Director of Jewish Studies

Seattle Jewish Community School is looking for an energetic, creative, collaborative Jewish Studies professional with an explorers' mentality. This new member of our professional community will partner with a cohesive team in building on strong foundations and in exploring new possibilities. 

 

Seattle Jewish Community School (SJCS) is a thriving and stable K-5. The school opened with a 17% increase in enrollment this year. It has a full kindergarten, and all indicators point to full kindergartens (with stretching definitions of "full") over the next two years and beyond. Student retention and staff retention both shatter national norms. The community is loving and tightly bound. The children -- if we don't say so ourselves -- are delightful, and their parents are ideal partners. 

Seattle is a beautiful city. Indeed, SJCS's campus is one block from a large and lovely urban park, where the students play every day. The city has three national parks in easy driving distance, and outdoor opportunities abound throughout the Pacific NW, a region that enjoys four distinct seasons. The city's Jewish community has strong leadership, including youthful leadership, and communal inter-connections are growing. Seattle also has a rich and distinctive Sephardic heritage -- opening all kinds of opportunities in Jewish studies -- and Jewish education in the metropolitan area is supported by the very generous and wonderfully collaborative Samis Foundation. 

This position would likely involve 12 hours of classroom teaching in our 1+2 and 3+4 multi-age cohorts. (We operate with multi-age cohorts in these grades, along with a standalone K and a standalone 5, as a product of pedagogical philosophy, and we divide these two cohorts of over 20 students each into two sections for Jewish Studies. Given high interst in our school, we anticipate that we will have too many students in 1+2 starting in AY25-26 for one cohort, but we will divide the children into two 1+2 cohorts -- with opportunities for mix and match -- rather than separate them by grade.) The job could also involve leading tefilah, in partnership with others. The Director of Jewish Studies will report directly to the Head of School, as a welcome thought partner to him and to other members of the Tzevet Nihul/Administrative Team, as well to the faculty.

SJCS is proudly moving from strength to strength, in service of its students, their families, and the broader community. We look forward to welcoming a new member of our leadership team, during a distinctly fertile time in Jewish education -- with challenges to be sure, but also rich in opportunities.