By Lise Applebaum

It all started with the fires. Last fall, Los Angeles was ablaze with fires spreading perilously close to Milken Community School. We had lived versions of this scenario before; however, this time it was different. The fires, just a hillside away, were difficult to contain and took several weeks to abate. During this time, we felt the urgency of developing a remote learning plan.

When we were permitted to return to campus again, Dr. Sarah Shulkind, our brand-new head of school, and I made preparations for remote learning a priority. After all, we knew that fires would eventually come again, if not later in the season, perhaps the following year. Over the next several months, our school’s professional leadership, in partnership with the board, invested in teacher training for remote learning. We also made sure that all of our students had access to the tools necessary for distance learning. We were ready for the next time remote learning would be required, or so we thought. Then came COVID-19.

At the beginning of March, the mayor of Los Angeles ordered our city shut. Overnight, we had to pivot from in-person classes to remote learning. At first glance, because we had prepared for remote learning at the beginning of the year, this transition was fairly seamless. Soon, though, we realized that the educational product we now needed to offer for many weeks and what we didn’t realize at the time, many, many months, needed to be enhanced if we were to truly provide an excellent education for our students. As we shifted from the immediate to the strategic, the hard work really began.

When school first closed, I don’t think any of us realized what a monumental challenge preparing for education in times of a pandemic represented. As a school, we have always prided ourselves on being ready for unexpected challenges, and in the case of COVID that meant being ready for three separate, multilayered scenarios: 1) fully remote, 2) hybrid learning and 3) in-person learning. There were so many questions we had, and so many we didn’t even know to ask.

Sarah and I assembled a COVID-19 Advisory Committee, composed of experts in the field of medicine, health and municipal and state policy. We knew that the success of our response to COVID was based on the strength of partnerships among professional staff, partnerships with outside experts and the strong partnership of the board with our head. These partnerships allowed us to formulate answers to our questions and to revise our response to those questions as circumstances change, which is the one constant of COVID.

With so much uncertainty, of the utmost importance is my recognition, and that of our board, that our head is the professional charged with leading our school. We fully trust in her ability to do so even during a pandemic. My goal is to be her strategic partner; we talk almost daily to share ideas with one other, share resources, brainstorm and problem-solve.

Sarah and I remain calm and resolute in our desire to steer our institution through this challenge. We model that behavior for our students, parents, lay leaders and professional staff each day. This allows us to focus our work together on strategic priorities—first and foremost, the educational product we want to provide to our students. Our next focus is on ways to help our families, especially those negatively impacted financially or emotionally by COVID.

This past spring, our head and leadership team, along with our executive board and finance committee, spent many hours studying the school’s needs in this new educational paradigm. We developed our response to ensure that we educated our students in the best way possible and that our students could remain at Milken even if their families were under financial strain. We restructured our school in anticipation of these changes, which produced cost-savings and allowed us to invest in technology and distance-learning specialists. We also were fortunate to have donors who recognized this critical moment and generously supported the school.

Even before COVID, Jewish day schools faced substantial challenges; in many ways, COVID was an accelerant to some of the changes that needed to occur. Without denying the seriousness of the many challenges ahead, we can recognize that COVID has created opportunities for us to think differently, both about how education can look in the 21st century and also who we can reach using remote learning. While we all yearn for the start of a normal school year, I am grateful for the lessons I have learned during this time: the importance of flexibility and agility, the immeasurable value of a strong relationship with your head and board, and the humility of recognizing there is so much more to learn.

Lise Applebaum is the chair of the Board of Trustees at the Milken Community School in Los Angeles.

By Deborah Shapira

As a board member of a Jewish day school as well as other Jewish nonprofits, I dream of a world in which board members feel as capable, knowledgeable and respected in their board work as they do in their professional lives. The Prizmah study is an important resource that will help make this vision a reality for day school boards. 

By naming the challenges and opportunities of day school boards, this study validates the experiences that a board chair may face. While every school and board is unique, there are certain issues that many boards face in common. This study powerfully articulates our challenges and places them in a context that board chairs will find useful. 

