This Tuesday, 400 students from North American Jewish Day Schools attended the online event “Private Conversations with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer” hosted by Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools. Ambassador Dermer reached out to Prizmah offering an exclusive conversation for any 8th or 12th-grade student whose Israel trip had been canceled due to COVID-19. 

“He was dynamic, told fabulous stories, and made us feel like we were just hanging out chatting with him, bringing a piece of Israel into our homes at a time when we cannot go to Israel ourselves,” said Rachel Dratch, Associate Director of Educational Innovation at Prizmah.

Students asked about his favorite sports (he likes football, not soccer), his thoughts on the peace process, anti-semitism, Israeli elections, and American political leadership. Sitting in the “Golda” room of the Embassy, next to an Andy Warhol painting of Prime Minister Golda Meir, the ambassador shared how he grew up in Miami, Florida and fell in love with Israel at a young age before making aliya in his 20’s. He passionately described his love of America and how that informs his service in Israel--fighting for shared values of freedom and community. “The stronger we are, the closer to peace we will be. My hope is that Israel continues to be strong and that ultimately all of our Arab neighbors will make peace with us,” said the ambassador.

When asked about lessons he has learned as ambassador, he shared this insight: “Assume good and give others the benefit of the doubt. Just because you disagree with someone doesn't mean that they are a bad person.” He explained that serving as a leader is all about people. “There may be honest disagreements--don't assume the worst about the other side.”  “In Israel, he continued, “They'll argue with each other, but they can also sit down and have a meal together knowing that everyone has served the country- so don’t assume the worst about your political opponents.”

“What a privilege it was to have this special time with the Ambassador,” said one school leader.  Another added, “He conveyed a lot of important information, from the light-hearted to the more serious.”

“It truly is an honor to be able to partner with the Israeli Embassy, and with schools and communities to bring people together and support educational initiatives and projects across North America,” said Rachel Dratch from Prizmah, “we look forward to future partnerships and projects - stay tuned!”

Prizmah is the network for Jewish day schools and yeshivas across North America. We see what’s possible for schools. Together we can achieve it.
 

This article is part of a series representing a partnership between JEIC and Prizmah. It grew out of a collaboration at the 2019 Prizmah Conference, where JEIC ran Listening Booths in which 52 participants shared their dream for Jewish day schools. 

Interview with Rabbi Moshe Margolese
Director of Advancement and Development at Ohr Chadash Academy in Baltimore, MD

Describe what you see in terms of contemporary education in Jewish schools.
Most schools today, including Jewish day schools, place tremendous focus on academics. The students are expected to achieve high academic goals; therefore, a serious environment is required. We want our students to become independent learners, across a range of abilities.

Judaic studies teaching is no different. There are now Judaic standards and benchmarks comparable to general studies. Our classrooms emphasize skill-building, and the learning is often tech-based.

If you walk into schools run well, you will find a Jewish environment that is highly rigorous, academic, with students engaged in their studies; the teachers make sure both to explore subjects in depth and to cover the material expected, many worksheets are distributed, etc. In this environment, student joy can be overlooked.

How do you know when a school is succeeding in infusing learning with simchah? What are the tell-tale signs?
When you go into a school on Rosh Chodesh, or even on erev Shabbat in some schools, you can see and feel the simchah that they have created, through music, singing, dancing. When you walk through the halls of school during the month of Adar, you can see and feel simchah all around you. People in costumes, funny signs hanging on the walls. The schools have been able to highlight specific times throughout the year and infuse the environment with joy and simchah. 

You can see students laughing, staff in a pleasant mood, focusing on the positive around them. There is momentum, a ruach of simchah during these times. You can walk into individual classrooms, seeing students with smiles on their faces deeply engaged in a class lesson. You can see students acting out the parshah chapter that they just learned followed by carryover conversations and laughter. You will see students excited to tell you about what they are learning, just learned, or are about to learn b/c of their excitement about the lesson. Happiness spreads, it’s contagious, and people can’t keep it to themselves—it needs to be shared.

Where do you see schools falling short?
To me, an important aspect of life is simchas hachayyim—the enjoyment of life in all that we’re doing. I believe that simchas hachayyim needs to be deeply embedded in the school, in its environment, its culture—a part of all aspects of school life, including academic.

Would you describe davening and benching in our schools as a time of simchah? Would you describe Judaic classes as a time of simchah? What portion of the eight hours a day that children and staff are in your school is focused on simchah? My guess is almost none, except for the times that we have set aside for that, rosh chodesh, adar, a siyyum. But on a daily basis we keep things very focused and measurable. 

At day schools, everything is planned, thoughtful. The focus is chinuch; schools strive to attain results that are measurable. This level of planning creates a desired level of control, which in turn creates a restrained environment.

I think we are undervaluing how much can be learned while infusing simchah into our learning, within a fun atmosphere. I think we are falling short on wanting to “treat children like adults” and needing a “level of seriousness.” We say, “It’s chinuch, you don’t want them banging on the tables and doing hand motions when they are an adult while bentsching.” “They are talking to Hashem, this is a very serious time.”

