Common sense tells us that technology can either be a blessing or curse in our lives. The assertion flows from us in a deceptively facile way. Beneath the flowing assertion, lay many cross currents and much complexity. Join Rabbi Jeffrey Schein as he explores how we use technology and ways to support our Jewish spirituality through technology.  

Dr. Jeffrey Schein is currently the director of the Text Me: Ancient Jewish Wisdom Meets Contemporary Technology project of the Covenant Foundation.  He is the senior education consultant for Jewish Education of the Mordecai M Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood and also a professor in the joint doctoral program with in educational leadership of Hebrew College and Lesley College.

For twenty four years  he was a Professor and Director of thiiid1e Education Department at the Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies in Cleveland where he taught and mentored over 100 graduate students who received their Masters’ degree in Jewish education.   He also served as the senior consultant to the Lekhu Lakhem project of the Mandel Jewish Center, a major initiative to change the Jewish character of eighteen JCC camps across North America through the professional development of their directors.  He served the Mandel foundation as a member of the visioning professors group convened to enlarge the uses of the groundbreaking Visions of Jewish Education volume (Fox, Marom, and Sheffler)

For seventeen years he served as the education director and then senior consultant for Jewish education to the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation.  For nine years he served on the faculty of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.  For three years he directed the Project Mishpacha initiative of the Greater Jewish community of Philadelphia and for three years he was the director of the Adolescent Initiative of the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland. He was the education director of Reform and Conservative synagogue programs for fifteen years.  

Within the Reconstructionist  community,  Dr. Schein is the founding Rabbi of congregation Kol HaLev, the Reconstructionist community of Cleveland. He was the first non-pulpit Rabbi to receive the Ira Eisenstein award for community service.  

Beyond the Reconstructionist community, Dr. Schein's leadership positions have included serving as national program chair for the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education and President of the association for Institutions of Higher Jewish Learning of North America.

Dr. Schein is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (1977) and of the doctoral program in curriculum studies of Temple University (1980).   He is the author (or co-author) of the following works: Creative Jewish Education (Rossel books), Targilon: a Guide for Charting the Course of Jewish Family Education (JESNA  and JRF), Windows on the Jewish Soul (JRF), Growing Together: Resources, Programs and Experiences for Jewish Family Education (ARE/Behrman House), and most recently Kol Ha-No’ar: The Voice of Children (a prayer book for young children and their families, JRF) as well as numerous journal articles about Jewish, general, and religious education.

With his wife Deborah, an early childhood professor, he has developed a seminar series "The 100 Languages of Children Meet the 70 Faces of Torah" designed to create frameworks for learning across the Jewish life cycle. Together Jeffrey and Deborah presented the seminar as guest scholars for Leo Baeck College and the Jewish community of Great Britain in the spring of 2004, at Siegal College in 2009 and 2013, in West Palm Beach in 2009 and in Detroit in 2010.