Hachanah le’Shabbat: Building Sacred Community
Jonathan Klatt is the Associate Head of the Jewish and Student Life Office
at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School (New York). At Heschel, Rabbi Klatt
teaches on the Limudei Qodesh faculty, leads a tefillah, and works closely
with student leaders to create meaningful programs and build community.
Dahlia Kronish is the High School Associate Head at the Abraham Joshua School (New York). At Heschel, Rabbi Kronish teaches on the Limudei Qodesh faculty and oversees the Jewish and Student Life office. Rabbi Kronish spent many summers working at Camp Ramah and for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships.
Abraham Joshua Heschel High School (NY) prides itself on building and cultivating an engaged and connected student body. As in many Jewish day schools, our students would report that a defining characteristic of their high school experience is the community. As our school has grown significantly in the last ten years, it has gotten harder to ensure that the unique nurturing atmosphere in the high school is preserved. With this in mind, in the summer of 2023, we created a new program that we refer to as Hachanah le’Shabbat. We feel privileged and blessed that we piloted this program in September of 2023. Following October 7th, this program offered us a weekly opportunity to pray for the hostages and learn about the war in Israel. The events of October 7 transformed our program, and this allowed us to ritualize and process our response and obligation to Am Yisrael.
Background, Goals, and Format
From the very early years of the high school, we have had a weekly programming block on the schedule. During that slot, we hear from speakers, celebrate holidays, conduct grade and Town Hall meetings, and experiment with different types of workshops in small and large groups. In the past, we ran a weekly program on Monday mornings that we called Mabat. After tefillah, the high school community would gather in the atrium and listen to a presentation from one of our student-led clubs. The advantage of this program is that it was brief, it empowered students to teach their peers, it offered a communal gathering at the beginning of the week, and it showcased presentations that brought our mission and core commitments to life.
After COVID, we did not resume this program. The two primary reasons were that we had outgrown the atrium and felt that the program wouldn’t be as successful in other spaces, and we felt that the student presentations took far too much preparation and were not sufficiently rich in content. However, within a few years, we felt the absence of Mabat. Our school was growing. We were spending more time by grade or in smaller mixed-grade settings, but we were not coming together as one community. This led us to begin to brainstorm about how to address this rising need for communal gathering. And thus, in a series of meetings with the Grade Deans, the high school leadership, and the Jewish and Student Life office, Hachanah le’Shabbat was conceived.
It is important to note that these meetings and the collaboration between so many members of the faculty invested in the school’s mission are a key component of the success of the program. This was not a program that one person or even one team imagined. Rather, the collaboration and partnership both produced a refined plan and deepened faculty and leadership investment in the program.
In these meetings, we articulated the following goals for the program:
- Gather weekly as a community.
- Ensure that vibrant Jewish living is experienced in our school. Building on that goal, we sought to create a ritual where we prepared for Shabbat together.
- This new ritual would deepen our communal conversation by bringing in a diverse range of voices and personalities to inspire and provoke student learning and experiences.
In order to accomplish these goals, we decided that the program would have 4 components:
- Singing a Shabbat song. This would be a new experiment for our school, as we had not engaged in much communal singing before launching Hachanah le’Shabbat.
- Student announcements.
- Keynote Speaker. Faculty or community member speaking, ideally sharing a story or reflection related to a chosen yearly theme.
- Birkat Yeladim. We specifically chose Birkat Yeladim, both considering its connection to Shabbat and seeking to highlight a component from our graduation ceremony.
Since October 7th, we have added an additional component to Hachanah le’Shabbat. Between the keynote speaker and Birkat Yeladim, we count the days the hostages have been in captivity and sing Aheinu together.
Empowering and Amplifying Student Voice
Inviting student input and voices has been a key factor in ensuring our programming is successful and wholesome. This is especially true for Hachanah le’Shabbat. When we first piloted this program, we partnered with our Student Government Executive Board to help create a theme or a question that would frame the content of our gatherings. This empowered our student leaders to take ownership of the program and ensured that their ideas played a crucial role in the ongoing, weekly planning of the program. For example, the question that the Student Executive Board chose for this year to frame the content is “What does being in community demand of me?” The students felt it was crucial to think about what, as individuals, we owe to our communities, and what our communities owe us in return. This question has challenged our students and our entire community to think critically about how our relationships with our communities shape who we are and who we ought to be as a part of something that is bigger than ourselves.
