Head of School Blog Post

Good morning and welcome to CESJDS. It is truly a joy to have you with us for Dor L’Dor - our Generations Day - a day that so beautifully celebrates connection and continuity.

Thank you for being here. Whether you are grandparents, special friends, extended family members, or alumni family, your presence today matters deeply. Schools are built not only by the students and faculty who fill them each day, but by the generations of people who invest their love, wisdom, and belief in what education can make possible.

I want to begin with heartfelt gratitude to the Rhona and Eddie Longman Family Endowment, whose generous support helps make Dor L’Dor possible. We are deeply thankful for your commitment to fostering these meaningful moments of connection across generations.

I also want to extend sincere thanks to this year’s Dor L’Dor chairs - Barbara and David Weisel, and Meyer Koplow - for their leadership and dedication in helping bring this special day to life.

This year is especially meaningful as CESJDS celebrates our 60th anniversary - a remarkable milestone in the life of our school. From our beginnings in 1965 with just seven kindergarten students in the basement of a synagogue, to the vibrant, thriving JK–12 independent pluralistic Jewish day school community we are today, JDS has always been animated by a powerful belief: that Jewish tradition and innovation are not in tension with one another, rather they strengthen one another.

In Hebrew, we call our school Beit Midrash Zuriel for Charles E. Smith’s Hebrew name. The beit midrash, a house of learning, has been one of the great engines of Jewish creativity and renewal for nearly two thousand years. The Talmud teaches, “המדרש בלא חידוש אי אפשר לבית ”—“It is impossible to have a Beit Midrash without innovation.”

And yet, Jewish innovation has never meant abandoning tradition. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik distinguished between hiddush, innovation that grows from within tradition, and shinui, change that breaks from it. At JDS, we believe deeply in hiddush: innovation built on the shoulders and values of our Jewish tradition.
That is what makes this school so special.

It is why our students can move seamlessly between deep Torah study and cutting-edge STEM learning. Why social entrepreneurship becomes a modern expression of tikkun olam. Why our students are taught not what to think, but how to think.

The late Harvard professor and educational philosopher, Israel Scheffler, once argued that the difference between genuine religious education and indoctrination is the centrality of questioning and reason. That insight feels profoundly Jewish to me. Questions are at the heart of Jewish learning. Interpretation, debate, multiple perspectives - these are not modern educational inventions, they are ancient Jewish practices.

And they are central to JDS’s educational philosophy and mission.

At JDS, we aspire to cultivate academically excellent, intellectually curious, deeply Jewish young people guided by Jewish values, compassion, and purpose. We do this through our extraordinary faculty who challenge, nurture, and inspire our students each day.

Today, as you visit classrooms, learn alongside your grandchildren or family members, and experience the joyful energy of our school, I hope you will see what we see every day: a remarkable, accessible, Jewish learning community where tradition truly meets innovation, where students learn more, where Jewish learning is alive and dynamic, and where the next generation is being prepared not only to succeed, but to lead and to strengthen the Jewish future.

Thank you for being part of our story. Welcome to CESJDS, and enjoy this very special day together.