By Donna Gordon Blankinship, Editor, JTNews
Rabbi Elon Sunshine is a little too happy.
He is the father of two sweet little girls, with a third child on the way. He and his wife, Shira Rosenblatt, are thrilled to be living in the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. They have found the greater Seattle Jewish community to be incredibly warm and welcoming. And on top of all that, he has his dream job as the new headmaster at the Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle.
Although he had been serving as a congregational rabbi at Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas for three years, Sunshine says his goal has always been to work his way up to the job of head of a Jewish day school. He earned rabbinic ordination from the University of Judaism in Los Angeles at the same time he received his master’s degree in education. He has taught at various Jewish schools over the years and has also made a name for himself as a community leader in Dallas, where he served on the boards of a number of Jewish organizations.
He has a special love for teaching prayer and teaching Bible, and particularly enjoys teaching both adults and children. “I missed the day when they said day schools are only about children,” says Sunshine, who plans to expand the Bellevue school’s educational outreach to adults. He believes day school are especially good at drawing families into Jewish life. “It certainly was that way in my family,” he says.
Over the course of the next few years, JDS families can expect to have more adult learning opportunities growing out of their children’s experiences. Not all these adult learning programs will be created by JDS staff. Sunshine believes in building community partnerships and expects the school will find many willing partners in the greater Seattle area.
“All of us share a common vision to grow the Jewish community,” Sunshine says. A large percentage of Jews in the area are unaffiliated. “We can share the common goals of seeking to engage them in meaningful activities.”
He says his job as defined by the JDS board of directors is to oversee and maintain the successful operation of the school. It is that level of success that appealed to Sunshine, especially achievement during the past few years of leadership transition. JDS has had a series of short-term heads of school since Dr. Harvey Raben left in 1999.
“I’m not looking to fix anything that’s not broken,” he says. “I’m really excited to build on the strengths of the curriculum.” Sunshine says Rabbi Stuart Light has been writing some “fantastic” new curriculum for Judaic studies and the academic team on the general studies side have been conducting a thorough curriculum review. The strengths in both Judaic and general studies are among the things that attracted the new head of JDS.
“We need to raise our children to be whole people — thoughtful, knowledgeable, prepared young people — where their Jewish tradition informs the decisions they make about their lifestyle,” he says.
Sunshine’s goals for the short term include integrating into the community by getting to know students, faculty and parents, learning the finer points of running a day school, building relationships in the wider Jewish community, overseeing the establishment of the school’s new preschool program, and supervising the completion of reaccreditation by the Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools. He hopes to be able to issue a final report on the reaccredidation process by the following academic year.
When interviewed in his office about a week before school started, Sunshine was excited to get to know the students and get back into the classroom. Many families have come to visit him since he arrived in July, however, so he’s already getting to know some of the student’s names and faces.
“I’m very pleased with how quickly we’ve been welcomed and integrated into the community. Moving to a new community can be a challenging thing to do,” he says. “We look forward to setting in some roots and making this home for us.”
This summer they managed to do a little site seeing and exploring, plus revisiting some of the beautiful places they found while vacationing in the Seattle area months before he heard the school was looking for a new leader. They fell in love with the area, and even exclaimed in a family video that they should think about moving here.
Sunshine says he looks forward to carving out some time for gardening at their new home in Seattle’s north end, and for more time with his family, something he did not enjoy enough as a congregational rabbi.
“Who I am is very much connected with who my family is,” Sunshine says. “We all have the same passionate connection with Jewish life and Jewish education.”