When Holli Goldenberg was in college, she got her first job teaching Hebrew school. She loved it and quickly decided it was something she wanted to continue to do, in addition to her full-time job teaching in English-as-a-second-language programs.
“It’s always been something that I have been passionate about and something that I’ve enjoyed,” she said.
Today, Goldenberg is still in public and Jewish education, although her roles have changed a bit. The Chestnut Hill resident is now an administrator with both the School District of Philadelphia, where she oversees ESL programs at 45 public schools, and with Mishkan Shalom, where she serves as the education director. She isn’t in the classroom as much anymore, but still finds time to check in on the students she helps oversee, especially at the synagogue.
“Since I’m there directing on a given Saturday, I spend a lot of time in the classrooms anyway, helping teachers and seeing what’s going on. So, I do still feel like I get that engagement,” she said.
Goldenberg said her goal at Mishkan Shalom is to ensure that Hebrew school is enjoyable for students.
“I am looking to make congregational school fun for students. You so often hear all these tropes like, ‘My parents make me go to Hebrew school,’ ‘Hebrew school’s boring,’ ‘Hebrew school is the worst,’” she said. “And I really wanted to change that narrative and make it a place that students like to go, and just somewhere where they can engage positively with their Judaism.”
For Goldenberg, who grew up in Northeast Philadelphia and Montgomery County, her own experience was a little different. As a child, she started in a Jewish day school while being tutored in Hebrew on the side before working with an independent rabbi for her bat mitzvah.
“I never really went to traditional Hebrew school,” she said.
Goldenberg’s Jewish upbringing and identity are a large reason why she wants to create the same experience for this generation of Jewish kids. She has helped initiate or continue several programs at Mishkan Shalom, including the annual field trip to another city in the region for cultural experiences.
“We went to New York the past couple of years. This year, we’re going to go to the Jewish Museum in Baltimore, and it’s just like a really good bonding experience for our families, a chance to allow our kids to experience something new,” she said.
The shul is also piloting a new program for teens in which a different theme is explored each year, with the selected theme for this group being rebellion. Goldenberg said that with everything going on in the world right now for Jews, rebellion felt like an appropriate topic.
“We have four sessions throughout the year, and a local Jewish educator who’s also a parent is running it. We have three sessions left. The first session went really well. He has guest speakers and artists coming in, and students are creating things based on the idea of rebellion, and kind of connecting that to their Judaism,” she said.
As an ESL teacher and administrator, Goldenberg knows the value of not just learning about your own culture, but learning about others, too. Her day job means as much to her as her work with young Jewish students, and she gets joy out of both roles.
“It’s very rewarding … I think it’s great when kids have the opportunity to meet a lot of different people and to kind of be exposed to other cultures as early as possible, because that’s what our world is,” she said. “We try our best to advocate for our students, to make sure that they are able to feel safe and comfortable and get a high-quality education.”
Goldenberg loves the city she is from and said she doesn’t see any reason to leave. Outside of everything she does with the schools and Mishkan Shalom, she enjoys sketch and improv comedy, trying new restaurants and traveling when she can. She plans to stay.
“I feel like Philly is a vastly underrated city,” she said.
