One Community, Many Denominations

Tomorrow afternoon through Saturday night, one teenaged Hebrew Academy alumnus and I will be co-chaperoning the Middle School Shabbaton.

We are not retreating to a camp or staying in sleeping bags at school. Quite the opposite, we are advancing into the area’s densest Jewish neighborhood, where many of our students live. Taking up residence in three families’ homes, we will be praying in one Orthodox and two Conservative synagogues, eating Shabbat meals in two families’ houses and at one shul, studying with five rabbis and a cantor, and, weather permitting, enjoying free time by the neighborhood pond, a regular gathering place for Albany’s Jews of all ages and denominations.

The Capital Region Jewish community is very special, in that it is both big enough to support several large synagogues within blocks of each other, and small enough so that Jews behave as one close-knit, Jewish community. People commonly meet members of various shuls at each other’s communal dinners and events. All of Albany’s congregations walk to Buckingham Pond for the Taschlich ceremony and festivities on Rosh Hashanah. The local Board of Rabbis includes clergy ordained in more than six different rabbinical seminaries.  

At Hebrew Academy, students study, play, and pray with Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Renewal, Reconstructionist, Traditional, and secular classmates. Their families’ varied modes of Jewish engagement and observance are respected by the teachers and through the curriculum. Such diversity often complicates school policies. Yet, with families proud of being part of this community of difference, Hebrew Academy gratefully works through those complications to craft an educational environment that affirms each  family’s choices.

These Middle School students are excited to meander from shul to shul together this Shabbat, learning about the different movements while strengthening their connections with each other as members of one Jewish community.  

Shabbat shalom!

Q: How does kashrut work at Hebrew Academy?

A: Hot lunches and all other cooked meals and snacks prepared in the school’s kitchen are subject to supervision by the Va’ad Hakashrut of the Capital District. Several staff members serve as agents of the Va’ad, supervising daily operations such as checking packaged foods for hecshers (seals of various kosher certification-granting organizations) acceptable to the Va’ad, and attending to all kashrut requirements. Children may bring snacks and meals from home that are dairy or pareve (neither milk nor meat), and because students’ home kashrut standards vary, no sharing of food is permitted.