At the Chabad of Delaware County, Rabbi Tzvi Altein and his wife, Rikki, saw a problem with the way that Hebrew Sunday schools approached Jewish education. For many kids, going to Hebrew school is a chore. The Alteins decided that a new approach could change that perspective.
“People have been complaining about the traditional Hebrew school experience, where kids hate it and they have to be dragged out of bed on Sunday mornings,” said Rikki Altein, who serves as director of the Hebrew School. “Parents felt all this guilt because they wanted their kids to do Hebrew school but their kids hated it, so we wanted to answer that with a Hebrew school that’s fun and that kids love.”
The result is a Hebrew school put on by the Chabad in Broomall that emphasizes the arts, out-of-classroom learning and activity. Instead of having students recite prayers and judging them on their accuracy, the school and its teachers lead songs, with students learning the prayers while having fun singing them. When they learned about Kosher laws, the students made pink, white and yellow slime and applied the substance to figurines of food. At the Chabad of Delaware County Hebrew School, fun comes first.
“My oldest loved attending Hebrew school so much so that when she had the flu in the winter, she was most upset that she couldn’t go to Hebrew school,” said Rebecca Reiter, who has two children in the school and another starting next year. “You just can’t make that story up — nobody wants to go to Hebrew school. I knew that I wanted my kids to want to go to Hebrew school, and that’s exactly what I got.”
Reiter’s children had attended another Sunday school prior to this, and it just didn’t spark the same level of interest. She said that activities like scavenger hunts, field trips, crafts and a reward program with prizes like Squishmallows and remote control cars have helped her kids get excited to learn about their culture on Sundays.
“Kids are having so much fun in Hebrew school that they don’t even know they’re learning — that’s what we like to tell everyone,” Rikki Altein said.
The Alteins arrived at the Chabad in 2014 after the rabbi worked at Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn for six years. He wanted the chance to lead his own branch of the organization, and he jumped when the Chabad leadership in Greater Philadelphia noted that they needed someone to head their Delaware County Chabad house.
The Broomall Chabad does all of the normal outreach and events that are typical of branches of their international organization, but the special part of the Alteins’ leadership is their insistence on creating a new format of Hebrew school. It has quickly grown from just one part of their approach to a major passion.
“They learn so much through art, through singing, through fun, through games, through projects — there’s no notebooks and pencils. It’s not like the traditional Hebrew school model at all,” Tzvi Altein said.
Last year, the school served 38 children from the ages of preschool through bar and bat mitzvah students. While Chabad is a Hasidic organization, the school is meant to appeal to Jews of all types. In fact, one one of those 38 children is Hasidic and Orthodox — the Alteins’ own son.
“It’s a public school demographic, with kids who are going to public schools and then doing this as a supplemental Jewish education. It’s absolutely not geared towards Orthodox kids,” Rikki Altein said. “It’s an important message because so many people think of Chabad and think ‘Orthodox,’ and that’s really not the case.”
The Chabad house is not big enough to accommodate the demand, so the Hebrew school is held at the Haverford Township Community Recreation and Environmental Center.
One of Reiter’s favorite parts of the Delaware County Chabad Hebrew School is the Hebrew program.
“Most schools don’t teach the kids the letters and their sounds until fourth grade, but my first grader was doing that in a very one-to-one personalized program,” she said.
The school uses the Aleph Champ curriculum, which is a Hebrew learning program that is based on the belt system in karate.
Kids start at the bottom rung — white aleph — and advance through the colors by learning and being quizzed. The idea is that it gives children a more tangible way of achieving their Hebrew goals, and also allows children to be categorized by ability level, not age.
“The karate belt system is really, really motivating for my kids,” Reiter said.
Rikki Altein said it’s a special day when a student reaches the black aleph.
“When they get to black, they’re like a fluent Hebrew reader. We joke that when they’re at black, they’ll be able to read quicker than Rabbi Tzvi,” she said.
While the fun is what brings the kids in the door, the Jewish knowledge is what satisfies the parents of children at the Delaware County Chabad Hebrew School more than anything.
Reiter said that what she has seen in her own kid has confirmed the idea that a fun Hebrew school is a well-run Hebrew school. Reiter was preparing for a presentation on Israeli culture at her daughters’ public school and asked them offhandedly what an example of a mitzvah might be.
“I really didn’t know what she was going to say, but all of the sudden she shouted, ‘Honoring Hashem and welcoming people into your home,’” Reiter said. “And then she continued — and that’s not typical of my daughter — and then my middle [child] overheard and started adding to the conversation.”
The examples they gave were easy to remember following an activity in which the students crafted gift boxes for guests in their home intended to teach of the Jewish value of being warm to visitors. The connection between fun and learning is what makes the school special, Reiter said.
It’s just as fun for the Alteins.
“I think we’re going to be growing in terms of the number of kids, and we have an awesome curriculum that we’re excited to be starting next year,” Rikki Altein said, although she said the specifics of that curriculum are still being hashed out.
“Instead of being something that you guilt [your kids] into doing, it becomes something that’s a very positive experience,” Tzvi Altein said.