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Since he only gets 45 minutes at a time with his students, most of whom would rather be spending the day outside in the sun, Ira J. Wise decided to teach Jewish values through something that he knew would grab their attention -- movies.

Wise presented his methods in one of eight workshops Sept. 2 at Leadership Education Values, a professional development conference for Jewish educators at The Jewish Center in Princeton. Fifty-five teachers from New Jersey attended the first of what is intended to be an annual event before the school year, said organizer Nancy Shechter, director of education at Temple Beth Shalom in Manalapan.

Young people view the world through both digital and analog lenses, and teachers older than 25 are "digital immigrants" who need to decide how much new-age content they want to absorb, Wise explained during his workshop. At Congregation B'nai Israel in Bridgeport, Conn., Wise shows 8-10 minutes of film per class to create a "teachable moment" and a jumping off point for discussions on Judaism.

"I believe that we need to go where the kids are," Wise said. "They are just daring us to give them something they can wrap their arms around."

Wise said he has used the "Good Samaritan law" scene from the final episode of "Seinfeld," in which the cast ignored an overweight man being mugged (and landed in jail for it), as a way to teach the Jewish obligation of not standing by idly when someone is suffering, as well as the allusion of John Connor to a Jesus-like messiah in "The Terminator" to discuss the differences between Jewish and Christian messianic beliefs.

The main challenge of teaching is sparking children's interest, or "handing them the microphone," as Wise put it. Showing films in class clears that initial hurdle, and "once you hand them the microphone, they take the stage," Wise said.

"The kids will delight you, they will impress you, they will thrill you," Wise said of students' reactions to film. "And, it's easy stuff."

During the conference's keynote address, Joel Lurie Grishaver, co-owner of the Los Angeles-based educational Judaica publisher Torah Aura Productions, recalled that the teachers of his childhood mastered three things: sarcasm, throwing chalk, and complete control of their classrooms. Grishaver, who modeled his speech around texts cited in his 2007 book "Teaching Jewishly," said he eventually realized how all of his lessons also involved some form of "structured embarrassment."

Any time a teacher embarrasses a student, he runs the risk of chasing the student away from the classroom and shattering their connection to Jewish tradition, Grishaver said. When a teacher scares one student by yelling, he said, the whole room is affected and takes a long time to recover.

"The most important teaching I did was when my students were being the most difficult," Grishaver said.

Though people tend to think of angels as celestial beings, but the Hebrew word for angel (malach) is translated as messenger, Grishaver explained. That's why he wrote a chapter called "Teachers Are Supposed to Be Angels" to show how teachers convey God's message, not just their message, to students.

"We are trying to have [our students] emerge as fully human, and that needs to be the central focus of all our efforts, to raise adults committed to sustaining tradition and changing the world," Grishaver said.

Besides for Wise's "All My Jewish Values Come From Movies!" session, other workshops focused on nurturing the Jewish identity of children of intermarriage, prayer, questions about God, and body ethics, among other topics.

In a workshop called "Everything Israel," Joshua Mason-Barkin, director of school services at Torah Aura, discussed how teachers should help their students develop strong connections to Israel.

"It's not enough that [students] know about Israel; it's not enough that they care about Israel," Mason-Barkin said. "They need both."

Mason-Barkin explained that Israel education needs to paint an accurate picture of the country and give students "3-D" learning elements such as meetings with Israelis, stories of teachers' experiences there, and even tactile exercises like tasting hummus and putting Dead Sea mud on their faces.

Regarding the teaching of Israeli politics, Mason-Barkin said that students must first understand all the relevant history and facts, allowing them to develop their own well-informed opinions about issues such as the security fence.

"You can't decide what you think if you don't understand the issue," Mason-Barkin said.

Israel education should also motivate students to visit Israel, Mason-Barkin said, calling a trip to Israel something he thought should be a more important milestone in a Jewish child's life than even a bar or bat mitzvah. Teachers should use language like "when you go to Israel" when they talk to students, not "if you go to Israel," he said.

Mason-Barkin and Grishaver co-wrote Torah Aura's most recent textbook on Israel, "Artzeinu: An Israel Encounter," released in 2008. Torah Aura's textbooks have raised the bar for all Jewish publications, Shechter said, because they speak clearly to students and are always ahead of their time.

Shechter, who got her first religious school job in 1976 at Congregation B'Nai Israel in Rumson, said that with the help of Torah Aura, conferences like this are part of filling the void left by the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE), an organization that closed in February and cancelled its annual summer conference.