Behrman House CHAI Curriculum

Behrman House is a century-old Jewish educational publisher. CHAI is its flagship congregational-school curriculum, a three-strand, seven-level Reform and Conservative program that homeschool families have quietly adopted as a structured option for Jewish home education. It is neither a complete homeschool program on its own nor a supplement in the usual sense. It is the Jewish religious-school curriculum.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Traditional / scripted / spiral
Worldview	Jewish (Reform and Conservative movements)
Grades	K-8 (seven levels plus early childhood and high school)
Formats	Print textbooks and workbooks; digital Turn Page Access; Mitkadem Hebrew modules
Cost tier	Budget (per-book)
Parent intensity	3 (scripted lessons reduce prep; content area knowledge helps)
ESA-common	No (ESA-restricted in most states; limited religious-materials access)
Accredited	No (publisher; congregational schools using it may be recognized separately)
Established	1921 (Behrman House publisher); CHAI curriculum launched 2007
Website	behrmanhouse.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	3	Age-appropriate religious-school content; not a full humanities spine
Ease of teaching	4	Fully scripted one-hour lessons; low prep
Content quality	4	Well-designed, denominationally appropriate, coherent across levels
Flexibility	3	Adaptable to multi-age classrooms; less flexible across worldviews
Value for money	5	Budget-tier pricing on trade-press-quality materials
Worldview scope	2	Specifically Reform/Conservative Jewish; not usable outside that frame
Visual/design	4	Professional publishing aesthetic; thoughtful illustration choices
Support resources	4	Teacher guides, tutorials, and dedicated homeschool/tutor storefront

Who the publisher is

Behrman House is one of the oldest continuously operating Jewish educational publishers in the United States. The Behrman family has served the educational needs of the Jewish community for more than one hundred years, with the publishing line founded in 1921. The company sits in a specific market position: it is the dominant supplemental-school publisher for Reform and Conservative Jewish congregations in North America, with a distribution that includes denominational movements, synagogue religious schools (commonly called Hebrew school or supplemental school), and, increasingly, a homeschool and private-tutor storefront that sells the same materials directly to families.

The CHAI Curriculum is Behrman House's flagship product line. The name is a Hebrew word meaning "life," and the curriculum is structured around three strands that every Jewish educator can name without translation: Torah (the text and its study), Avodah (worship and sacred practice), and G'milut Chasadim (acts of loving-kindness, meaning Jewish ethical and communal life). Each strand has its own spiral sequence running through seven core levels, designed for congregational religious schools meeting once or twice a week, with family-education sessions woven in alongside the child-facing instruction. The curriculum is used in more than 300 Reform congregations, developed in partnership with the Union for Reform Judaism.

Theologically, CHAI reads cleanly within the Reform and Conservative movements. It uses the Reform prayer framing, the Reform calendar of observance, and the modern scholarly posture toward biblical text (Torah as a text to be studied, discussed, and engaged with, rather than a verbally dictated document to be defended against critical scholarship). Orthodox families will find the theological posture too liberal; Christian or secular families will find the content confessionally Jewish in a way that does not translate. Reform and Conservative families, which make up the majority of the American Jewish population, will find the curriculum describes their own tradition accurately.

The core pedagogy

CHAI teaches by the same logic congregational-school educators have used for decades, short, focused, scripted lessons delivered over a sustained school year, but built on a backward-design framework adapted from Understanding by Design (Wiggins and McTighe). Each level opens with explicit "enduring understandings" for the year, and every lesson traces back to those anchor concepts. This is the curriculum's signature pedagogical claim: children are not just learning about Torah or Shabbat as isolated content, they are building toward articulable year-level ideas such as "Torah is an ongoing dialogue between the text and its students."

