2026 Ruby Award: Inside the Adolescent Mind

In-Person

The Ruby Award is Jewish LearningWorks’ biennial celebration of Jewish educators and professionals who work with Jewish teens. In addition to honoring an outstanding teen educator from the community, the Ruby Award aims to elevate Jewish education by studying important issues that impact Jewish teens, and addressing the implications, challenges and opportunities for the educators who care for them, and help them grow. Please join us!

When: Tuesday, May 19, 2026 from 11 am to 2 pm

Where: Jewish Community Center of San Francisco

Guiding Growth Through Jewish Wisdom & Care

For this year’s Ruby Award, we are excited to be joined by Pulitzer Prize winning author, and NYT science reporter Matt Richtel to deliver a keynote on his most recent book, How We Grow Up: Understanding Adolescence. His book expands on his award-winning NYT series on the teen mental health crisis, and weaves research in biology and neuroscience with personal stories to explore the nature of adolescence itself, and how parents and educators can better help adolescents as they seek to understand themselves. 

  • Aimed at: Stakeholders in the lives of Jewish adolescents in the Bay Area.
  • Format: Biennial in-person celebration and learning program.

For the past two years, The Bay Area Jewish Youth Resilience Roundtable, facilitated by Jewish LearningWorks, has explored what it means to sit at the intersection of Jewish education and adolescent well-being and resilience. In the wake of Jewish LearningWorks’ SoulFULL Gathering in 2025, which featured a keynote from Dr. Lisa Miller on the neuroscience of spirituality, and the important ways it bolsters mental health, we have chosen to focus on what it means to center spirituality within Jewish education. We are excited to connect our learnings from each of these areas with Matt Richtel’s work. 

event Details

  • Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2026.
  • Time: 11:00 am – 2:00 pm. Lunch will be served. View our kashrut policy.
  • Location: JCCSF (3200 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94118).

program

Following Matt Richtel’s keynote, Jewish LearningWorks will facilitate a short workshop that applies takeaways from his book to the work of Jewish educators. In this workshop, we will share tangible tools for nurturing adolescent well-being and spirituality in a way that supports the developmental tasks of adolescence. Our program will conclude with a Q&A with Matt Richtel.

Registration

Early bird fee: Register for $36 by April 28, 2026.

Regular registration fee: The program fee rises to $40 after the early bird deadline.

Organizations that are members of the Bay Area Jewish Youth Resilience Roundtable receive one comped registration. If you are a member, please email Alisha Pedowitz at alisha@jewishlearning.works to register.

Register Here Today

Registration is open until May 12, 2026 or until the event is full.

Questions

Please contact Alisha Pedowitz, Senior Educator, at alisha@jewishlearning.works for any questions or more information.

All trainings at Jewish LearningWorks are subsidized by our generous donors. If the cost is a barrier to your participation, do not hesitate to contact us.

About Our Presenter

Matt Richtel is a Pulitzer Prize winning author for the New York Times, speaker, and bestselling author of fiction and nonfiction books. His latest nonfiction, “How We Grow Up: Understanding Adolescence” illuminates new science that explains the vital, complex, often poorly-understood modern journey to adulthood. Prior works, including “A Deadly Wandering,” and an “Elegant Defense,” have received widespread praise and multiple book-of-the-year accolades. He won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for his series on texting and driving and the impact of heavy computer use on attention. Matt lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife, two teenagers, and two dogs. In his spare time, he plays tennis and music.