Even more importantly, the study enables board chairs to begin grappling with changes that are warranted, providing a potential road map of available opportunities for improvement. By outlining specific issues that might be addressed, it will help board chairs prioritize the most immediate needs of their specific boards. 

I hope you will use this study as a jumping-off point for addressing the problems faced by your boards. Consider engaging your governance committee chair (or if your board doesn’t have a governance committee, any governance-minded fellow board member) to discuss the challenges and opportunities outlined in the study. Your discussion will likely reveal one or two top priorities, areas that seem to be the greatest obstacles to your board’s success, allowing you to begin taking steps to address and manage them. Knowing where to start this work can be daunting, but this study serves as a first step, helping to launch your efforts to make your board work as effectively as possible. 

Board chairs, take heart! There is much to be done, but this study demonstrates that you are not alone. There are a body of evidence and network of support that will help you bring your board closer to its full potential, in turn helping your day school thrive.

Wishing you much success and satisfaction in your holy work.

Deborah Shapira is a certified facilitator and educator living in New York City.  She consults with non-profit organizations and boards of directors, crafting processes to guide them towards successfully meeting their organizational needs and goals. Deborah serves on the Board of Directors of Prizmah, where she is Chair of the Governance Committee, as well as the Board of Trustees of SAR Academy and High School, where she is the immediate past chair of the SAR Board of Education. Deborah also serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Pardes North America. Deborah and her husband, Barry Stern, live in Riverdale, New York, where their children are enrolled at SAR High School and the Leffell School.

By Jonathan Weiss

In July, I had the fortune of assuming the role of President of the Board for Hillel Torah, a Modern Orthodox Day School in Skokie, IL. Even in “normal” years, I imagine there’s a steep learning curve at the outset of taking on this responsibility. Of course, this is far from a normal year. Despite preparing myself for the challenge of navigating the intricacies of process, discussion, and decisions amidst a pandemic, the experience itself has been illuminating, portending to what the next couple of years in the role might entail.

Some early lessons learned:

• Empathize. Parents, administration, teachers and students are all grappling with the uncertainty of school’s reopening. Opinions range from “We absolutely must be in-person with minimal modifications” to “It’s irresponsible to do anything other than 100% virtual learning.” Emotions are running hot. More than anything, people just want to be heard. Listening, and I mean truly listening—not telling people how they should feel—is the recipe for success.
• Frame the situation. We often think of our decisions as being choices between right and wrong, or good vs. bad. But when it comes to how best to educate our children during a pandemic, our options are between bad and less bad. Once we acknowledge that no matter how we go about this it’ll be far from ideal, we can then stop talking past each other and figure out how collectively to make it work.
• Prepare to adapt. Safe, responsible reopening for in-person learning amidst a pandemic requires a detailed plan with myriad protocols and contingencies. Yet information and guidelines may constantly change on us, and no matter how carefully we prepare, we will inevitably learn new things as we execute the plan day in and day out. We must maintain flexibility and a willingness to adapt, similar to how we’ve had to do so over the last half year since this virus entered our lives.
• First debate, then communicate as one. Boards are comprised of a range of perspectives and people, often Type A personalities who are confident and outspoken. This can be challenging, but is also healthy and necessary. Embrace the debate, seek a diversity of viewpoints, and help bridge gaps when possible. Once reaching a consensus, it’s critical for the whole board to speak in a collective and cohesive voice, instilling confidence in the community.
• Don’t lose sight of longer-term strategies. It would be easy to press the “hold” button on longer-term strategic ventures, with so much time and energy being spent on COVID-19 plans. Nobody would fault us for it. But the world doesn’t halt due to this virus. It’s important to maintain “zoom-in, zoom-out” perspective whereby we simultaneously deal with the here-and-now around the pandemic while still progressing against our goals of the future.

In short, the same skills and strategies used to govern our schools during normal times can stand us well more than ever during our COVID year.

Jonathan currently presides over the Board of Directors at Hillel Torah, a preschool through 8th grade Jewish day school in Skokie, IL. Having served on the Board for 4 years prior, he began his role as President this past July. Professionally, Jonathan works in consumer insights and consulting for a range of companies and industries.   

