\”I want to create a place of wonder,\” said Lindy Lane-Epstein, who spent the summer attempting to animate her vision for a scaled-down preschool and kindergarten for members of Santa Ana\’s Temple Beth Sholom.
Knowing little about Judaism, 11 Russian immigrant families in the Los Angeles area began meeting in 1991, holding Shabbat dinners together and learning Jewish teachings from their children, many of whom were enrolled in Jewish day schools.
The weekend was spectacular, not only from an intellectual standpoint, but as a Jewish parent and communal professional. It was refreshing to see so many generations of Jewish families — some with children, some without — learning together, singing together and laughing together.
The overflow of chutzpah (Yiddish for \”unmitigated gall\”) from my kids never ceases to amaze me. On a daily basis, they make the most brazen declarations while still expecting three square meals a day for the next 15 or 20 years, regular birthday presents, new shoes every two months and allowances that include automatic adjustments for inflation.
The rabbis of the Talmud tell us that we are created with yetzer hatov (good inclination) or yetzer harah (bad inclination).
Two forces in our culture are at odds here — the desire to respectfully accommodate differences, and the ease with which we claim victimhood for ourselves and for our children.
Today, Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School, with nearly 500 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, sits on a three-and-a-half-acre site in Northridge. And Shirley Levine is still diligently working to improve the school.
When director Andrew Davis first read Louis Sachar\’s acclaimed children\’s novel, \”Holes,\” about a boy sent to a hellish Texas juvenile delinquent camp, he said he \”detected a Jewish family.\” The story of the fictional Stanley \”Caveman\” Yelnats IV flashes back three generations to reveal how his forebears struggled to come to America, \”which reflects the Jewish immigration experience,\” Davis (\”The Fugitive\”) said.
Thousands of Israeli students are learning what it means to be good Jews.
I honestly thought my daughter, Bruria, would never learn how to read. My nieces learned how when they were 3, and so I assumed that if I got in early, say around 2, Bruria would be in full swing by 3.
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