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Religious School

Welcome to the Temple Sholom Religious School!

Please note! This section of our website is under construction, and not all links are active. For information, please call our Religious School at (203) 542-7157. Thank you!

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Our duty to our children, and our joy as teachers, is to create a set of experiences which will nourish them spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally and which will inspire them, individually and collectively, to serve God by devoting themselves to Torah (study), avodah (worship), and gemilut hasadim (deeds of loving kindness).

At Temple Sholom Religious School, it is our mission to create educational experiences that mirror the joy, spiritual vitality, and the authentic quest for tikkun olam (repairing the world) and tikkun ha middot (personal spiritual growth).

Study should:

Be a personal and spiritual engagement that connects the mind and the heart - it should move each of us to more fully encounter ourselves, each other, and God.
Strengthen us as a community and inspire each of us individually and collectively to increase our level of Jewish involvement/observance and do our part to repair the world.
Reflect our commitment to Israel and to the Jewish people.
Provide a learning experience in a variety of methods to address the needs of the individual child.

Overall Goals

Our overall educational goals for the Religious School, which emerge from our mission and the principles above, are as follows:

Initiate our children into the study of Torah with the specific intention of finding the place where text and self meet — to enable a child to discover in our tradition authentic resources for relating to the most important issues and needs in his or her life.
Create meaningful and developmentally appropriate prayer experiences which can guide our children toward the joy and power of the worship experience.
Utilize Hebrew language in a meaningful manner.
Build a community based on the principle of gemilut hasadim —deeds of loving kindness — in which members learn to treat one another with compassion and kindness and to reach out to those outside of the community in need of care.
Support parents in joining their children on a journey of Jewish growth and discovery by creating family programs that include parents in all aspects of learning.
Offer experiences outside of the classroom through which children and families can discover first hand the joy of living in sync with the rhythms of Jewish life (Shabbat, holidays) as part of a Jewish community.
Cultivate excellence in our teaching staff so that our teachers become primary resources in meeting the above goals.

LEARN MORE:

Our Curriculum

Bar-Bat Mitzvah Overview

Shabbat Programming

Health and Safety

Correspondence

Policies and Procedures

Temple Sholom Religious School Brochure

Please note: this section of our website is under construction. Not all links are active.

For information, please call the Religious School at (203) 542-7157. Thank you for your patience!

TEFILLAH MACCABIAH UPDATE!

Here's a wonderful write-up by Mordy, one of our Religious School Teachers, about our Tefillah Maccabiah competition on Sunday, November 6th.

Mazel tov to the Purple Team for pulling out this week's win!

On the first day of teacher orientation last year, Reb Alison asked all the teachers to share what they enjoyed the most about teaching at a Jewish school. The first thing that came to my mind was how inspired I become when students join together in song. Seldom have I felt that emotion more than during Tefillah Maccabiah this past Sunday.

Tefillah Maccabiah is a new program at our Religious School this year, where the 3^rd through 6^th grade students are split up into four teams: orange, purple, blue and green. Each team, led by a teacher, learns and discusses various prayers and blessings. After weeks of preparation, the teams came together in the Sanctuary on Sunday, November 6th to compete against one another. The students were called up one at a time by grade to attempt to buzz in and answer questions ahead of their counterparts on the other teams. The competition was extremely spirited throughout, as each team enthusiastically cheered on its representatives. The knowledge of the prayers that the students amassed was clearly on display throughout the competition.

At the conclusion of the competition, all the teams joined as one as Adam Feder, the music specialist at Temple Sholom, led the students in the singing of two songs: Modeh Ani, and our school song “Kehilah Kedosha” (Holy Congregation). The students, carrying over their built-up energy from the competition, sang with an unbelievable amount of spirit and passion. I was overcome with emotion. All the other teachers I spoke to had the same reaction; some had tears in their eyes. It was surely a moment we will not soon forget.

Click here for your grade's archived brachot and questions from October 28th.

