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Be’eri’s informal education initiatives create a complete ecosystem in which pluralistic Jewish-Israeli culture permeates students’ lives beyond the classroom. Be’eri’s success in engaging informal educators within the educational system has motivated us to go a step further in creating extracurricular training and teaching methodologies that inspire a culture of Jewish renewal among Israeli youth, educators, and professionals.

The Informal Educators Track run by the Be’eri School for Teacher Education familiarizes informal educators with Jewish-Israeli identity through text-based study of Jewish great books and Beit Midrash-style learning. In a series of monthly seminars, participants learn to tailor informal Jewish identity educational components such as field trips and cultural activities (e.g., Batei Midrash, music, cinema, and theater) to high school groups.

This combination of training and innovative curricula enables informal educators to understand and internalize the importance of their mission; strengthen and define the Jewish spirit of their schools, youth groups, and communities; and reach students in all aspects of their lives. The training has already proven to be a success. Participants have found it to be so inspiring and beneficial that they have requested that additional days be added to the course, on their own private time.

To augment training for informal educators, Be’eri creates dedicated platforms such as VOD Yehudi, which provides teachers with easy access to a specially curated library of modern Israeli and global films relating to challenges in Jewish identity and Jewish and democratic values. The continually expanding VOD Yehudi film collection is currently being used by more than 250 educators and facilitators. The pilot project launched with 15 movies. Significant expansion to a much larger set of films is planned for next year.