Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

3 Jewish Educators Honored for Excellence

Three Jewish educators have received 2012 Covenant Awards for excellence in Jewish education and innovation.

The recipients of one of the most coveted honors in the field of Jewish education are Peter Geffen, founder and executive director of KIVUNIM: New Directions in New York; Gitta Jaroslawicz-Neufeld, director of education at Allegra Franco School of Educational Leadership in Brooklyn; and Karina Zilberman, director of Jewish Family Life and Culture at 92nd Street Y in New York.

“The institutions they have enriched, the programs they have initiated, and the influence they have had on their students, their peers, and the community at large is enormous,” Eli Evans, The Covenant Foundation’s board chairman, said in a statement. “They do not share one denomination, one pedagogical approach, or one type of classroom. But each one, each day, proves that Jewish education across the spectrum of ages and venues, are catalysts for individual and community growth, strength and future.”

The three recipients join 63 other Jewish educators honored with a Covenant Award since the foundation established the citation in 1991. Each will receive $36,000, and each of their institutions will receive $5,000.

The Covenant Foundation, a program of the Crown Family Foundation and the Jewish Education Service of North America, honors outstanding Jewish educators and supports creative approaches to Jewish programming.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.