overwhelming.

One school sent a letter of gratitude to Mrs. Krausz, explaining how the program clearly saved a life. On Seder night a short while after the program started, the brother of one of their students started choking. The seventh-grader took control and performed the Heimlich maneuver on the child, saving his life.

“If nothing else was accomplished by the Save a Life program, this story alone would have been worth all the time and effort we put into it,” says Mrs. Krausz.

In another instance, a young teenage girl in Lakewood found her brother submerged in the pool. The rest of the family members who were there panicked, frantically trying to locate Hatzolah’s number. The girl calmly did compressions while dictating Hatzolah’s number to the family. By the time Hatzolah arrived, the boy was already talking.

At this point, over 100 schools are using this curriculum. This includes boys’ and girls’ schools of all types, from chassidish to Modern Orthodox.

With this curriculum in place in many schools, our community’s commitment to safety will take a giant step forward.

Atzmi

As the owner of one of Detroit’s only Jewish clothing stores, Dr. Marcy Forta was privy to many troubling conversations.

Each day, she watched mothers come in with their teenage girls, who frowned at themselves in the mirror. The mothers would whisper to Dr. Forta, “Can you tell her that it looks good? She won’t listen to me.”

She saw new mothers who were shortly after birth burst into tears in the dressing room and older women walking out empty-handed because they weren’t okay with their changing appearance.

New clothes are supposed to bring joy and satisfaction to women, but the shopping experience brings up a host of negative emotions to so many.

She eventually sold the store due to family considerations, but Dr. Forta couldn’t get those encounters out of her head.

The struggle that many women go through to accept the way they look was very real to her.

“I struggled with an eating disorder as a teen, and I’m very, very lucky to have gotten out of it. It’s a very difficult illness, and it usually takes an average of six years to recover from it.”

While there are exceptional people out there today to help those who are suffering from eating disorders, Dr. Forta wanted to assist from a different angle.

“I wanted to take a step back and address this issue in a proactive way. Instead of helping after the fact, I wanted to see what we could do to address the issue at its roots.”

Dr. Forta went back to school and got a doctorate in behavioral health and educational leadership.

“I did my dissertation on the unique risk factors within the frum community. I spoke to rabbanim, teachers, and therapists to find out more about the topic.”

Prevention for eating disorders works, but it needs to be targeted and it needs to take environmental concerns into consideration. Using a secular curriculum won’t do the trick in our classrooms.

“I wanted to give our girls the tools they need from a Torah and empirically based perspective.”

High expectations

In her research, Dr. Forta discovered that Jewish girls are twice as likely to develop an eating disorder as their non-Jewish counterparts. The reason?

“There’s a very strong expectation of homogeneity in our communities, which makes sense in many ways. But it has very negative side effects.”

We expect high standards of behavior and growth in our community, and the benefits are immeasurable. But the darker side of this is the silent expectation that everyone needs to be the same.

When a girl is different from the girls around her—even if she doesn’t get flak for it—she’s left wondering what her place is.

The result of this discomfort doesn’t need to end up in an eating disorder. Dr. Forta’s intention was to wage a greater battle. She wanted to create an environment where girls can feel comfortable with themselves despite any factors that make them feel different.

She wanted each girl to internalize her unique identity: a precious daughter of Hashem.

The Torah’s viewpoint

Armed with both professional knowledge and encouragement from rabbanim of diverse communities, Dr. Forta created the Atzmi curriculum.

The curriculum has a three-pronged approach, with a different course offered for parents, girls, and educators. “It’s important for parents to have the tools to build that confidence and self-esteem in their daughters. In the teachers’ course, the goal is to give teachers the awareness to nip any potential bullying about appearances in the bud.”

But the most important piece is the classes that are brought into the classroom.

It’s a four-week workshop that’s designed to be given in eighth, 10th, and 12th grade. The classes for each grade are self-standing, so if an elementary school chooses to give the course but the high school doesn’t or vice versa, the girls will still gain.

In eighth grade, the first goal is to establish how precious each person is to Hashem. The concept of self-compassion is discussed, as well as the Torah’s perspective on beauty.

