Official blog of The Leo Baeck Day School

Parsha Teruma tells the story of God’s instructions to Moses for the construction of the Mikdash, or sanctuary, as a structure in which God could dwell among the Jewish people. We know, as Jews, that we experience God in many ways, and in many places: in the beauty of nature, in the love we share for one another and when we perform acts of tzedakah and tikkun olam. If God is, indeed, everywhere, why then the need for a building or structure in which God can be experienced? The early Rabbis reasoned that it was our need as humans to have a place of worship, a special place set apart from our everyday life where we could pray and meditate. Like the mikdash described to Moses in the Torah, our sanctuaries are places of beauty and of inspiration where we can feel God’s presence and share in this feeling with our friends and families. I have fond memories of being a young boy, sitting in the Holy Blossom Sanctuary with my family, as my father would point up to the beautiful blue domed ceiling and tell me that when he was a boy, he thought that was where God lived. At the time I thought this to be funny, but now I realize that he was probably right.

The story of Terumah actually reminds me of a situation that we are facing at Leo Beack today. Since I arrived at the school last year, and for many years before, there has been much talk of moving and renewal and renovation. The question of where our Beit Midrash, or our House of Learning, should be located has been on many of our minds. There are plans and instructions, in the form of blueprints and designs, and many within our community have provided Terumah, gifts or donations, to contribute to the construction of a new school. But as God’s presence is not limited to the bricks and mortar that make up a sanctuary, nor is the learning that takes place within a school such as ours defined by the physical space that houses it. While a school, as we presently define it, certainly requires a physical space, complete with classrooms and textbooks and Smartboards, I believe that it is the people and the ideas and the ideals within a school that truly define it. While our school is not the sanctuary of biblical times, and we are no longer nomads wandering through the desert, the work that we do here, whether it is teaching or learning, is indeed holy work. (Mr. Petersiel reminds me of this whenever I see him wearing his kippah in our hallways or in his office.) Just as the mikdash could move from place to place without eroding its importance and meaning to the Jews and to God, so too is this school’s physical location and the grandeur of its bricks and mortar far less important than the people within it and the lessons that we teach and learn here.

If you haven’t already heard, The Leo Baeck Day School is now the only Jewish Day School in North America authorized as an IB World School by the International Baccalaureate Organization. Getting here was not an easy process, but it has been profoundly rewarding. To begin, considering becoming an IB World School meant looking deeply at the mission of our school and the desired outcome for our graduates.

As we learned more about the basic components of the IB philosophy we were more and more excited about the synergies and the potential for our school’s improvement. IB represents the best educational expectations for students who are prepared to become independent thinkers in the international marketplace. Some schools cannot qualify because they refuse to teach 50 hours annually of a foreign language; all of our students receive four times that threshold in Hebrew and twice that number in French. Some schools struggle with the requirement to participate in Social Action education; our school has always understood that teaching students to take responsibility for those in need was a base expectation of being a Jewish day school and inseparable from our entire experience.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for many in our institution was a true understanding of the inherent value of exposing our students an array of opinions on any topic. As it says in the IBO Mission Statement, the programmes “encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.”

In fact even this wording has changed over the years. The previous phrasing asked us to accept that others “with varying world-views” could also be right, and for many that was hard to swallow. There is a comfort in thinking that one’s world-view is shared, authoritative and correct. But erasing that misconception is clearly at the crux of good education everywhere, and it was in fact our understanding of Reform Judaism that tipped the balance for our school. As Reform Jews we understand that interpretation of Judaism is the right and responsibility of every Jew. The ultimate goal for our students is to give them the background necessary to understand this Jewish responsibility and the ability to make those difficult Jewish choices in their lives. This requires open-mindedness to the widest range of opinions, and the critical thinking skills to evaluate those options in order to define personal philosophy. As this critical thinking skill is one of the bases of the IB educational philosophy, the connections were simply too hard to ignore.

Now here we are, seven years later and finally recognized as the only Jewish IB World School in North America. We are proud to join this international organization and share our perspectives with educators and students in 140 countries.  We will all learn from each other.

I am excited to use this moment to launch this interactive conversation space for our community as well, where we will highlight educational insight and opinions from various members of the Leo Baeck community and ask you to share your thoughts as well on the widest range of topics that affect our school. I hope you too will choose to participate in the conversation in order to make it richer for all.