“There is an expression, ‘The teacher can be either a sage on the stage or a guide on the side.’ We want to move toward education that is more faciliatory and less didactic.”

By Cindy Mindell

Rabbi Jeremy Bruce

WEST HARTFORD – This year, Hebrew High School of New England (HHNE) welcomes a new head of school. UK native Rabbi Jeremy Bruce succeeds Rabbi Daniel Loew, who led the school for a decade.

Born and raised in London, Bruce holds a BA in international history and politics from the University of Leeds and a Master’s in educational management from King’s College London. He is a graduate of Yeshivat Hamivtar in Efrat, Israel, where he received his rabbinic ordination from founders Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and Chaim Brovender. Since returning to the UK in 2001, Bruce has worked in both the private and public school sectors, and was an adjunct lecturer at the London School of Jewish Studies, where he regularly taught Bible and Jewish philosophy.

He comes to HHNE after serving as deputy head teacher of King Solomon High School in London, an Orthodox Jewish day school with a multi-faith student population. Bruce and his wife Jo have three children – Adina, 15, and Dalia, 14, who will both be attending HHNE – and Gavriel, 10.

Bruce spoke with the Ledger about how his experiences in the UK will inform his new position.

Q: Tell us about your Jewish background.

A: I grew up in a nominally Orthodox household in London. We affiliated with an Orthodox synagogue but weren’t particularly religious as a family. My parents decided to send me to an Orthodox high school and I became more interested in Judaism as a result. That was incredibly important to me for my religious journey; I took from that experience a lot of lessons about things that went well and things that didn’t go well, which have since informed the decisions I make in my career as an educator.

By the time I finished high school, I had decided to become fully observant. I went to Israel for a year to study at Yeshivat Hamivtar in Efrat. At the University of Leeds, I was very involved in the Union of Jewish Students, which is like Hillel, and worked for them for a sabbatical year after university. I got married and Jo and I went back to Israel, where I spent five years learning at the same yeshiva and received my smicha there.

Q: Why did you decide to work in Jewish education?

A: I always intended to be a communal rabbi with a little educational work on the side. Back in England, I didn’t find a full-time position in the rabbinate, but instead got a part time position in the rabbinate and a full-time position in a school. After three years of juggling rabbinic and educational work, I decided that I much preferred the latter. I knew early on that I wanted to be an educator because I loved the ability to interact with young people on a daily basis. Many of us are privileged to have children and see them grow up, and it can be the greatest joy of our lives. I feel that it’s a great honor to observe the growing process of hundreds of kids and get to know them very well. When they leave, it’s tough. When they do well and contact you years later, telling you how much you helped them, there’s nothing quite like it.

In 2007, I moved to King Solomon High School, where I was senior manager and then deputy head of school, which is like vice principal. I spent seven years there, a wonderful experience in a very challenging school.

Q: How does King Solomon High School work?

A: In the UK, most Jewish schools are state-funded, just like any public high school in this country. At King Solomon High School, we had all the responsibilities and obligations of the state, and offered a Judaics program in addition to a general-studies program. It’s a completely comprehensive school, which means that we took students from all academic backgrounds, from the very able to the least able. That really taught me about what became my mantra as an educator: the absolute importance of differentiation, where each student in your class must be catered to at his or her level – instead of teaching to the middle.

London has experienced a decline of the non-Haredi Jewish population. The school is run on Orthodox lines; its philosophy follows Orthodox guidelines. When I was there, 40 percent of the students were not Jewish – 20 percent were Muslim – and the vast majority of the Jewish students were not religious.

How does one integrate all sorts of students from very diverse backgrounds into an Orthodox high school? It was a great challenge that went really well; but it pushed me and my colleagues to be very creative about how the students experience Judaism, especially if they’re not Jewish.

It was really rewarding and because I engaged with many families of different religions, I became very interested in interfaith work. That gave me a very unique and first-hand perspective about anti-Semitism and anti-Israel matters, which the students and their families debated and discussed.

Q: Why did you decide to leave the UK for West Hartford?

A: The UK Jewish community is wonderful and we’ll miss it, but it’s a relatively small community and has a small number of high schools. I’d worked at a number of them and we were looking for other opportunities. North America has always been an attractive possibility and I’ve kept my eye out for a number of years. The HHNE opportunity was an exciting and attractive one, not only because my wife and I have family in Toronto and Boston.

As wonderful as it is to be part of a state-funded school system, that comes with many obligations, which curtails educational creativity to a certain extent. At HHNE, I saw the ability to be part of a highly academic environment and to craft, together with my staff, parents, and board, a world-class educational institution. We’re starting from such a high base, and as excellent an institution as it is, it’s very exciting to take it forward. I also appreciate the fact that I can get to know all of the students personally, as well as their families, and that allows us to build close and meaningful educational relationships.

First and foremost, I want to build on the outstanding success of my predecessors, and to continue to ensure that what we do is world-class. We must have a highly successful educational program, or this model fails.