The scope and sequence is organized as seven core levels (roughly K-7), with each level containing twenty-seven one-hour scripted lessons across the three strands, plus family-education lessons. Early levels are narrative and experiential. Shabbat candles, holiday cycles, brief Torah stories with illustration. Middle levels introduce more substantive Hebrew prayer literacy, Torah narrative and mitzvot (commandments), and Israel study. Upper levels move into Jewish history, comparative denominations, ethical reasoning in rabbinic texts, and preparation for b'nai mitzvah.

Signature mechanics: (1) Three-strand spiral. Torah, Avodah, and G'milut Chasadim each receive distinct weekly attention, and the three strands spiral through age-appropriate enduring understandings. (2) Scripted one-hour lessons, the teacher guide reads as a lesson plan with timing, questions, and activities, which reduces prep for a congregational teacher and equally for a homeschool parent. (3) Family education integration, several lessons at each level are designed to pull parents into the learning, which fits Reform movement pedagogy and adapts naturally to homeschool use. (4) Hebrew as a parallel track. Hebrew reading and prayer fluency are taught through the companion Mitkadem program and the music-based Hebrew in Harmony curriculum, both sold separately.

A day in the life

A homeschool parent running CHAI Level 3 with a third-grader typically treats it as a once- or twice-weekly religious education block, sixty to ninety minutes per session, replacing what a synagogue-attending family would get in Hebrew school. The lesson opens with the teacher script, a short check-in, a framing question tied to the week's enduring understanding ("What does it mean to do what is right even when it's hard?"), and a Torah text or ritual focus. The child works through the associated student workbook pages, illustrated Torah summaries, short writing prompts, a Hebrew reading or vocabulary line, while the parent leads discussion.

Families who want daily Jewish content rather than weekly generally supplement with Mitkadem Hebrew modules (which run in short daily increments), Hebrew in Harmony prayer recordings, or trade Jewish children's literature from the Behrman House catalog. The Mitkadem three-year music-based Hebrew program for grades 4-6 is the most commonly paired companion, creating a richer daily routine. A family using all three. CHAI for Jewish studies, Mitkadem for Hebrew, Hebrew in Harmony for prayer, has roughly thirty to forty minutes of Jewish content daily plus a longer weekly CHAI block, which approximates what a child attending a full-time Jewish day school receives without the day-school tuition.

What they do exceptionally well

Denominational fit without denominational rigidity. CHAI is clearly Reform-and-Conservative in its prayer framing and biblical posture, but the curriculum does not hammer denominational distinctives. A Reconstructionist family will recognize most of what it teaches; a modernizing Orthodox family can adapt several lessons; a Conservative family will find it nearly native. The range is genuine, and the curriculum's willingness to treat Jewish practice as a lived tradition rather than a confessional position opens it to the broad center of American Jewish life.

The family-education component. Few religious-school curricula genuinely integrate parents. CHAI's family lessons, short, structured sessions parents and children work through together, are a real strength for homeschool use specifically, because the homeschool parent is already the primary educator. What is an innovation in a congregational setting is simply the default mode at home.

Price-to-quality ratio. Most items in the Behrman House catalog, workbooks, student texts, companion family materials, price between $5 and $25, which is remarkable for trade-press-quality Jewish educational publishing. A family building a full year of CHAI from scratch will spend approximately $60-$120 on core materials, well below the pricing of comparable humanities curricula in any worldview.

What they do poorly

Not a full homeschool spine. CHAI replaces the religious-education portion of a homeschool week. It does not teach math, language arts, science, or general history, and it is not designed to. Families new to Jewish curriculum sometimes expect a Sonlight-equivalent, a single box that runs the whole school year. CHAI is congregational-school material, and the homeschool family will pair it with a general-education program of their choosing.

Hebrew is a separate purchase and a separate discipline. CHAI assumes the student is acquiring Hebrew somewhere, through a parent, a tutor, Mitkadem, Hebrew in Harmony, or a day-school cousin. Families without any Hebrew background who want a self-contained Jewish-with-Hebrew program will find CHAI alone insufficient. Budget for the Hebrew track separately.