The exuberance that each new school year brings for the children we greet through our doors is palpable throughout the school in the weeks leading up to September. But now, with so much uncertainty surrounding us, we are left wondering just how we’ll recreate that communal buzz of excitement and cozy school vibe through our sterile masks and socially distanced hallways. How will our educators and students re-enter a building they have not inhabited for close to half-a-year, and resume school life as they know it? How will our educators weave their magic and ease back-to-school tension and worries, restoring calm and reviving the smiles and laughter that we all miss? How will we partner with our parents to ensure that we are all working together and placing the social and emotional wellbeing of everyone within our educational communities, front and center of everything we do?

How I wish I could answer those questions, and foresee the future. We are all navigating unchartered waters, and in the absence of certainty, we are charged with the task of an abundance of planning, with an eye toward sensitivity and caution. Administrators and educators are working round the clock to ensure a healthy transition back to school and are at the center of efforts to restore the conditions for all of us to thrive and flourish this year. But in order to do so, we must reclaim our role as those who create the conditions, and don’t just respond to them. 

Agency

There’s a strong premise within positive psychology that when individuals have the psychological state of agency, progress occurs, but when they don’t, they face stagnation. Agency is a subjective, internal state of mind whereby individuals feel as though they can make a positive difference in the world around them. Agency is comprised of a sense of efficacy, which is a cognitive belief of one’s ability to exercise control, as well as optimism, the expectation of a positive future. 

COVID-19 has challenged not only our efficacy and optimism, but our core understandings of our place in the world around us. Thankfully, belief and conviction in our sense of agency throughout our school communities is embedded within Jewish education from the youngest of ages. It begins with the daily prayer of Modeh Ani, where, in the words of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, we teach our children to “begin your day thanking G-d; if not from faith in Him, then at least from His faith in you,” to be a productive and a positive force for yourself and those around you. The sense of agency that is central to the mission and vision of our schools fosters resilience and innovation, and allows us to try harder, dream bigger and brighter, imagining things other than the here and now. 

Make no mistake: we are all going to need to take an inside-out approach this year, as we engage in collective healing and social-emotional learning and join forces to cultivate inclusive and welcoming classrooms. We often think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, but really biologically, we are feeling creatures that think. We know that our emotions affect our ability to store, process and absorb information, as learning is a deeply emotional process that calls on areas of the brain that intertwine cognition and emotion-processing, particularly the prefrontal cortex. Positive emotions enrich our cognitive functioning in areas such as brainstorming, problem-solving, memory, creativity and lateral thinking. We know that no learning happens when our students are highly emotionally aroused, and we’re going to need to attend to their social-emotional needs so that they will be available for learning.

Resilience

As we return, our approach must remain relationship-focused, student-centered and restorative in order to breathe new life into our classrooms, fueled by courage, compassion and connection. The data speaks for itself: strong subjective wellbeing has been linked to enhanced health, immunity, better social relationships, productivity and resilience, and the best news is that wellness can be taught and character strengths can be developed. 

Resilience is a dynamic process that takes into account the complex and changing contextual interactions between individuals and their surrounding environment, including family, community and social systems, that influence one’s capacity to overcome adversity. Resilience is more than coping with difficulties; rather, it enables people to adapt and regain an ability to flourish, with room for positive growth, transformation and transcendence. 

Reconfiguring the Fragments

There’s a famous parable in the literature of trauma. Imagine you had a precious vase that you were gifted from a close relative that gets knocked on the floor and smashes into a myriad of tiny pieces. Panicked, you bend down and try to gather all the fragments so you can piece it all back together. You try and try, but shaping it into what it once was proves to be too arduous a task. Perhaps you can assemble the pieces into something new, and repurpose them to help you creatively process and preserve your memories. 

As educators, our task today is not to put back the pieces to what they once were. I believe that our task is to welcome everyone back into our sanctuaries of learning and empower each other to reconfigure our pieces and imbue our experiences with meaning, as we incorporate them into a renewed and enhanced version of ourselves. As Holocaust survivor and Austrian psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Let’s revive the sense of agency and human connection within our schools and pave the way for the powers of possibility this year.