In the younger grades, students love learning. Chumash: they make models, play with the material. When they get older, however, things change; classes become more textual, analytical. Is that always necessary? Is there room for what children like and want to do, to make them laugh? Is there room to continue dramatic play, art, games, in middle school?

Childhood is a time to create foundations. If we can create a foundation of simchah, ruach, fun, people will want to keep that in their life. Especially for elementary/middle school, schools need to form an emotional basis upon which the intellectual life will flourish.

And would it be so bad if all of us allowed a little more joy in their life on a daily basis?

What does it take to achieve this?
Infusing learning with joy takes creativity and imagination. It requires working with teachers to ensure that this is part of their pedagogical approach. Often, it requires expanding our teachers’ skill sets, and ensuring that they operate with the permission to teach in a different way. Some teachers are afraid that this approach will take time away from academic learning and harm the expectation of rigorous learning. They need to see that bringing more joy into the classroom can lead to greater student engagement with their subjects, as well as greater student—and teacher—wellbeing. It takes creating new ways of assessing students. It takes shifting stakeholders' expectations. It takes confidence to do something that not everyone else is doing. It takes the willingness to take risks.

Can you share some examples of programs you have tried?
In our school, we use a mix of scheduled and impromptu activities designed to raise student excitement. 

Every time the students come back to school, we plan a special activity. For example, this year our school’s theme is “building and rebuilding education.” At the start of school in September, students were given hardhats when they were greeted back. They wrote their names on Jenga pieces and added it to a large board that said, “We are OCA builders.” This board was displayed for the first few months of school.

During winter break, I made a video of myself dressed as a knight. When students returned, the head of school dressed as a queen, and kids dressed up as royalty; students built castles out of milk crates; the school rented a horse and carriage, and we gave rides to kids and parents. The activity lent the return to school, a time often fraught with anxiety and queasiness, an air of great anticipation. Students wanted to be there, to take part in the fun. They had something exciting to look forward to.

As an example of something unscheduled: A staff member strolled through the halls strumming a guitar and making up songs to random things. The activity gave the students a feeling of something new, unexpected, exciting, and it did not take any time or money. Another activity: we set up a coffee shop in the parking lot one day and handed out coffee to parents who were dropping off students. 

What do such initiatives add?
Little efforts like these add a sense of life to a school, a pulse, passion. They create a place where people want to be. They give a spark to the teachers, a feeling that their work is filled with playfulness, enjoyment, relaxation, that carries over into the classroom. These activities reinforce what we’re about: children. Of course, we’re also about education, but there’s so much more: we’re here 8 hours a day, and that time cannot just be about pounding books. We need to be in touch with our own childhood side; teachers need to have fun for the students to have fun.

For teachers, this requires a delicate balance. They need to set expectations, within which fun can take place. Teachers need to believe that we can make learning come alive while maintaining classroom standards; we can be successful and the class will not fall to chaos. To achieve this balance on a school-wide level requires teamwork and consistency, as modeled by the administration.

What advice do you have for schools that want to elevate the joy in their school?
The culture of a school has to start from the top. Administrators should know what they want the school to feel like. If simchas hachayyim is important, then that should be a quality explicitly desired in candidates.

There are many practical steps that schools can take to set the tone. One is to have people serve as greeters, like at Walmart, giving all students a large smile and a big “hello, nice to see you” when they arrive. Some schools play nice music when kids come in the morning.

It’s important to utilize both planned and unplanned time for imbuing the school with joy. The unexpected brings life to the expected, to the normal rhythms of school life. Students don’t always have to know what’s coming or when. For example, they know something’s happening when they come back to school, but they don’t know exactly what will take place.

Another example: Every Rosh Chodesh, we, as do many schools, come together and play music. This event, designed to break the norm of schooling and to mark the day as special, becomes the norm through repetition. Where can schools find the life source within it? How do you change it up so there’s a spark that fuels their curiosity? There’s a tendency to keep something when we’ve got something good that works—but we need to build on it, put a spin, find new ways to make it meaningful and come alive.

In our elementary division, the student guidance counselor creates a video with a morning message every day. Students from different grades greet everyone, wish people a happy birthday, say a cool fact of the day, read ikarim cards (a positive behavior reinforcement system where teachers fill out a card giving a specific compliment to a student who displays one of OCA’s values), remind everyone to pledge and say Hatikvah. Although this is a major highlight of students’ morning, we found that students got bored of it over time, even though every day different students were featured in the videos. Therefore, to change it up, every once in a while we add music, get a guest speaker, and run family episodes, with parents sending in a clip of them sharing a cool fact of the day.

If you ask people at most Orthodox schools if this is an important aspect, they will tell you it is. Most rebbeim carry a geshmak, a “taste” or sense, for spicing up classroom learning. However, for joy to become a guiding principle of a school, it must go beyond the classroom to encompass the entire school environment. Someone on the leadership must fuel conversations: what are we doing that makes the kids excited, want to come back, want to learn? Just as we are learning to continue to foster creativity within learning as students get older, so too we can continue to encourage simchah as a part of schools.

