Oy, The Whole Shebang!

In a rather different - and rather entertaining - twist on our annual drama productions, the Boys High School,  under the masterful direction of Mrs. Renee Brame, presented two short plays this week by Jewish playwright Rich Orloff:  "The Whole Shebang" and "Oy!".

The former used used metaphor, satire, and irony to explore the relationship between man and God while challenging the audience to think both about our limitations and potential in this world.  On a much lighter note, "Oy!" presented a series of vignettes which employed the genre of Yiddish theater and humor to poke good-natured fun at some of the peculiarities of American-Jewish culture. The cast, which included several boys from 8th grade, did a wonderful job keeping the audience thinking and laughing throughout.

For pictures and some video clips from the production, click here.

IDF Visits the High Schools

Thanks to the initiative of 11th grader Sophie Ostrow and 12th grader Gabe Goldstein, our high schools were visited by members of the Israel Defense Force this past week.  Both Sophie and Gabe were selected last summer for the highly regarded Teen Internship Program run by StandWithUs, an international Israel advocacy group.  Leveraging their connections with the organization, Sophie and Gabe arranged for Memphis to be a stop on this year's Stand With Us Israel Soldiers Stories Tour.  Together with a representative from the organization, former members of the IDF travel the country as part of this tour, talking to audiences about what it is really like to serve in the Israeli military, the unrivaled moral code which permeates everything they do, and their refusal to lower their ethical bar no matter what tactics are used by their enemies.  In addition to an evening event at the JCC, the ISS group came to our high schools and not only spoke of their experiences but showed videos of enemy targets identified by the IDF which they were prepared to attack but which they abandoned due to the fear of civilian casualties.  Although our students knew much of what they had to say beforehand, hearing their stories - up close and personal - from the people who lived it, was a whole new experience for many of them.

Reflections on "Work" in Jewish Education

The following post is based on the Message from the Dean in this week's MHA/FYOS newsletter. Current and previous editions of the newsletter can be accessed here.

At the closing plenary of the first day of the Martin Institute’s Project Zero Conference, Ron Ritchhart related that a British researcher sat in on a random sampling of classrooms in order to measure the number of times the words “work” and “learning” was used by the teacher.  What he found is that for every one mention of “learning” there were 48 mentions of “work.”

Project Zero is a research group based in Harvard University’s School of Education which has been studying the essential aspects of human learning for almost fifty years.  Ritchhart, who began his career as an elementary school math teacher, has been a researcher with Project Zero since 1994 and his book entitled Making Thinking Visible may be the group’s best known product, second only to the work of Howard Gardner.  Thanks to the Martin Institute, based out of PDS here in Memphis, ten members of our administration and faculty were amongst over 700 educators from across the globe who had the privilege of hearing from Ritchhart this past Thursday about his work on creating cultures of learning in schools.

Amongst the points which Ritchhart emphasized was that schools aren't simply places where students learn.   They are places where students learn about learning.  Learning has a story: what it looks like, how it’s done, what it’s for – and every school communicates that story to the children who pass through its classrooms and hallways.  According to Ritchhart, the story of learning being told in most schools today continues to hearken back to the Industrial Age.  It’s a story of success and failure, of winners and losers.  It’s a story of products rather than process, and – most of all – it’s a story of work: homework, class work, workbooks, worksheets, quiet work, group work, showing your work, and finishing your work lest you have to take it home.  It’s a story about penalizing kids who just “get it” but don’t do the work and rewarding the kids who do the work but don’t really “get it.”  What would it look like, he wondered, if instead of being about “work” the story our children were hearing in school was about “learning?”  Home learning and class learning. Learning books and learning sheets.  Quiet learning, group learning, showing your learning, and never finishing it.  Would we see a mere shift in vocabulary or a sea change in what our children do in school?

I wondered as I listened whether the equation of school with work has implications for what happens once our children leave school as well.  That is, if learning is the “work” that people do when they are in school, are we implicitly telling our children that when they leave school and enter a new occupation the learning stops and a new – more worthwhile – form of “work”begins?  Is the vocabulary we are using suggesting to students that unless they choose research or teaching as a profession, learning is something that has a finite time and place and with the flip of a tassel it mercifully comes to an end?

