By Shira Deener, Head of School.

This the week, before our annual signature fundraising event, A Taste of What Really Matters, we wanted to give you a taste of what really matters here at JCDS, starting with the warmth of Aliza’s smile enveloping those who enter our school!

On Wednesday, several Middle School students took it upon themselves to continue a musical T’fillah (prayers), replete with singing and guitar strumming in the Beit Knesset (main prayer space). Classrooms are ever-abuzz with reading, writing, and arithmetic, and debates and Talmudic discourse ring out in Tanakh and Toshba classrooms. Walk into HaSadna (The Workshop), and be wowed by engineering, design thinking, and the sound of the laser printer feverishly cutting a student’s project. While you are nearby our Makerspace, peek into the gym where games, fun competitions, laughter, and movement abound. From the hallways, Israeli music can be heard, pulsating, as several dance troupes rehearse for the upcoming MIT Israeli Dance Festival, and imagine the joy and pride we felt when two of our 8th graders recently ran T’fillah instantly, without hesitation, in a Lower School classroom because the teacher had been unexpectedly called away for a few moments. Although the school day has ended, on the bus ride home, the connection continues as an 8th grader cuddles up to the 1st grader that she has been tutoring in Hebrew, all while tutoring her in Hebrew…and that’s just a taste!

Please join us on Saturday evening, March 25th, as the JCDS community celebrates as one, A Taste of What Really Matters.

By Shira Deener, Head of School.

Kif Kef (Fun Fun) week was filled with joy and connection, from a lower school costume parade, to Megillah reading with JCDS parents, alumni, students, and staff, to a mixed-grade seudah (festive Purim meal), to an incredible middle school-led Purim carnival, and much, much more! In addition, this year’s Matanot La’Evionim collection raised a record $1,800 for Yad Chesed! Chag Purim Sameach (Happy Purim), JCDS! We are so grateful to be in community with you.

Monday: Awesome Hair and Hat Day

Tuesday: Costume Day

Tuesday: All-School Megillah Reading

Tuesday: Purim Carnival

Tuesday: Magic Show

Wednesday: Inside Out & Backwards Day

Thursday: Time Machine Day

By Shira Deener, Head of School.

This week, we had the pleasure of presenting our strategic planning process for the next five to seven years with the faculty, staff, parents, and broader JCDS community. Members of four task forces shared some of the big questions currently under exploration which pertain to enrollment, the hiring and retention of high quality teachers, property and facilities, and marketing and branding. This process rests on the love for and belief in JCDS’ value to our families and to the Jewish community at large.

So, you have to ask yourself, why? Why are so many people willing to step up to participate and give so much of their time and energy? It is because we care about JCDS’ mission to kindle the flame of lifelong learning within a Joyfully Jewish environment. A strategic planning process helps us ensure that we continue to nurture each student’s capacity for intellectual discovery within a uniquely pluralist, bilingual Hebrew-English environment. We want to continue to build strong Jewish operating systems based on the wisdom of our collective Jewish values, texts, and culture. We want to guide our students to find their unique voice and to contribute meaningfully to the world. 

Strategic planning is not always about the future. Our school embraces strategic moments on the school calendar as a way to double down on our school’s mission. This is one way we intentionally guard the traditions that build our joyful community. Purim is a perfect example. Mi Shenichnas Adar Marbim B’simcha “When the month of Adar begins, we increase our joy.” The days leading up to Purim are some of the most palpably joyful moments in our school. If you come into the building, you’ll see scintillating posters hanging that serve as reminders of next week’s Kif Kef (Fun Fun/Spirit) week. Classes were happily interrupted by our Nitzanim (Kindergarteners) as they marched in to sing Purim songs loudly and proudly. Middle Schoolers are gearing up for the much awaited Purim Carnival that they plan for and run every year. Those who are reading Megillat Esther next week can be heard practicing in the Beit Knesset (our main space).

If you do not have plans, we invite you to join us on Tuesday at 9am to hear our students, staff, and parents reading from the Megillah. We hope that, in this month of Adar, joining us will increase your joy!

