“Why not here?” Jewish High School of Connecticut opens its doors
By Cindy Mindell

BRIDGEPORT – Four years ago, a group of parents of current or former day-school students in Fairfield and New Haven Counties decided that it didn’t make sense to end Jewish education at 8th grade. Only 30 percent of Fairfield County Jewish day-school graduates continue on to Jewish high schools, most forced to travel to Westchester for the nearest institutions.

“We all found those schools to be a very positive experience,” says Susan Birke Fiedler, an original member of the organizing committee, “and we saw other successful Jewish high schools around the country. We asked, ‘Why not here?'”
Over the next two years, in living rooms and synagogues throughout the region, the question was answered, and the Jewish High School of Connecticut took shape. Fiedler and other organizers met with focus groups, education consultants, and heads of school from various types of institutions, and decided that a pluralistic Jewish school would best fit the demographics, affiliations, and backgrounds of the community.
Fiedler is now president of the school’s board of trustees, who welcomed the Jewish community and the first group of 9th- and 10th-grade Pioneer students at the Aug. 30 dedication of the new regional institution, housed at Congregation B’nai Israel in Bridgeport.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman gave the keynote address, and likened the moment to the recent birth of his seventh grandchild.
“To all of you who are parents and supporters of the school, in all you have done to bring the Jewish High School to this moment, if I can speak for a moment as a Jewish grandparent… This is a miracle: all the labor and work that happens, and suddenly there’s a baby.”
“You are stepping into a very long history that really begins with God’s original conversations with Abraham thousands of years ago,” he said. “The history goes through the Exodus from Egypt, and the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, and it carries out the major mission statements of the Jewish people. One of the first is the responsibility that Jewish parents are given in the central prayer of our faith, the Sh’ma, and its injunction to parents to teach all this to our children. All of you parents have accepted that responsibility.”
Rabbi Ed Harwitz joined the school as director in 2008, after serving as director of student affairs and Israel programs at the Milken Community High School in Los Angeles. He was the founding Head of School of the Jewish Community High School of the Bay in San Francisco and assistant dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Bel Air, Calif.
The Jewish High School’s mission statement invokes Maimonides’s teaching of “Torah u’Madah,” Torah and science.
“For a Jew, to call oneself truly educated, one must develop mastery in both Torah u’Madah – Jewish studies, along with science, mathematics, and world literature and languages,” Harwitz says. “Furthermore, one must integrate that knowledge and apply for the good to one’s contemporary society. This model draws upon the power and wisdom of the great intellectual traditions, while actively engaging modern educational methods and techniques.”
The school is based on a pluralistic Jewish model, designed “to educate, not to indoctrinate,” Harwitz says. “A parent once asked me, ‘What sort of Jew do you want my child to become – Orthodox, Reform, Conservative or Reconstructionist?’ I answered, ‘We want your child to become an educated Jew.’ Why? Through the process of education, one is empowered to make intelligent and professional decisions, but also moral and ethical decisions, as well as informed decisions about one’s Jewish identity. If a graduate of JHSC is asked to complete the statement: ‘I am Jewish because…,’ I will feel that we have fulfilled much of our mission if her answer is fundamentally informed by her education.”
For more information: www.jhsct.org / (203) 275-8448.

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