Sad as it might be that our emphasis on school “work” may result in children never opening another book of history, reading another classic of literature, or keeping up with developments in science post graduation, the implications for the Judaic side of our curriculum are all the more daunting.  If learning Chumash and Navi, Gemara and Halachah, Mussar and Machshavah, are seen by our children as mere “work” to be completed upon graduation, the very essence of our heritage is put perilously at risk.  Jewish educators today, though, find themselves in a bind.  On the one hand, we want our students to see their Torah learning as a lifelong endeavor – one that is joyful, inspirational, and never limited by time or place.  Yet, on the other hand, we fear that disassociating talmud Torah with the “work” which defines today’s schooling culture, may lead parents and students alike to deflate its value, rather than inflate it; to take it less “seriously” because the amount of “work” isn’t the same.  

It didn't used to be this way.  Jewish education has always had its challenges and for most of our history, rigorous Torah study was the provenance of small and select few.  But for all of our controversies through the ages over what to learn and how to learn it, one thing has always been true: Torah study has always been about learning and never about "work". 

So perhaps it’s time for our schools to begin telling a new story of learning.  And perhaps Torah-based Day Schools should be leading the way.

Model UN

Congratulations to our high school Model UN teams who made our schools proud with their performance at last week's annual YUNMUN event in Stamford, CT.  Headlining that performance was Aaron Knobel who was awarded an Honorable Mention for the work he did in his committee on curbing discrimination against women.

This weekend it's time for our athletes to shine as our Girls High School varsity basketball team competes in the Miami Tournament and our Junior High boys take on national competition in Chicago.  Best of luck to them both!

Thoughts on Mercava

The following post appeared as the Dean's Message for the MHA / FYOS school newsletter last week.  Previous newsletters and messages can be accessed here.

The future of Jewish education is here.  Without it, we will lose at least an entire generation of Jewish children.  With it, we’ll unify the Jewish people and change the world.

These are some of the lofty promises made in a promotional video that has been viewed some 19,000 times since it was posted on YouTube six weeks ago.  Its creators are an Israel-based group called Mercava who, according the video, include “Executives who brought you Facebook, creative minds behind Disney, and pioneers of 21^st century education from Pearson Education.” They believe that the Digital Age, with its barrage of high-speed, high-definition, interactive and immersive media experiences - coupled with the seductive allure of social media - have created a challenge for Jewish educators unlike any we’ve ever seen before.  Jewish children today, they say, need their information delivered on demand, in hyperlinked text, with stunning graphics, integrated video, and digital animation.  Jewish children today, they say, need our Torah texts instantly translated and brilliantly brought to life by the creative minds that brought us Toy Story, Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph.    Without it, our children will be distracted, uninterested, and unengaged.  With it, we’ll save a generation.  This is “the cutting edge.” This is what Mercava has set out to do.

Readers of this column, readers of my blog, and those generally familiar with our school, know that over the past five years our faculty and administrators have spent countless hours reading about, thinking about, and discussing the unique set of challenges posed to our children by our rapidly changing world.  You also know that technology integration is something we have embraced across all grade levels and disciplines.  Yet, when watching this video from Mercava I couldn’t help but feel disappointed.  Disappointed not in the quality of their proposed content or in the elegance of the tools they are building to disseminate it.  Disappointed, rather, by a sense that their truly laudable efforts on behalf of Jewish education hardly scratch the surface in addressing the most significant challenges facing our children and their future.  

As part of our efforts to adjust our curriculum so as to best prepare students for their future rather than our past, our faculty adopted a set of “C21 Standards” a year ago which list the capacities we believe our students need to succeed in the 21st Century.  These standards are broken down into five categories: Analytical and Creative Thinking, Digital and Quantitative Literacy, Global Perspective, Adaptability Initiative and Risk Taking, and Religion and Modernity.  In all, there are fifty standards which our PreK-12 faculty felt accurately portrayed the additional skill set which our students will need in order to effectively navigate this brave new world academically, professionally, socially, emotionally, and religiously.  Sadly, I count only five of those fifty - and only one in the category of Religion and Modernity -  which this new platform heralded by Mercava as the future of Jewish education, will help our students to address.  

