Mayberg Foundation Supports Prizmah-JNTP Merger to Expand Jewish Day School Educator Pipeline Efforts
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Prizmah and the Jewish New Teacher Project (JNTP) have announced a strategic merger, uniting two leading organizations to strengthen teacher recruitment, retention, and instructional excellence across the Jewish day school field. By combining Prizmah’s field-wide reach with JNTP’s expertise in teacher induction and mentoring, the merged organization is positioned to deliver more comprehensive, data-informed support to schools and educators. The Mayberg Foundation provided support for the operational and administrative efforts needed to carry out the merger, recognizing its potential impact on the Jewish day school field.
As Prizmah CEO Paul Bernstein noted in the announcement, the merger advances “a stronger, more coordinated approach to supporting schools” and contributes to “elevating the profession of Jewish day school teaching.” Nina Bruder, founder of JNTP, emphasized the importance of mentoring and induction in “helping new teachers stay and thrive” and “supporting early-career educators when it matters most.”
This milestone builds on years of collaborative work, including partnerships supported by the Mayberg Foundation through its investment in the Jewish Educator Innovation Challenge (JEIC). Together with Prizmah and other partners, JEIC has worked to develop solutions to strengthen the Jewish day school educator pipeline—laying important groundwork for deeper alignment across the field. Both organizations have also been part of Mayberg’s broader ecosystem of partnerships, with Prizmah as a Mayberg Foundation partner and JNTP as a member of The DEEP Consortium, another Mayberg-supported initiative.
“This is an opportunity for Prizmah to expand its work and focus more deeply on teacher recruitment and retention,” said Rachel Abrahams, senior advisor for education grants and programs at the Mayberg Foundation. “JNTP brings both extensive experience and valuable data demonstrating how strong induction and mentoring help new teachers stay in the field, and integrating that expertise—along with adding Nina Bruder to Prizmah’s leadership—strengthens Prizmah’s ability to understand and respond to educators’ needs. If we want our teachers to help develop each student’s Jewish self-esteem, Jewish identity, and relationship with God, we need to invest in our educators’ professional development.”
Together, the merger brings added scale, expertise, and strategic focus to one of the field’s most pressing challenges. For Mayberg and its partners, it represents a promising step toward building a stronger, more sustainable pipeline of Jewish day school educators.