A Work of Art

Dear Brandeis community,

 

My week began with a walk through Harlem in New York City, toward Teacher’s College at Columbia University. It was a brisk autumn morning; the city was saturated in earth tones, brownstones, and brick-red leaves. I was headed—along with Debby Arzt-Mor, our director of Jewish learning—to a meeting of the Collaborative for Spiritual Development, a project convened by Dr. Lisa Miller of Columbia’s psychology department. The collaborative’s aims are to build a model of a curriculum for spiritual development that will serve K–12 schools nationwide; Brandeis was invited as one of twelve leadership schools to contribute to phase one of that effort.

 

Walking near Teacher’s College, we ran into Danielle B. (class of 2013), a new freshman at Columbia. We exchanged surprised hugs and snapped a photo to send to her parents, suffused with a new warmth by the chance encounter. From there it was a day of intense discussions about interfaith understandings of and engagements with spirituality—how we at Brandeis encourage students to consider their connection to the deeper mysteries of our world, and how other schools from other parts of the country and other traditions ask similar questions with different words.

 

On Tuesday we set out on school visits informed by Debby’s network of practice as part of the Day School Leadership Training Institute at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. First to Heschel, a K–12 pluralistic school, then to Schecter Manhattan, a K–8 school with a deeply-rooted inquiry-based pedagogy. At Heschel, I was struck by a quote that adorned one of their walls from the school’s namesake, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose wisdom I have quoted at length in these pages and elsewhere:

 

“And above all, remember… to build a life as if it were a work of art.”

 

What a wonderful sentiment! I appreciate the quote for its reminder, especially in this moment in our national and local history, to not lose sight of the beautiful and the joyful—and as the work of art that is Rabbi Heschel’s life reminds us as well, such joyful engagement is a support to, not a detractor from, purposeful and ethical work in the world. 

 

Debby and I ended our day walking the High Line, taking in the power and at-times-overwhelming majesty of some of the public art and architecture that lines its paths. Tuesday afternoon in New York was crystalline; sharp in sunshine, cold and clear. We wandered and discussed, admiring the thoughtful contours of the park itself, stopping to buy a get-well gift for a friend who was on our minds. Our conversations turned from exciting educational practices we’d seen and heard about in the preceding day and a half, to the human capacity for creativity and invention, the reimagining of space and reorganization of social life.

 

The aesthetic dimension gave me then, as it has often given me at other times, the opportunity to reflect and process. Sitting and watching the sun settle over the Hudson River, as the afternoon drifted from sharp edges to fuzzier outlines, I was reminded of what we hope for our students: days such as these, spent in purposeful learning, enriched by community, tradition, and shared thinking, inspired by the beauty and the mystery of our world.

 

 

Warmly,

 

Dan