| Dear Parents and Friends,
We are both honored and humbled at the opportunity to deepen our involvement with the Kehillah Schechter Academy school and community. We are also so appreciative of your support and trust. Indeed, the work ahead is sacred: To continue building a community of learners and menschen together with you, along with our teachers, our staff, our students, and our supporters. We feel blessed to stand on the shoulders of Jane Cohen and Marc Medwed. We believe that our work together will bring our school to heights we've only dreamed of reaching.
 | | Learning and Living at KSA |
While we come to the table with our different opinions and backgrounds, we also also come with many similarities. Primary amongst them is that there is so much to celebrate about our school. We want to nurture and grow those strengths. At the same time, as the leaders of a Kehillah Kedosha (a spiritual community of learners), we are also committed to doing a cheshbon hanefesh (an honest accounting)of all those aspects of our school that could improve. We believe that growth and renewal are central tenets of Judaism and want to model this for our students.
We are dedicated and determined to teach our students that -- to paraphrase Aristotle -- excellence is a habit. We strive to help each of them become a Jewish citizen of the world that excels in his or her own way and time. We want to teach each child in our school as a whole person. We are devoted to challenging their minds, building their skills, opening their hearts and igniting their spirits.
We invite you to click here to read more about our dreams for achieving those goals. Kehillah Schechter Academy inspires our children to dream, to hope and to believe. Whether we are benching after lunch, playing on the playground, working on our addition, walking through the Gallery of Understanding, or pouring over a novel, our goal is to ignite our students' spirits. We want our children to love God and be empowered to find their place in the larger Jewish community and the world. Ours is a diverse Jewish community and we seek to bring everyone from every corner into our sukkat shalom, our tent of peace. We are also dedicated to the principles of Conservative Judaism. We believe that serious Jewish learning, a life filled with mitzvot (commandments) and Jewish ritual, and daily prayer nourish the soul.
While these are some of our thoughts and our dreams, it's important to remember that we are only two people, and we are not alone. We are part of a team - a team of amazing administrators and educators. Ivonne Krasnick, Richard Waldman and Russ Lavoie round out our Leadership Team and the five of us are working around the clock and bringing all of our skills together to lead our beloved school into the 21st century.
Our Leadership Team knows, with complete certainty, that each and every one of our teachers and staff members are vital contributors to our professional team. We value every single one of them and are working with them to craft an innovative, exciting and serious academic program. Finally, we also look forward to continuing our partnership with you in this effort. We recognize the importance of good communication as we move forward. Everything possible will be done to keep you in the loop as we work tirelessly this spring, summer and into the new school year. Toward that end, we have created a new email address: heads@ksa-ne.org. When you send a message to this address, both of us will receive your message. Unless your message is directed specifically to one of us, you will likely hear back from David. Of course, you can continue to reach both of us individually at our respective email addresses: nresnick@ksa-ne.org and dpaskin@ksa-ne.org. In the past four days, we have learned much about each other. (Having shared many trips to Israel together, we did have a jump start.) David stays up very late and leaves dozens of emails in Nitzan's inbox for the morning. Nitzan wakes up very early and returns the favor. We're feeling a little bit like one of those mythical two-headed creatures and we're loving it.
Friends, we have great things to celebrate and more great things to look forward to. It is a wonderful journey and we are proud to share it with you.
Dr. Nitzan Resnick and Rabbi David Paskin |
