Next week we will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday. As a child, Thanksgiving was a favorite holiday because it felt like the holiday that best integrated my Jewish and American identities. There was something that felt very Jewishly familiar about sitting around the table with extended family and sharing a heavy meal. At the same time, the absence of Jewish ritual created a bridge in my mind  to a shared experience with the entire country. Of course, a number of historians would point to the fact that the Pilgrims' strong interest in the Hebrew bible led to their identification with the Israelites journey to the Promised Land and to many other ritual influences. A number of academics posit that the "first Thanksgiving", which was a multi-day outdoor feast held early in the Fall in celebration of the successful harvest to which guests were invited was very much a New World celebration of  the holiday of Sukkot. This melding of cultures symbolizes to me one of my favorite aspects of a Yavneh education, the integration of Jewish values, traditions and learning across all domains of learning, and the integration of secular domains of study into the understanding of Jewish tradition. This integration is not only a reflection of Yavneh's fundamental belief that learning is deeper and more meaningful when it is relevant and purposeful, but it is also an important strategy in building strong, seamless identities in our students, in which Judaism is an integral component.

Following the Thanksgiving holiday, our parents, students (in most grades) and teachers will have a chance to observe yet another fall ritual, sitting together in support of our students' growth. These Family-Teacher conferences are an opportunity to bring together two additional cultures, that of the school and that of the home. While bread isn't typically broken in these feasts of the mind, these are the conversations that help create the common ground to best build and enhance our students' learning and growth across the two main environments in which they live. I hope that our families and teachers are able to engage in these meaningful conversations as true partners. 

Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom, happy Thanksgiving and enriching conferences -Zvi