We’ve completed building our new facility, following a successful multi-million dollar capital campaign for the Ida Crown Jewish Academy, the premier coeducational modern Orthodox high school in the Midwest. As if that weren’t challenging enough, we now turn our attention to the challenge of bringing our educational experience in line with the challenges of the modern world. To adequately inspire our future students, it’s no longer sufficient to educate children in “the way” (the derech), as it was for past generations, without giving them “the why.” Our work is clearly not done.
As we approach the planning for our annual scholarship dinner, we will clearly be recognizing and celebrating our successes. But we are going to try something new: we are going to turn the dinner into an opportunity to workshop and address this adaptive challenge.
Perhaps you have ideas about how to make the modern Orthodox day school experience more transformational? If you have best practices, curriculum, space design, pedagogical methods, t’fillah or anything else to share, please send them my way.
David Strulowitz, a Wexner Heritage Program alum (Chicago 06), is co-chairman of the building campaign for the Ida Crown Jewish Academy, a co-educational modern Orthodox Jewish high school. He also leads a bi-weekly Jewish spirituality study group and a weekly teleconference on spiritual insights into t’fillah. David is a Trustee of the Ark, an organization committed to providing free social and medical services to help distressed members of the Chicagoland community. In January of 2012, David joined the Wexner Heritage Alumni (WHA) Delegates Council, together with 41 other alumni delegate volunteers, with the goal of leveraging the alumni network to advance individual Jewish communal work. David, a partner in a wealth management and planning firm and tax attorney, has written extensively on financial, estate and tax planning matters, including a quarterly investment newsletter. He is co-author of the book The Intelligent Guide to Your Financial Future (2005). David can be reached at david@strulow.com.
