Kulam Curricular Outline

Year 1

Circle 1: Me/The Self (Shleimut)

1. Standing Together

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Establish guidelines for themselves to make the space a place for honest conversation
  • Feel more connected and comfortable with the rest of the group
  • Describe what to expect from these curricular sessions
  • Describe more than one aspect of their identities

Jewish Text: Torah

2. A Listening Heart

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Identify the difference between empathy and sympathy
  • Identify where empathy is reflected in Jewish values
  • Practice reframing sympathetic situations they might encounter with an empathetic response
  • Articulate where and why it is important to practice empathy

Jewish Text: Kings

3. Stressed Out? Tune In!

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Learn more about the body’s physical response to stress and brainstorm some de-stressing techniques.
  • Discuss how their physical response to stress and stress relief techniques might be informed by gender and gender stereotypes.
  • Use Jewish wisdom to help remind them that they can take action to reduce their stress levels.
  • Reflect on how they responded to the prolonged stress and uncertainty of the pandemic.

Jewish Text: Jewish Folklore, Talmud

4. Jewish Identity

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will…  

  • Explore the personal experiences and emotions that are connected to Jewish identity.
  • Reflect on the relationship between their Jewish identity and their other identities.
  • Support their peers in connecting to Jewish identity.

5. Self-Care Does a Body Good

Objectives: By the end of this session, participants will… 

  • Deepen their understanding about the many dimensions of self-care
  • Read and reflect on Jewish texts/wisdom to explore the meaning of self-care and its relationship with their body and their community
  • Nurture empathy and self-awareness by identifying obstacles to practicing self-care, by sharing self-care strategies they use, and by learning new strategies from their peers

Jewish Text: Pirke Avot & Rav Kook

6. What’s Your Purpose

Objectives: By the end of this session, participants will… 

  • Explore the meaning of “purpose” and articulate some ideas of what their life’s purpose might become in the future.
  • Consider the components that can guide them as they pursue their life’s purpose.
  • Create a visual representation of their purpose.

Jewish Text: Rabbi Zusya

Circle 2: Relationships/Family (Hesed)

1. Risk Taking & Courage

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will…

  • Explore the messages that teenagers receive about risks and courage from media, society, and Judaism, including messages about gender norms and risk/courage
  • Reflect on their personal relationship with risks
  • Reflect on their personal “fallback setting” and how to check in with themselves in a new or stressful social situation in order to make thoughtful, healthy, and safe decisions

Jewish Text: Talmud

2. FOMO & Filters & Facetime, Oh My!

Objectives:  By the end of the session, participants will … 

  1. Inquire into the role that social media plays in students’ own lives
  2. Understand the pressures that they and their peers feel related to using social media.
  3. Reflect on ancient Jewish wisdom, and consider how it may speak to the adolescent challenges and experiences related to social media use.
  4. Create a resource of Jewish wisdom, for self and/or fellow-students, to draw on when considering social media use

Jewish Text: Proverbs

3. Friendship: “I’ll Be There for You!”

Objectives:By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Identify the characteristics of healthy and supportive friendships
  • Describe what they value most in friends
  • Apply Jewish wisdom to the participants’ understanding of their own friendships

Jewish Text: Torah

4. Conflict Resolution

Objectives :By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Reflect on the ways they feel about conflict.
  • Identify their personal style when addressing moments of conflict.
  • Practice ways to work through conflict in order to create positive relationships.

Jewish Text: Talmud

5. Boundaries

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Practice how to set boundaries and communicate their needs.
  • Understand why setting physical, emotional, material, and time boundaries is important to their well-being.
  • Identify the importance of boundaries in Judaism.

Jewish Text: Talmud

6. Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Examine their feelings about competition and jealousy.
  • Reflect on the drawbacks and benefits of the various competitions (academic, athletic, artistic, etc.) that they are pursuing or might pursue in the future.
  • Practice healthy ways of dealing with competition and jealousy.

Jewish Text: Torah

Circle 3: Community/World (Tzedek)

1. Jewish Peoplehood

Objectives:By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Reflect on their own sense of belonging and connection to the Jewish people. 
  • Explore the plurality of ways that Jews around the world connect to Jewish identity. 
  • Feel inspired to connect to Jewish peoplehood/Judaism in at least one new way. 

Jewish Text: Kabbalist Wisdom

2. Antisemitism 1

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Explore the personal experiences and emotions connected to antisemitism.
  • Describe what antisemitism is and how it manifests in the wider world along with the Jewish world.
  • Reflect about their role in responding to anti-Jewish hatred.

3. Understanding Racial Bias

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Be able to define “learned implicit bias”
  • Make connections between historical and current systems of oppression that impact their learned implicit biases
  • Begin to explore ways they can address racial bias and think about their responsibility

Jewish Text: Pirke Avot

4. Gender Inclusivity and Transphobia

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Reflect on the Jewish value of Kavod Ha-Briyot, honoring the inherent worth and dignity of every living being, including trans, non-binary, and gender expansive folks.
  • Begin to form an understanding of the differences between sex, gender, and sexual orientation.
  • Learn and reflect on the fact that a multitude of genders and sexes have existed throughout history, including during the time of the Mishnah.
  • Experience a heightened awareness of some of the everyday issues trans and nonbinary people may encounter.
  • Become aware of how they can show up as allies.

Jewish Text: Talmud, Torah

5. Dreaming Better Futures

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Imagine the future with hope and optimism. 
  • Identify obstacles in the way of positive change. 
  • Choose small changes that can make their own lives happier and closer to their ideals. 