Q: The Jewish day schools of Greater Hartford – HHNE’s traditional feeder schools – are all experiencing a decline in enrollment. How will you face that challenge in your recruitment efforts?

A: We have 18 students in this year’s freshman class, with no input from one of our major feeder schools. That’s because our reputation is spreading. We have students from Canada, New Jersey, Rhode Island, all over the northeast – but mainly from Connecticut and Western Massachusetts. Our reputation of being a highly successful, Jewish, academically challenging and rigorous school, as well as a lovely place to come, is an extremely attractive combination to many parents. We combine a lot in that package: we are very successful academically and our SAT scores are considerably better than even the local private schools, on average. At the same time, we’re also very much engaged in supporting the students in a Jewish family atmosphere and we also have a lot of fun along the way!

We have several boarding students again this year, who will live with families in our three main communities: West Hartford, New Haven, and Springfield. Expanding our boarding program is a priority of our board, and if we are able to do so, it would make sense to open a dorm.

Also, we’re really proud of our mechina program, a preparatory curriculum for kids with little or no Judaic background, where we give them the necessary skills to let them move into the regular curriculum.

My vision for our Judaics program is that I want to foster educated and passionate young Jews. I’m also absolutely committed to making sure that our students are fully involved in the community; I want them to be highly successful academically and to give back to the community that has given them so much.

Q: As a British Jew, how do you interpret the rise in antisemitism in the UK and much of Europe?

A: I feel extremely privileged to have been born and raised in the UK, which is a tolerant and open society, and supportive of Jews. Are there anti-Semites? Absolutely. Are there those who are anti-Israel? Absolutely. Has it gotten worse? Perhaps a little. Is it 1939 again? No. We have to be careful about falling into a trap of demeaning what happened in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, where we jump to make those comparisons too quickly. The governments in the UK and France are tremendously supportive of their Jewish communities and of Israel. The UK government has been extremely supportive of Israel and its right to protect itself.

There is a very prevalent view of Jewish history in its “lachrymose conception” [a term coined by historian and Rabbi Salo W. Baron] – that it’s about one disaster after another. Fortunately, it’s not true: there are many periods of time where we lived at peace and thrived. Today, there are extremist politicians in Europe, and anti-Zionist and anti-Israel views do slip into anti-Semitism. Around the world, the vast emphasis on Israel smacks of anti-Semitism, especially when there have been no demonstrations for the 200,000 killed in Syria, and many demonstrations for the current and tragic situation in Gaza.

Does that mean that everyone is out to get us, or that we are headed for another pogrom or Kristallnacht or Holocaust? I don’t believe that’s the case. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the UK, has for several years been sounding a clarion call regarding the anti-Semitism that is increasingly in the guise of anti-Israel views and anti-Zionism, but we have to be careful; we need to have a measured response.

Jews are at the very top of every profession in the UK, including government, and are respected and fully integrated. I and many of my friends are able to walk around London – one of the most multi-ethnic cities in the world – with a kippah and tzitzit showing, with no problem. Yes, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is there, and there are clearly anti-Semitic members of Parliament, but most people are not like that. When you speak to French Jews, they tell you not such a dissimilar story, although it’s worse there. The fastest-growing Jewish community in the world is Germany. For many Jews in the UK, the question is, why would Jews want to live there? But Jews are finding Germany tremendously tolerant and welcoming.

People are very surprised when I tell them that many Muslim, Hindu, and black Christian families were absolutely delighted to send their children to King Solomon, an Orthodox Jewish high school. If they were anti-Semites, surely they wouldn’t have chosen the school. But they wanted a good education in a safe environment. We had Muslim kids taking Ivrit [Hebrew], and girls who wore head-coverings who were passionately adamant about interfaith dialog and really enjoyed Judaic studies.

Q: What do you hope to bring to HHNE during your tenure?

A: I’m really excited about our professional development program. Our teachers have been training in the inquiry method of education at the Connecticut Science Center and we are also working with a University of Hartford professor of education to train our staff throughout this coming year in the method, which is about really facilitating students to take control of their own learning.

There is an expression, “The teacher can be either a sage on the stage or a guide on the side.” We want to move toward education that is more faciliatory and less didactic. It’s not that I never want to see our staff lecturing in the old-fashioned way; however, any of us who have sat through lectures or programs and are just lectured at know that it’s very hard to retain information in that setting. The way we truly understand knowledge is by actively engaging in it. To deeply embed educational ideas and skills, you have to repeatedly engage in that skill and knowledge. With the inquiry method: students learn to form their own questions about that knowledge and chart their own path toward understanding.

Rather than the teacher standing at the front of the class saying, “This is what you need to know; I will tell you the truth,” we’ll say, “Here are the important problems and issues of our society and world. What do you think about them, and how will you learn about them?” We have no idea what the main industries will be in 15 or 20 years, when our students have graduated college and are in the working world. App programming didn’t exist 10 years ago; today, it’s a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. These are 21st-century skills, designed to make kids able to guide their own learning, be resilient, work harder, and try again, so that whatever challenges they face, they will be successful.

Comments? email cindym@jewishledger.com.