Is there a deeper goal of this work you’re describing?
For students to feel joy, they need to know that they are loved. The book Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman claims that there are five different ways that people feel love: quality time, writing notes, words of affirmation, acts of service, and physical touch. Each person has a dominant one of those; in relationships, we should know what the other person’s dominant way is.

In school, I’m not sure how much we feel this. Kids we spend time with need to feel love to experience simchas hachayyim. They need to know that no matter how hard of day they’re having, the people in the school love them and care for them.

The book shows that we need to give thought for how individuals want to receive love. For example, we rarely give kids presents in school; some kids would feel appreciated by presents more than others. The same with teacher appreciation. While some would be fine with general gifts, others might prefer a more individualized form of recognition: a card, a laptop, etc. 

If our schools can be places where each student feels known and loved, and the classrooms and hallways are infused with joy, surprise, delight and creativity, then the learning and the Jewish life will be vibrant and meaningful, sparked by student passion.

Yom HaShoah ve-HaGevurah is Israel’s—and by extension the Jewish people’s—day of remembrance and commemoration for those murdered in the Shoah. Most people use the shorthand “Yom HaShoah” and don’t include, or perhaps even know, the second half. This is particularly interesting as the date was selected to fall a week after the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; gevurah, strength or heroism, was clearly on the mind of those who created this national holiday in Israel. 

I too was among those who did not know the full name for many years. Then I discovered the stories of Jewish partisans and the gibborim, the heroes, became a core part of my teaching and my learning. These stories are now an integral part of my curriculum in multiple grades and in my wider teaching to Jewish and non-Jewish audiences about how to inspire upstanders.

It is vitally important that we never forget those who were murdered for no other reason than the facts of their birth. Their lives, cut short by the Nazis and their collaborators, deserve a permanent place in our consciousness. Recalling this dark and unimaginable time in history is absolutely necessary to continue the work of assuring that it does not continue to repeat. Not just for Jews—not for anyone. But while these memories and this commemoration remind us why we must be vigilant, it is the stories of the gevurah that teach us how to be vigilant, how to work together, how to stand up to tyranny and to hatred, to sacrifice for the good of the community, to withstand more than we thought we could and get up and do it again the next day. How to be an upstander even when we just want life to be “normal” again. 

The Ladder of Gevurah
The Bielski Partisans, the Ghetto Fighters of Warsaw, The Jewish Avengers of Vilna—Abba Kovner, Vitka Kempner, Ruzka Korczak and their comrades—these are the big names that come up when we think about the Jewish heroes of the Shoah. But there are countless less well-known stories of men and women who decided “If I was going to die, I was going to die a fighter, not because I was a Jew” (in the words of Sonia Orbuch). 

Some fought back without weapons. The amazing Oneg Shabbat archives that were recovered from the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto are a testament to the wisdom of Emmanuel RIngleblum and his compatriots and of their bravery as well. And the information within the archive shows, in all too real detail, how people lived, and, far too often, died in the Ghetto. Acts of compassion, sacrifice and humanity, alongside “choiceless choices” that no one should ever have to make, show how these Jews dug deep into their reserves of gevurah and kept themselves and others alive as long as they could. It shows how they retained their humanity, their sanity, and their Jewishness in the face of overwhelming hatred and violence. 

The Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (JPEF) has a lesson called “Eight Degrees of Gevurah,” based on Rambam’s Ladder of Tzedakah. This lesson has students learn about how acts of gevurah are like acts of tzedakah and think about what particular acts would be equal to each of the eight rungs of Rambam’s ladder. This equating of the acts of Jews fighting both for their own lives and for the lives of all Jewish people to acts meant to help those with less than us or in difficult circumstances can serve to put the need for armed resistance into perspective. The highest level was embodied by Frank Blaichman, who provided arms and training to young Jews seeking to join partisans in the woods of Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. Partisan groups only took those with a weapon that they knew how to use. Having weapons and training allowed them to form their own groups and not rely on the uncertain welcome of Soviet or Polish partisan groups. 

Tuvia Bielski’s “family camp” allowed 1200+ Jews to walk out of the Naliboki Forest on July 8th 1944. The Bielskis did not know all the people they saved, but those saved all knew that it was Tuvia, and his brothers who were fighting with Soviet partisans, who allowed them to survive. This is step five on the ladder: the recipients know the identity of the giver but not vice versa.

Finding Gevurah in Others, and Ourselves
Today we are all “hunkered down” to some degree or other due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are days, weeks, a month or more (I am on week five) into quarantine or “stay home, stay healthy” confinement in our homes. We are scared. We are facing an “enemy” that we know little about and is easily spread. We don’t know what news or advice to follow. We want to see our friends, our family, our students and colleagues. We face weeks of teaching remotely, questions about the school year and even next year. Our students are stressed and miss their friends, their routines and, though they may be loathe to admit it, their school and teachers. 

How can we use the stories of these Jewish gevurah from the Shoah to help them cope? When I share these stories with my students, they often say, “But I could never do that!” My response is twofold: “God forbid you should ever have to know if you could do that,” and “You won’t know until you have to know what you are truly capable of doing.” 

