Welcome!

Dear 4th and 5th grade parents and families:
L'Shana Tova to you and your families! May this be a year of peace, health, and happiness for all of us!

I hope, too, that this will be a year of learning, self-discovery, creativity, growth, community building and good fun! After one Sunday with the 4th and 5th grade students, I know I am looking forward to reaching all of these goals. What an amazing group! I can't tell you how thrilled I am to finally be getting to work with all these children who I have known for several years, but never had in class. I'm excited to work with our new-to-the-school students, as well! Welcome to you all--we will try to make your transition into our community quick and easy and hope that by the time we've raised and decorated our community sukkah, next Sunday, that you will feel at home!

Our first day was spent mostly getting to know one another's names and a little about our personalities. We also did a brief Hebrew assessment to help us place each student with the right teacher at the right level. It is our goal to help all our students reach fluency in reading Hebrew and be familiar with the basic vocabulary they will encounter in services. This way, not only will they be well prepared for their Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies; they will be well on their way to becoming knowledgable and literate Jewish adults.

This Friday and Saturday, we will observe Yom Kippur. There will be a children's service at 10am, led by Sari Guttin, our Program Director. Childcare is provided until 1pm. I will be leading Shacharit services in the main sanctuary starting at around 9am, and would be happy to see as many 4th and 5th graders there as can make it!

Sunday, the day after Yom Kippur, our synagogue community--with special help from the Cohen School families and students--will build TY's sukkah in preparation for celebrating Sukkot. Please plan to join us for all, or part, of Sunday morning!

Finally, we are integrating our school web pages into the TY website. If you had bookmarked the school site--cohenschool.weebly.com--please change your bookmarks to point to http://toratyisrael.org. Teachers will be posting their blog pages on the TY site under the link for "Cohen School," and you will find school-related calendar events on the main TY calendar page. We will be developing the school pages over the coming weeks. Please visit and subscribe to the blogs of your children's teachers!

Looking forward to an inspiring and productive year! L'Shana Tova--see you soon!
David