CBI Blogs

Shalom Chaverim,

While summer is cool, you know what is cooler? Religious School! (Click here if you have been meaning to register).

Today, Thursday, August 8^th, marks exactly one month until our first day for our new school year: Sunday, September 8^th. Carly Cera, our Director of Education and Youth Engagement along with Lainey Komerofksy, our Youth Education Engagement and Coordinator, have been busy hiring teachers, tweaking curriculum, and planning for a great 2024-2025 year.

Yes, just like all of you, we have enjoyed a reprieve from the chaos that can best describe mid-August through June 1^st. At the same time, we have been lonely. We have missed silly kid jokes, misplaced water bottles, and finding out what the latest and greatest ___________ (you fill in the blank) is.

From our students we learn about freeze-dried candy, Sour Patch Kid© Oreo cookies, and the best toppings to have on your pizza. We tackle tough questions like: which is better, latkes or matzah balls? If you could choose, would you be Miriam or Moses? Is it possible to make hamentashen that don’t transform from beautiful triangles to flat blobs when they cook? Wait, can you make applesauce from scratch?

Of course, these are just a few examples of the lighter side of our time together. We also enjoy connecting as a community when many of our students might be the only Jewish people in their grade or school. We enter our spaces with a deep understanding of each other and no need to explain who we are. We learn about holidays, food, music, and prayer. Our students ask incredible questions of our Rabbis, begin to form a prayer practice that makes sense to them and grows with them from pre-K through 10^th grades.

Spending time with our religious school students is soul-feeding, heart-bursting, cheek-hurting (from all the smiling), quality time as we work to raise knowledgeable, kind, thoughtful, resilient, humans. The future leaders of tomorrow. With us our students navigate the complex time we are living in as we do our best to provide a nurturing space for questions, feelings, and just thinking out loud.

So, if you just haven’t gotten around to registering your children for religious school, do it now by clicking here. Late registration begins August 17^th so avoid that $100 fee/returning family by registering TODAY! If you are avoiding registration due to the cost, scholarship funds are available simply by clicking here and completing the form. All requests are maintained with strict confidentiality.

I know that I speak on behalf of Carly, Lainey, our remarkable teachers, Rabbis Young and Levy, when I say we can’t wait to hear our classrooms full of the boisterous sounds of learning, to greeting parents in the hallways at drop off and pick up, and to learn about the adventures that were had this summer.

Shabbat Shalom