\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe transition has been amazing because of the people here,\u201d said Goldsweig. \u201cPeople have gone out of their way to make me feel good and to feel supported. I have Shabbat dinner plans for as long into the future as I can want.\u2026 You get a sense that it\u2019s a very warm Jewish community here just by how warm and kind everyone has been to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goldsweig taught in Jewish day schools before becoming vice-principal at Toronto\u2019s Robbins Hebrew Academy and then vice-principal at the Leo Baeck Day School, where he spent the past 11 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to be head of school,\u201d he said. \u201cOn top of my PhD, I\u2019ve done additional programs to train educators to be leaders of Jewish day schools and so this has always been something that I\u2019ve aspired to do. When this job came up, it certainly sounded appealing being in a place with beautiful mountains and amazing people, but also the timing worked out because my kids, Danielle and Josh, are graduating from the Jewish high school in Toronto, called TanenbaumCHAT, and they\u2019re going on to university, so the timing worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n
His route to Vancouver was circuitous. He was born in smalltown Vermont to parents who left New York City for a rural life. (Were they hippies? \u201cThey would say no. I would say yes,\u201d Goldsweig replied.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up on a dirt road in a town with just a few thousand people and two or three Jewish families,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
At 18, he left to do environmental studies at Binghamton University in upstate New York, then lived in\u00a0<\/span>Israel for five years, doing a semester at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva and another semester at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies\u00a0on Kibbutz Ketura, which is located in the Arava Valley.<\/p>\nHe then returned to the Arava Institute the next year as a staff member, followed by three years at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. In the Pardes educators\u2019 program, he studied\u00a0Judaic texts\u00a0coupled with a\u00a0focus on Jewish education toward a master\u2019s degree from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His PhD, in educational leadership and administration, is from Lesley\u00a0University, and he has a related certificate from Hebrew College and studied education at Harvard as well. His PhD dissertation was on Jewish day school financial sustainability.<\/p>\n
In Israel, Goldsweig met his wife, Amy, who is from Toronto. The pair taught in Boston for a time before moving to Ontario to be close to family when they learned they were having twins.<\/p>\n
Goldsweig became bar mitzvah at a Reform synagogue in South Burlington, Vt., and belonged to a Conservative congregation in Toronto. His educational career included stints at schools affiliated with both movements and he is excited by King David\u2019s pluralistic approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a big believer in Jewish pluralism,\u201d he said. \u201cI think there\u2019s a great importance in leading and connecting with Jews that are like you and not like you.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year, he plans to visit all the synagogues in town \u201cjust to get to know the entire Jewish community in Vancouver.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Toronto, Goldsweig said, there are many different schools to choose from.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are not trying to be everything for everyone, you\u2019re trying to do what you do really well,\u201d he said. \u201cHere \u2013 and I really love this \u2013 everyone\u2019s in one building. So, the goal is to find ways to make everyone feel welcome and heard and connected and I really think that\u2019s a beautiful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goldsweig lauded his predecessor.<\/p>\n
\u201cRuss was an incredible head of school and is still an important member of our community,\u201d said Goldsweig. \u201cHe\u2019s done amazing things with the school.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s enrolment of about 270 students is on par with last year\u2019s and Goldsweig does not foresee any dramatic changes in the near future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cMy job for this year is really to spend a lot of time learning from everyone in the community and getting a sense of what the Jewish community in Vancouver is all about and what King David High School is all about so we can make sure we\u2019re meeting the needs for the community now and well into the future,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Seth Goldsweig (photo from KDHS) The start of the school year is always a time of fresh beginnings. This is especially true at King David High School this year. On Sept. 3, Dr. Seth Goldsweig will welcome new and returning students as the school\u2019s top administrator. It is the first time in 16 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44864,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3076,1559,1047,23450],"class_list":["post-44863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-education","tag-kdhs","tag-king-david-high-school","tag-seth-goldsweig"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}