Who will teach our children Torah?

I do not ask that as a complaint, or at least I am trying not to. I ask it as the most stubborn, practical question that lands on my desk, usually in late spring (but really throughout the year), when a beloved Judaics teacher tells me she is moving closer to family, or we are growing and need to add someone to our staff, and I realize that finding the next Jewish Studies teacher is not going to be like finding the next math teacher (not that finding a math teacher is so easy).

I have been a school leader for the better part of three decades, and Head of School at Bornblum Jewish Community School since 2018, and I can tell you that the market for a great Judaics teacher in a small Jewish community is not a market. It is a search party. You are not choosing among applicants; you are hoping one exists, within driving distance of a city that most of the Jewish professional world could not find on a map (and being in Memphis, I say that with love). The candidate must know the material deeply, love children genuinely, hold a room, honor a range of observance under one roof, and be willing to live in a community whose entire Jewish population would fit inside half a square mile in New York City. That person is rare everywhere. In a small community, that person is a miracle.

So here is what happens, quietly, in day schools like mine all over the country. The best candidate we can find, sometimes the only candidate we can find, brings his love of Torah and his love........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)