About EFI & UnitED

The Jewish Education By Design website contains educational resources commissioned by Educating for Impact (EFI). EFI is a groundbreaking, transformative initiative, designed to support Jewish communities in Europe through increasing the impact of their Jewish schools. This initiative is led and supported by a consortium of Jewish foundations and non-profit organizations including the JDC, the Matanel Foundation, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe, the Maurice and Vivienne Wohl Philanthropic Foundation, in partnership with the Ministries of Education and Diaspora Affairs of the State of Israel, and their designated partner, United at the Center for Educational Technology.

The materials on JEBD are not “plug-and-play”, fully-ready scripted curricula. Rather, they are collections of resources that can be used by teachers as starting points for their own curriculum design. EFI consultants work with teachers in our schools to help them articulate desired educational outcomes and essential questions that emerge from their school and community’s broader vision of Jewish life, and we then support them in building their own curricular units that will use the materials in this website to help students achieve those desired outcomes and grapple with the essential questions. JEBD’s materials were curated by Dr. Alex Sinclair, Tamar Krieger and Dara Unterberg.

More information about our curricular and pedagogic approach can be found here

UnitEd is a joint venture between the State of Israel, the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, and philanthropists in the Jewish world. The initiative was designed so as to strengthen formal Jewish education around the world and to create a global network for Jewish educators. Each country and region have their specific challenges. Based upon a deep commitment to dialogue and cooperation with the field, the initiative offers a wide range of responses, both local and generic: new content and curriculum, a virtual campus for professional development for Jewish teachers, a virtual campus for students, conferences, round tables and more so as to constantly contribute to the betterment of Jewish education. The initiative is managed under the leadership of Herzog Academic College.