Hebrew Academy in Randolph promotes assistant principal to top job

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

Moshe Vaknin, assistant principal of the Nathan Bohrer-Abraham Kaufman Hebrew Academy of Morris County and its Judaic studies department chair, has been tapped to lead the Randolph day school beginning in the summer of 2006.

Howard Cohen, who will have served as principal of the school for three years, will step down due to “family matters” and will relocate to Boynton Beach, Fla., administrators said.

“We really think [Vaknin] is the right person at the right time,” said Gary Scheer, president of the school’s board of directors. “Mr. Vaknin is a known quantity who adds spirit and ruah [spirit] to the school. He is well thought of among the student body and commands respect among the faculty. We think he’ll do extremely well.”

Vaknin, who has been at the school for 10 years, is currently participating in the Day School Leadership Training Institute, a project run by the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary with support from the Avi Chai Foundation. The project is designed to produce quality day school principals and heads of schools.

Vaknin acknowledged that he feels ready to become head of school and that he was not necessarily surprised that the school’s leaders chose him to succeed Cohen. Still, he said, “it’s very nice. It’s something I didn’t take for granted.”

The HAMC has an enrollment of 225 children in nursery school through eighth grade.

Vaknin has already begun putting together a transition team, meeting with teachers, staff, and administrators inside the school, and consulting with Elaine Cohen, associate director of the department of education at United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. Cohen, who previously served as head of school of the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union, consults with many schools in her role at USCJ.

Vaknin said he knows exactly where he wants to take the school over the next few years. His priority is to become accredited with the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools, a three-year project that includes teacher and curriculum evaluations. He will also apply to become a No Child Left Behind-Blue Ribbon School, a federal government project singling out schools for excellence.

Integration of the Jewish and general studies programs is also high on his agenda. The school will hold a middle school fair highlighting areas of overlap, including bioethical issues (combining science and religion), geopolitics of the Middle East and Israel (combining social studies and Israel), and comparative literature focusing on biblical narrative and English literature. In addition, he wants to strengthen creativity in the curricula and add field trips for hands-on learning.

Vaknin said he will also concentrate on outreach to the entire Jewish community, building on strides the school has already taken. “I want the school to be much more pluralistic. I want to reach out to families from more liberal backgrounds and to be accessible. Everyone should feel comfortable here. There will be opportunities to observe rituals and customs from whatever stream people come from. We’re trying to be more community-oriented.”

That approach includes involving parents more in the school and creating a full-day nursery school with before- and after-hours programming to accommodate working parents. He envisions inviting a physician parent to lead a class on anatomy, or a Wall Street analyst to discuss the stock market.

Vaknin was born and raised in Safed, Israel, in a religious Moroccan family. Fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, he now resides in Livingston with his wife, Beth, and two children. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Montclair State University and expects to earn a master’s degree in Bible, Talmud, and education from JTS next spring. In addition to his expanding role at HAMC, he continues to teach in the religious school of Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston, where he has worked since 1992.

Vaknin is proud of some of the recent achievements at HAMC, including implementation this year of an eighth-grade trip to Israel. But what he looks forward to the most, he said, has to do with the school’s pluralistic tradition, its affiliation with the Conservative movement’s Solomon Schechter Day Schools network notwithstanding.

“I want to gather all the Israelites here and make everyone feel welcome. We have a lot of tolerance here,” he said. “Kids from Orthodox Jewish and Reform backgrounds coexist beautifully here. Continuing that is the single most important thing I care about.”

Johanna Ginsberg can be reached at jginsberg@njjewishnews.com.

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