Schechter Shavua: December 5, 2025

Anafim’s Centers-Based Learning Helps Students Shine

The Anafim team (grades 1–2) has brought new energy to literacy learning through an engaging station-rotation model. This approach gives students continuous, hands-on opportunities to strengthen their reading and writing skills—while enjoying the benefits of small-group instruction and more individualized attention from both teachers and peers.

In writing, students are exploring the power of “small moments,” learning to zoom in on meaningful details that bring their stories to life. They’re also sharpening their punctuation and expanding their ability to write with depth and clarity.

In reading, our young learners are diving into story elements such as plot, main idea, and setting. They’re becoming experts at identifying these pieces while also choosing “good fit” books that challenge them at just the right level. To reinforce these skills, students engage in lively story-element games, phonics activities, and pattern word challenges.

When one-on-one with a teacher, students receive targeted support in parts of speech, spelling, and phonics—building the strong foundation they need to grow as confident readers and writers.

Anafim’s centers are buzzing with curiosity, collaboration, and joyful learning every day!

Click HERE to see more photos!
 

Finding Their Way: Anafim’s Hands-On Journey Into Maps

Anafim students (grades 1-2) have been learning about different types of communities as a building block to exploring maps! To bring their learning to life, students went on a tour of the school, clipboards and papers in hand, drawing maps of what they discovered. Using a compass, they pinpointed the exact location of their classroom within the building.

Their next challenges: creating a map key, scaling down their maps, and labeling each important location. Along the way, students encountered a real-world problem: their compasses didn’t seem to agree on direction! After another lesson and some troubleshooting, students found that most of their compasses were, in fact, working correctly, once they learned to use them properly.

Before Thanksgiving, Anafim students shared their mapping work with other Schechter students at ReLiSh!
 

Be the Shamash: Anafim Learns to Shine Their Light

Anafim’s Judaic Studies students are excited to begin a unit on H anukkah! Students learn the story of H anukkah, practice the H anukkah songs and blessings, and discuss their favorite foods that reflect this holiday of lights. They focused on the role of the shamash--the helper candle that lights all the others. Students will focus on the ways that each of them can shine and share their own light with their friends, our school, and the larger community. Sometimes a small spark can turn into a great flame. 

Schechter PA Brings Community, Celebration, and Connection

The Schechter Parent Association (PA)  —led by tireless co-chairs Kara Zablotsky (left) and Rachel Glantz (right) —keeps our Schechter community connected all year long! From the joyful Back-to-School Picnic and festive Sukkot celebration to a New Year’s Day roller skating event, Parents Night Out, and the always-popular end-of-year pool party, the PA brings Schechter families together through fun, friendship, and holiday festivities.

Thanks to the incredible success of our annual Purim fundraiser, most of these events are freefor all Schechter families to enjoy!

The PA also spreads warmth and gratitude throughout the school by showering our teachers and staff with appreciation during Teacher Appreciation Week, keeping our teacher lounges stocked with coffee and tea, sponsoring challah for weekly classroom Kabbalat Shabbat celebrations, and supporting classroom experiences with field trip funds.

Don’t miss the Book Fair featuring a wide selection of books from the River Bend Bookshop, December 8-14!Proceeds support arts and theater field trips for our students! Todah rabah to the PA for helping make Schechter an even more vibrant, connected, and joyful place to learn and grow!

Parashat Vayishlah* — God as our personal trainer

“God only gives us as much as we can handle.” People say this sometimes when trying to console friends who have suffered illness or tragic loss. The well-intentioned sentiment is rooted in a classic midrash about Abraham, but it has always troubled me deeply. Is that God’s role—the source of suffering, in just the right amount? Our parashahsuggests another role for God: as our personal trainer. A close look at the story suggests that God carefully helped train Jacob to face his toughest challenges. 

On his way to meet his estranged brother Esau, Jacob wrestles with a mysterious angel, and after the struggle, he exclaims that he saw a divine being face to face (ra'iti Elohim panim el panim). When Jacob encounters Esau a few verses later, he tells him that “seeing your face is like seeing the face of a divine being (p'nei Elohim).” The phrases are so similar; he seems to be saying that the angel looked like his brother!

Why might God have sent an angel that looked like Esau? Several rabbinic commentators suggest that God was trying to give Jacob confidence. When Jacob saw his brother, instead of being disheartened, he would say to himself, “I can handle my brother; I've just defeated someone exactly like him!”

God wasn’t the source of Jacob’s problems; Jacob created them himself.  God was just trying to prepare Jacob so that, when the reunion took place, Jacob would be confident enough to face his brother. This, I believe, is true in our lives as well: instead of seeing God as the source of our worst challenges, we can see God as the source of our strengths.

May we go many days without suffering and loss. But if we are to face harsh trials, may we be aware of all the ways God has strengthened us so that we can handle them.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Jonathan Berger
Head of School

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Questions for the Shabbat table:

1. Jacob was injured in his struggle with the angel, though he emerged victorious. Do you think the injury diminished his confidence, or increased it?
2. Can you think of times in your life when one challenge prepared you for another? 

* Please enjoy this thoughtful piece that Rabbi Berger wrote in 2021.