Chag Sameach!

By Shira Deener, Head of School.

The famous 19th century rabbi, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, said something profound. He stated that “bal taschit,” do not destroy, “is the most comprehensive warning to human beings not to misuse the position that God has given them as masters of the world and its matter through capricious, passionate, or merely thoughtless wasteful destruction of anything on Earth.” 

Here we are in 2023 and this warning still rings true. We also know that our children can sometimes experience an outsized burden of responsibility towards keeping our planet healthy, clean, and sustained for many years to come. While their individual actions are important from an educationally point of view, their impact on the planet is limited. Schools have an important role in the area of climate change. We can create the space, where many of of our children are already inhabiting, to learn, question, and act. That is exactly what happened last week during our Climate Justice and Action event.

Community Book Read 2023

Last week, more than 20 students and their families gathered as part of the 2nd Annual Social Justice Community Book Read. This year’s theme of Climate Justice and Action was brought to life in three beautiful and thoughtful books that reached a wide range of readers and interest levels. The picture book Stand Up! Speak Up! A Story Inspired by the Climate Change Revolution by Andrew Joyner told the story of a young girl’s realization of the big problems in the world and the small actions she can take in her community to make big change. The graphic novel Luz Sees the Light, by Claudia Dávila, tells the story of a community experiencing a blackout and coming to terms with the impact of their actions on the world–for better or worse. And Turn the Tide by Elaine Dimopoulos, a book in prose, tells the story of a young girl who becomes an ocean activist on an island, organizing her friends and her community to ban plastic bags. 

Students and their parents were first treated to videos sent in by the authors thanking and encouraging our young readers and climate activists. They then read the books and broke out into breakout groups by book to share noticings and wonderings about what they read. Afterwards, everyone came back together and did a “jigsaw” protocol, where groups were mixed up so that students of different ages who read different books shared their noticings, their favorite pages, and what they learned. The evening concluded with students writing their Community Climate Commitments on leaf shaped post-its. Students and parents came up with great ideas like “Plant a tree,” “Turn off lights,” “Walk more,” and aspirational ideas like “solar cars.” Parents and students alike then marched with Climate Action signs down the hall to the Community Climate Commitment Tree for celebration of our learning, actions, and for pizza!

By Shira Deener, Head of School.

כי האדם עץ השדה

A Person is a Tree of a Field

Deuteronomy: 20:19

This week, we celebrated Tu BiShvat, the 15th day of the month of Shvat. This is one of four birthdays we celebrate in Judaism, with this one being for the birth of the trees. If you are in Israel around February, you might catch a glimpse of the shkediya tree (the almond tree) with its beautiful pink blossoms. Much like America’s Groundhog Day, the shkediya reminds us that springtime is just around the corner.

With spring in the air, that means that the birth of a new cohort of JCDS Gan Nitzan students and families is just around the corner. February is the height of our admissions season and we have enjoyed bringing our new prospective families in for an even deeper experience of day-to-day life at JCDS.

This week, while groups of children explored the Gan Nitzan classroom during their “playdates,” parents studied a text with me in my office as a way to have an immersive authentic taste of a JCDS education centered on the values of intentional pluralism. We focused on the poem “Conversation,” by Dan Pagis. We discussed the text using JCDS’ pedagogical approach, Pedagogy of Partnership, about how the pine tree can be viewed from four different perspectives. We expanded upon this conversation to explore the ingredients needed for a healthy conversation to take place.

But my office wasn’t the only place where the tree theme took root during the week of Tu BiShvat. To name just a few:

• In Rav Talia’s 7th grade Toshba class, Talia organized a non-traditional Tu BiShvat seder focused on the idea of trees as metaphors for people. Her students meditated on the symbolism of bark, roots, sap, and fruit by tasting products derived from each part of the tree.
• In Vered’s Kitat Alon (4th grade) art class, our students in partnership with students from Akko, Israel, virtually worked on a leaf project created from trees from their respective neighborhoods. This project is part of an ongoing partnership through E4E with a 4th grade class in Akko.
• Our youngest students in Gan Nitzan through the 3rd grade engaged in a high-energy, interactive game focused on energy efficiency and the importance of saving energy. Students learned about simple behaviors such as turning off the lights before leaving a room or what to do when you see downed power lines. 
• 4th and 5th graders enjoyed their own special Tu BiShvat seders, where symbolic fruits such as raisins, fig newtons, and almonds were enjoyed, and middle schoolers learned from a panel of speakers who shared their professional work associated with environmentalism. 
• Be sure to check out the planters in the sifriyah created by our Lower School students. The compost that is in each of the planters was created by our school’s very own compost collected throughout the year.

