A Parent's Take on HAMC

We're pleased to receive feedback from parents and community members about HAMC, and this week we want to share one parent's perspective from the Dishin' with Dana blog on the United Jewish Communities of Metrowest New Jersey website.

Dana Lichtenberg, the blog's author, handed her blog over to HAMC parent Jonathan Ramsfelder, who had some glowing and thoughtful things to say about his kids' 27 years of combined education at HAMC in "And, Of Course, I'd Like to Thank the Academy!" Here's a mere sampling of Ramsfelder's reflections on HAMC and what it has to offer families and the Jewish community.

HAMC is a pluralistic Jewish day school where families from across the Jewish denominational spectrum come together to educate their children, truly reflecting the diversity of the American Jewish community today. The school lives up to its mission statement by maintaining high standards of academic excellence; nurturing students in an environment infused with the richness of Jewish life; and inspiring intellectual curiosity, critical thinking and personal integrity to enable its students to emerge as lifelong learners, compassionate individuals, and successful members of society.

Jewishly, HAMC is a beautiful model of what the state of American and world Jewry could be if we focused on what unites us as a people instead of our minor differences. Members of the HAMC community embrace and encourage one another’s Judaism even if it is quite different in practice than our own. Some may be shomer Shabbat and some may not be religiously observant at all. However, parents, faculty and students at HAMC share a powerful understanding that no one has a monopoly on the right way to practice and different types of religious experiences and modes of practice are meaningful to different people.