Student Spotlight

Spring 2025
אביב תשפ"ה

Student Spotlight

Spr 2025 HaY banner 2
Prizmah Columns

From the CEO: Students Matter

From the Board Chair: The How, the What and the Why

Research Corner: Hillel Exec on the Power of Day School

Student Book Review: A Letter to the Luminous Deep

Eliora Winer
Rebecca N Goldberg
In This Issue

Student Spotlight

“Rabbi Ḥanina said: I have learned much from my teachers and even more from my friends, but from my students I have learned more than from all of them.” BT Ta’anit 7a In a usual issue of HaYidion, we put the grownups at the front of the class–administrators, teachers, consultants, lay leaders, scholars–and let them teach us what they know. In this issue, we set the students on the podium and the rest of us find our seats and listen to them.
About This Issue
HaY Spring 2025 cover

The cover image is adapted from the winning entry to the HaYidion Art Contest. Congratulations to Adira Friedman, a ninth grader at the Tampa Bay Torah High School. Her submission can be seen in the School Feature.

This issue gives a platform to the people our schools are for: students. With contributors ranging from second to twelfth grade, they bring all of their creativity, intelligence, passion, humor, emotions, anxiety and hope into their writing, which spans different genres. Their teachers also weigh in, describing how they provide intellectual and spiritual support in this time of rapid educational change.

Contribute to the summer issue of HaYidion, on Endowment.

Place an ad in the next issue of HaYidion.

About HaYidion

HaYidion is the thought-leadership magazine of Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools. It is published 2-3 times a year. No articles may be reproduced or distributed without express written permission of Prizmah. All rights reserved.

The articles here represent the diverse views of the North American Jewish day school field, and not necessarily those of Prizmah.

Sinai Akiba art
School Feature

Student Art Contest

Take a gallery walk of the submissions to the student art contest that was announced for this issue of HaYidion. The winning entry appears in the banner and cover image above.
School
Leora Shenderov, Yonit Klein and Asher Brook
Lihi Maine
Margot Englander and Tzofiya Lesack
Tali Gubin, Hadar Groner, Benjamin and Samuel Uvaydov
Halston Cohen, Eliya Digadker, Kate Rosenblatt
Zoe Eisenstein, Rafi Kessler
Lindsay Shapiro, Eleanor Samuel
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Blackbaud Ad Spring 2025
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Ohel spring 2025 ad
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Israel Experience ad

Articles From This Issue

  • Learning that Matters: Engaging Students Through Inquiry
    Yoav Cohen-Rimmer
  • Empowered to Lead
    Lihi Maine
  • They Were Children, Too
    Rebecca Naimark Goldberg
  • Teaching Film Production Is Teaching Digital Literacy Skills
    Vanessa Bloom
  • Student Leaders, Moral Leaders
    Margot Englander and Tzofiya Lesack
  • My Path Towards Becoming a Jewish Educator
    Daniel Weisskopf
  • Kids and Tech: Responses to Jonathan Haidt
    Lilly Labowitz, Lisa Vardi, Jason Touvi, Yael Jaffe
  • What Makes a Great Teacher
    Tali Gubin, Hadar Groner, Benjamin and Samuel Uvaydov
  • Student Book Review: A Letter to the Luminous Deep
    Eliora Winer
  • Dance of Israel
    Spencer Foss
  • Switching to a New School
    Zoe Eisenstein, Rafi Kessler
  • Student Spotlight
    Elliott Rabin
  • Achieving Our Goals Through Hope
    Ella Markowicz
  • The Grit Behind the Grades
    Micki Appel
  • From the CEO: Students Matter
    Paul Bernstein
  • Teaching Respect: The Dreyfus Affair’s Contemporary Resonance
    Aidan Fogel
  • What I Wish Teachers Knew
    Halston Cohen, Eliya Digadker, Kate Rosenblatt
  • From the Board Chair: The How, the What and the Why
    Lisa Coll
  • The World is a Narrow Bridge: Learning Empathy from Fear
    Leora Mahler
  • Trips That Shaped Identity
    Lindsay Shapiro, Eleanor Samuel
  • Students At the Center: Of Mind, of Heart, of Practice
    Jillian Kaltman-Weiss
  • The Anguish of Liberal Jews
    Oren Opperer
  • Gratitude to The Givers
    Lily Sabghir
  • Research Corner: Hillel Exec on the Power of Day School
    Odelia Epstein
  • Deep, Nuanced Study of Israel
    Elif Zanzuri
  • Discovering My Roots
    Ari Wertlieb
  • Student Art Contest
  • We Will Dance Again: Learning Resilience After October 7
    Lila Derman and Tamar Steinberg
  • Grateful
    Amalia Goldstein
  • A Classroom of Their Own: How Students Designed Their Ideal Learning Space
    Rochie Niman
  • Israel and Antisemitism Post-October 7
    Jaylene Tirado
  • A Place We Didn’t Realize Was Home
    Zoe Zak
  • From Grades to Growth: Engaging Students in Learning How They Learn
    Bonnie Atkins
  • One Very Big Heart: Being an Israeli Student in a Jewish Diaspora School
    Tzuria Roichman
  • Roots, Resistance, and the Road Ahead: The Jewish Identity Puzzle
    Jeremy Dejman
  • The Teacher as Coach, Not Judge
    Gillian Steinberg
  • Always My Homeland
    Ramona Freiman Light
  • Tales of an Imperfect Jew
    Bina Sragowicz
  • On a Mission
    Joanne Baker
  • Welcoming an Inclusive Community
    Miranda Le, April Akiva
  • How Sports Instill Jewish Pride
    Henry Kaplan
  • Finding Their Jewish Voice
    Lisa Clumeck Graef
  • If I Could Make My Own School
    Effy Zaientz
  • To Bring Letters to Life
    Bailey Halpern
  • Bridging the Gap and Making Connections through Chesed
    Jennifer Rosenzweig, Tovah Miller
  • Our Makolet
    Leora Shenderov, Yonit Klein and Asher Brook
  • Theater as a Tool for Jewish Education
    Naomi Stoll