Perhaps more significant, though, is the fact that this platform, if overused, may make some of our other standards more difficult to achieve.  For instance, standard 5c, under Religion and Modernity, calls for our students to “Distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of religious information on the web.”  Mercava’s tools, with its crowd-sourcing approach and its use of digital animation to reimagine stories in Tanakh, may well blur the line between fact and fiction rather than help our students to delineate it.  Standard 5j reminds us that in this world of sound bytes, video clips, and tweets of a 140 characters or less, one of our objectives as Torah educators must be to help our students “Demonstrate the capacity for sustained textual analysis.”  While Mercava’s model of making 1,000 classical Jewish texts available for free in fully searchable and fully hyperlinked format may certainly help to encourage Torah learning be-iyyun, its promotional video clearly suggests that we ought to give in to contemporary society’s propensity for quick, instantly accessible, and therefore often shallow, messaging rather than fighting it by helping our students to taste the exhilaration and sense of accomplishment that comes with struggling through a thorny text and ultimately arriving at its true meaning.  Perhaps most glaring is the potential impact which Mercava’s project may have on standard 5i which calls for students to “Understand and appreciate the value in ‘powering down’ on regular occasions.”  If even Torah learning can’t be done without high-def and surround sound, I fear what will become of Shabbat and Yom Tov in the world of children and our children’s children.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve already registered for an account on Mercava’s site and I’ve taken their Daf Yomi app for a spin.  If the rest of their “product line” develops as they describe it, I certainly see myself using it and encouraging its use, under the right circumstances, in some of our classrooms.  What is critical, though, is that the world of Jewish education not see in this exciting tool a panacea for all of the very real challenges which we face in the years ahead.  Far more important than creating digital tools for the classroom, will be cultivating teachers with the skills to effectively use them and the flexibility to replace them when the next new thing comes our way.  And just as Rav Chaim of Volozhin did in his day, Rav Hirsch did in his, and Sarah Schenirer did in hers, it will be up to the educators of our day to constantly find new ways of bringing Torah to life, of demonstrating its continued relevance, of modeling its unrivaled beauty, and of inspiring its continued study even in the face of the monumental challenges posed by the Digital Age. 

Siddur Presentation

Kitah Aleph brought the house down with their singing, dancing, and speaking at Sunday's siddur presentation. The program, designed and directed by Morah Debbie with help from Morah Gila, Cantor Samberg, Morah Chany, and Morah Yehudit, opened with a first-grader's piano rendition of Hatikvah and culminated with Mrs. Gersten's presentation to each student of a beautiful siddur, hand decorated by each student's parents.

The variety of songs, speaking parts, and choreography set a new standard for what a Siddur Presentation can be and for what first graders can do!  Pictures from the incredible event can be accessed here.

Medicine and Halacha

The high schools had the privilege last week of hearing from Professor Yonatan Halevy, Director General of Shaare Zedek Hospital in Yerushalyim.  Professor Halevy shared with them his rather unique insight into the interplay between modern medicine and Jewish Law which comes from his decades at the helm of the world's only modern hospital that operates fully in accordance with Halacha.

From stem cells to end-of-life issues, Professor Halevy sensitized the students both to the difficulty of the dilemmas that arise from time to time, while emphatically stating that there has never been a conflict between accepted best practice in modern medicine and the demands of Torah law that the medical experts and halachic experts couldn't jointly resolve.  In fact, he noted that some of the policies created at Shaare Zedek under the guidance of their poskim have been adopted by hospitals worldwide due to the sense that they best reflect ethical standards for medical practice.  In doing so he heightened the students' appreciation both for the work of Shaare Zedek and for the place of Halacha in the modern world.

Geography and Meteorology

Learning has come to life in all sorts of different ways for our elementary school over the past few days. Late last week, the grade level winners of National Geographic's National Geography Bee went head to head in order to determine the school winner.  While the competition was fierce and everyone gave it their best, 8th grader Shmuel Perl defended his title and will be moving on to the State qualifying test.  Students who score in the top 100 on the qualifying test are invited to Nashville in late March to compete in the state finals.