Carly Namdar is an educational psychologist and director of middle school guidance at HALB. Carly is a doctoral candidate at the Azrieli Graduate School of Education, and is passionate about all things positive-psychology related. 

The Book of Devarim that we are reading in synagogue during these weeks is a recap of the previous four books; the material is largely familiar, but is presented in an entirely new way. Some of the classics (the Ten Commandments/Utterances) reappear with changes, while important new material (e.g., the Sh'ma) is introduced. Moshe is recounting the people's history for several important reasons: the new generation needs to review the experiences of their parents; the people require instruction regarding their identity and values before they fight a war upon entering the Land; the teller wants to leave a legacy that defines the meaning of his leadership, that all future Israelites can study and learn from.

However, the emphasis throughout Devarim is less on the recounting and more on the message. The experience that the people are about to undergo, conquering the land and ruling it autonomously, requires different qualities than were required previously. The purpose of Moshe's speech is to fortify the people in their faith and relationship with God and their understanding of the Land as the culmination of their formation and wanderings as a nation.

If the very meaning of Torah is instruction, the Book of Devarim is singularly focused on education:

And this is the Instruction—the laws and the rules—that the LORD your God has commanded [me] to impart to you, to be observed in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, so that you, your children, and your children’s children may revere the LORD your God and follow, as long as you live, all His laws and commandments that I enjoin upon you, to the end that you may long endure. (6:1-2) Translation found in JPS and Sefaria.

Most significantly, only after this period of education, reflection, preparation and change can Bnei Yisrael enter the Land.

Jewish day schools similarly have undertaken a period of reflection, education and preparation unlike anything that most of us have experienced in our lifetimes. When we return to our schools, either in person or online, or both, much will be familiar. We know our material; we know how we like to teach our subjects; we know many of our students, their families, and often the communities in which they live. Unless we are transitioning into a different school, we know the culture of our schools, we are comfortable with our colleagues, our departments, our faculty, staff and leadership, with whom we may have collaborated for many years.

And yet, our world has been shaken, our communities no longer function as they used to. Our schools have invested countless hours to ensure that our buildings will offer as safe an environment as possible. But for all this extraordinary, intensive labor, we simply do not know what the future, near and long term, has in store. Some schools are unable to open because COVID is still raging in their vicinity; when will they be able to return? For schools in states with lower rates of infection, will people truly be able to return to school safely, or will, God forbid, outbreaks recur and force additional closings? 

And we have no idea when this period of history will end and what the world, and our world, will look like on the other side. Will we have a vaccine in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year that will effectively inoculate everyone? Or will the vaccines only be partially effective, as some epidemiologists warn, requiring continued caution and vigilance? At the end of the day, we lean on our faith in God and our confidence in the importance of Jewish day schools and their mission to place our hope in a good outcome, no matter how or when we get there.

Nevertheless, the abundant efforts of our stakeholders are effecting changes that are serving our schools well now, in the present, and will continue to yield fruit for months and years to come. Our schools have proven to be agile to a degree even beyond our expectations, ready to transition to fully online instruction with a degree of success few others could achieve. Despite all of the stress, our teachers and administrators have shown incredible resilience, adapting to changing guidelines and forecasts, making the best of it with remarkable humor and aplomb. 

We see new forms of internal collaboration, with technology directors suddenly ascending in importance and consulting daily with school leadership while supporting the entire educational infrastructure; and unprecedented external collaboration among schools, with heads banding together weekly for critical networking and inspiration. Teachers are engaging in professional development on a massive scale never before seen in our field, in social-emotional learning, inclusion, and online instruction. And board members have worked tirelessly to help ensure the school's financial health, provide for emergency needs, and forecast a sustainable budget in these murky waters.

Like Bnei Yisrael, we do not know when we will arrive at the next stage of our journey or what exactly it will look like; all we know is that it will look different from our world today and the world that we have known until now. And yet, just like our ancestors, we can glean seeds of hope today that we may plant and may flourish one day soon, God willing, when we reach a better place.

