Tool 5: Demonstrate Authenticity and Vulnerability in the Classroom

Tool 5: Demonstrate Authenticity and Vulnerability in the Classroom

Practicing authenticity and vulnerability in the classroom means giving students an honest representation of the teacher’s identity and beliefs. In DRJC language this means appropriately sharing one’s questions, challenges, and beliefs about the primary texts they are teaching. This allows students to also be vulnerable and authentic, and to recognize that Jewish learning allows for and encourages authentic engagement. 

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Rabbi Kerrith Solomon has been at Adas Israel in Washington DC since the summer of 2014 as part of the clergy team and oversees and directs all aspects of congregational education for members age 0-18, and their families. She has a rich and varied background in education and Jewish learning and her educational practice and philosophy is based on her experiences working in synagogues, day schools, camps, campus, Federation and Israel. She previously served as the Senior Jewish Educator at Tufts University Hillel and the Director of Teen Programming and Family Life Educator at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York and has worked in a variety of other formal and informal settings.

Kerrith completed the Hartman-Hillel iEngage Fellowship for Campus leaders, and was a participant in both the second Senior Educators Cohort and the second Relational Learning Cohort of M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education. Most recently she traveled to Nigeria where she helped to establish the first Jewish Camp in the country.

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Adas Israel Congregation is a vibrant, dynamic, multi-generational synagogue that offers access to Jewish life and community for people of all backgrounds. For almost 150 years, Adas Israel Congregation has been a flagship synagogue in American Jewish life, and that tradition of leadership and excellence continues today in an atmosphere of depth, warmth and welcome. Today, Adas Israel is the largest Conservative synagogue in Washington, DC.