In this blog post, Rabbi Yehuda Chanales maintains, “We must work to bring the Sukkah mindset into our classrooms and schools,” pushing us to re-frame our actions and be more mindful of our surroundings.
He adds, “If we want to make room for God, deep personal reflection and identity building in our schools, we can’t simply look at the actions teachers and students need to be doing differently. While new programs, pedagogy, and curricula are valuable, we also need to think carefully about the culture and environment in which these new initiatives are introduced.”
In this blog article about making change, JEIC managing director Sharon Freundel echos three phases of changemaking and three roles that people play at various times, originally identified by Rabbi Justus Baird of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
“As we consider our major initiatives at JEIC, we realize that this is what we have been doing unconsciously all along,” said Freundel, naming the recent “God Expansion” initiative as just one way that JEIC is making change in Jewish day schools.
During Kol Nidre, which ushers in Yom Kippur each year, the Jewish community does something seemingly odd. We publicly declare all of our vows between a person and God null and void from this Yom Kippur to the next one. Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik points out that we nullify vows based on two premises (explained in Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Deah 228).
1. At the time a promise was made, a person was ignorant of some circumstance that made it too difficult to perform the promise.
2. At the time of the vow, the person was not ignorant, but came to regret the promise as time moved on because of new circumstances. Fulfilling the vow became too difficult.
Kol Nidre makes these assumptions with its grand stroke of remitting a statement that all these vows disappear for the next year. This future thinking makes us more attuned to our future vows, cautioning us against making regrettable promises.