This pandemic is in no way equivalent to the challenges faced in the Shoah, but for our students it is most likely the first time they have felt truly unsure and scared about the future and about the ability of the adults in their lives to provide assurance and to “fix” things. Having them look around to find the acts of gevurah being performed is a way to have them focus on the good being done and the ways that they too can contribute to making everyone safer. Some examples are the healthcare workers and first responders who are working tirelessly, often without proper personal protective equipment; employees of stores and restaurants working, also often without masks and gloves, to be sure we can all eat and have the other necessities of life; neighbors reaching out to help each other; those shopping and caring for the elderly and infirm; businesses that have swapped out their production lines from making haute couture or just regular clothes to manufacturing masks and gowns for healthcare workers. 

There are many other examples if we all look around (hint: teachers working hard to support their students emotionally and help them continue to learn and be engaged in the wider world). Be sure your students think about things that their family members have perhaps done to help make all the time together more enjoyable and create positive memories in this difficult time. You might have them write them out like the strips included in JPEF’s lesson plan and rank them according to degrees of gevurah. This focus on “the helpers,” as Mr. Roger’s called them, is a good way to reassure your students that positive things are happening and that people are working together to control the spread of COVID-19 and help those who are sick.

The memory of the perished reminds us to continue to work for a better world where anti-Semitism, racism, bigotry, and hatred of any kind have no home. The individual stories of those whose lives were terminated show us what was lost. They prove the Jewish teaching that “to destroy a life is to destroy an entire world” (Sanhedrin 37a). The actions of the gibborim prove the second half of this saying, “to save a life is considered by the Torah to have saved the entire world.” 

Ghetto fighters, partisans and others who took up arms, or pens, or song to fight back against the Nazis were doing so to save the Jewish world. They were choosing to give their likely death meaning and importance, dying a fighter, not just because they were a Jew. Their acts of bravery should inspire us to likewise give our lives meaning and importance by working for the greater good of all humanity. May the memories of all those who perished, along with those who fought and survived and have since passed, be for a continued blessing as we work to inspire our students towards lives of meaning.

Nance Morris Adler is in her 15th year teaching Judaics, Jewish History and Social Studies at The Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle. She is a Museum Teacher Fellow at the USHMM (MTF Cohort 2014) and a Powell Fellow at the Holocaust Center for Humanity in Seattle. She is the lead educator for We are Here! Foundation for Upstanders. 

Jewish day schools across the country have pivoted overnight to transition into virtual learning environments. We feel great pride in the way our schools’ leadership, teachers, families and students have worked together in a massive collaborative enterprise to ensure stability, ongoing education and support in the face of the uncertainty brought upon us through COVID-19.

The beautiful pictures posted on social media and school websites sharing creative ways of engaging students and community convey the impression that we are all feeling a heightened sense of being in this crisis together. It is true that we are showing the best of what our community offers and that indeed together we are stronger. It is also true that there is new learning and different ways of engagement, and in many cases it is really hard. Most of us are overwhelmed by the new normal and are struggling to feel seen.

It is during these intense and vulnerable times, where we ourselves are feeling stretched thin, that we need to create space to hear our children. Let us hear their voices to understand what they need, create space for us to learn how we can do this better and how they can help us help them. Maybe we can even create stronger relationships and help our children feel empowered to be advocates for what they need. 

Inspired by conversations taking place within the Prizmah Reshet, here are four questions for us to reflect on after the Passover holiday and to guide us in shifting our thinking from crisis remote learning to our children's needs. This blog looks closely at our small school, Einstein Academy in Wilmington, Delaware, as we reflect on the past few weeks and imagine what’s possible if we are asking the right questions.

How might this crisis help us understand what really matters, and what will we do differently in school as a result?

Here are the core questions that guided our team’s initial crisis response:

1. What are the key aspects of our school that we need to transfer online to continue delivering our product?
2. What tools should we use to do that?
3. What can we reasonably expect of our students and their families?

Our school showed students how to access Google Calendar and sent them home on Friday, March 13th to look for links to Google Meet classes on Monday, starting with schoolwide tefillah. We rolled out a calendar with three 45-minute blocks and breaks in between, expecting it to be hard for everyone to sit in front of a screen any longer. The personal connection and the sense of community we found by teaching synchronously was affirmed by students and parents alike.

During weeks 2 and 3, we added specials to affirm our commitment to educate the whole child. We switched to Zoom to have better control of who was talking or chatting. We used a fourth 45-minute block for check-ins and to fit in some of those specials. During this time, closures were extended and stay-at-home orders were put in place.

When I had time over Shabbat to reflect on what we were observing from students, I saw their behaviors as symptoms of grief, in line with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s famous five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Some of our students definitely were angry, though they may not have used that language. We found some turning off their video, some playing with anything and everything in their room, and some not coming to class after exhibiting different signs of anxiety about logging on. We heard them, and before the holiday we called to ask how they were and how our experiment was going. As we approached our Passover break, the limits of our approach became clearer.

It turns out that the right questions are less about how to teach virtually and more, in true Passover fashion, about mah nishtanah, what is different? And what does “different” require of us and our children to be successful?

