HIGH SCHOOL
Welcome to Heschel High School!
I hope your visit to our website will give you a taste of the intellectual and creative energy that fuels the vision and daily life of our High School. We are an academically rigorous, innovative, diverse, and pluralistic community. We empower students to pursue their passions with focus, deepen their intellectual interests and abilities, and develop a lifelong commitment to leading a Jewish life of integrity and purpose. In the words of our namesake, Abraham Joshua Heschel, we are a community where “intellectual efforts are stirred by a blazing passion.”
Our commitment to pluralism anchors our educational philosophy and classroom pedagogy. Guided by our talented and dedicated faculty, students develop the deep analytical and expressive skills they need to master sources and formulate their own informed positions on a wide range of complex and foundational contemporary challenges and questions. Further, students develop the intellectual capacity and curiosity to listen to the ideas and challenges of classmates and then openly and honestly reassess their own positions.
Our students assume leadership positions in their classes and through a rich variety of co-curricular activities including sports teams, a wide array of clubs, social justice causes, and art experiences. Our classrooms extend well beyond our building into the diverse neighborhoods of New York City and beyond. We are proud to graduate students rooted in Judaism in a multiplicity of ways and confident in their abilities to engage deeply with difference and make lasting contributions towards bettering our community and the world.
Your four years at Heschel High School will shape, stretch, challenge and inspire you. Join us to discover who you can become!
I look forward to meeting with you.
Warmly,
Noam Silverman
High School Head
ACADEMIC PROGRAM
The essential core of Heschel High School is a rigorous and creative educational program. Across disciplines, students develop critical thinking skills through the close readings of texts, student writing, and spirited classroom discourse. Heschel faculty members create student-centered classroom environments that are open, inquiry-based, and hospitable to a variety of learning styles. At Heschel, students and teachers
collaborate to create a dynamic and ethical learning community.
The Heschel curriculum is a product of deliberative and iterative conversations led by our Department Chairs, informed by current educational research, and discussed among the faculty throughout the division.
Each grade has a dedicated Dean responsible for the overall student experience. The Dean works closely with advisors and Department Chairs to ensure a well-balanced and successful year.
Heschel educators forge transformative, authentic bonds with our students through fullhearted discussions and open debate. At Heschel, we see the teacher-student relationship as an essential feature in ensuring student academic growth and success.
The Heschel Commitments
“WE SHALL NEVER BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE SPIRIT IS REVEALED IN THE FORM OF WORDS, UNLESS WE DISCOVER THE VITAL TRUTH THAT SPEECH HAS POWER, THAT WORDS ARE COMMITMENTS” -ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL
Heschel High School is a community with deep commitments to rigorous intellectual pursuit, artistic expression, and openness to difference and pluralism.
The five “Heschel Commitments,” emerged from collective brainstorm and feedback sessions involving the entire High School community during the 2015-2016 academic year. Incorporating teachings of our school’s namesake, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Heschel Commitments, convey the essence of who we are as a community. They are one step towards ensuring that there is a shared understanding and commitment to what is required from each of us and owed to all of us.
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
The High School Jewish & Student Life Office works with students, faculty and administration to cultivate a sense of community and to bring the mission of the Heschel School to life in and outside the classroom. The primary responsibilities of the Jewish and Student Life team include: working with the various branches of student government, planning and executing programming that brings the Jewish calendar to the forefront, engaging students in conversations about their relationships with The State of Israel, connecting students with opportunities to do acts of Hesed in and outside the school, planning Shabbatonim, and working towards creating an environment of trust, respect, selflessness and integrity amongst students and faculty.
Shabbatonim and Overnights
Each year, all High School students and faculty gather away from school to celebrate Shabbat together as a community. Students take a leading role in envisioning the Shabbaton’s theme, planning the weekend’s activities, and leading programs throughout Shabbat. At our Shabbaton across grades, in community with our faculty, we prioritize the joy of Shabbat observance and deep learning, as well as the importance of each student’s background and traditions. Over the course of Shabbat, students engage in meaningful study sessions, grade bonding activities, and a lot of fun and games. While the actual experience of the Shabbaton lasts one weekend, that Shabbat contributes in enormous ways to our larger Heschel High School culture of pluralism and Jewish values.
