Melton Graduation Remarks

Ellen Beller

As you’ve heard, my name is Ellen Beller and it has been my honor and privilege to be involved in bringing the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School to Colorado. Let me tell you a little about how it happened, why I’ve worked so hard to ensure the success of our Melton school, and why it is so critical that our community members and leaders engage in meaningful Jewish learning.

Over the years, I’ve been involved with many Jewish organizations and educational initiatives. Having participated in the Wexner Heritage program – an initiative that strives to educate Jewish communal leaders in the history, thought, traditions and contemporary challenges of the Jewish people – as well as in United Jewish Communities’ young leadership cabinet, I thought I was pretty well-educated. But Melton is different.

How is Melton different? Well, one difference is that I was chosen to do Wexner, because of my leadership role in the community. It wasn’t open to everyone – and that was a shame. Who knows who the leaders of tomorrow are? YOU can choose to do Melton. It’s a personal decision. Someone doesn’t decide this for you; YOU have the power to decide whether you want to be Jewishly educated or not.

Now it’s true that many of us have had a Jewish education (and many of us have not). But even for those of us who did have a great Jewish education as children, we learned it through a child’s perspective. As an adult, when I realized the availability of  this marvelous Melton education – with its internationally acclaimed curriculum, professionally put together, taught by outstanding teachers – I knew we needed to bring it to Colorado.

In 1998, CAJE Executive Director Daniel Bennett and I went to the General Assembly in Indianapolis and met Betsy Dolgin Katz – tonight’s keynote speaker – and Florence Melton, teeny-tiny and wearing her tennis shoes.  Daniel and I had two different but complementary purposes when we met with Florence and Betsy. Daniel’s main focus was to create a cadre of teachers in this community who had the benefit of the world-class adult Jewish education that Melton could provide. (And by the way, you should know that every year, our community’s teachers and principals enroll in Melton, bringing their knowledge back to our children’s religious school classrooms.) I saw a great void in quality Jewish adult education in this community, and thought that this program could fill the void, because Melton is different.

As a Melton student, I’ve had the opportunity to learn and to love history and ethics (I was NEVER taught ethics!) and how to study Jewish text in a totally new way. It’s been amazing getting to know all of the fabulous teachers in this community, from whom I’ve learned so much. There are people in my class that I’d never have met if not for Melton, and they’ve enriched my life. There is so much to learn … it’s just the tip of the iceberg. And now with all of our Advanced Studies courses for Melton graduates, there’s an opportunity for all of us to keep learning. It’s great to see all of our successes and how far we’ve come.

But there’s another reason that Melton is different, and with this I want to offer a challenge to our Jewish community leaders. Tonight, two CAJE past presidents – myself and Diane Hochstadt – are graduating from Melton. Other CAJE past presidents who’ve graduated from Melton include CAJE founder Leland Huttner, Susie Fishman, and CAJE’s newest past president, Nancy Gart. Many other leaders – such as our current Federation president Doug Seserman – have also graduated from Melton. But not all of our leaders have yet taken advantage of this terrific opportunity, and I challenge you all to begin.

If you’re going to be a participant in the Jewish community, you need to know where you came from, and what you’re talking about. And when everyone is knowledgeable about the past, that’s the first step to creating a better future.

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