❤ The End of an Era and the Beginning of a New for Jerusalem’s Adam Waldorf School

In 2010 when we moved with my family back to Jerusalem following two successful, communal years at Kibbutz Kramim in the Negev, we thought that our daughters then 8, 5 and 3 years old had the chance of their lives to enroll to a Waldorf school/kindergarten. We visited the school and kindergarten respectively, got an impression of the community and the teachers and opted to register all three of them to their programs. The eldest joined the third grade while, the younger two the kindergarten of the system.

Despite having left behind us the Kibbutz setting, we still thought it was a good idea for our daughters to have an education emphasizing community-building. Cooperation, creativity and the cultivation of the spiritual dimension of life hand-in-hand with a close connection to the land -through extended outdoor activity- were qualities we wanted our daughters to experience.

I remember how overwhelmed I felt by the demands the school made on us working parents, when all three of our daughters were in the primary school: Hand knit their crayon-kits with their names, drive them once a week to the park by the Monastery of the Cross for their weekly Friday outings in nature, design the school for Purim celebrations and prepare whole food meals for the whole class during theatrical play-rehearsal weeks.

As a mother of three daughters, juggling it all, was challenging; Yet it ingrained in us parents -as it did to the pupils-  the joy in communal work, the joy in sharing a home-made meal with the class, the joy in sharing your respective talent in singing, music playing, costume designing, classroom-designing, excursion-escorting, pitta-baking, and so many other tasks we parents were asked to partake.

It is with some sadness but also with great emotion that I am writing this blog post to part from the beautiful experiences we shared in the Adam school campus and building on Emek Refaim which housed all this growth, creativity and communal togetherness for at least a decade.

The sadness involves parting from a magnificent building and schoolyard with which so many fond memories are associated.

However along the sadness comes the joy. The joy associated with the Adam school’s natural growth so much so that its current premises could not uphold. I am moved by thinking that more and more Jerusalemites opt to enroll their children to an educational system that prioritizes community building over personalized technical learning; An educational system that emphasizes music, the arts and crafts, theatre and teaches pupils through involving all of their senses, and all of their strengths in body, mind and soul.

I sense that the coronavirus is directing the world towards the realization that for us to accomplish healing and health on a communal level, we are asked to engage in the task with our physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual capacities, as whole human beings and cooperate as best we can to address the challenging times ahead.

The Waldorf educational system, is an expert at teaching cooperation among its students and community.  I sense that the move of the Adam school and the Hassadna conservatory to their new home at Beit Hinuch school will allow both the school and the conservatory to further grow.

Coincidentally, we are a family that is connected to this move through two of our daughters; One who currently studies at Beit Hinuch and one who studies at Adam, and only wish for both of our daughters’, classes and respective school communities to prosper and make the most out of  their new homes.

Both schools’ leadership and communities deserve our genuine respect for having cooperated towards this move. The year 2020 marks the beginning of a new era for both. A real win-win Jerusalem schooling story, close to home, that I felt an urge to share!

From Jerusalem with love,

Yvette Nahmia-Messinas