About Kesher Families
Who are Kesher Families?
Kesher is a warm and welcoming community committed to creating a heimish environment for our students to learn, make friends, and develop their Jewish identities. Kesher’s community is a diverse group of families all committed to excellence in Jewish learning. We have families who are observant and not observant, who belong to synagogues and don’t belong to synagogues, who celebrate Shabbat weekly and who don’t; who are married, divorced, and single; who come from diverse cultural backgrounds, who have adopted children, who have one Jewish parent and one non-Jewish parent, who have non-Jewish grandparents, and who live in Newton, Watertown, Natick, Needham, Wellesley, Brookline, Lexington, and Jamaica Plain.
What all of our families have in common is that they are committed to excellence in Jewish learning, are looking for community for themselves or their children, and are looking for an alternative to either day school learning or congregational learning.
Why did our families choose Kesher?
Families choose Kesher for many reasons. Here are a few sample quotes explaining why:
“My son is not a passive learner, and I just couldn’t see him sitting at a desk while his teacher lectured. But Kesher kids learn with all their senses. When I heard my son “buying” falafel in Hebrew during Erev Ivrit, and when I saw the “passport” he used when learning about Jewish immigration, I knew I had found the right program for us.”
What does Kesher do for families?
Kesher’s main purpose is to create meaningful and excellent learning experiences for the students, but we do also want to create a community of families among Kesher families. Kesher provides many opportunities throughout the year for families to gather together to celebrate holidays, learn together, and get to know one another.
We begin our year with Sukkot family brunch to welcome back our community after the summer, and end our year with a family picnic at the Newton Centre Playground. We have two havdalot each year, one in November and one in March, where we sing, say goodbye to Shabbat, and do activities like Israeli dancing as a community. Families celebrate Chanukah and Purim together during Shira. We hold special events each year, such as Mimuna, for the entire Kesher community, and conclude the year with a festive Erev Ivrit in early June.
