No, probably not. And yet… I’ve started one. Why?
When I was young, probably between the ages of 16 and 23 I used to write a lot of letters. This was especially true when I was in Israel and there were those aerograms that you could fold up and put in the mail. But then the internet came, and email with it. And while at the beginning email functioned something like letters, over time this changed, and anything over a paragraph between friends disappeared.
It was especially true in those years that writing to friends was a place for me to work out my ideas, my challenges, and my thinking. To be clear, I was not, and am not, a person who needs to write. I was and remain terrible at journaling. I can only write to someone, and always have someone in mind when I’m writing. And when I do put words on paper, or more accurately nowadays, on a computer screen, it helps me clarify my thinking.
So part of the motivation here is for this to be a space for me to work out my ideas about education, Torah, and leadership, and is the reason why I’ve used the tentative title, Thinking Out Loud. These domains reflect much of what I think about and am concerned with, not only professionally but personally.
So why did I choose you as an audience? The ‘lo lishma’ reason is that I’m told a Head of School should have a blogging section on our website. But I also realized that I don’t speak enough about educational and religious ideas with you, our Netivot community, and it only makes sense that I share my evolving learning and thinking with you. This only makes sense given that my goal is to translate the ideas I think about into the reality of our school life. In that vein, I’d be very happy for your feedback and reflection. I much prefer a dialogue than a monologue.
My intention is to post my Monday Morning Reading reviews here, as well as a non-book post every other week, and hope it creates value. Here’s to a new experiment for the new year!