JCDS’ Milestone Celebrations program honors the academic progress our students make each year and sets their learning into a broader, value-rich context. The program establishes a special event for each class, and reflects well the joyful spirit of our studies. Each Milestone highlights a primary element in each class’ Judaic curriculum with an artfully composed program presented to parents and faculty. Depending on the focus of the celebration in a given year, and the grade level, the celebration’s structure and content will vary. Most celebrations share the following elements:

• Recitation and performance: The Milestone celebrations, first and foremost, culminate months of study and skill development in everything from T’fillah (prayer) to Torah study to Mishna. Leading up to the celebration, our teachers develop many different learning experiences along a common theme so that our students have the joy of bringing together strands from across their curriculum in an important and meaningful event. Milestone celebrations, like so much at JCDS, feature authentic Hebrew and English expression from the students.
• Displays, art, poetry, and song: The Milestone celebrations are an opportunity for JCDS students to express in personal and creative ways their understanding of the texts they’ve studied. We promote a pluralistic understanding of Jewish experience, and also convey our deep sense that Torah and Jewish tradition are things of beauty that merit artful celebration.
• Jewish texts: Beginning in 1st Grade, the school gives a different Jewish book to each of our students each year, assuring that by the time they graduate they will own a substantial Jewish library. JCDS is committed to being a place of serious, creative learning of classical Jewish texts. To reinforce this value, most Milestones conclude with a period in which the parents and other guests study from the target text together with their children.

GAN NITZAN, Kindergarten – MI ANI – מי אני (Who Am I?)
This program culminates a year of discoveries and celebrations. In art and song, recitation and portfolio, in video and on paper, in Hebrew and in English, the six year olds show what they’ve learned and done. “Who Am I?”, they ask. The ceremony answers the question loud and clear: They are JCDS students: in love with learning, bonded to one another, joyful in their Judaism, and living the school’s mission.

OREN, 1ST GRADE – KABBALAT SIDDUR – קבלת סדור
The students demonstrate their mastery of fundamental T’fillot (prayers) and share fitting poems, songs, and more. This ceremony looks ahead to years more of study and increasing participation in Jewish communities both at JCDS and beyond. Meanwhile, each student’s parents pour their creative energies into custom-designed covers for the Siddurim, which are the school’s gift to the 1st Graders.

ARAVA, 2ND GRADE – HAGGIGAT HAVDALAH – חגיגת הבדלה
In preparation for this celebration our 2nd graders learn the many elements of the Havdalah ceremony, includings its brachot, songs, symbols, and rituals. They explore the alternating pattern of Shabbat and regular days, the core concept of Jewish time, and the role of our senses in experiencing the world, among other themes. The students take great pride in mastering a whole ceremony and sharing their skill with their parents.

EREZ, 3RD GRADE – HAGGIGAT MIDRASH – חגיגת מדרש
Continuing their study of Genesis, now with Rashi’s commentary in the traditional Rashi script, our 3rd graders explore Midrash as an essential tool in their Humash class. In the Milestone, they use many modalities to demonstrate their growing mastery of the paths of Torah study. The school gives our 3rd graders as a gift the Torah text (Sh’mot – Exodus) they will study in 4th grade, signaling that Torah study is unending.

ALON, 4TH GRADE – HAGGIGAT HaHAGGADAH – חגיגת ההגדה
The 4th graders take up both the book of Sh’mot – שמות – Exodus and the Passover Haggadah in class. Through their intense learning they come to see how the Rabbis and Jewish tradition fashioned from the story of the Exodus from Egypt an incomparable well of meaning for the generations. This celebration is a joyous display of text, song, dance, color, and art. The school’s gift for this milestone is, of course, a marvelous Haggadah.

TAMAR, 5TH GRADE – KABBALAT MISHNA – קבלת משנה
This marks the students’ first formal study of Rabbinic text as they learn the language, structure, logic and cadences of the Mishna, as well as the lead figures associated with it. With the gift of the seminal text, Pirkei Avot as the centerpiece of the celebration, our 5th graders highlight their identification with the timeless wisdom, early heroes, and sacred texts of our people.

6TH GRADE – MIDOR L’DOR – מדור לדור
In preparation for this Milestone event, the students explore the parallel between the Israelites’ anticipation of life in Canaan and their own progression toward the stage of bar or bat mitzvah, as individuals, as young Jews, and as inheritors of the unique legacies of their families. The 6th graders custom design a tallit for the Celebration and the school also gives them a Tikkun – the volume from which one prepares Torah or Haftarah portions for their B’nei Mitzvah and beyond. In this Milestone, JCDS sends the message that Judaism is a legacy which each student must take for her or himself in the context of community.

7TH GRADE
The B’NEI MITZVAH – בני מצוה Milestone is an important moment in our students’ pluralistic education. As they attain Gil Mitzvot – גיל מצוות, or the age of responsibility, our students share their deliberations over their Jewish commitments and begin to articulate the nature of their Jewish identities, based upon classical and contemporary texts. In preparation for the celebration, and in coordination with their course on the Jewish Life Cycle, our students study the varying ways our tradition has understood what it means to become bar or bat mitzvah. The school’s gift to our 7th grade students is a volume of contemporary guidelines to Jewish customs and practice.

8TH GRADE
The GRADUATION CEREMONY – טקס סיום is itself the final Milestone. Students reflect deeply on their JCDS experience and convey it in an original and creative way. Offerings range from original raps to short films to gourmet dinners to scrapbooks to paintings. Students also choose classical Jewish texts that have inspired them and elucidate them both textually and artistically. Lastly, teachers celebrate their students with personal remarks so that JCDS students hear one final time that at this school every student is known and every student is loved.