Homeschool-specific scheduling is thin. Behrman House's tutor and homeschool storefront is well-organized as a purchase route but does not ship with a full homeschool planner of the sort Christian congregational-schoolhouse curricula (LifeWay, for example) include. Families adapting CHAI to a homeschool week are building their own scope-and-sequence calendar on top of the lesson content. This is manageable but not turnkey.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick CHAI if: you are a Reform or Conservative Jewish family homeschooling and want a structured Jewish education spine; you attend or are affiliated with a Reform or Conservative congregation and want to mirror its educational content at home; you want denominationally appropriate Torah and Jewish-practice content at budget pricing; you plan to supplement with Mitkadem or another Hebrew program; you value the Reform movement's backward-design approach to religious education.

• Skip CHAI if: you are Orthodox and want a halachic framing or Chumash-heavy Torah sequence (look at Kinder Torah or Torah Umesorah materials instead); you want a complete homeschool curriculum in a single box; you are a Christian or secular family and want a Jewish-studies supplement to a non-Jewish spine (consider trade titles rather than a congregational-school curriculum); you need every component in Hebrew or require a classical Jewish textual education.

Cost honest assessment

CHAI materials price individually through the Behrman House store. A core-level student workbook runs approximately $10-$15; companion family-education materials $8-$15; teacher guides higher, typically $20-$30. A full year of Level 3 (student workbooks across the three strands, teacher materials, family education companion) lands in the $60-$100 range. Adding the Mitkadem Hebrew program at the appropriate level adds another $40-$80. Hebrew in Harmony, Behrman's music-based prayer curriculum, runs $40-$60 per level.

A realistic all-in family budget for one student, running CHAI at the appropriate level plus Mitkadem for Hebrew, is roughly $120-$200 per year, which is the budget end of homeschool pricing in any worldview and extraordinary for a denominational Jewish curriculum. Families with multiple children at different levels will duplicate some student materials and share some teacher materials; real multi-child costs typically run $200-$400 total.

Compared to Melamed Academy (tuition-based Orthodox online school, much higher cost for full program delivery) and the free resources from ReformJudaism.org, CHAI sits between the two, more structured and richer than free resources, dramatically less expensive than a tuition-based program.

ESA eligibility notes

CHAI's ESA situation is genuinely complicated and state-dependent. Religious-materials restrictions vary by state program: Arizona's ESA, Iowa's Student First Scholarship, and Utah Fits All generally allow faith-based curriculum including Jewish materials. Florida's Step Up For Students permits some denominational materials but has historically scrutinized religious-studies-specific purchases more carefully than core curriculum. West Virginia's Hope Scholarship permits religious materials. Oklahoma's LEARNS Act marketplace includes Jewish publishers. However, several ESA programs have restrictions on "sectarian" instruction that apply uniformly across faith traditions, which sometimes limits CHAI reimbursement even when Christian curriculum is reimbursable. Families should check their specific state's vendor list and religious-materials policy before ordering, and contact Behrman House directly for ESA-specific invoicing questions.

Alternatives

• Melamed Academy, a family would choose Melamed over CHAI because they want a fully online Jewish school structure with live instruction and accredited transcripts, particularly for Orthodox families.
• Torah Umesorah materials, a family would choose Torah Umesorah resources over CHAI because they want Orthodox day-school content rather than Reform/Conservative supplemental-school content.
• PJ Library paired with Sefaria, a family would choose this combination over CHAI because they want an informal, literature-based Jewish education supplemented by the primary-source Jewish text library, at essentially zero cost.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Behrman House CHAI curriculum pages at behrmanhouse.com/chai, the Big Ideas (enduring understandings) summary for each level, the published partnership between Behrman House and the Union for Reform Judaism, and the Behrman House storefront listings at store.behrmanhouse.com. We cross-referenced against publicly available congregational religious-school curriculum documentation, the URJ's announcements on CHAI and Mitkadem, and Jewish educator publications describing CHAI adoption rates. Prices and program details verified April 2026.