How might we support our students, teachers and families through a process that often feels akin to grief? 

During a Prizmah webinar on how Jewish day schools might think about commemorating the Yoms (Yom Hashoah, Yom HaZikaron, and Yom HaAtzmaut), it became clear that many school leaders were paralleling Kubler-Ross’s stages of bargaining and sadness. We asked many “what if…” questions, such as: What if we focus on Holocaust stories of resilience? What if older students present to others? What if we share a video of the Yom HaZikaron siren in Israel and then examples of the 7:00 pm pots, pans, and honking for healthcare and other frontline workers here? What if we help families celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut in their homes? 

As the conversation stretched out, the bargaining, looking for versions of what we usually have done in our schools, gave way to a gradual recognition of not being able to mark the days the way we want. If we were unprepared to think about end-of-year programs and graduations, we should imagine that our students and parents will feel that loss even more. If the grieving was not obvious before, it will become so relatively soon after we return.

We now have the opportunity to help our communities get to the fifth stage of acceptance. To do so, we are going to have to name the challenges as more than expecting a lot from students and teachers. We are going to have to state explicitly that no matter how talented our teachers are, they cannot make our existing curricula work well without the magic of the classroom. We are also going to have to admit that whatever notions we had for what parents can pull off at home in support of our initial goals is not sustainable. Lastly, we should also be clear that we are not trained grief counselors nor do we specialize in collective trauma, and we need one another and more support more than ever. We need to be thinking about what supports we need in place to sustain us through the next few months and when we return to our physical co-located spaces.

How might we reimagine the way we are gathering to create space for the many losses our students, teachers and families are feeling?

If Week 1 was a metaphorical shivah, where we tried to comfort the bereaved with our presence and with familiar rituals to keep them distracted from the depth of their loss, we can look to Passover as the end of sheloshim. In fact, many have experienced real losses: loved ones or acquaintances, jobs or percentages of salary, on top of the radical change to how we are living and working. Private burial and virtual shivah minyans are not the same as being comforted by the community. Coming out of Passover, everyone’s mourning has been cut short; our grief has had little outlet and lingers. We are now, to extend the metaphor further, in the year of mourning where our joy is muted and where we make room daily to acknowledge our loss. 

Here are four ways our school will make that room for our K-5 students:

1. Students lost those moments of unexpected joy and connection: in the hallway, in the lunchroom, passing notes in class or on the way to the playground (especially if we blocked the chat feature). We will build in social time, pressure-free. After break, we will open our day into Zoom breakout rooms by classroom to allow students to start their day much as they did in school, arriving bit by bit and socializing before school started. Then, we will bring them from their breakout rooms to be together as a school for tefillah, instead of jump-starting the day with everyone all at once.
2. Students are overwhelmed by what they see and hear on a video conference screen. Frankly, group video conferencing is sensory overload for all of us. We will teach skills for coping and for making video conferencing more like a classroom. Students need help to be able to focus on one person, like the teacher. Students also need to learn how to see their peers without being bombarded by all the square screens. We need to guide students to make the most of their independent time when a teacher needs to work with particular student(s).
3. Our students not only lost their classrooms, we have also turned their homes into schoolrooms. We will help students establish safe spaces for learning and scaffold the learning process in a virtual setting. We need to teach them, like we did at the start of the year, our new routines: when should they be sitting at a desk or table? when can they go to “the carpet” or a comfy chair? what about a bed is out-of-bounds? 
4. Our students see us and their peers putting on brave, happy faces, making it hard to open up about any other feelings. We will invite students to share their struggles. We can discuss the Psalms that model asking for help, rather than the focus on praise in Hallel and Ashrei. We can ask them to think about what tools they may have been using to get through this period. We will also be even more intentional in regular, private check-ins with children and families.

How might we create meaning together given our current conditions? 

When we look past the challenges, it turns out that there are many opportunities. When we take standardized testing and overnight field trips off our calendar, we then have room to stretch our curricula, worrying far less about what might have been missed. 

In fact, we can balance that extra time with advancing new goals to match this moment. David Kessler, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s co-author, subsequently added a sixth, lesser-known stage to the grief cycle model, meaning. On the first day of spring break, the faculty met and came up with a way to make room for the challenges ahead and to make meaning for this moment: we are dedicating Fridays to teaching community through internal efforts, external efforts, and skill-building efforts.

Internally, we will make more room for class meetings. We will reinvigorate our buddy system to have older students read with younger students, and we will have classes share their work with each other. We are still exploring more options, and the process is giving us new energy. We look forward to getting student ideas, too.

Externally, we will write letters and work on video conferencing with the seniors at our local Jewish senior facilities. We will write about and share out what we are doing and experiencing, and we will leverage ourselves as a resource to the community.

Skill-building is our hidden opportunity. Part of struggling to look at the screen in a video conference is not understanding the importance of eye-contact. We will take the time to teach how to have a good conversation, how to make a phone call, and how to schedule an online playdate. While we are spending time in our homes, we can teach how to be a good host (for the future), starting with how to clean and the science behind cleaning devices, or even simply how to set a table. There are so many ways we can use being home as the classroom for life, especially a life of community.