Originally posted on JEIC. 

As school leaders, we find ourselves dealing with a unique situation none of us could have imagined other than as a summer science-fiction blockbuster film. We have been tasked with making informed decisions, yet we don’t really know what information and analysis to use to best inform our decisions. Like Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai (Berachot  28b, Bava Batra 89b), we can never be sure that our decisions are right, and, since each decision impacts so many people long term, we are painfully aware of the stakes at play and the price to be paid if we err or fall short. 

Frustratingly and to our great consternation, just when we think we’ve made progress, something beyond our control changes. Updated statistics, revised state guidelines, network “Breaking News,” and we’re back to where we started. Qualifying phrases like “as of now,” “as of today” or “as of this moment” pepper our memos and our posted “live documents.” An honest reckoning demands a rhetorical question: Will all these planning meetings have any value, or perhaps, sadly, we have been wasting our valuable time?

I am reminded of the military adage that “no plan survives contact with the enemy,” a statement attributed to Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, the famed Prussian chief of staff in the 19th century. Von Moltke wrote: “One cannot be at all sure that any operational plan will survive the first encounter with the main body of the enemy. Only a layman could suppose that the development of a campaign represents the strict application of a prior concept that has been worked out in every detail and followed through to the very end.”

If this is the case, then why make any plans ever? In answer to this very question, Dwight D. Eisenhower, general and later president of the United States,  replied, “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.” This seems to move the needle a little bit forward. According to Eisenhower, even though plans tend to disintegrate when confronted by reality, the process of planning has substantial worth. The question then becomes, In what ways might this be so?

We must distinguish between planning and preparing. Preparing is often undertaken in a controlled environment for a predictable situation. The Talmud provides such an example, when it declares that ”whoever prepares on the eve of Shabbat will be able to eat on Shabbat” (Avodah Zarah 3a). Prepare for Shabbat by cooking the food on Friday and you’ll have what to eat on Shabbat evening and afternoon. But this preparation isn’t  planning. A person cooking for Shabbat knows more or less how many people will be eating each meal, what time they will be eating, and what foods to cook. Of course the brisket could burn, the clock could run slow, or last minute sleepover guests might necessitate additional place settings, but it’s more likely than not that things will work out and the Shabbat meal will be enjoyed without a hitch.

Planning is fundamentally different. It often involves considering the possibility of something unknown or unpredictable happening in the future and of formulating strategies in the event of such an occasion. We can plan a family picnic weeks in advance, but if it rains on game day we are out of luck unless we have a backup plan.

I believe the halachah of Eruv Tavshilin might shed some light here. The Talmud describes that this eruv enables us to prepare on a holiday for Shabbat, an act that, absent the eruv, would be prohibited (Beitza 16b). In a situation when Shabbat immediately follows a holiday, some people will become hyper-focused on Shabbat to the neglect of the  holiday, others on the holiday to the neglect of Shabbat. The physical eruv is less about actually preparing the Shabbat meal on the eve of the holiday and more about ensuring that one “plans” appropriately for both the holiday and Shabbat. It’s the process of planning for both that guarantees that both the holiday and Shabbat will get their due.

In light of this, I would like to suggest some benefits of planning, even if the plans should end up changing throughout the planning process and, especially, during the implementation stage. Bearing these benefits in mind will justify to some extent all the time we have spent and will spend in planning meetings for the upcoming academic year.

1. The organization focuses on its mission, goals and values. When plans need to change, new plans should be adopted that keep true to the organization’s goals. For example, if in war the ultimate  goal of the battle is to win over the hearts and minds of the local population, a military unit that encounters friction will not switch to a tactic that wins the battle but causes substantial collateral damage.

2. An organization identifies its strengths, weaknesses, resources, capabilities, capacities, etc. While the original plan may need to be changed, new plans are designed with an acute awareness of these known variables, thus increasing the chances of success.

3. Various options are discussed. Even though one of them will be chosen as the primary course of action, the others should not be shelved. They form the core of other options to be looked at and possibly adopted during actual implementation.