In 10th and 12th grades, the topics grow progressively more sophisticated and are targeted to deal with that age group’s thoughts and feelings.

The curriculum is chock-full of sources from the Gemara, the Rishonim, and today’s rabbanim that teachers can bring in.

The impact

Teenage girls are notorious for their sarcasm. One eye roll can destroy a beautiful lesson. How does the Atzmi curriculum avoid this pitfall?

“The person teaching the curriculum is supposed to be a member of the staff. I personally feel that it’s best if it’s not the girls’ current teacher, because I think it limits the girls from asking questions. I find that the school usually has a good idea of who the best person to give over the lessons is.”

If the right person gives over the curriculum, someone the girls connect with and respect rather than a stranger, the potential for appreciation is much greater. Dr. Forta trains the teacher that the school chooses to teach the lessons to enable that process.

When the curriculum debuted two years ago, Dr. Forta taught the lessons in her hometown.

“Interestingly enough, the eighth graders were the most resistant to the lessons. But as the classes went on, most of the girls were won over.”

In the post-workshop survey, only one girl had a negative reaction, so the program is clearly hitting a positive chord.

The curriculum is free for the schools; the only cost is for the journals.

“Last year was the first year that the Atzmi program was available for the wider community. In fact, Lakewood has been at the forefront of bringing this program to our schools, and it’s heartening to see how important this is to them. I really believe that the curriculum can be pivotal in creating change for our girls.”

Mesila

The numbers on the paper scream out accusingly.

Ten thousand dollars… We’re only two people! How in the world is it so high?

Thousands of frum families are in debt today, and fingers point in all sorts of directions about the cause. But there’s one reason for the lack of fiscal responsibility that’s easily cured: many young couples, in particular, spiral into deep debt because of simple cluelessness.

It starts long before they get married. You can often spot teenagers in stores casually swiping their parents’ credit card. They simply don’t know what money is or how to be responsible about it.

Even when the family is careful about their finances or are high earners, making ends meet with a frum lifestyle is tough, and everyone needs some guidance to create financial stability.

Twenty years ago, Shmuli Margulies started Mesila, an international organization aimed at helping frum families achieve financial stability. While the bulk of their work is coaching couples from across the economic spectrum on healthy finances, at some point, the organization realized how much could be accomplished if the problem was approached in a preventative way.

So many couples came to Mesila desperate after they’d dug themselves into a huge hole, and so many times, the hole was created because of their lack of financial knowledge. They racked up credit card debt because they didn’t understand how credit cards worked. They spent way over their income because they’d never been taught how to budget. Their bills were high, but it wasn’t because they didn’t want to be thrifty. They just didn’t know how to shop differently.

Mesila would teach the concepts when these distraught couples came knocking at their door, but what if they could prevent them from coming altogether?

The idea of a curriculum was born.

The goals

Ten years in, the Mesila curriculum has been taught in hundreds of schools, and there are 7,400 students studying it yearly.

It’s a highly professional curriculum that has the haskamah of numerous rabbanim, including Rav Elyashiv and Rav Wosner. There’s a slightly different version for girls and boys and a separate junior high and high school version.

The goal of the curriculum is to teach financial literacy from a Torah hashkafah, enabling students to get the fullest picture possible.

“We want to promote not just literacy, but behavior,” says Rabbi Hillel Adler, director of US School Programs.

In the junior high version, the curriculum is more concept based. The teachers talk about how money doesn’t grow on trees and give the students a better appreciation of where money comes from and how to use it properly.

In high school, it’s more practical, with budgeting projects assigned for homework. The curriculum discusses the difference between needs and wants and how to make strong financial decisions, look for a job, decide on a career, etc. It’s a complete preparation for the world of adulthood.

The impact

“In every school I go to,” says Rabbi Adler, “even if the school is not currently using the curriculum, the principals express how much they understand the urgent need for such a program. They see the way our community looks today, how expectations and levels of materialism keep rising, and they realize that the Mesila curriculum is a necessary tool to address these issues.”

The course is generally taught in 11th or 12th grade, and the junior high course is often implemented in seventh or eighth grade. Teachers have the flexibility to embellish each lesson, and courses range anywhere between one or two semesters.