Warm greetings from your Dallas Jewish Day School Leadership Team.
We want to write to everyone in the greater Jewish day school family, and we want to do so together, with one combined voice. We know that these unprecedented times leave everyone unsure and worried. We wanted to address those concerns and, with one clear voice, encourage everyone that our Jewish faith and our Jewish community has always been at its best when we truly come together and rely upon each other.
For many days we have worked together to discuss and weigh the important choices we have all made to close schools moving forward into next week. We have been working together, consulting each other and learning from each other and we are better for it, as are our schools. While every medical and health agency to whom we have spoken does not require these closures at this time, we collectively felt this was in our community's best interest to help protect the weakest amongst us fight this health risk.
Our Torah values have long instilled in our people an appreciation for the paramount value of health and community, and in the unparallel power of our community when we raise our voices in prayer and unity. We are adhering to our best Jewish values and our best American civil responsibilities by taking these collective steps.
We are working with the Jewish Federation, local synagogues, and many other institutions that make up the fabric of our wonderful Jewish community. Within this anxiety-provoking climate it is important to remember that calm, medically and scientifically informed choices should direct us all. We will learn together through this experience, and we will lean on each other as we do.
Please continue to follow all medical recommendations about social distancing, handwashing and hygiene, as well as your local synagogue's guidelines for Jewish observances, prayers and public celebration and life-cycle moments. By coming together we hope our combined voice will act as a reminder that we are all together in this, and that we will all help each other through this as one perseverant and vibrant community.
We wish everyone a Shabbat Shalom, a Shabbat of peace, of health, and a Shabbat of feeling more connected now than ever before.
Sincerely,
Tom Elieff, Head of School, Ann & Nate Levine Academy
Rabbi Yaakov Green, Head of School, Akiba Yavneh Academy
Rabbi Avraham Kosowsky, Headmaster, Mesorah High School for Girls
Rabbi Shlomo Pacht, Head of School, Texas Torah Institute
Rabbi Avi Pekier, Head of School, Torah Day School
and Rabbi Mordechai Harris, Executive Director,
Center for Jewish Education &
Rabbi in Residence, Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas
