Dear Alumni,
On a Friday afternoon in February, I stood together with our seniors on a rooftop in Yemin Moshe, overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem. We were davening Kabbalat Shabbat, singing and dancing with such fervor that a resident of the neighborhood who had been preparing Shabbat dinner in her apartment picked up her siddur, came outside, and joined us—saying that she had never witnessed a scene like it. It was one of those quintessential Leffell School/Schechter Westchester moments, surely resonating with many of you from your own Lev v’Nefesh experiences in Poland and Israel.
It would have been impossible to know at that time that barely a month later, this group would be on an emergency El Al charter flight, returning to the United States shortly before the coronavirus lockdowns would take effect. Their eight-week, life-changing experience had become a five-week, life-changing experience. Most of their senior-year internships were canceled, and their opening semester of college was cast into doubt.
Michael Kay
Back
Along with the rest of our school community, the Class of 2020 pivoted and maintained a sense of optimistic resilience. WISE projects were reinvented and exhibited with elaborate digital presentations (and attracted 46 alumni evaluators). High School students became Lower School teachers, working with small groups of students on enrichment projects in math, literature, and Hebrew. Student inventions hatched in our makerspaces and design studios were tweaked and perfected. The traditional graduation ceremony was reimagined as a series of three events: a professional photo shoot at the moment of receiving the diploma, online commencement exercises, and a celebratory car parade. And demonstrating the extraordinary breadth of interests and talents that have always characterized our school community, student teams finished second nationally in the Moot Beit Din, defeated 3055 other teams to win the New York State Stock Market Game, and organized a computer-programming competition for dozens of local coders—all in the online space.
We are incredibly proud of the ongoing leadership demonstrated by our alumni community. In the past month alone, one SW/Leffell School alum played a prominent role in shepherding the Minneapolis faith community through the crisis precipitated by the killing of George Floyd, another regaled nearly 1000 participants at our Bathrobe Ball online gala with tales of how his Schechter Westchester education influenced his Hollywood fame, and a third—now a member of the school’s board of trustees—was honored with our inaugural Ari Bogeir award for contributions to the school and the broader community.
Even as we are physically distant during this extraordinary time, we are crafting closer connections with our alumni than ever before. I am thrilled that Orlea Miller has joined our team this year, and I commend her for the steps she has initiated to strengthen the alumni community. I look forward to seeing you in person again, once this is possible.
Michael Kay
Head of School
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