Religious School

Dear Friends,

We are opening up registration of your child(ren) for the 2022-2023 academic year at the Temple Shir Shalom Religious School. We have new leadership and exciting new plans for this school year. Toby Hunter, a Temple Shir Shalom past president with 43 years experience as a professional educator, will take the helm as our education specialist. Marley Penson, who has been teaching for us at Temple Shir Shalom for three years, and who will soon be earning her M.A. in education from the University of Florida, will fill a new position we are calling “lead teacher.” Rabbi Joseph will also be more directly involved with Religious School “operations.” In addition, Rabbi and Debbie Joseph will be planning and leading 8-10 brand-new family education programs. We will also continue to use a curriculum provided by the Institute for Southern Jewish Life (ISJL), and offer a new, in-person alternative for Hebrew instruction. 

Our family education sessions will be designed with parental (or grand-parental) participation “required," though an extra grownup or two will always be on hand if you really can't make it. These sessions will be geared toward deep learning about fundamental Jewish concepts, with each age group first working separately and then coming together, so that each generation can learn from and teach the other.

Our Sunday morning sessions will continue to run from 9:30-11:30am, just two hours in length—that was very popular with our families this past year. Hebrew instruction with the general goal of B-Mitzvah will continue to be offered separately—with a twist. Each student will have the choice of learning Hebrew online during the week with a privately arranged, one-on-one Zoom meeting, or learning in-person from 11:45-12:15pm on Sundays, most probably with a small group of fellow learners.

We hope you will be excited by these changes to our program, which we hope will result in a better depth of learning for our students and their families. As always, we welcome your questions and suggestions. Below is a link for you to directly enroll your student(s). Please note that Temple membership in good standing is required for enrollment. If you are interested in becoming a Temple member, please contact Ann Eisenstadt in our office (352-371-6399).

Thank you!

Temple Shir Shalom Religious School Committee