Today, everyone in third through 6th grade was a winner when Channel 3 Meteorologist Austen Onek visited Mrs. Triplett's science room to teach a lesson about weather.  With an array of recycled "junk" that he brought with him, Mr. Onek showed our students how they could build a fully functioning weather station out of materials they could find lying around their house.  He explained to them what each homemade instrument could measure and encouraged our kids to get actively involved in studying and reporting developments in the local weather.

Here are some more pictures from both the geography bee and the visit from Mr. Onek.

Images of our Mission

A little over a year ago, and following a grueling process that stretched over several months, our Board of Trustees voted to adopt a new mission statement; one that was felt to better capture the essence of who our school is what it strives to be.  Above is that statement illustrated by images of the children who bring it to life each and every day.

Divrei Hesped for Rabbi Efraim Greenblatt, ztz"l

I remember walking into the Anshei Sphard Beth El Emeth Congregation for the first time and noticing the slender man with the long white beard and black kapota standing near the mechitzah a few rows up from the bimah on the left hand side.  It was clear from his seat and the way that he carried himself that he was intending to be inconspicuous.  His garb, though, set against the deep purple and metalic silver of Anshei's unique decor made doing so rather difficult.

My first instinct was that this must be a visitor.   A rabbi, perhaps, visiting the mid-South from New York or maybe from Yerushalayim.  After seeing him interact with the rest of those who had come to Anshei to daven that Shabbos - a wonderfully eclectic mix of Jews from all backgrounds and of all levels of observance - I realized how mistaken I had been.  I was the visitor.  This was his home.  This was Rav Efraim Greenblatt: famed sage, student of Rav Moshe Feinstein, and one of the greatest poskim of his generation.  This was Rav Efraim Greenblatt whose erudition and acclaim didn't prevent him from spending decades, alongside his wife, teaching Torah to Memphis's youngest children in the school I had then just come to run.

Last week, the Torah world lost one of its most brilliant minds and the Memphis community lost one of its most cherished teachers: Ha-Rav Ha-Gaon Rav Efraim Greenblatt, zecher tzaddik le-vrachah.

It is an honor and a privilege to share with you these divrei hesped, words of eulogy, written by Rav Efraim's son, Rabbi Menachem Greenblatt, rov of Agudas Israel of St. Louis.

Kosher Corky's is Back!

Back by overwhelming international demand, we are once again making Corky's world-famous southern hickory-smoked barbecue brisket, ribs, beans, and sauce available to kosher consumers across the globe.

Available only for a limited time under the strict supervision of the Va'ad HaKehillot of Memphis and intended to make your kosher Super Bowl party truly one-of-a-kind, orders can now be placed through our school's website.  For local Memphis orders click here and for delivery anywhere else click here.

If you have friends or family anywhere that love slow-cooked, hand-rubbed, authentic barbecue beef, be sure to let them know about this incredible opportunity.  They'll thank you for it later!

דער פֿאַרהער (the test)

In thinking the past summer about ways that we might further upgrade the rigor of our high school Gemara program, Rabbi Noam Stein, our Talmud Department Chair, had the following idea:  Given that almost all of our boys and girls spend a year learning in yeshiva or seminary following graduation, and given that through our Torah MiTzion program we are fortunate to have bachurei yeshiva here in school with us every day, why not try to create an experience more like a typical Israeli yeshiva than a typical American yeshiva high school while our students are still here with us for those students who want it and those students who are capable of it?

And so our new Beit Midrash program was born.  A select group of students who passed proficiency exams were exempted from our more standard Gemara classes and instead have been spending each morning preparing pieces of Gemara in our Beit Midrash together with one of the Torah MiTzion bachurim (2 students to one bachur).  Much like they do in traditional yeshivot, once the boys completed their preparation, they would gather together with the bachurim to hear a shiur, given completely in Hebrew, on the material they had prepared from Rabbi Maimon, our Rosh Kollel.


As midterms approached, Rabbis Stein and Maimon had another challenge: on the one hand, they wanted to preserve the "yeshiva feeling" of the program and yeshivot don't exactly give midterms.  On the other hand, it was important for us to assess the progress of our students over the first half of the year, especially in an experimental program such as this one.