6. How Smart is Artificial Intelligence?

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Deepen their understanding of the limits and opportunities of current artificial intelligence technology.
  • Explore ethical frameworks for using artificial intelligence in particular cases.
  • Connect the ethics of artificial intelligence to traditional and modern Jewish wisdom.

7. Closing Session: The In-Between

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Reflect on the past year including what they’ve learned and how they’ve changed
  • Consider the challenges they have faced over the past year individually and as a group
  • Explore the concept of liminal spaces using the Israelites as an example

Jewish Text: Torah


Year Two

Circle 1: Me/The Self (Shleimut)

1. Happy Self, Happy Brain

Objectives: By the end of this session, participants will… 

  • Describe the meaning and importance of happiness to them.
  • Understand the role of happiness in Jewish tradition.
  • Apply concepts from the neuroscience of happiness to improving their own lives.

Jewish Text: Likutei Moharan

2. Who Do You Think You Are

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

  • Identify their personal and social identities.
  • Consider how others can make assumptions about us based on our social identities.
  • Explore how identity norms can be challenged and can change over time.

Jewish Text: Torah

3. Achieving Balance When So Much Is Wrong

Objectives: By the end of this session, participants will… 

  • Identify their own right balance of work and self-care.
  • Systematically prioritize work and self-care.
  • Break large projects down into small steps in order to make work, particularly change work, more manageable.

Jewish Text: Pirkei Avot

4. Me, Myself, and I: How to Be Alone

Objectives: By the end of this session, participants will… 

  • Explore their feelings about being alone. 
  • Differentiate between aloneness and loneliness. 
  • Appreciate the Jewish practice of hitbodedut
  • Identify concrete ways they enjoy spending time alone. 

Jewish Text: Likutei Moharan

5. Some BODY to Love

Objectives: By the end of this session, participants will… 

  • Understand that self-talk creates, strengthens, and perpetuates our perceptions of our bodies. 
  • Reflect on the ways in which physical appearance is valued in Jewish texts. 
  • Explore and practice various frameworks for relating to one’s body. 

Jewish Text: Torah

6. The Limits of Ability

Objectives: By the end of this session, participants will… 

  • Understand that people have a diverse range of abilities and limitations, and recognize degrees of ability and limitation within themselves.
  • Fully welcome and include people with disabilities in their communities, families, and friendships. 
  • Recognize the advocacy that has been done, and is still being done, for a fully inclusive society. 

Jewish Text: Torah, Talmud

Circle 2: Relationships/Family (Hesed)

1. Reinventing Family

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Understand the similarities and differences in different models of family.
  • Relate their own family model to others in the diversity of Jewish families.
  • Imagine their own ideal future family.

Jewish Text: Torah

2. When Friendship Isn’t Forever

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Evaluate the healthfulness of their friendships
  • Consider their current needs in a friendship and how those may have changed over time
  • Understand different ways to go about distancing themselves from a friendship that no longer serves them

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Understand what consent is, in terms of relationships and sexuality. 
  • Understand and discuss pressures, including gendered pressures, that impact how people communicate about consent. 
  • Recognize signs of an abusive relationship. 
  • Develop skills for communicating about consent. 
  • Learn about Jewish wisdom about consent and communication in relationships. 

Jewish Text: Various Historical Texts

4. Disagreement For the Sake of Heaven

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Fluently use the skills of “Disagreements for the Sake of Heaven.”
  • Engage in dialogue with others whose beliefs differ from their own.
  • Develop a plan for talking with members of their community about a topic of personal importance.

Jewish Text: Torah, Hillel & Shammai

5. Desire: Do You Know What You Want?

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Reflect on what they might want and not want in romantic relationships.
  • Reflect on their own boundaries within potential or actual romantic relationships.
  • Understand and discuss pressures, including gendered pressures, on how people should behave in relationships.
  • Learn Jewish wisdom about boundaries and relationships.

Jewish Text: Torah, Talmud

6. The Pressure to Be Perfect

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Discuss achievement culture and its effect on teens’ mental health. 
  • Examine approaches to perfectionism from religious and psychological sources. 
  • Brainstorm about how to respond to the pressures associated with achievement culture.

Jewish Text: Reshit Hokhma

Circle 3: Community/World (Tzedek)

1. Home/Land: Exploring Israel Through the Theme of Home

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Explore the idea of home: Where is home for you? What or who connects you to home? .
  • Reflect on what it means to call America home, and like other Jews from all over the world, what it means to have a “home” in Israel.
  • Describe the concepts of am, eretz and medinat Israel.

2. Climate Justice/Vent Diagrams

Coming Soon

3. I’ve Got the Power

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will…

  • Explore a definition of power.
  • Consider hierarchies of power and how it operates in their lives.
  • Differentiate between individual and collective power and consider how to wield each of these powers in the future.

Jewish Text: Megillat Esther

4. Media: Can You Believe It?

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Develop and apply strategies for discerning truth and bias in media.
  • Reflect on how they come to believe things are true and the extent to which this depends on the opinions of others.
  • Practice applying their critical thinking skills to real world media.

Jewish Text: Talmud, Sefer Halkkarim, Prophets

5. Antisemitism 2

Coming Soon

6. Touchy Subjects

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Discuss sensitive topics in a safe and supportive space.
  • Understand new perspectives on difficult subjects.
  • Model approaches to discussing controversial and/or emotional topics in the future.

7. Closing Session-Mapping the Journey

Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will …

  • Reflect on the past year and describe what they’ve learned and how they may have changed.
  • Consider the challenges they’ve faced over the past year individually and as a group.
  • Develop a plan for how to use their Kulam learning going forward in their lives.

Jewish Text: Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl

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