4. The team accesses a range of sources of information. The planning group will be able to vet these sources for credibility and reliability so that they can know how much to weigh them during the implementation stage, when decisions need to be made based upon imperfect information. As part of this process, the planning group learns to operate and decide in a world of uncertainty.

5. The school selects outside agencies that can provide support and establishes relationships with them, as well as outside experts and consultants. Connections to these networks can be quickly accessed during the “action.”

6. Key members within the organization get to know each other and understand the leadership dynamic in a way that can be used during implementation.

May Hashem guide us in these difficult times as we forge our opening plans. And may we merit that our planning meetings become preparing meetings as well.

Rabbi Dr. David Hertzberg is the principal of the Yeshivah of Flatbush Middle School and an adjunct asst. professor of History at Touro College. His rabbinic ordination is from Yeshiva University. He holds a Master of Arts in International Politics from NYU and a Doctorate of Arts in Modern World History from St. John's University.

by Lisa B. Ziv

Tisha B’Av is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and 70 CE. Many tragedies for the Jewish people have fallen on Tisha B’Av. 

Every year, I do the traditional things to observe the day. I fast, read kinnot (dirges, poems of mourning) in synagogue, and yearn for the Temple to be rebuilt. I go through the rituals. But until now, I haven’t personally connected with Tisha B’Av. This year my heart aches as a mother helping her child struggling with depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. My perspective on so many things is filtered through my family’s mental health challenges. 

The day I learned that my child was “cutting” is one that forever changed my perspective on the idea that our bodies are our temples. The school principal called me saying she found a letter where my daughter wrote, “I have already hurt myself many times.” Although she was in counseling for depression and anxiety, neither my husband, her counselors, her teachers or I had any idea that she was in such deep pain. The letter was a cry for help that put us on a path to getting our daughter a higher level of mental health treatment. The journey to help her get to a better place is best left for another time. Thank G-d, she is doing better, but the scars from the razor blade are there to mark when her bodily temple was attacked.

Thinking about the body as a human form of the Beit HaMikdash, the Holy Sanctuary, is both inspiring and imposing for me. As Mendy Hecht wrote on www.AskMoses.com:

With the destruction, G-d temporarily removed the Temple from its geographic location and placed it within us. Instead of traveling to Jerusalem, G-d wanted us to find Him in our inner Jerusalem. Now, our bodies are our Temples, our souls are our windows, our minds are our kohanim and our animal instincts are our sacrifices. We cannot offer physical sacrifices three times a day, but we can pray three times a day. We cannot attend Temple services three times a day, but we can tap into our souls three times a day. We cannot atone for our shortcomings by sacrificing animals, but we can sacrifice our inner animals—our hormones, our lusts, our desires, our beastly compulsions. We cannot find G-d in Jerusalem; we must find Him in us.

Just as we mourn for the destruction of the Temples, we hurt for our loved ones who are suffering. Some try temporarily to ease their pain through self-harm by cutting, abusing pills, drugs or alcohol, binging, purging, overeating or other unhealthy behaviors. This Tisha B’Av, as we pray for the Temple to be rebuilt, let us pray for our family and community members with mental health challenges.

Rabbi Yechezkel Freundlich spoke during Canadian Mental Health Week 2020 about the need to bring awareness and destigmatize mental health. He discussed the commandment to maintain the dignity and honor of those who need help. Rabbi Freundlich shared a commentary to the Torah equating helping those with mental health issues to rebuilding the Temple, saying: 

If the Jew can fulfill the mitzvah of maintaining the dignity and honor given to those that need in a way that they are able to feel good about themselves, it is as if, Rashi says, you constructed the Beit HaMikdash, you build the Temple itself, and went there and brought all the offerings that are necessary. That is our task.

On Tisha B’Av, I will join with Jews around the world to lament the destruction of the Temples and pray for the rebuilding of Jerusalem speedily in our lifetime. My prayer, for my daughter and all those struggling with mental health challenges, is that their personal temples be repaired and rebuilt in good health and peace.