And so the farher was (re)born.  Following the model quite common in the yeshivot of Europe, Rabbi Stein suggested that the boys get an oral exam on the material they learned but not with review sheets, or questions in advance, or even a test created by their own teacher.  A better assessment of whether they truly knew their stuff would come from bringing "outsiders" familiar with the material but unfamiliar with what exactly the boys had learned to fire questions at them and see how they could respond.  Therefore, a few weeks ago, Rabbi Stein reached out to me and to Rabbi Joel Finkelstein of the Anshei Sphard Beth El Emeth Congregation and asked us if we'd come in to farher the boys on the sections of Bava Metzia they had been learning.

Of course, we both jumped at the opportunity and for an hour and a half this past Wednesday we took turns asking the boys to read, translate, punctuate, tell us about Rashi, read us a Tosafos, explain the underlying concepts and the flow of arguments in the Gemara they had learned.

I'm thrilled to report they did an excellent job, that their enthusiasm for they way in which they are learning is incredible, and, as such, the program to date seems like a real success.

Mazal Tov Kitah Aleph!

It was a festive day in Kitah Aleph today as the children celebrated their completion of their first Ariot book.  To mark their accomplishment they ate foods whose Hebrew names contained letters that they had learned and they had a special visitor, dressed in full Ariot regalia, with a בלון אדום for each of them.

The occasion was particularly special because Morah Debbie, who is new to Kitah Alpeh this year, was celebrating her first time completing the Ariot book as well.  We wish her and the class הצלחה רבה as they continue their exciting journey into the world of Torah learning!

Hour of Code

Technology industry leaders launched a global initiative this week called the Hour of Code.  Its intent is to introduce people, young and old, across the world to the value that computer programming plays across all disciplines and in all fields by encouraging them to spend one hour this writing computer code of some sort.  

Under the direction of our Lower School Science teacher, Mrs. Cathleen Triplett, our 6th graders were the first of our students to take part.  You can read about their class and follow what our other classes will be doing as well, on Mrs. Triplett's Science Blog. 

Master of the Arts

10th grader Dovid Yehoshua Samuels is known to much of the community for his talent in playing the violin, which was on display to all at our recent Boys High School Steak Dinner.  Within the school, though, Dovid Yehoshua has also long been known for his way with words and his gift for creative writing.  It's this second artistic talent which was again recognized nationally this past week when a poem he wrote was published by The New York Jewish Week's Fresh Ink website.

Here is the poem he wrote, entitled The Light of Chanukah:

The sun sinks slowly beneath the trees
The leaves gain an eerie, but majestic edge
Masterfully casted from the liquid fire of that molten orb

Soon, darkness descends, and with it
gloom blankets the city in an all-encompassing shroud of silence.

All seems quiet, dead;
But no.

A whispered blessing can be heard,
and then — a mere pinprick of light penetrates the darkness
carrying with it more joy and happiness than seemingly possible.

A moment passes,
and as if by miracle,
Light, beautiful Light,
breaks through the barricade of darkness, emanating from the windows
of every Jewish home for miles around.

She spreads her wings, and with an almighty thrust,
bursts into the night – the joy, faith, and happiness
of every Jew mounted proudly astride her back.

She dances, leaps, soars throughout the city
proclaiming to God the hopes, sorrows, and unwavering love
of the Jewish people as a whole.

Finally, upon reaching the edge of the city
she slowly twirls to a stop,
gracefully landing before the window
of a small, but welcoming house.

Her essence flows forward, unhindered by any obstacle.
She rests on a knit rug and lovingly watches as an elderly man sinks
comfortably into a worn armchair before the menorah,
an enormous smile plastered across his face.

Slowly she approaches, her essence joining with that of the man
as he beckons his children and grandchildren closer.

“Come,” he says. “Come listen to the tale of the Maccabees, brave and bold;
of a miracle full of light and grandeur.”

“Come,” he says. “Come listen.”

Chanukah has begun.

author's bio: 

Dovid Yehoshua Samuels is a sopho

Raising Jewish Teens: Charlie Harary's Motzei Shabbos Talk

Thanks to Debbie Miller who videoed Charlie Harary's talk on the Challenges of Raising Jewish Teens at our Motzei Shabbos Melave Malka and posted it on Torahanytime.com, everyone can now enjoy his words of wisdom and inspiration.  Thanks again to Gary and Dena Wruble for opening their home for this talk and for making the entire weekend possible.

