Hillel Expands Tutoring Program

After nearly 30 years of providing informal help for Jewish youth in preparation for their passage into adulthood, a congregation within Harvard Hillel has expanded their tutoring programs in a new Bar/Bat-Mitzvah Institute founded this past fall.

The Institute enlists the help of Harvard students and leaders of Hillel’s Worship and Study congregation to prepare local students and their families for the big day, while drawing them into Harvard’s Jewish community.

Hillel members will still offer private tutoring for students, but the expanded program, under the oversight of Worship and Study Rabbinic Advisor Norman Janis, includes weekly study groups with members of the congregation.

The group services are free to students, provided they and their families join the Worship and Study congregation, at the cost of $54 a year. One-on-one tutoring sessions with experienced undergraduates are priced at $40-$50 an hour.

“This is definitely a step up,” Janis said. “The students are able to gain a sense of being a group within the congregation.”

The Worship and Study prayer group within Hillel follows the Conservative Jewish service while emphasizing a “participatory, egalitarian” community, according to its website.

At the core of the Institute’s program are the weekly meetings held Saturday mornings during the regular services at Hillel. The services, led by Janis and members of the Worship and Study prayer group, will give students a chance to discuss weekly Torah readings.

Marc Cohen, a teacher in the weekly group, cites the social aspect as particularly important for the students.

“We’re accomplishing the goal of making the kids be comfortable in a synagogue environment, and that’s something you can never get with private tutoring,” Cohen said. “The group gives them the opportunity to be with other kids who may be going through the same thing.”

With the Institute still in its infancy, Harvard undergraduates are not yet formally part of the tutoring program. As the program grows, Cohen and Janis say, undergraduates will take on the task of tutoring the students, who range from age 10 to 12.

The Bar/Bat-Mitzvah Institute is also meant to serve as another way to introduce Hillel to the community at large. Organizers say requiring students’ families to become part of the Hillel congregation will enhance the benefits of the bar- and bat-mitzvah education process.

“Often parents may not know that much, but still want their kids to learn something,” said Tom Schultheiss, who serves as the Bar/Bat-Mitzvah Institute coordinator along with Janis.

The Institute’s programs are tailored toward students of all levels of Hebrew proficiency and knowledge of the Jewish tradition, and Hillel’s website says the tutoring programs in the past have worked with children of professors as well as local residents.

Currently there are six students participating in the Institute, but the program’s coordinators say it will continue to grow. The group has already grown by word of mouth, Cohen said, after one student invited others to join her.