I am delighted to join the East Midwood Hebrew Day School as the new School Rabbi. The school is more than an academic institution. It is a community of learners engaged in the rich life of Jewish practice. Our students become versed in the stories and laws of the Torah and in the narratives of the books of Joshua, Judges, and the Books of Samuel. We become familiar with the unique perspective of Rashi, the pre-eminent commentator on the Torah and Talmud. Our students and families are immersed in living the calendar of Jewish life with communal festival celebrations and in-depth classroom explorations and discussions of the laws and customs that make them come to life. Finally, we expose our students to the wisdom and intellect of the Rabbis in studies of the Mishnah, Talmud, and later codes as our students reach middle school level.

Eretz Yisrael is always at the heart of our school spirit. We can, of course, feel it on Yom Ha’atzma’ut and also in our daily classroom learning, in the Hebrew one can hear throughout our school from the start of every day with Hatikvah and until the school day is over. We believe strongly in the rabbinic teaching “Kol Yisra’el areivim zeh la’zeh” “Every Jew depends one on the other.” Jews in the Diaspora must develop strong ties of support, love, spirituality, and kinship with the land and people of Israel, and we do everything we can to foster such feelings.

Everyone finds a home and feels comfortable at EMHDS. We take Judaism and Jewish life extremely seriously with our observances of Shabbat, Kashrut, and all the festivals, but we take an educational approach toward them so that all members of our community can learn and enjoy together, parents and children alike. In this way, our school prides itself upon being a “unifier,” bringing parents closer to their children, teachers and educational leaders closer to families, and families from different backgrounds closer to one another.