Through her lived experiences, Lisa Ziv developed a passion for supporting parents as they navigate their children’s mental health challenges. Her private organization helps identify resources and build supportive communities, by connecting families and increasing awareness in schools and the Jewish community. Her reflections on Jewish holidays, traditions, and texts inspire families that are coping with uncertain times. Lisa lives in Baltimore, MD, with her husband and three amazing teenagers. [email protected]; www.lisaziv.com

Why School?
by Rabbi Laurie Hahn Tapper

I was walking up the steps of our garage with my groceries freshly picked up from the curbside of our local supermarket and realized I was carrying more than I usually do: a whole watermelon and a bag of brown sugar in one arm and two one-gallon containers of milk in the other hand. When had I gotten so strong?

This must be one of those real life, mundane moments my strength training had been preparing me for, I thought to myself with a smirk. Since the pandemic hit, I’ve been getting through the days by expanding my workout routine to include daily riding (on my bike that goes nowhere) and strength training. The instructors will often say things like “We are not doing this exercise for the sake of the exercise, but we are doing this to live our lives more fully,” or “Being uncomfortable by pushing faster or lifting heavier helps us get comfortable doing uncomfortable things in our lives.” One of my favorite instructors in fact used to say (pre-March 13th), “Go faster! We’re training for the apocalypse and when those zombies come, you want to be able to outrun them.” When she used to say that, I would both laugh and go faster.

Now, I hear those words differently. The apocalypse (though not a zombie one) feels like it has arrived. The pandemic, systemic racism, white supremacy, a federal government with no leadership, climate change—how have we trained to meet this moment? Do each of us have within us the necessary ethical, emotional and physical muscles to survive, live and thrive in this current moment? Have I trained myself in patience, self-discipline, empathy, just to name a few of the characteristics I find myself most needing to call upon right now? It’s a question I think is critical for teachers and administrators to ask ourselves as we figure out how we will return to school. 

Regardless of the physical or virtual form school takes, what is the content we will be providing right now for students to survive and thrive in this current world moment and beyond? Instead of focusing on how we will do school, what if we first asked why? 

So, at this moment: Why school? Yes, academics are important. One needs to know how to read, write and think critically. But more than anything, I have often felt that the goal of elementary school is to help a child learn who they can be and how they can be a respectful and productive citizen of the world. If this is so, then what do our children actually need to know and be able to do to be citizens of the world they are currently living in and help to continue to build?

As we look at the images of unmasked people gathering in large groups, videos of people coughing on others who disagree with them, or the general disregard of medical experts and scientific studies, how do we help children find the strength within them to withstand this moment and even to thrive?

Whether virtual or physical, schools need to be centers that develop respectful and productive citizens of the world who value common decency, empathy and critical thinking. Our job is to be training students with deep social-emotional and inner-spiritual skills. What are the fundamental building blocks that children can learn so they develop patience, resilience, hope, delayed gratification and, most importantly, the deep understanding that their wellbeing is inexplicably tied up with and dependent on the wellbeing of their immediate and global community?

I’m not sure yet what it actually looks like, but I feel that our world needs us to rethink the curriculum, and our religions compels us to. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in “What We Might Do Together”: “Many of our people still think in terms of an age in which Judaism wrapped itself in spiritual isolation. In our days, however, for the majority of our people involvement has replaced isolation. The emancipation has brought us to the very heart of the total society. It has not only given us rights, but also imposed obligations. It has expanded the scope of our responsibility and concern. Whether we like it or not, the words we utter and the actions in which we are engaged affect the life of the total community. We affirm the principle of separation of church and state, we reject the separation of religion and the human situation.”

If emergency learning required us to try to keep things as normal as possible so people could survive, I wonder if this next phase requires us to acknowledge and name the situation we are in, so that we may purposefully train and educate for this moment and beyond, rather than try to just perpetuate what we’ve always done in a modified way. I dare say that Judaism requires it, our world needs it and the future of our children depends on it.

Rabbi Laurie Hahn Tapper is beginning her fourteenth year as the School Rabbi of Yavneh Day School in Silicon Valley, California, where she is also the Director of Learning Integration, empowering teachers and students to make connections between all aspects of the learning.