Hachana l’Shabbat/Preparing Together for Shabbat
The full Heschel High School community gathers each Friday for a unique assembly to reflect on our week, mark important communal or current events, and prepare together for Shabbat. During this program, an invited guest shares a piece of text or a story related to an annual theme that anchors each week’s gathering. Together, students and faculty end the school week in a reflective and spirited communal space. We end our weekly assembly with a faculty member blessing our students with the Birkat Ha’Yiladim, the traditional blessing that many parents
recite on Friday night, along with that faculty member’s own interpretation of that canonical text. Holiday Celebrations
We prepare for holidays by engaging in communal learning facilitated by High School faculty, guest speakers, and students. We celebrate each holiday together through festive tefillah (prayer), learning, and activities—like our treasured traditions of communal Hanukkah candle-lightings and the Purim shpiel.
HESED DAYS
Core to the mission of the Heschel School, and core to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s vision of the world, there is a commitment to hesed and tzedek, to learn about the challenges facing different communities and to work actively to better our world. At Heschel High School we teach our students the critical importance of, in the words of our mission, the “religious imperative to unite human beings through justice, shared humanity, and mutual respect.” We bring this to life through learning, action, and tzedakah. Our students spend Hesed Days outside the Heschel walls, building relationships and learning about ways to be agents for change in our broader New York community. Led by students on the Hesed & Tzedek Council of the Student Government, the High School also creates many educational tzedakah opportunities, raising funds for local and Israeli causes throughout the year.
TEFILLAH (PRAYER)
Our daily Tefillah program reflects our commitments to spiritual exploration, liturgical literacy, and pluralism. Tefillah allows our students to start each day with an authentic, spiritual, and communal experience. All students participate in a shacharit minyan (morning prayer service) of their choice. Our options include an Egalitarian minyan, Orthodox minyan, Sephardic minyan, and a variety of alternative services such as Tefillah Exploration, Creative Expression Minyan, Music Minyan, Israel Minyan, and Social Justice Minyan. An optional mincha minyan (afternoon prayer service) meets each day.
HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS AND COMMEMORATIONS
At Heschel High School we live the Jewish calendar with all of its celebrations and commemorations. The Jewish holidays live in our curriculum and come alive in our programming. We prepare for holidays by engaging in communal learning facilitated by High School faculty, guest speakers, and students. We celebrate each holiday together through festive tefillah, spirited celebration of Jewish rituals and customs, learning opportunities, and experiential activities.
Heschel High School’s monthly Rosh Hodesh Program brings noteworthy speakers, musicians, artists, and poets to our student community to elevate the start of each Jewish month.
COLLEGE COUNSELING
Our role, as college counselors, is to help students and their parents navigate the college search application process; our goal is for the journey to be exciting but also smooth, instructive and illuminating. We hope to provide a seamless transition from high school to college as we assist in finding the best undergraduate institutions to fulfill each student's personal and academic goals. Applying to college has become something of a rite of passage for students and their families. Ideally this search and selection process is an opportunity to visit new places, or perhaps see familiar places with a fresh perspective, to meet new and interesting people, discover a wide range of possibilities, and most importantly, an opportunity for students to learn more about themselves and the people they hope to become. Over the course of junior and senior year, students will consider their many strengths and interests, what things are important to them as students and as individuals, and what environments might best support their continued growth and learning as they embark on the next stage of their education.
Our starting premise in this process is that every student can be happy and successful at more than one institution. We will work with students to develop a list of schools to visit and to which to apply that will include some choices that may be more aspirational, and others where there is a close fit between the student and the school's profiles. At the end of the day, students will make informed choices about where to apply and ultimately enroll.
For many reasons, including a seemingly unending barrage of articles and features in various news media, the college search process can be stressful and fraught with unnecessary baggage. “Success” in this process equals enrolling at a school in which a student will thrive and have the opportunities to pursue his or her interests and prepare for a lifetime of learning and achievement. Success is finding the right “fit,” a comfortable alignment of individual interests and ambitions and an academic program and campus environment. There is no one-size-fits-all school and our role will be to help students assemble a list of schools that will meet criteria that they and their parents will define in the coming months.
From learning how to learn about schools, creating a college list, and navigating the process through a final decision about which college to attend, our goal is to help students make choices. We hope that students will experience this as an exciting time as they look forward to the challenges and adventures that await them in the future.
