Hillel Academy set to honor rabbi’s 36 years of service
When his former students think back to their Judaica classes with Rabbi Nachman Levine during his 35 years of teaching at the Hillel Academy Jewish day school, they invariably remember his playing his guitar on Fridays, his sense of fun and humor, his projects to make learning vivid and, above all, his enthusiasm.
“The guitar was a big thing for me,” one of the things that made him “a special teacher,” said Cindy Levy, who was a student at Hillel in the 1970s. Another was his projects. “Every year we made a huge something” — a salt-dough map of Israel, a diorama showing the conquest of Jericho. “It made the learning come alive,” she said.
Dr. Joel Cornfield, now an urologist in private practice in the Chicago area, said that Levine “seemed to have a lot more fun with us than some of the other instructors.”
Cornfield was in one of Levine’s first classes at Hillel in the late 1960s, and said that “even when he made me write something 100 times, it was done nicely. I have nothing but fond memories of him.”
Debbie Bruce, who attended Hillel in the late 1970s and early 1980s, said Levine created “a relaxed atmosphere” in his classes. “Some teachers you respect out of fear. Levine you respected because you liked him a lot.”
A lot of that accumulated affection will be expressed on Saturday, March 1, 8 p.m., in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, when Hillel presents “A Gala Evening of Entertainment Honoring Rabbi Nachman Levine” as he enters his 36th year of service to the school and community.
Continuing tradition
Levine himself, in looking back, finds his teaching “very, very gratifying. A lot of students that I knew who went on to learn other things have kept the values, traditions and customs that we’ve imparted to them through all these years.”
He also feels “really good” that some of his former students, including Bruce and Levy, are now sending their own children to Hillel. “They’re continuing the tradition of day school education and commitment to what they’ve learned, and they’re transmitting it to their own children, who in turn will transmit it to their children,” he said.
Moreover, “I have very good feelings” about how 15 to 20 of his students have become rabbis. They include rabbi, physician and Jewish medical ethics authority Edward Reichman, son of Rabbi Bernard and the late Shoshana Reichman of Congregation Anshai Lebowitz.
Said Reichman in a telephone interview from New York: “[Levine] has an infectious enthusiasm and a very strong bond with students…. He was fun, entertaining [and] had all the ingredients of an ideal teacher…. I’m delighted that he’s being honored.”
Levine himself said that “to show genuine enthusiasm” is a deliberate part of his approach. “When kids see that, it rubs off and they get into it,” he said.
Toronto native Levine, 56, asserted that he has to work harder today to maintain students’ attention than he did when he first came to Hillel in the late 1960s from Baltimore.
“Kids like to be entertained more” because they have grown up with computers, television and movies, he said. “It’s harder to motivate kids and teachers have to work harder to do this.”
Levine tries “to think young,” he said. A teacher also has to “keep up with the times a little bit,” to “know your current events, sports, music,” so that “when they talk to you, you can relate to them and they back to you.”
Levine, who also is spiritual leader of the modern Orthodox synagogue Anshe Sfard Kehillat Torah, admitted that he doesn’t do all the things he did in his first years at the school, like join in the kids’ sports; and he doesn’t bring his guitar as often as he used to. Still, he plans on remaining there “until whenever G-d tells me it’s time.”
Keynote speaker at the “Gala Evening” will be Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, head of the Chicago Rabbinical Council’s Rabbinical Court and chief of the Rabbinical Council of America Rabbinical Court.
The event also will feature a musical tribute by Milwaukee instrumentalists Joe and Rick Aaron.
Reservations for the “Gala Evening” are $36 per person. For more information and to make reservations, call 414-962-9545.
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