RS Handbook - Temple Sinai

TEMPLE SINAIPARENT HANDBOOK 5773WELCOMEDear Families,I am thrilled to join Temple Sinai and serve as the Director of Congregational Learning. As I prepare to teach your childrenduring the upcoming school year, let me begin by relating a favorite teaching of mine:One Rabbinic Midrash says that there are 600,000 letters in the entire Torah, recalling the Biblical statement that 600,000people stood at Sinai to receive God’s revelation. The Midrash asserts that the letters had been waiting and waiting forliving human beings so that each letter could bond with a soul to carry out its message. As an educator, I see it as ourmission to join these “letters” to the souls of our children in order to bring the text of Torah to life.As we embark on a new educational experience together, I look forward to working in conjunction with teachers to makelearning meaningful for each of our students. Engaging in serious professional development, teachers will sharpen theirexisting skills, energize their professional enthusiasm and exchange in open discussions on the journey that will bring ourreligious school to the next level of excellence.It is an exciting time in our students’ lives as they share the joys of learning, celebrating and participating with peers inJewish holidays and events, becoming rooted in community through shared thoughts, feelings and experiences.We are fortunate to live in an age when our children are free to study the wisdom of Judaism simultaneously with Westernthinking without walling themselves off from the world around them. There is a story of an old schoolmaster who hungabove his classroom, “Shakespeare, Einstein and Plato live here.” In our school, we could write: “literature, mathematicsand philosophy live here, and so do Torah, Midrash and Hebrew.” Our children are heirs to Shakespeare and also to Bialik,to Socrates and to Maimonides.At Temple Sinai, we lay the foundation for our students to understand Western civilization as well as to find meaning in theculture and wisdom of their people. Our students live what they learn; going from theory and classroom study to the realworld outside of our small community feeling rooted and historically anchored.Oliver Wendell Holmes summarizes my educational approach: “the main part of intellectual education is not the acquisitionof facts but learning how to make facts live.”Our faculty, staff and I are looking forward to an exciting and innovating academic year.Joseph H. Maghen, Ph.D.Director Of Congregational Learning-1-