Students across the grades enjoyed a community book read last evening on the theme of environmental responsibility and care in partnership with JCDS’ Green Team. Stand Up! Speak Up!, Luz Sees the Light and Turn the Tide are age-appropriate books that students discussed tonight together with parents and faculty.

The Torah teaches us that humankind is like the tree of the field. At JCDS this week, we all explored the relationship between humans and trees, nature and the environment.

By Shira Deener, Head of School.

אָ֣ז יָשִֽׁיר־מֹשֶׁה֩ וּבְנֵ֨י יִשְׂרָאֵ֜ל אֶת־הַשִּׁירָ֤ה הַזֹּאת֙ לַֽיי וַיֹּאמְר֖וּ לֵאמֹ֑ר אָשִׁ֤ירָה לַֽיי כִּֽי־גָאֹ֣ה גָּאָ֔ה ס֥וּס וְרֹכְב֖וֹ רָמָ֥ה בַיָּֽם׃

Exodus 15:1

Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD. They said: I will sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously.

This week is Shabbat Shirah שבת שירה, or “Shabbat [of] Song,” which is the name given to the week where parashat (weekly torah portion) Beshalach is read. This parasha celebrates the crossing of the sea and the Israelites’ miraculous transition from slavery to freedom. It is customary to chant the “shirah” (song), called Shirat HaYam שירת הים, or Song of the Sea, in a special trope, with a call and response style ensuring that every year in every generation the voices blend together in community as we remember this foundational moment in our collective Jewish narrative. 

This parasha holds a tremendous amount of meaning for me today just as it did many, many (too many!) years ago when I chanted it on my bat mitzvah. I had the honor of re-enacting this formative moment in my own life with our students yesterday. Along with Yoni K (JCDS ’23), who also became bar mitzvah on Shabbat Shirah, we shared the honor of leading the students through our chanting during our morning t’fillot (prayers). We were also grateful to be joined by Chavah Goldman, JCDS Director of Teaching and Learning, to leyn (chant) from the Torah. To prepare the community for this special shirah, on Tuesday, JCDS middle schoolers and staff met for a few moments in the Beit Knesset (our main prayer space) to sing together in unison. Those 10 minutes of soulful harmonies filled the room, spilled out into the hallways, and reminded us all of the unique moment in our Torah’s journey.

Singing and music are two pillars of the JCDS experience. When we speak of joyful Judaism, music is an essential ingredient. Last week, many JCDS families joined the Temple Beth Zion community for a special Kodesh L’Kol with Rabbi Deborah Sacks Mintz, brought to us by the Hadar Institute. Swaying, humming, and the harmonizing of unique niggunim (wordless songs and prayers) allowed the adults in our community to experience what our students experience on a regular basis.  

This week, JCDS music teacher, Elah Grandel, arranged for a professional brass ensemble, including an animated Q&A, to join our school as part of our ongoing orchestra concert series. The instruments and music were framed in the context of both music class and t’fillah. As Elah reports, “it was wonderful to watch the students listen so intently and enjoy the live performance.” The instrumentalists played the French horn, trombone, and tuba, filling the room with the sounds of Poulenc, Andante from a Trio by Bohme, a duet for trumpet and horn by Bozza, and a duet for trumpet and tuba by Telemann. The students revealed that they especially enjoyed the mute “tricks” on the trumpet and the jazzy trombone.

By Shira Deener, Head of School.

