The title of James McBride’s book, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, was enough for me to want to read it. The book begins by us learning that a decomposed body is found in a well in Pennsylvania in 1972, and ends when we learn how that body got there in 1936. However, in terms…
Seeing Myself Through My Teacher’s Eyes
I’m not a crier. I’d say I cry on average about twice a year – once on Yom Kippur, and on about one other occasion. Today was that day. I was at my parents’ for Rosh Hashana where they handed me a thick file folder of old documents, mostly report cards going back to SK…
Metaphors at Work
I’ve often heard school leaders, and even teachers, talk about their school’s as ‘one big family’. For a long time I thought this was such a beautiful way for someone to feel about the places they worked, and maybe also felt like something was missing when this wasn’t the case in my places of work….
Us Against You – Fredrick Backman
I’ve truly enjoyed all of the Fredrik Backman books I’ve read, especially Beartown. This summer I finally got around to reading the second book in the Beartown series, Us Against You. While I’ll do my best to avoid any spoilers, I really would encourage you to read Beartown, and then this sequel. They are deeply…
Peter Attia – Outlive
I’ve decided to start my Monday Morning Reading series this year with a book that I think suits the beginning of the year – Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, by Dr. Peter Attia. Originally from Toronto, Attia is a Stanford, Johns Hopkins and NIH trained surgeon, who left all of that behind to…
Praise for Educators
Last year a senior member of the UJA asked me, “If you had a magic wand, what would you change to help day schools?”. I said that it wouldn’t be money (though that would be a big plus, and the one that comes up most frequently). Rather, it would be that the community truly valued…
Reading People
A big part of why I read (and learn Torah) is to make sense of the world. Fiction or nonfiction, both help me clarify what I see outside, or as often, understand myself and my inner life. And because of this strong inner-drive I have to ‘make sense’ of things, reading is something I turn…
My Charge to the Netivot Graduates
Over the last few months I’ve been part of a working group that’s trying to address the shortage of Jewish Day School teachers across North America. During one of the sessions, a person in school leadership shared that he was inspired to go into professional Jewish education because at his graduation, his principal made a…
Patrick Lencionni – Silos, Politics and Turf Wars (and how it connects to our work at Netivot)
I struggled to decide which of the two books I’d recently read should be shared as my ‘last’ book of the 2022-2023 school year. I came down on the side of Silos, Politics and Turf Wars, by the management consultant Patrick Lencionni, and I’ll explain why below. I’ve written about Lencionni’s books before, which I…
Rav Rimon
Part of my daily learning seder includes halacha. I’ve learned different sefarim over the years, most often classics like Mishna Berura or Shmirat Shabbat Ke’Hilchata. But more recently, my favourites have been the books of Rav Tzvi Rimon (having just finished his volume about Sefirat HaOmer and laws around the bracha for newly flowering trees…