A force for constructive communal consciousness
School hires consultants to facilitate process, ensure success
The new head of the Ottawa Jewish Community School (OJCS), Jon Mitzmacher, arrived this fall with many ideas to transform the school into a centre for 21st century educational innovation. Some initiatives required extra money, so he shelved them while he got to know his new school. Then a $50,000 grant fell into his lap.
Suddenly, the road to innovation got much smoother. [Read more…]
Gal Indyk is clearly having a great deal of fun putting his dragon boat team, the Ohalo Dolphins, through its warm-up before getting in the boat.
Where other teams do some yoga stretches, perhaps some jumping jacks, Indyk has the team playing the kind of games you might remember from summer camp. Currently, everyone has a clothespin clipped to the back of his or her shirt and they’re around trying to snatch a many other pins as they can from each other. There’s a lot of laughing. [Read more…]
Unscrolled: 54 Writers and Artists Wrestle with the Torah
Edited by Roger Bennett
Workman Publishing
375 pages
Unscrolled: 54 Writers and Artists Wrestle with the Torah is not your zaidy’s Torah commentary. Fifty-four writers and artists, very few of whom have any education in Jewish scholarship beyond their b’nai mitzvot, tackle the 54 Torah portions in what the book’s editor calls “a reinterpretation, a reimagining, a creative celebration.” It is an ambitious attempt to make the Torah accessible and relevant to modern North American Jews.