Community is just where we started thinking about meaning in this crisis. Being #AloneTogether does not mean that we will never be together. We want to turn our current loss into a chance to have a stronger future.

Now is our chance to ask about our exodus from our buildings. Let us use these four questions to help us acknowledge our loss, make room for our grief, and attempt to make positive meaning for our students and for ourselves.

On Tuesday, nearly 700 school leaders from eleven countries around the world joined Prizmah and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks for a message of inspiration, hope, and courage. In the midst of new realities and the urgent and challenging work schools are doing, we took some time for reflection, wisdom, and for spiritual self-care.

Each day, under the toughest of circumstances, heroic school leaders and educators are strengthening their communities, educating children, and continuing to fulfill our shared vision for a vibrant Jewish future. Caring for each other and for ourselves at this time of enormous pressure must also be a priority. As Rabbi Sacks asked, “Who will give strength to those who give strength to others?”

Rabbi Sacks called teachers the true heroes of Yetziat Mitzrayim/the Exodus from Egypt. Indeed, at this time of so much uncertainty--at a time of such great disconnection and isolation--we feel such gratitude to those who are leading us forward on the journey from slavery to freedom. Teachers know better than anyone, as Rabbi Sacks put it, that “education is the conversation between generations”--that even in virtual classrooms, connections are formed as ideas ignite learning in the ever-developing minds of our children. Visions of freedom and redemption are not hard to find, even over zoom.

“Empower kids to think of creative responses themselves,” said Rabbi Sacks. “It is in the difficult moments that you get the very best from kids by turning them into leaders. They will surprise you.” As we look ahead to Pesach next week, however we gather around our seder table, may we all be privileged to follow the example of the children who give the best of themselves and may we surprise ourselves with our capacity for hope even in these most trying of times.

Chag Kasher V’Sameach.

By just about any measure these are difficult times. We have been forced to acclimate to an unprecedented paradigmatic shift in the way we live, learn, and work in a very short period of time. Many of us are also dealing with the sickness or loss of family/community members, as well as anxieties related to the unpredictability of the road ahead. Under the circumstances, we have responded with inspiring ingenuity, with institutions and communities banding together to share best practices and create spaces for catharsis. Many articles have been written, virtual shiurim given, and memes created about the countless heroic efforts of so many and the spiritual implications of our current reality. Indeed, there is authentic achdut, unity, being birthed by this episode, and there is a collective feeling that we are all in this, and will get through this, together.

But what about when we are on the other side of this?

What lessons will we take with us, and in what ways will we be reoriented for the better?

As we move into Pesach, it is incumbent upon each of us to spend time preparing for the holiday, both logistically and spiritually. The Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, used to say that the more reliable indicator of a devout Jew is not that he/she is shomer Shabbat, rather that he/she is shomer erev Shabbat. This principle, which we share each year with 8th grade HAFTR students before their shabbaton, speaks to the fact that the degree to which something is special correlates to the degree to which we prepare to make it special. 

With this in mind, in just a few days we will engage in the ancient Jewish art of storytelling via the sacred mitzvah vehicle that is the seder. We will relate the timeless story of yetziat mitzrayim and ask the important question: How is this night different from all other nights? However, I believe that this year in particular, given the social backdrop, it is equally important to reflect on the words of The Holistic Haggadah written by Michael Kagan: How am I different on this Passover night? Given our current state of affairs, how can I, in the paraphrased words of Winston Churchill, see the opportunity in this difficulty? 

In her recent editorial, "Now I finally understand what my grandparents knew," Allison Glock reflects on the childhood memories she has of her grandparents doing seemingly mundane activities with great joy.  She says, "I'd watch them play cards, do crosswords, dance together in their cramped living room, taking care not to topple the miniature, boxy television set that was only ever turned on for baseball games."

Ms. Glock posits that the values her grandparents came to prioritize in life were shaped by their upbringing. She says, "My grandfather served in the war. So, too, did everyone he and my grandmother knew. They'd seen death and futility and heroism and loss. They knew what mattered." 

I would humbly suggest that we all have the opportunity to leverage growth from this challenge. Whether we have rediscovered the beauty of taking an afternoon walk with our spouse, the satisfaction of completing a puzzle with our kids, or the calm that can come from gardening (I've heard this is true from others), we all have the opportunity to clarify our priorities and sensitize ourselves to the situations of others. 

It is my hope that we are all able to get back to normal soon, but I also hope that when we do, we don't go back to business as usual.  I hope that our appreciation for each other and our schools, shuls, and community institutions does not diminish.  I hope we make greater efforts to put our phones down when we interact with our children because we know that over 65% of communication is nonverbal (tone of voice, facial expression, body language). I hope that the tremendous strength of the partnership that I have seen between home and school continues, albeit with a different dynamic. 

Ultimately, I hope that each of us asks the questions this Pesach: How am I different? How have I been changed by this challenge?  And the answer is: I saw the opportunity, and I have been changed for the better.

