Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education

The Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE), founded as the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education, was a non-profit organization based in New York City. Its activities included an annual conference that drew ~2000 Jewish educators, advocacy for Jewish educators, various education-related publications, and more. Its founding was the brainchild of Jerry Benjamin and Cherie Koller-Fox.

In 2009, CAJE closed. In 2010 a new organization called NewCAJE arose, led by founder Cherie Koller-Fox.

Conference

CA CAJE's yearly CAJE conference drew between 350 at the first conference and as many as 2,400 Jewish educators from around the world at later conferences..The first conference was held in August 1976 at Brown University. Around 350 people attended. It was sponsored by NETWORK where Jerry Benjamin was the President. At the end of the conference, the participants voted to have another conference which was held one year later in Rochester, NY where CAJE was officially founded.

Due to its size and nature, the CAJE conference was held on a university campus.

The CAJE conference was the model for the Limmud Conferences in England and later around the world.

Unlike other conferences of its size, the CAJE conference typically offered several hundred workshops over the course of only a few days. The workshops were lead for the most part by teachers in the field. The daily workshops were supplemented by evening keynote addresses and performances of the arts including music, storytelling, comedy, dance and art etc.and a choir led by Debbie Friedman. Most importantly, the CAJE definition of teacher included "anyone involved in the transmission of Jewish education and culture. It is a pluralistic organization that included all who worked in Jewish education from any denomination and teaching any age group from birth until adulthood.

Many innovations in Jewish education were spread through the conference to Schools around the country and the world. The networking that happened there created a field of Jewish education and gave support to teachers in every setting, both formal and informal. At CAJE 25, CAJE started to advocate for better salaries, higher status, benefits, professional development and other things necessary to create an excellent teaching community to educate Jews living in the Diaspora.

In recent years, sub-conferences such as the "Consortium for the Future of the Jewish Family" ran concurrently with the CAJE conference. For 26 years, Dr. Elliot Spack was the Executive Director of the Organization. There were 11 Presidents of CAJE: Rabbi Dan Syme, Jerry Benjamin, Rabbi Cherie Koller-Fox, Rabbi Stuart Kelman,Carol Starin, Betsy Dolgin Katz, Rabbi Michael Weinberg, Sylvia Abrams, Alan Wiener, Fran Perlman and Iris Petroff. Each conference had Chairpeople and there were thousands of volunteers who organized and taught at every conference. Special mention should be made to Stuart Kelman, Joel Grishaver and Ron Wolfson who were the founders of the West Coast region that made CAJE a National Organization.

CAJE went bankrupt in the Winter of 2008 in part because of the recession that year that stressed the finances of synagogues and schools who paid for educators to attend and partly because of the financial mismanagement on those running the organization.

Recent and future locations

All past program books for NewCAJE are the NewCAJE Website.

• 2024 San Diego
• 2023 Montclair New Jersey
• 2020,2021,2022 The Summer of NewCAJE online Conferences due to the Pandemic
• 2019 Portland, Oregon
• 2018 Hartford, Conn.
• 2017 Moraga California
• 2016-Naperville, Il.
• 2015: University of Hartford ([1])
• 2014: Sinai Temple and UCLA Hillel ([2])
• 2013: Nichols College ([3])
• 2012: Montclair State University ([4])
• 2011: American Hebrew Academy ([5])
• 2010: A new organization called NewCAJE arose, led by founders Cherie Koller-Fox and Jerry Benjamin. The first conference was held at Gann Academy in Waltham, Massachusetts. It had 350 attendees, most notably 75 young professionals.
• 2009 MANAGE Conference at Pearlstone Jewish Retreat Center with 186 participants planned by participants after the fall of CAJE
• 2009: CAJE went out of business
• 2009: Trinity University (CAJE 34) This conference was canceled due to the economic downturn on 9 January 2009 via email to all CAJE members.
• 2008: University of Vermont (CAJE 33, chaired by Mel Birger-Bray and Joel M. Hoffman)
• 2007: Washington University in St. Louis (CAJE 32, chaired by Peter Eckstein, co-chaired by Iris Schwartz)
• 2006: Duke University (CAJE 31)
• 2005: University of Washington (CAJE 30)
• 2004: Hofstra University (CAJE 29)
• 2003: Ohio State University (CAJE 28)
• 2002: Trinity University (CAJE 27)
• 2001: Colorado State University (CAJE 26)
• 2000: Hofstra University (CAJE 25)
• 1999 (Ohio State University) CAJE24
• 1998 ( Trinity University) CAJE 23 San Antonio
• 1997 Stanford University, Palo Alto, California[
• 1996 Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
• 1995 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
• 1994 Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
• 1993 Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas
• 1992 University of Southern California, Los Angeles
• 1991 Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York
• 1990 University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
• 1989 Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
• 1987 West Georgia College, Carrolton, Georgia
• 1086 University of Maryland College Park,MD
• 1985 Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois
• 1984 Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA.
• 1983 Trinity University, San Antonio, TX
• 1982 Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
• 1981 Oberlin, College, Oberlin Ohio
• 1980 University of California, Santa Barbara, California
• 1979 Rutgers, University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
• 1978 University of California at Irvine, California
• 1977 Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY
• 1976 Brown University Providence Rhode Island

Highlights of CAJE 33 Aug 10–14 2008

The Roundtable Fishbowl

• The Future of Congregational Education: Evolution & Revolution
• The Roundtable Fishbowl
• Green Judaism: The Moral Imperative to Care for the Earth
• Early Childhood Conference @ CAJE 33: Sharing a Vision --- Early Childhood as the Gateway to Jewish Learning and Living
• Hands-on Technology: Virtual Community, Actual Learning
• Principals' Intensives
• Teachers' Intensives
• National Educators Institute with PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values

External links

• NewCAJE
• CAJE 33
• CAJE 33 blog
• CAJE closes