Introducing: Rabbi Iscah Waldman

Rabbi Iscah Waldman, AC's new Director of Education and Family Programming, always knew she wanted to teach Jewish subjects. She began studying at The Jewish Theological Seminary towards a Master's Degree in midrash, and only afterward enrolled in the Rabbinical School. “I didn't want to be an academic, I wanted to teach. I still love midrash, and I still hope eventually to complete my doctorate in it,” under the direction of AC member Professor Burt Visotzky. Her father, Rabbi Nahum Waldman, also combined rabbinic and academic work: throughout her childhood he held both a weekend pulpit and a full-time job as a professor at Gratz College in Philadelphia. “But for me, really, the rabbinate is about access, about wanting to teach in different ways. Teaching about the historical connections between Judaism and the rest of the world is not the same impulse, for me, as wanting to teach Judaism because I believe in it and I love it.”

Rabbi Waldman spent the last two years teaching Jewish subjects to high school students at the Solomon Schechter School of West Orange, and seems especially to enjoy the qualities in teenagers that others can sometimes find daunting. “Teaching high school was really fun. I always knew I’d end up teaching teens when I finished rabbinical school. They’re really struggling with the great issues, not afraid to say what they think.”

Earlier in her career, Rabbi Waldman served as a once-a-month Torah reader for a Conservative synagogue in North Carolina. She would fly down and, in addition to leyning, she led five or six different kinds of educational programs over the course of each weekend. One thing she enjoyed about that job was that “I would do a lot of craft programs—a lot of what I was doing with families was really interactive, even tactile.” She continued this in West Orange, where she led her students in making Jewish objects for prayer. “We illustrated prayers, we experimented with micrography, we made candles and spice bags for Havdalah.”

While she was in rabbinical school the multi-faceted Rabbi Waldman was famous for a cartoon strip she drew on the weekly Torah portion for the JTS newsletter.

Among the many AC programs which are now gathered under Rabbi Waldman's aegis are the weekly Shabbat children's davening programs which are available for all ages; the Hebrew School and the 2-3-4s program which are just beginning for this year; AC's family Shabbat dinners and Havdalah programs which will start again later this fall. Rabbi Waldman hopes to add a social action aspect to the family education program as well. She and Rabbi Kalmanofsky are also in the early stages of planning, probably for this spring, an Introduction to Judaism class for families, modeled in part on the 92nd Street Y's Derekh Torah program for adults, in which Rabbi Waldman taught.

She is also happy to be strenghtening our youth group connection to the Young Judaea movement. “I think it will help us to have an established youth group, in part because kids go where there are kids: there is an established YJ group that is planning to meet at AC. YJ has really strong regional programs, so that the attraction, especially for the oldest kids in the high school age Bogrim group, goes beyond the local meeting with local friends.” YJ’s Tzofim, for 6th and 7th graders, and Ofarim, for 3rd–5th graders, will also be meeting at AC beginning this fall. AC itself is familiar territory for her. “I've been living in the neighborhood for three years, so I've spent time here and I've davenned with Minyan M'at intermittently over the years.

Rabbi Waldman is in the building nearly every afternoon and many mornings, and encourages members—both those with children and those without—to stop by and say hello. You can reach her via e-mail at iscah.waldman@AnscheChesed.org

September 2001