The Kansas City Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning, which is preparing to celebrate its 18th year in Kansas City, will now be run under the auspices of the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy and will be known as Melton@HBHA. HBHA completed negotiations with the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School to house the local franchise this summer and is ready to begin programming after Simchat Torah. The local Melton program will be directed by Henri Goettel.
Until now the Jewish Community Center had “proudly” hosted the Melton program, in which time it had close to 700 graduates and even more students. Jacob Schreiber, president and CEO of the Jewish Community Center, noted the JCC decided this spring to steer its adult learning programming in a different direction.
“As the JCC begins to focus our programming more toward engaging young families — as well as to responding to national polls in which Jews are asking for more cultural arts and hands-on programs that empower them to express Jewish creativity — we thought it was time to try some new things. That’s why we are thrilled that HBHA has decided to offer the Melton program. It’s still a fantastic formal education course, and we believe HBHA’s creative energy will provide healthy new approaches to marketing it,” Schreiber said. (See related story)
HBHA’s change in focus
Up until now, HBHA has concentrated almost exclusively on educating children in grades K through 12. HBHA Head of School Howard Haas said the HBHA board now hopes the school can become the Jewish educational institute for the area.
“We want to be able to metaphorically knock down the walls of Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy and open up the gifts that we have to the entire community. We want to be able to reach the adult population and we also feel that by letting people know who we truly are it will help grow our own student population,” Haas said.
One reason the school hopes to expand its vision is because it has so many talented teachers. Haas said becoming the home for Melton is just the first step in HBHA’s plan to expand its focus and open its doors to the entire community.
“We are also reaching out to different congregations to see if we can help with their Bar and Bat Mitzvah training their students,” Haas said. “We have the resources here and we’ve been doing this for 40 years, so we want to open up more of our services to the community.”
One service HBHA has already opened up to the community is its morning minyans. Each day school is in session, the school has a traditional and an egalitarian minyan at 7:55 a.m. Haas said people have already taken advantage of the opportunity to worship with the students and are welcome to continue to do so this year.
Haas said HBHA will house Melton and be its administrative support. The Melton@HBHA advisory board will be responsible for raising money to pay for the program.
Melton@HBHA Director Goettel explained that by the time HBHA had decided to seek the Melton franchise for the area, it was too late to apply for traditional funding grants. The board has already successfully obtained enough pledges “from people who care about Melton” to cover the 2012-13 franchise fee. Funds are still being solicited as they are needed to create a scholarship fund, pay for operating expenses and to establish a savings account that will eventually become Melton@HBHA’s endowment.
Courses for 2012-13
Goettel explained that Melton@HBHA will begin on a small scale this year with a class called Foundations for Jewish Living. It’s designed for parents of young children and will be co-sponsored by Jewish Family Services.
One section will be held during the day at HBHA and taught by Marla Brockman. Plans are not complete for a second section, but hopes are it will be held at a congregation on Sunday mornings. The class will be taught over 20 weeks and is open to the entire community.
Susie Hurst, JFS’ director of Family Life Education, said this is a perfect fit for JFS as it wanted to work collaboratively with other agencies.
“The Foundations for Jewish Living course focuses on both parenting skills and the core values of Judaism to enrich Jewish learning and family connections,” Hurst said.
Foundations partners with the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and PJ Library. Kansas City has a large group of young families who participate in PJ Library making it, Goettel said, a win-win for Melton here. She believes these families can benefit greatly from this course.
“We believe that over time children who read these books and watch these videos will have questions that their parents will not be able to answer. This is the background for the parent to understand where our master stories and our values come from so that as they interact with their young children they can pass along that information,” Goettel said.
Goettel stressed that you don’t have to be a PJ Library parent to enroll in this course.
Students who have studied at Congregation Beth Torah the past couple of years will be able to continue their Melton studies. For the last seven years Beth Torah has offered a core Melton class that is a one-hour course over four years versus the traditional two-hour course over two years. When classes begin in the fall, these students will begin their third year. The class will be taught by HBHA’s Michal Cahlon, who also taught this group last year.
For those students who took Melton first-year courses through the JCC last year, there will be no official Melton 2 offerings through Melton@HBHA this year. However, Jill Maidhof, the JCC’s director of Jewish Life & Learning, said students who wish to continue engaging in serious adult education at the JCC will find plenty of high quality, multiple week offerings taught by two of the community’s most popular instructors, Dr. Edna Levy and Hazzan Rob Menes, who will be teaching by teleconference.
The Melton Classic Seminar
One of the things Goettel is really excited about is coordinating a group of Melton students to participate in the Melton Classic Seminar in Israel. A group from Kansas City is scheduled to go to Israel June 17-27.
“Our teacher is Chaim Aronovitz. He’s an extraordinary educator. For people who have never been to Israel before this is really a life-changing experience. For people who have been to Israel, this is an experience unlike any other seminar they’ve participated in. We’re really looking forward to putting that seminar together and going as a group.”
Melton Advisory Board
In addition to fundraising and publicity responsibilities, a Melton advisory board, which is comprised of representatives from the local congregations, will help craft Melton@HBHA for the future. That will include determining from the pool of local Melton graduates when people want to study, where they want to study and what they want to study.
“We have graduates going all the way back to 1996 and the graduate program wasn’t even in existence at that time,” Goettel said. “We think there are folks who really don’t know how many modules Melton makes available and how rich they are. We are hoping by the second semester of this year that we’ll have a cohort of people who are interested in, for example, ‘Beyond Borders,’ which is the primary source record of the Arab-Israeli conflict or ‘Holocaust Through Memoirs and Diaries,’ which hasn’t been offered since 2006. There are wonderful Torah-based and also contemporary issue-based curricula that we think people don’t know about. We’re going to be working through our advisory board to get that word out.”
The following individuals have agreed to represent their congregations and are available to answer any questions about Melton:
Beth Shalom: Erwin Abrams — 410-703-7688, or Sharon Loftspring — 913-814-8687,
Beth Torah: SueAnn Strom — 816-729-9671,
Kehilath Israel Synagogue: Ellen Portnoy — 913-451-6293,
Kol Ami: Rabbi Doug Alpert — 913-642-9000,
Ohev Sholom: David Friedman — 816-289-6521, or Elaine Friedman — 816-377-1758,
Community Contact: Celeste Aronoff — 913-548-7384,
KC Melton Director: Henri Goettel — 816-795-8361,