Another way in which student voices are embedded into Hachanah le’Shabbat is through student announcements. After we sing a Shabbat song together, a student stands in front of the entire school and shares school news and updates. We have invited members of the Student Government to take the lead in this role. And, on many occasions, this is an opportunity for a student who is connected somehow to our keynote speaker to play a role. The announcements range from celebrating different student groups, such as athletic teams and clubs, or inviting everyone to take part in our Hesed initiatives, such as our blood drives and coat drives.
Faculty Involvement
The real magic of Hachanah le’Shabbat and what makes it a true gift to our community lies within our faculty involvement. Each week, a different faculty or community member shares their own personal story, experience, or reflection in response to the chosen theme. Our faculty transform the space into engaging storytelling experiences with high levels of vulnerability, with a willingness to share a deeper piece of themselves that we would not normally get to know.
Some of our most memorable speakers of the year so far include two faculty members who shared their experiences of living with MS; a Limudei Qodesh teacher who spoke about his nephew serving in the IDF post October 7th; an alum who came back to speak about working in the West Wing during the Biden administration; the varsity soccer coach who shared stories about the resilience and leadership of our players after they won the state championship; the Social Studies Department Chair who shared his PhD work about Shoa research in Germany; and a Math teacher who teared up while singing a Yiddish song her mother sang to her when she was a child.
The multitude and variety of life experiences that are shared during Hachana le’Shabbat speak volumes about our commitment to honor and hold different voices and perspectives within our community. By listening to all of our speakers, we strive to better understand the complexity of the world we live in and how we can engage with it in a meaningful way while remaining grounded and committed to deepening and enriching our school’s values and Jewish identity. Our community is blessed to have faculty who consistently model and embody these values for our students.
Finally, each week, we conclude Hachanah le’Shabbat with a different faculty member who blesses our students with the Birkat Yeladim prefaced by a personal hope, a word of Torah, or a cherished memory from their own family Shabbat tradition, transporting us back in time to a treasured moment in their lives. Then, when Birkat Yeladim is recited, we turn our attention to our beloved students, our future, the next generation of young Jews who will hopefully carry those messages and stories with them to inspire and create a better world for all.
Goals and Challenges for the Future
Hachanah le’Shabbat has played a central role in cultivating and sustaining a pluralistic, joyful, and sacred community. It has helped us strengthen the centrality of Shabbat to our communal experience and to highlight student and faculty voices. One reason Hachana le’Shabbat has been so successful is that we have remained steadfast in our commitment to never cancel it for other programs and to keep it to 20 minutes. The ritual aspect of the program—that which is familiar and repetitive from week to week—helps the students know what to expect and, similarly, what is expected of them. And, similar to many rituals, the challenge is to keep the content fresh, relevant, and exciting. As we enter year three of this ritual, we will need to ensure that we continue to build student and faculty investment and that even as we re-invite faculty to be the featured speakers, we ensure their content is not repetitive. Similarly, amongst our goals for the future are to increase our repertoire of songs, to deepen the connection between the program and Shabbat, and to include more students’ voices, potentially as our keynote speakers as well.
Above all, Hachanah le’Shabbat has been a success because it was uniquely crafted by our students and faculty for our specific community. Our process and product reflect the values and mission of our school: pluralism, collaboration, in-depth exploration of ideas, placing Jewish practice at the center, and cultivating meaningful relationships between students and faculty. We encourage you to learn just as much, if not more, from our process than you might from our product.
at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School (New York). At Heschel, Rabbi Klatt
teaches on the Limudei Qodesh faculty, leads a tefillah, and works closely
with student leaders to create meaningful programs and build community.
Dahlia Kronish is the High School Associate Head at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School (New York). At Heschel, Rabbi Kronish teaches on the Limudei Qodesh faculty and oversees the Jewish and Student Life office. Rabbi Kronish spent many summers working at Camp Ramah and for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships.
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