Risa Strauss

Risa Strauss is the Education Director at Beth Shalom Synagogue and the Founding Director of Camp Gesher at The Katie and Irwin Kahn Jewish Community Center.

During her tenure as Education Director, Strauss has increased enrollment and reinvigorated the Religious School through enhanced teacher training and meaningful interaction with parents, and worked to develop positive connections with adult learners and the synagogue Board through outreach and creative programming.

Known as the “pied piper” of the synagogue community, Strauss draws children to Shabbat, holiday, and community events through her reimagined Tot Shabbat and junior congregation program. Dubbed “the Jew Crew,” the junior congregation program begins with Torah study via informal conversation and moves on to a Shabbat service where the students lead. Under Strauss’ leadership, the children at Beth Shalom are challenged to examine and question the Torah portion and build on one another’s thoughts. For younger children, Strauss created the Shabbat Play & Learn program, a fun, interactive Shabbat service with a puppet show d’var Torah to engage the synagogue’s youngest learners and their parents. Strauss reintroduced a once-a-month “Dinner and a Minyan” program to merge students and adults on Wednesday evenings for minyan. Strauss also introduced a Shavuot program in which members of the congregation each speak about a commandment closely aligned to their professional work.

Strauss guides her teachers to utilize multiple approaches when teaching a topic: reading, writing, music, art, drama, dance, and movement are employed to engage children of all ages and abilities. With a deep commitment to fostering relationships amongst all of the Jewish children in Columbia, Strauss has often brought together students from the local Reform and Conservative synagogues for joint programming, to allow students to get to know one another.

In 2013, the Columbia Jewish Community Center recognized Strauss’ innovative and creative skills and recruited her to redevelop and “re-jew-venate” its day camp, which allowed her to interact with Jewish children beyond her synagogue and infuse the informal camp experience with Jewish life and learning. The day camp program is based in Jewish values with an emphasis on respect, compassion, and tolerance. The camp demographic is only 20% Jewish, but the entire population embraces Strauss’ educational curriculum, which includes Hebrew, Israeli Music, Bible Stories, Israeli Dance, and Shabbat.