Schechter Shavua: March 7, 2025

How Does Rhythm Promote Motor Skills?

Walk into anEC Music classand you might find three and four year olds enthusiastically tapping rhythm sticks to the beat of “Hakuna Matata!” Dancing, clapping, and basic motor skill exercises help children develop balance, body awareness, and coordination. Early Childhood students love music class with Miss Julie; her activities promote listening skills, rhythm recognition, creativity, and the ability to follow directions in a fun and interactive way! Students learn different types of music, including simple songs, rhythmic patterns, and musical genres like folk, classical, and nursery rhymes. Miss Julie even plays the Ukulele along with the songs as they sing….It’s one of the many benefits to having our Early Childhood program within a larger school setting.

Students Design Mazes that are Simply De-Light-ful!

Student creativity and ingenuity has been shining brightly in Makerspace class! For the past month, middle school students discovered and explored the reflective and bending (refracting) nature of light using mirrors, lenses and lasers. Tasked with building an obstacle maze through which a beam of light must travel is no small task; students needed to create a maze that reflected the light of a single laser beam off of a series of mirrors at appropriate angles in order to get that beam of light to travel all the way through their maze! They began with some rough sketches, then tweaked their design as they measured the exact angles needed to move the light along. The results were absolutely de-Light-ful!

For more pictures, click HERE!

Ner Tamid: A Celebration of the Schechter CommUNITY

Ner Tamid was a truly meaningful celebration as we came together to celebrate Schechter and this year’s theme, Unity, or K’lal Yisrael , כלל ישראל, one of our core values. We were privileged to honor Jason and Arielle Kay , whose dedication to Jewish education and commitment to Schechter embody the strength of our community. Gathering in their honor was a powerful reflection of K’lal Yisrael and the deep connections that make Schechter such a special place today.

Exploring the Joys of Shabbat through Challah

Scoop the flour! Crack some eggs! Shorashim Alef students (EC3-4) recently rolled up their sleeves to make challah along with parents Marsha Jacobskind and Debbie Silverman. Students helped incorporate ingredients and stir the dough before finally getting to braid their own loaves. We love when parents share their passion with our students!

Note: this d’var Torah is adapted from my talk at Schechter’s Ner Tamid gala, which honored Jason and Arielle Kay for their amazing leadership and service

Parashat Tetzaveh—Leaders Who Elevate Everyone

This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Tetzaveh . It contains a vivid description of the bigdei kehunah , the full set of clothing that the kohanim or priests would wear when serving in the sanctuary. Regular priests wore relatively simple tunics, sashes and turbans, but the kohen gadol , the high priest, wore a very ornate uniform. It featured many layers of brilliantly colored linen, with beautiful embroidery and some delicate metalwork. The purpose of the garments, according to the Torah, was lekhavod uletifaret, “for dignity and splendor.” But whose dignity, and whose splendor? Could the entire goal of the fancy uniform have been to make the high priest look impressive, and glorify his ego? There must have been something else going on.

The key to understanding the priestly clothes is the hoshen , the golden breastplate that was decorated with 12 semi-precious stones, each one a different color. Separately, they weren’t so special; together, they formed a rainbow of beauty. And each stone was engraved with the name of one of the 12 tribes. In other words, the hoshen represented the unity of the tribes, a union that was more beautiful because of its diversity. Each tribe, each individual, had its own identity and strength—that was their kavod and tiferet . The kohen gadol’s garments were supposed to remind him of the people’s glory, dignity and splendor.

In this vein, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev points out that in most situations, when one person is selected, the others feel rejected. Looking at Aaron, the high priest, the Israelites might have felt, “He is special and we are not.” That’s why the gems were engraved with the tribes’ names—so that the Israelites would remember that God chose them too. The kohen gadol’s garments were supposed to make every person feel honored and resplendent.

So two values emerge from the kohen gadol ’s clothing: (1) beautiful unity emerges from diverse ingredients, and (2) true leaders don’t swell with a sense of their own importance; instead, they represent and elevate everyone. These values seem sorely lacking in our public and political life today. So many leaders seek to gain and exercise power by being divisive and showing contempt towards anyone different—and their sense of self-importance threatens to eclipse the true needs and interests of the people they are supposed to lead. May we be blessed with leaders who take the lessons of the hoshento heart!

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Jonathan Berger
Head of School

Questions for the Shabbat table:

The kohen gadol ’s clothing included a lot of fabric dyed tekhelet—a deep blue color produced by a rare dye. Individual Israelites were supposed to have tekhelet fringes at the corners of their robes; we call those fringes tzitzit. What might the color symbolize? What do we make of the fact that both the high priest and the regular Israelite was supposed to wear something made with that dye?
What’s the finest/most special set of clothes you’ve worn? How did it make you feel when you put them on?