Torah Academy's High School Girl's Division

By Breindy Lazor, Torah Academy

It's a pleasure for me to share the goings-on and happenings at Torah Academy's High School Girls Division! Our theme this year is Positive Leadership and, in that vein, we began our school year with a discussion about Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, and his articles on leadership, specifically Jewish leadership. Being able to define and identify true, healthy and positive leadership is critical to helping us understand how to be the leaders we want to be in our lives. Our high school girls then chose a Jewish leader to research, whose life and actions illustrated one of the seven traits of leadership that Rabbi Sacks describes as crucial for effective leadership. Good leaders must look back in order to look forward and so, as future Jewish leaders, our students are learning about the Holocaust in their Modern Jewish History class. This is in conjunction with the Names, Not Numbers Holocaust Program in which students will have a hands-on experience interacting with, interviewing and documenting the testimonies of survivors in a documentary that the students will create. Their work in this project will enable future generations, who will never meet the survivors, to hear their eyewitness accounts.

As Chanukah approaches, the high school students are also hard at work creating their own mini magazine with articles, recipes, games and other fun features that they look forward to distributing to the Jewish community in Jacksonville and beyond. We're so proud of our students who are using their technology, graphic design, writing and editing skills to create this original publication. Of course, all of this is in addition to their Judaic and Secular studies course loads. Our high school students are the most wonderful group of talented, kind, thoughtful and creative individuals!