Maintaining normalcy during these abnormal times is our goal. The schools are educating through online platforms. Many shuls are using Zoom to daven “together,” even if it’s not with a minyan. We are beginning to prepare for Pesach. Who hasn’t received numerous emails letting us know how important it is to keep a structure for ourselves and our children? Wake up at the same time every day; go to sleep at the same time. Make sure to get dressed as opposed to staying in pajamas all day. Try to get some fresh air and even squeeze in some exercise, if possible.

The leaders of the communities are stepping up to the plate. The schools are not just educating but trying to entertain as well. Giving some sense of school spirit in the absence of brick and mortar. The guidance departments are all on-call dealing with emotions ranging from boredom to fear to those going stir crazy. The memes and short videos that are being passed around are keeping our humor and taking the edge off of the otherwise stressful situation we are all in.

But our world is not the same. Pesach plans have been upended for many people. Programs canceled, travel plans not possible or sadly, grandparents that are too afraid to be with their own grandchildren for fear of getting sick. For many, milestones are celebrated in a very different way than expected. Brisim with barely a minyan. Becoming a bar or bat mitzvah acknowledged around the dining room table because the party was postponed or canceled. Weddings that are happening in backyards with immediate family only. Burials with minimal amount of people required to do the mitzvah and mourners being consoled via phone rather than the personal touch of a loving hand on the shoulder.

Then comes the Tehillim groups on behalf of those that only wish they were home bored. They are the ones struck with the virus and are feeling ill. They are the ones who are in the hospital, many in ICU, holding on to their lives, artificially breathing. They are the families of those in the hospital, hoping the virus will pass before their loved ones do. 

Then there are the amazing chesed organizations that are working overtime, helping those afflicted offering money, tele-counseling and any other services that could be done from afar. In times of trouble the best comes out in people, in us, in Klal Yisroel.

When will things get back to normal? We don’t know when. All we know is that we will return to normal eventually. But we need to make sure it’s a new normal. Let us maintain the togetherness that is occurring within families. Let us maintain the unity that is happening in communities across the globe. Let the appreciation for our institutions and their leadership live on. Let’s hold on to our new hierarchy of priorities where health and family are at the top. Let’s cherish our newfound appreciation for the ability to do mitzvot freely, to daven with a minyan and our realization that ein ‘od milvado--there is no other to rely on besides Hashem.

This, unfortunately, won’t happen on its own. Human nature is to slip back into our comfort zone, what we are used to, what was “normal.” It is our responsibility to harness the growth during this painful time and utilize all we have to make it the “new normal.”

If you know my father, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, then you have probably heard the joke that he sleeps in a three-piece suit (as they say, “It’s funny ‘cause it’s true”). Which is why I never liked wearing suits. As far as rebellions go, there are far worse. As a head of school, I wear suits. But for a few years on Fridays (and sometimes other days), I would wear pants and a blazer, no tie. One winter Friday, my family drove into the city for a Shabbos Bar Mitzvah, dropped our things off at my parents and went straight to the Friday night portion of the festivities. I was one of a handful of men not wearing a suit and tie. Walking home from dinner, my father very gently said, “You know, Josh, you’re a head of school, a leader, I think you should wear a suit and tie.” The next morning over breakfast, my mother said very gently, “You know, Josh, I think you should wear suits and ties.” Since that Shabbos, I rarely don’t wear a suit and tie.  

Fast forward to today, under quarantine. As usual at this time of year, I started to “turn over my closet”--not from winter suits to spring suits, but from winter suits to no suits. Every day I wake up and put on a button-down shirt and jeans or other casual pants. That is how these few weeks have been in so many ways. Coronavirus moved my school. It hasn’t moved my cheese. Yet.

Like most of the world, we didn’t see this coming. (If you did, please let me know because I’d like to solicit you for our scholarship campaign). But we can adapt, we can enjoy (yes we can) and we can learn to expect and be ready and enjoy the next big change.

For most educators, it’s Just. So. Different. It’s the opposite of everything that brought us into this field. It’s not a field that lends itself to a remote, work-from-home setup. Students aren’t numbers on a screen. Teachers aren’t Powerpoint presentations. It’s personal. Even with the boundaries that are needed between adults and children, it’s still personal. It’s still about proximity and the ability to read expressions and body language and listen and be there. It’s still about forming deep bonds and connections. It’s not that every educator needs to be an extrovert, but every educator has to have a fundamental belief in people and a desire to interact with them in a meaningful way.

Now do that with your three young children running around, expected to be engaged in their own distance learning, at the same time that you’re supposed to be teaching your students or calling parents or donors. True, this may not have been the ideal time to potty train our almost 3-year-old, but my wife and I were terrified of the alternative (“you mean you were in the house for 90 days straight and your daughter isn’t potty trained?”). And don’t work in your bedroom for countless reasons. But what if your home doesn’t have an abundance of private areas?

It’s nice to be home with my kids. But now go explain to them why mommy and daddy are home but not able to play with them. That was never an issue when school was school.

And I sit in an office most of my day so my home office is different, but not as different as my teachers’ new classrooms.

