“I found the mistake! Do you see it? Everybody clap…respectfully!” Ernest C. Bairstow, the sculptor who carved “euture” instead of “future” on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial, wasn’t there to hear it, but I like to think that he would have appreciated the moment on Wednesday night when an eighth-grade student exhorted her classmates to applaud his error. You see, while it is not (yet) etched into our classroom wall, we do have a poster reminding Bikkurim students that “mista

I spend a lot of time in Israel for someone who doesn't live there. I've absorbed many of the cultural idiosyncrasies and actually internalized them — I find it perfectly natural to touch other people's children, call strangers by endearing names, and, unless I catch myself, stand uncomfortably close to people in line by American standards. Still, Israeli culture regularly surprises me. A few years ago I was aggressively chastised by a stranger for picking a wildflower. I did

At each b'nai mitzvah, we give students a framed quote from Pirkei Avot: "It is not on you to finish the work, but neither are you released from the obligation to do the work." This gift is intended to convey that we believe the world can get better, that our students are the change agents it needs, and that they are obligated to do all they can to repair it. Alongside this, we teach humility: the humility to recognize that partnership is essential to making change, that big

This past Tuesday, our middle schoolers spent the whole day outdoors. Fifth and sixth graders traveled north together to Inwood Hill Park — which I learned (from them) is home to the last old-growth forest on the island of Manhattan and to the Shorakapkok Preserve, a place where humans have been stopping to be present for nearly 700 years and whose name in the Munsee Lenape language means "the sitting place." Meanwhile, our 7th- and 8th-graders made their way to the North Woo