How can learning about percentages help our students make sense of the world around them? At JCDS, a 7th grade math unit in which students learn how to calculate how much a value has changed over time is also an opportunity to apply math learning to real-world scenarios and current events. This is a way for our students to make sense of the world around them with the tangible practice of a new math skill.

For this percent change project each year, students choose their topic from a list of relevant issues or look for their own data about a topic of interest. The students were split into small teams and tasked with making sense of their datasets, asking a question that the data can answer, calculating percentage change over time, and hypothesizing about what might be causing that change. The presentations and resulting questions embodied two of our Habits of Mind and Heart – Curiosity and Evidence.

I left the classroom incredibly impressed by the eloquence of the speakers, the intellectual curiosity on display from the presenting groups, and the insightful questions asked by their fellow students. The questions being examined by the respective groups were the impact of Russia’s war with Ukraine on the value of Bitcoin, the effect of inflation on the prices of bread, tomatoes and gas, unemployment rate changes resulting from Covid, change in sea surface temperature from 1880 to 2020 as a measure of global warming, and whether the killing of George Floyd resulted in a change in the police budget. One student, who had chosen and researched his own topic (price of Bitcoin), shared how he’s fascinated by the stock market and wanted to investigate its fluctuations over the past year. This led to an analysis of the potential geopolitical consequences of a war, specifically its impact on the value of cryptocurrency. Other students noticed that different projects looked at different time periods because some of the data was impacted more by Covid while other data was impacted more by the war in Ukraine.

In conducting the analysis of the data, the students’ work expanded beyond the boundaries of mere statistical analysis and ventured into a 3rd JCDS Habit of Mind and Heart – Multiple Perspectives & Empathy. They found themselves considering the perspective of others with respect to how fluctuating prices of household goods and exorbitant gas prices can impact spending habits and day-to-day choices for many.

After watching the student presentations, I’m 100% confident that these future JCDS alums will have an oversized impact on creating positive change in whatever future endeavors they choose to pursue.

By Shira Deener, Head of School.

“To see the other side, to defend another people, not despite your tradition but because of it, is the heart of pluralism.” – Eboo Patel, founder Interfaith America

Intentional pluralism, the core of a JCDS experience, underscores Patel’s belief that a commitment to one’s tradition can lead to seeing the other, and can even push one to defend the other. That is to say that knowing who you are and your particular identities actually helps to break down barriers. MLK, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel knew how to do just that. Coming from two very different traditions, they found a brotherhood in their joint pursuit of justice and equality in their shared fractured world. This year, JCDS celebrated our 3rd annual Erev MLK, Jr. Day program, whereby 95 registrants enjoyed a rich evening of learning and discussion. Our two incredible teachers, Rabbi Or Rose and Imam Taymullah Abdur Rahman led us in an exploration of key moments in the lives of these two iconic leaders of the civil rights movement. 

In a private letter written to MLK after his participation in the third Selma to Montgomery march, Heschel famously shared, “For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips, and marching is not kneeling, and yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.” Together we explored what it really means to pray with our legs, how action must accompany prayer, and what it means to lead a life replete with “high moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.”

We ended the evening with a meditation on MLK’s hopeful words upon acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize of 1964: “I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of [hu]mankind. I refuse to accept the idea that the “is-ness” of [our] present nature makes [us] morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “ought- ness” that forever confronts [us].”

Patel shared that “[w]hen thousands of people discover that their story is also someone else’s story, they have the chance to write a new story together.” At JCDS, we are working to write the next chapter, the next story together.

By Shira Deener, Head of School

Last week, we began our School Sparks series to highlight how we put into practice what we claim in our JCDS mission statement. As we share HOW we achieve this goal and make our implicit beliefs more explicit, we hope you will enjoy this latest installment. We invite you to take the time to experience such moments in person.

“How Do You Want to Feel Today?”

This week, during Kitat Oren’s (1st grade) morning meeting, General Studies Teacher Ashley Donovan asked her students how they wanted to feel. While it is also typical practice to ask students how they currently feel, Ashley asked students to reflect and remain curious (two of JCDS’ Habits of Mind and Heart) about how they want to feel. Students shared responses: happy and calm, easygoing and free, and mischievous to name a few. Each response resulted in conversations and connections to one another.

