JS: Faculty

Head of Jewish Studies, Tzivia Garfinkel

Click here to email Ms. Garfinkel

Phone: 773.572.1244

Tzivia Garfinkel has been at the Day School as Head of Jewish Studies for 15 years. She received her Bachelors and Masters degrees from the University of Michigan, and has a teacher's certification that spans kindergarten through 12th grade. Ms. Garfinkel has been involved in Jewish day school education, as a student, teacher or administrator, since her fifth birthday. Prior to her arrival at the Day School, she was Principal of the Solomon Schechter Middle School in Skokie, IL, and a member of the Sager Solomon Schechter faculty for eight years. She was previously the Assistant Director of the Department of Judaica at the Jewish Community Centers of Chicago, where she founded Shalom Sunday: the Family School, an innovative family education program for immigrants recently arrived from the former Soviet Union.

Ms. Garfinkel wrote an award-winning series on the Jewish holiday cycle for the Pritzker Center for Jewish Education, entitled Jewish Family and Living. She won a Covenant Foundation Grant to write the Shalom Sunday curriculum, and a Cummings Foundation Grant to write Be'Tzavta!, a curriculum to be used in the former Soviet Union. She was a founding teacher in the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, in which she taught all four courses. She is also a Jerusalem Fellow (1992-1993). Most recently, Ms. Garfinkel has published a research paper on the pluralism of Jewish life, which was undertaken while she was a participant in the Principals' Center at the Lookstein Center of Bar Ilan University. She is currently serving as a mentor to newly appointed heads of Jewish day schools in Project SuLaM of the Jewish Community Day School Network, RAVSAK, funded by the Avi Chai Foundation. Ms. Garfinkel's work and personal professional development have taken her all over the United States and the world, and each spring she leads the Day School's 8th graders to Israel on their Tiyul.

Ms. Garfinkel has watched the Day School double in size during the course of her years here, and continues to shape and mold the depth of Jewish education of our students, and nurturing the teachers beginning their careers in Jewish education. She believes strongly in the Day School's mission to partner with parents, and has been teaching an ongoing parent Torah study class for 14 years. When meeting new faculty members, Ms. Garfinkel likes to emphasize that while they may not all be Jewish educators, they are all educators of Jewish children, and have the responsibility to be guided by the school's mission, to teach them diligently.

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