And my Amazon packages with office supplies, that I have to leave outside, wear gloves, open the box as if I’m on the FBI Bomb Squad unit, come back into the house sweating, needing a shower let alone a hand washing.

And the list goes on and on. Everything has moved. 

And while a routine has set in after three weeks, it can turn on a dime. We thought we were good after two weeks, but then some cracks emerged. Not enough Zoom classes. The worksheets weren’t sophisticated enough. Too much paper having to be printed. Not enough specials. Too many specials. The day is too short. The day is too long. Other schools are doing such and such.

One clear lesson: Be proud of your accomplishments, but be nimble and humble so that you can continue to evolve.

Nechama Leibovitz’s explanation as to why the fifth phrase of redemption, ve-heiveti, “And I will bring you [to the land of Israel],” doesn’t warrant a fifth cup of wine is that the first four phrases came true--we left Egyptian slavery and became servants of God--but the fifth lasted only a short while and then we went into exile. Even the best plans have hiccups, the best roads to success take detours.

One of the values listed in the Westchester Day School mission statement is resilience, based on the verse in Micha, Ki nafalti kamti, “Though I have fallen, I will rise.” This experience isn’t a straight line. But that is ok. It will make everyone stronger in the end. If that is the only thing learned during this time, it will be the most important lesson any of us learn, let alone our students.

Enjoy the experience. How? Celebrate every success and win. Have a great day of learning? Enjoy. Have a great day of learning in one grade? Enjoy. Get a positive email from a parent? Enjoy. Make a good decision? Enjoy. Have a great class? Enjoy. See posts of kids doing acts of chesed at home? Enjoy. Watch teachers support each other in new and creative ways? Enjoy. See administrators do things that make you proud to call them colleagues? Enjoy. Witness teachers and administrators do everything they can possibly do to reinvent themselves? Enjoy. Sleep well? Enjoy. A day where your 3-year-old has no accidents? THROW A PARTY!

I cry all the time. This made me cry (from a WDS parent who is a public school teacher): “Just wanted to let you know that this afternoon while on a Zoom call with my entire grade team and my supervisor I brought them into my kitchen to watch my daughter complete her science experiment with Ms. Shapiro. You guys are doing such a great job and I wanted to show them how distance learning can be done correctly. Thank you for all your hard work!”

Enjoy.

And if this has taught us nothing but that change will find a way in somehow and the next time we won’t be as shocked, then we will have learned a valuable lesson.

And then there is perspective to help us handle the lows and celebrate the highs. Today I spoke to a friend whose father is on a ventilator, sedated, after testing positive for COVID19. He can’t go visit him. He can’t be with him. He can’t hold his hand. His father is alone. He has a 50/50 chance of coming off the ventilator, and even if he does he might have irreparable damage to some of his organs. He found out his father was intubated after the procedure. The doctors told him to be prepared to find out that his father’s condition could change for the worse.

That is real change. Ours, as disorienting as it is, will pass and we will be stronger as a result.

We pray for all those who are seriously ill at this time.

A few days ago, I went for a walk, just to get out of the house, and noticed that the trees in my neighborhood are blooming. How crazy that the earth is still acting like things are normal. My husband and I remembered the blessing we say when one sees blossoming fruit trees for the first time during the month of Nissan: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם שֶׁלֹּא חִסַּר בְּעוֹלָמוֹ כְּלוּם וּבָרָא בוֹ בְּרִיּוֹת טוֹבוֹת וְאִילָנוֹת טוֹבוֹת לֵהָנוֹת בָּהֶם בְּנֵי אָדָם. Blessed are You, L‑rd our G‑d, King of the universe, Who has made nothing lacking in His world, and created in it goodly creatures and goodly trees to give mankind pleasure.

Is nothing really lacking? Don't we often say the blessing of borei nefashot after we eat, where we thank G-d for the things that are “chaser” or missing (“borei nefashot rabot vechesronam”)? How can we thank G-d for both the lack and that we have it all? 

Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm has an amazing explanation: he calls this blessing of the spring, permission to create a “holy fiction.” For just a moment, almost like we are squinting and tilting our heads to the side, in that one moment in time, when we witness the amazing miracle of rebirth in the trees, our breath is taken away, and in that one moment, we create the “holy fiction” that everything really is perfect. The brachah gives us permission to see the holy and good even amidst the imperfections of the world, and certainly in the very imperfect time in which we find ourselves today.

I find myself coming back to the wisdom of Dr. Lamm again and again this season. I am inspired daily, even hourly, by the amazing dedication and love being poured into our students and schools by the educational leaders we are blessed to have. In any given moment, I find myself smiling and thanking G-d for sending the right people to us at this time, and in that way, and in so many ways, I find that I am surrounded by the Holy Fiction of the perfection of many, many mini-moments of glorious GOOD happening all around us. 

We enter in the season of our Redemption, with humility and prayer for health and safety for the world, and with the fervent prayer and wish that we are an even better community through this process and that we have grown from these moments of Holy Fiction to become even more who we are meant to become.

Torah thoughts to go: check out “pocket” divrei Torah here and please add your own!