OUR VALUES & CURRICULUM

There are so many ways to be Jewish. We have many lenses and value learning from one another. The DJC is committed to fostering Jewish learning, Jewish actions, and teaching tools for interpreting Jewish tradition in a contemporary, progressive context. With these tools, we support the diversity of practice in Jewish life and the capacity of students and parents to make informed, joyous decisions about their Jewish practice. We welcome students as they are, with no judgment. We welcome families in all their diversity, including the ways they practice Judaism at home.  We teach that mitzvot and Jewish practices are a key way that we “do Jewish,” putting values into action and participating in individual and communal Jewish life. We acknowledge that a person can be motivated to do the same practice based on history, community, ethical motivations, following a Jewish path to grow one’s character (middot), a sense of responsibility to the world, a spiritual call to respond through sacred action to the blessings of being alive, etc.

Our egalitarianism includes our commitment to accessibility, to patrilineality, to 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals and families.  Our commitment to absolute egalitarianism is exemplified by our welcoming of ritual leadership from all members (Jewish and non-Jewish alike) who have completed a ritual leadership program led by Rabbi Glickman.  This value also extends to the language we use in blessings and prayers. While it is important for students to learn the traditional language for blessings and prayers, we refer to God/the Limitless Holy One and Oneness in feminine as well as masculine and non-binary pronouns and metaphors (e.g. Brucha at Yah Rucheynu Ein ha’chayyim…  Blessed are You, Yah our Spirit wellspring of life…).  Our siddur, Kol Haneshama, has some additional examples. We encourage students to participate equally in all rituals and practices, regardless of their identities.  We want to normalize an egalitarian Jewish reality in which a person’s identity has no bearing on the rituals they perform and all rituals are available to everyone  (e.g. candle lighting is not just for girls and kiddush is not just for boys). We use translations of blessings and prayers that do not ascribe a gender to God (i.e. “He”, “Lord”). We want to reflect the values of our community, which includes letting our students with diverse gender identities see themselves reflected in our texts.

Our community is not affiliated with any specific Jewish movement (i.e. Reform, Reconstructionist, etc.). We proudly and intentionally serve many different Jews and Jewish families in our East End neighbourhood. Despite being unaffiliated, we consider ourselves part of a movement that includes other progressive Jewish communities.  Like other progressive communities, we share in the rich wisdom and inspiration of Jewish tradition and culture while seeking to challenge, explore, and reinterpret it. We draw on the resources, practices, and traditions of other communities, but do not turn to any single movement for our standards of practice or approach.

Our community celebrates and teaches about the diversity of Jewish ethnic, geographic, and cultural backgrounds. We are part of a large and diverse world-wide Jewish family. We do not teach in a strictly European/Ashkenormative way. Students are encouraged to share  their Jewish cultural/ethnic backgrounds in the classroom. Practices, songs, stories, and recipes of non-Ashkenazi communities from around the world enrich our teaching. Our Kita 5 Curriculum includes a particular focus on Jews from around the world.

The DJC is a consciously welcoming and inclusive Jewish community. We follow the halakhah (laws and practices) of the American Reform and Reconstructionist Movements that define Jewish status as anyone with one Jewish parent who is raised as a Jew. This differs from traditional halakhah that defines Jewish status through one’s mother.  We teach that there is no such thing as being “half Jewish.”  A person at DJC is considered Jewish if they have one Jewish parent or have converted to Judaism. This person might ALSO have other cultural identities.  We encourage students to claim their identity as Jewish and their place in the larger Jewish community. We can still be clear that being Jewish does not erase their other heritage(s).

Families in our school may be 2SLGBTQIA+, heterosexual, one-parent, and/or include caregivers, grandparents, and other close adults.  We are grateful for family diversity and the ways that our students are enriched by these relationships. Our teachers make room for students to self-identify, including in discussions about their families. On the other hand, we do not single anyone out if they are not comfortable talking about their family structure.

We are dedicated to offering students creative, thoughtful, inspiring and experiential tools to cultivate a spiritual life. Connecting with the Jewish language of blessings, prayers, Torah, and the sacred is an important part of Jewish education and Jewish life.  Like many other progressive communities, we recognize that understanding and experiencing the divine can occur in many ways. Judaism is filled with several names for God, each speaking to metaphors, attributes, and relationships one may have with God. We differentiate between the ways the authors of the Torah imagined and described God in Torah stories and the ways in which we are encountering the Divine today.   As a people, we are called Yisrael (the People of Israel) which translates to “One who struggles with God.” We are thus encouraged to engage in a life-long relationship (including struggle and uncertainty) with Adonai, knowing that the contours of that relationship may ebb and flow as we grow, age, and experience life’s highs and lows. We teach that each of us is created B’tzelem Elohim (in the Divine Image) and this helps us to relate to God in a variety of ways. These experiences are a valuable foundation to connect students with how we understand and connect to Adonai today, growing their spiritual awareness and experiences and using these experiences to read Torah or prayers through a personally meaningful lens.

We engage with the Torah as the central text of Jewish life – the root of Jewish values, practices, spiritual encounter, heritage and culture and community.  We do not teach Torah as historical fact, but as sacred myth and as a guide teaching deep truths.  We engage with Torah stories as having many lessons we can interpret and learn from. Learning Torah helps us ask some of the most important questions of life.    We aim to offer students the tools to interpret Torah and find meaning in its mitzvot, rituals, and stories. Our holy texts are ours to struggle with, to agree and disagree with, and to engage with throughout our whole lives.

We acknowledge that it is difficult to teach and learn about Israel at the current time. At DJC, we do our best to listen to one another with open minds and humility, to empathize with positions with which we may not agree, and to commit to community even when we disagree. This is reflected in all of our classrooms. In teaching about Israel, we have two main goals: To foster students’ love of Israel (without an overly idealistic experience) – by teaching them about Israeli arts, culture, religion, history. For older students, to help them to understand the current political situation, equipping them with tools to think critically and support their learning. When we teach about the current political situation with older students, we acknowledge the multiple narratives of peoples in the region. We teach about and celebrate Israel as the historic and religious homeland of the Jewish people, and as a living centre of contemporary Jewish life and culture. We give historical context to the legitimate claims and yearnings of the Jewish people to live in our homeland after 2,000 years of exile and mistreatment in the places we had lived in for hundreds of years. We explore Jewish people’s joy and relief at the founding of a modern Jewish state and the feelings of refugees who continue to arrive to live in safety. At the same time, we communicate the right of Palestinians to a state and homeland. We discuss the impact of the founding of the modern state of Israel and the expanding settlements (e.g. in the West Bank). We are not interested in a simplistic defence of all of Israel’s actions and seek to hold the complex and conflicting truths and narratives of two peoples in conflict. We seek to grow a connection to, and love of, Israel among students while also engaging critically and opposing unjust action on any side. We can teach our students that just as we love our siblings and still disagree with them, and just as we might love living in Canada, but disagree with some of its policies, being in relationship should include critical thinking and sometimes wrestling with those we care about.