This episode of The Grand Conversation: "Supporting Sephardic Students in Our Schools" features an important conversation between Rabbi Shmuel Hain and Ms. Denise Samstein, Judaic Studies faculty member and Director of Sephardic Engagement at SAR High School. Questions discussed include: What is the experience of Sephardic families and students in schools where they are a minority? What more can we do to include Sephardic history, culture and halakha in our school life?

This episode of The Grand Conversation is devoted to the subject of Building Jewish Confidence. In the podcast, Rabbi Shmuel Hain is in conversation with Ms. Adina Shoulson, Chair of SAR High School’s History Department and Dr. Caryn Keller, History faculty at SAR HS. Ms. Shoulson and Dr. Keller were the coordinators of Am V’Ometz: Building Jewish Confidence Conference. This conference, along with a number of curricular and co-curricular activities at SAR HS and ongoing projects at Machon Siach are designed to instill and reinforce students’ confidence in their Jewish identity.

This special episode of the Grand Conversation is devoted to the subject of teaching Jewish sexual ethics at SAR high school and in the broader modern orthodox community. Rabbi Hain speaks with Ms. Shuli Taubes, the author of This Too is Torah, SAR High School's tenth grade beit midrash program on Jewish sexual ethics, values and practice.

American Jews have benefited greatly from access to higher education and the professional pathways it opened to them. Today, here is a great deal of concern about the culture and climate for Jews and Zionists on campus. But our students are still striving for acceptance into competitive universities, and we still see our students struggling with the endless demands of the college admissions process, one that seems to get more daunting with every year. Even as we reconsider whether our community should remain bought in to this system, is there any way to rethink how we define, demonstrate, and reward merit? Is it possible to enjoy the benefits of striving for excellence without all of the costs that our current system imposes? Professor Daniel Markovits of Yale Law School, author of The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite, speaks with Rabbi Tully Harcsztark and Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz about the nature of problem, how we got here, and what we might do about it. * This was recorded prior to October 7th, 2023.

In this episode of the Grand Conversation, Rabbi Shmuel Hain discusses SAR High School's Vaad program with Rabbanit Lisa Schlaff and Ms. Shira Schiowitz. Vaad enhances the spiritual growth and meaning making of our faculty and students by devoting one period a week to their inner world. Listen to find out how SAR HS teachers and students develop the skills and dispositions to support one another in their religious and emotional journeys. SAR High School's Vaad program was developed in partnership with Lifnai V'lifnim, an organization dedicated to deepening connections and transforming relationships with oneself, with others, with community and with Torah and God.

On this special episode of the Grand Conversation, Rabbi Shmuel Hain hosts a discussion with Rabbi Jonathan Kroll and Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz about the upcoming presidential election. In this polarized moment, how has SAR High School tried to foster an environment where all members of our community, staff and students, can engage in political discussion with civility and respect?

Transcript Notes: Election Education: A Presidential election provides an opportunity for our students to explore important issues that affect the future of our country. While the political theater is often full of divisiveness we believe that our students can engage issues civilly and with deep respect for each other. A committee of staff members is coordinating educational programming for our students over the course of the next few months. During in-service we shared this draft of an affirmative set of principles that guide the way we as a community approach the election.

SAR educators, Dr. Rivka Schwartz, Ms. Sarah Medved, and Ms. Rebecca Glassberg, who have experimented with different forms of ungrading--removing teachers' grading power in the classroom and making students responsible for their own learning--talk about their experiences, what brought them to ungrading, and the anticipated and unanticipated outcomes.

David Sable and Aaron Mitchell join Rabbi Harcsztark to discuss The Confidence Project, a Machon Siach initiative to connect SAR students and faculty with their peers in three Bronx high schools. This follows on the relationship that SAR Academy has developed with Atmosphere Academy in Riverdale. As we began to bring SAR students together with students from Comp Sci High, The Theater and Arts Production Company School (TAPCo) and the Fannie Lou Hamer School, our teachers worked with Aaron Mitchell and David Sable to prepare our students for conversations across cultural differences. David and Aaron share their professional experiences and guidance as Rabbi Harcsztark shares his vision for this project.

American Jews and Higher Education:
This series will explore the experience of American Jews in higher education, and consider some of the challenges raised in recent years by shifting campus culture and changes in law and policies around admissions, discrimination, and free speech on campus. As a school committed to the "grand conversation between Torah and the world", the majority of whose graduates continue on to secular college, how are we thinking about some of these issues, and what work do we need to do to prepare our graduates to engage them?
Episode 1: Past is Prologue
In this episode, Rabbi Shmuel Hain interviews Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz about the history of Jews' experiences on American college campuses, from the arrival of waves of Eastern European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century, through decades of exclusions and quotas through greater acceptance on campuses after World War II. How was higher education once seen as an essential component of American Jews' "making it"? And how has shifting campus culture, and shifting cultural and educational norms, in the last part of the 20th and early 21st century, affected that acceptance, and Jewish students' comfort on campuses?

In this episode, Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz speaks with two individuals who understand how to gather and use data to offer insight into schools' successes and areas for improvement. Her first guest is Rabbi Joseph Beyda, principal of the Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School, who discusses his use of data to take the measure of his school community and assess the effectiveness of its programs. Her second guest is Jake Trumbo, project coordinator at Bach Harrison, who oversaw the three administrations of the survey gathering data about substance use among Modern Orthodox adolescents. He discusses the process of surveying, and what it looked like from his side.

This is the second episode in our new series: Substance Use among Modern Orthodox Adolescents: Identifying Problems, Implementing Solutions.