Click here to register for the 2011-2012 session. (PDF)

Click here to complete the 2011-2012 Student Profile. (Word doc)

A Messsage from Reb Allison Berlinger, Religious School Director

Dear Parents:

Each night, when I put my three daughters to bed, we say the Shema together. As a mother, I have vivid memories of learning to recite the Shema before bed when I was a child at Jewish summer camp, and the comforting feelings of settling down to sleep after a fun and busy day. I imagine that when we practice this ritual at home, I am offering my children the same emotional cues - it is time to calm down after a long, fun and busy day. I tell my girls to relax, take a deep breath, close their eyes, and then we recite “Shema Yisrael: Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.”

The Shema is the ultimate Jewish prayer. It is one of the first prayers we teach our children, and it is meant to carry that child through the course of their lifetime. It is an anchor and a touchstone for every significant moment, to be recited on one’s deathbed, or even if one fears that one’s life is in danger.

Yet, it is the first paragraph that follows the Shema in which we find our duty as parents: we are commanded to “teach these words to your children.” We are obligated to teach the Torah to our children, ensuring that they learn how to fulfill God’s commandments both at home, and when they are away from home. In our obligation to teach Torah to our children, as parents, we are able to give our children so much more than what we, perhaps, think about as “religious education.”

The rabbis are very clear in the Talmud that parents are obligated to provide their children with an education. Parents are not merely obligated to provide their children with any old education; it must be an education that will help them to be productive in society, and it must also give them moral and spiritual guidance so that the child will always be inclined to do what is right. Perhaps the most famous rabbinic statement about parents' obligations to children appears in the Talmud (Kiddushin 29a), which provides a list of things which a parent is obligated to provide for a child:

"A father is obligated to do the following for his son: to circumcise him, to redeem him if he is a first born, to teach him Torah, to find him a wife, and to teach him a trade. Others say: teach him how to swim as well."

We can see from this statement that rabbinic tradition is concerned not only with intellectual and spiritual competency, and with practical knowledge which would assure survival; hence the obligation to teach a child to swim.

So you may be wondering, what does Religious School have to do with teaching one’s child to swim? In a world where children (and parents) are hopelessly overscheduled, burdened by the competitive and stressful environment in which even our youngest children race from activity to activity, and resume building begins in nursery school, it is easy to drown in expectations and pressure. Religious School offers children a chance to consider the key ideas of what is good, what is right, and what is important. It provides them with a life-raft of spiritual development and a moral compass amidst an ocean of choices. Giving our children the sacred gift of a Jewish education is, in effect, a method of teaching one’s child to swim, and how to navigate their way through an increasingly complex society.

I know that we all have limited time and you may wonder what could possibly be different in the handbook this year. We indeed have some new programs and some new information that is important for you to be aware of. To make it easier, here is a list of the sections that have been amended:

1.“Pre-Gan” class – curriculum described on page 5

2. Jewry Duty – page 15

3. Chalutzim – page 18

I hope you will take the time to review this handbook, and should you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch with me, either by calling (203) 542-7161, or by emailing me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

On behalf of the faculty and staff of the Temple Sholom Religious School, I thank you for entrusting your children to us, and we pledge ourselves to helping your children become the best spiritual, ethical, and moral ‘swimmers’ that they can be.

L’shalom,

Rabbi Allison Berlinger

Director of Education

Click here to see photos of past TSRS programs & special events

Religious School Office Hours

Sunday	8:00am - 1:30pm
Monday	9:00am – 5:00pm
Tuesday	9:00am – 6:30pm
Wednesday	9:00am – 6:30pm
Thursday	9:00am – 6:00pm
Friday	9:00am – 4:00pm
Shabbat	CLOSED

If you need to speak with Reb Allison,
feel free to email her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
or she can be reached at (203) 542-7157

Temple Sholom, 300 East Putnam Avenue Greenwich, CT 06830 Phone: 203.869.7191 Fax: 203.661.4811 info@templesholom.com

Affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.