One student shared that she wanted to feel sad, as “You can’t be happy if you are not sad first.” At the Prizmah Conference earlier this week, Tal Ben-Shahar presented a dynamic session on happiness, including the research he shared in Happiness Studies: An Introduction. The art of happiness does not include dismissing the feelings of stress, anxiety, or struggle. Rather, happiness can be most truly experienced by leaning into difficult emotions, acknowledging them, and taking the time to recover. Golda Meir noted that “Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t know how to laugh either.” The students in Kitat Oren intuitively understand this concept, expressing that they want to feel sad knowing that they will then feel happiness more completely.

Later in this conversation, a student shared that “I want to feel with you guys.” Ashley enthusiastically responded, “It’s a community feeling!” The student response? “I am obsessed with this community!”

We can’t wait to share more about JCDS in the weeks to come as we continue to make the implicit explicit.

By Shira Deener, Head of School.

It is easy to write on our website that, “At JCDS, pluralism is more than the existence of diversity — it is an active posture, a point of view that shapes how we attempt to build and foster Jewish community, and how we understand and seek to engage with and improve the world around us.” It takes little effort to publish our belief that a JCDS experience “nurtures each student’s capacity for intellectual discovery and decision-making within a respectful, pluralist, bilingual Hebrew-English environment,” or that “we kindle the flame of lifelong learning in all its constituencies and serve as an inspirational model of innovative, effective, and joyful teaching and learning beyond the school.” 

Any school could say this. However, every day, we put into practice what we claim in our JCDS mission statement. It is in the HOW we achieve this goal that differentiates JCDS from other schools. 

The next few School Sparks articles will highlight the small moments that make these implicit beliefs more explicit. As always, we welcome you to visit and experience such moments in person. 

Wednesday’s 7th grade Toshba (Oral Torah and Rabbinics) class offers a great example of making the implicit beliefs more explicit. It was a tiny moment in the scheme of the lesson, but was grandiose in terms of impact. On the second day back from vacation, Rav Noah Westreich (Middle School Jewish Studies Teacher) was about to begin a lesson focused on traditional Jewish wedding rituals. As with any class of any age of students, a teacher uses their own style and tools to help learners transition from whatever came before to the lesson at hand. Some teachers might use gentle hand clapping routines, a “do now” assignment, a song, or a raised hand. I witnessed a beautiful tradition in Rav Noah’s Toshba class that illuminates an innovative transition that not only readies the class for learning, but also can inspire students to learn beyond the class period.  

After reciting the blessing one makes before delving into Torah study (בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יהוה

אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶך–הָעולָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָנוּ בְּמִצְותָיו וְצִוָּנוּ לַעֲסק  בְּדִבְרֵי-תורָה / Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha’olam asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu la’asok b’divrei torah. / Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has sanctified us with commandments, and commanded us to study words of Torah.), Noah asked his students to dedicate their learning for the day to someone or something that was meaningful to them. It was clear this was a familiar practice. Each student paused quietly, the energy began to shift in the room, and one by one, the students shared who or what they were dedicating their Toshba lesson to for that day. Their responses ranged from superstar athletes, to the weather in the hopes for a snow day soon, to Kanye West (Ye) so that learning could inspire him to be more thoughtful and less divisive and dangerous with his antisemitic tropes. This last dedication blew me away!

In that small moment of transitioning from what came before to the lesson at hand, here is what happened: Rav Noah set the stage for engagement and learning. He was able to honor each student by giving them the much needed opportunity to answer “Where are you now?” He was able to create a small window into each of the student’s lives to better understand what was on their minds and what they were emotionally bringing into the class. He created a stance for learning and empowered each of the students by elevating the stature of the learning through their individual dedications. At the same time, each student felt seen and understood.

This is just a small moment that can help you imagine the creative moves teachers at JCDS make every day which result in the enactment of our mission and vision. I look forward to sharing more in the weeks to come!