Beverly Socher-Lerner, 39, launched Makom Community at the age of 26. At the time, Socher-Lerner was terrified. There were moments during that first school year when the founder thought about quitting.
To the Graduate Hospital resident and Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel member, that now feels like a lifetime ago.
Later this month, Socher-Lerner will host a conference at Makom’s Washington Avenue location for educators from around the country who are interested in applying Makom’s model. Makom itself is also thriving, with 150 students across its after-school program and summer camp.
Makom was founded on Socher-Lerner’s idea of Jewish Placemaking. What that meant, first and foremost, was practical: The executive director wanted to give Jewish families a place to take their kids during childcare hours that school didn’t cover.
But what it really meant was deeper. As Socher-Lerner explains on makomcommunity.org, Jewish Placemaking encourages Jewish kids to ask questions and “co-create an environment with educators and friends that invites questions and meaning-making from Jewish wisdom.” It also includes parents as “interpreters of Jewish wisdom.”
That last part is especially important to the founder. Socher-Lerner started Makom Community as a place for all types of Jewish families. On initial coffee dates with prospective families, Socher-Lerner talked to parents who spoke of “times they wanted to be included in the Jewish community but didn’t feel included.” Some were married to non-Jews; others asked bigger questions about belief in God and stories in the Torah; some were just queer.
Makom Community would be open to all, Socher-Lerner told them.
That first year, the typical Shabbat activity consisted of parents attending with their kids, and everybody sitting in a circle while Socher-Lerner expounded on the text. Then, the founder would throw out a question: “How would you do this in your family?”
“Parents would talk to the kids; kids would talk to the parents; and I would get out of the way,” Socher-Lerner recalled. “Every parent in the room is suddenly the interpreter of Jewish wisdom for their family.”
The executive director still does “individualized intake,” though not as often in the form of coffee dates (People usually prefer Zoom post-COVID). Makom also still hosts those Shabbat gatherings. This open, engaging approach also extends to lessons and activities across the curriculum.
If you walk into Makom on a random day, you might see kids drafting ideas for a mural and other kids cooking in the kitchen. It all has a goal of “bringing people and place and relationship and text into conversation with each other,” Socher-Lerner said.
“I had a kid ask me last week if there were commentators who didn’t believe in God,” the founder said. “Kids are getting a deep understanding of their Jewish texts, and also have a great deal of fun when they’re here.”
It’s a pedagogy that Socher-Lerner will now try to spread to other Jewish educational institutions. About 40 people have signed up for Makom Magic, the conference at the end of the month. Socher-Lerner has also begun certifying educators in Jewish Placemaking. The executive director envisions training educators to teach their own sessions on Jewish Placemaking, as well as a two-year cohort program teaching educators to apply Jewish Placemaking to their home communities.
“We’ll start a process of credentialing educators in our approach and starting a network of Jewish placemakers across the country,” Socher-Lerner said.
The Makom founder grew up in Marietta, Georgia, in a Jewish community that empowered youth. By the time Socher-Lerner graduated from high school, the future educator had served as a voting member on the synagogue board and participated in two search processes for new clergy members.
“That sense that, if I wanted to make something happen, I could make it happen, really persisted with me,” Socher-Lerner said.
Around the time Socher-Lerner married, the couple started thinking about what they wanted in a Jewish education for their future children. Socher-Lerner, who was working as an assistant director of congregational learning at Temple Beth Sholom in Cherry Hill at the time, also began talking to Jews in the community about “what would be exciting.”
“What would be exciting would be a Jewish education that actually works on a working family’s schedule, and that really is a place where kids want to be,” Socher-Lerner said.
During that first year, Makom had five students in the basement of a Unitarian church.
Then, it had to move to Mekor Habracha, an Orthodox synagogue in Center City, because it couldn’t make rent at the church.
But Socher-Lerner kept going on coffee dates and hosting Shabbat circles. From year one to year two, Makom’s attendance tripled. Then, thanks in part to support from the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, it increased again by year three. In 2023, a $162,000 grant from the Federation helped Makom move to a bigger location.
Socher-Lerner expects enrollment to grow again by the fall.
“Kids should come away with the idea that they are making their community what they need it to be, and that Jewish wisdom is a guide in teaching them how to do so,” Socher-Lerner said.