B’nai Mitzvah Mentor (Adult Mentor) - REMOTE

About the Position

The B’nai Mitzvah program at Stephen Wise prepares students for their service leadership role through individualized tutoring and mentorship. The program comprises a team of “Peer Mentors”—teens from the community who teach students how to lead the siddur elements of the service—and “Adult Mentors”—educators with a broader understanding of liturgy, teaching the decoding of Hebrew text, and cantillation (trope). Adult Mentors are paired with students for tutoring over a course of either five-six months or nine-ten months depending on their decoding capacities at their assessment.

Responsibilities:

• Meets weekly with assigned students to ensure their competency and confidence of the reciting, singing, and chanting of prayers, blessing, and readings from their Torah and Haftarah portions.
• Encourages accuracy and clarity of all elements of a student’s Hebrew leadership by close attention to a student’s pronunciation.
• Teaches students the basic mechanics of Torah and Haftarah cantillation[1]; either through a “classical” method through patterns of trope clauses, or a “syllabic” method through identifying key syllables in the text.
• Communicates progress of students through Mitzvah Tools and correspondence with families and the Program Director.
• Maintains prompt, clear, and professional communication with students, their families, and the staff of Stephen Wise Temple.
• Can be remote, via zoom, approximately 4 hours/week

Minimum Qualifications:

• Degree or certificate from higher education.
• Notable experience teaching children ages 11-13 in formal or informal Jewish education.
• Fluency in reading and decoding Hebrew; to “cold read” Hebrew text with all diacritical marks (nikkudot) accurately, and chant through reading the cantillation accents.
• Competence in educational technology (e.g. Zoom) for holding tutoring sessions.
• Kindness and empathy towards students and families based on their individual needs.

[1] Stephen Wise Temple, barring some traditional styles (minhagim) of the community, uses the “Reform standard” of Torah and Haftarah cantillation (i.e. Wolff-Portnoy).