20th Anniversary Steak Dinner

For 20 years, under the direction of Rabbi Yonason Gersten, the boys in our high school have been marketing, purchasing, cooking, setting up, entertaining, serving, and cleaning up their famous four-course formal dinner fondly known as the Steak Dinner in an effort to raise funds for their activities account.  This year a record crowd of well over three hundred community members came to show their support, enjoy a fantastic meal, and schep a bit of nachas from the truly outstanding boys who make up the Cooper Yeshiva High School for Boys.  As always, the boys chose a surprise honoree for the dinner for whom they made a moving - and entertaining - tribute video.  There could not have been a more fitting recipient for the 20th anniversary dinner than this year's honoree, Mrs. Teri Graber.

Mazal tov to her on her much deserved award and yasher kochachem to Rabbi Gersten and all of the boys for reminding us all just how much teenage boys are capable of and just how special our little school is.

GMSG Play

Congratulations to the girls high school for a phenomenal evening of theater earlier this week.  Rather than one full-length drama production, this year the girls, under the direction of Mrs. Renee Brame, showed off their versatility in presenting several different types of theater.

The evening began with a staged reading of an original play collaboratively written by the girls themselves in their creative writing class.  It was a mystery set in a school and centered around a drama production which made it both suspenseful and entertaining.  Most of all, it gave them invaluable experience in an area of both drama and writing which is often neglected in high school curricula.

The next part of the production shifted from live theater to film as the students presented a documentary they had filmed and produced about the preparations they had made and efforts they expended leading up to this evening.

For the final and featured piece of the evening's entertainment, the girls performed Agatha Christie's The Patient. A suspenseful whodunit set in a hospital and centered on a woman left paralyzed by someone who pushed her out of her second story window, the girls did a masterful job of conveying the play's wit, surprise, and drama.  For more pictures from the play, click here.

The entirety of the evening shined a wonderful light on our girls, the High School English Department, and the GMSG as a whole.

An Inspiring Weekend

For months our school and community had been looking forward to what we were billing as a "Shabbat Experience" - a weekend in which various parts of our school community would come together in and around the school to draw inspiration and to inspire each other.  With the help of Dr. Gary and Dena Wruble, and the talents of the weekend's feature attraction, Mr. Charlie Harary, it didn't disappoint.

The weekend started with a talk that Charlie gave to both of our high schools at the end of the school day on Friday about what it means to be a "Yehudi" - a descendant of Yehudah.  On Friday night, in a first for our school, the entire community was invited to davening in our High School Beit Midrash followed by dinner and a talk from Charlie.  280 men, women, and children of all ages signed up and the atmosphere was nothing short of electric.  From a spirited davening to a wonderful meal replete with "parsha questions" for the kids and the much beloved "cup song," there was something very special about all parts of our diverse community coming out to enjoy Shabbos together.  It was capped off by a captivating talk by Charlie on the meaning of inspiration and how best to find it.

On Shabbos morning the weekend zeroed in our teens with a special davening in the High School in which Mr. Harary delivered a derasha about the lessons of Chanukah.  That was followed by a special kiddush and a teens-only Q&A session with Charlie.  One of the most inspiring sights of the weekend was seeing our Beit Midrash packed with kids on Shabbos morning after davening, when no one was forcing them to be there, just for the opportunity to glean some wisdom from our guest speaker.

Charlie turned his focus back to the adults with a short talk during Shalosh Seudos at Baron Hirsch and then capped off the weekend at a Melave Malka in which a crown packed Dena and Gary's beautiful home  to hear Charlie speak on the challenges of raising Jewish teens.

For many of the participants I spoke to, this was a weekend unlike any other in recent history in our community.  Our hope is that there will be many more like it in the future.

High School Open House

On Tuesday night we hosted 8th grade students and parents for annual High School Open House.  In case you missed it, below is the multimedia presentation we showed highlighting the endless "opportunities" available to students at the Cooper Yeshiva High School for Boys and the Goldie Margolin High School for Girls.  Unfortunately, the best part of the presentation is missing: that was eight of our students who eloquently spoke about each set of "opportunities" and the way in which they have benefited from them.  Nonetheless, the presentation itself does give at least a glimpse into what may await your child at our high schools.