RJ Blog

by Micah Lapidus Jewish day school sustainability is about more than survival. It’s about maintaining a diverse, vibrant, dynamic, healthy, growing school community. The best way to achieve day school sustainability is by ensuring that we’re fully engaging our human resources.  What does it look like to fully engage our human resources? Here’s a case study. My school, The Alfred and Adele Davis Academy, Atlanta’s Reform Jewish Day School, is a school that loves Jewish music. Jewish singing permeates our school, most noticeably at holiday celebrations and at our weekly Kabbalat Shabbat gatherings. When I came to Davis five years [...]

by Ken Gordon At the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE), we always stress the importance of two goals that align with our long-term vision: (1) community collaboration and (2) advocating strongly for the value of JDS. Turns out, we’re not the only ones who believe in this powerful combination of ideas. We’re excited to tell you about a superb capacity-building project: The Reform Day School Externship. Now in its fourth year, the externship is a model of collaboration of between PARDES: Day Schools of Reform Judaism, host member schools across North America, Hebrew Union College-­­Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), [...]

Next Wednesday, May 23, will be a big day for our family. That night, my wife, Dana Gershon, the outgoing president of The Rashi School’s board of trustees, will be honored at the school’s annual dinner. Dana has been president of the board for two years and, with four daughters, all of whom are Rashi students, we spend a lot of time at 8000 Great Meadow Road in Dedham, where we’re all part of the wonderful kehillah that is Rashi. Needless to say, between meetings, classes, sports, parent-teacher conferences, plays, t’filah, and more, it’s very often where our family hangs [...]

by Pat Whitlock “So, how many children do you want?”  Not an unusual question for a man to ask his girlfriend when he is beginning to think about a future with her.  However, when I heard this question, it came from the cute, industrious Israeli I had been dating for about six months and I actually laughed.  “You mean grandchildren, right?”  You see, at 38, I had been a single parent for 18 years, and I was looking forward to the next phase of my life.   But, as we continued to talk, I started to think that parenting with a [...]

by Rabbi Micah Lapidus Down here in Atlanta, GA many of us have just finished our first weekof the 2011-2012 school year. It’s a good time to pause and reflect onwhat makes Jewish day schools like The Davis Academy unique andexceptional. I recognize that this post is going to read like a loveletter (or a brag) but I think it’s important to put some of this stuffout there for folks that might not know! This isn’t a comprehensive listby a long shot, it’s more of a starting line. So feel free to run withit. 1. Jewish Time. Jewish day schools [...]

by Rabbi Fred GreeneTemple Beth Tikvah, Roswell, GAOriginally published in Torah at the Center and ayekah — where are you? At three years old, my daughter, Yael, stood in front of the mirrorwhen she finally uttered her first independent sentence: “I see God.” I was a rabbinical student at the time, but my wife and I did nottypically go around the house talking about seeing God everywhere. Weknew that it wasn’t Yael’s typical echolalia. Yael (who is now 12 yearsold) was embracing a connection when she was just three for which manyof us yearn–seeing God’s Presence in our own reflections. [...]

by Rabbi Eric YoffieOriginally posted in Reform Judaism magazine Some wonderful ideas are circulating these days about how to renew Jewish life, but creating publicly funded charter schools which teach Hebrew language and Jewish culture to children of all faiths is not one of them. Philanthropic supporters of the three Hebrew charter schools that now exist in America (and the dozen more currently in the works) express two primary motivations, both of which are seriously flawed. First, they say the high cost of attending Jewish day schools makes it difficult for most parents to choose that option; charters, on the [...]