The Milwaukee Jewish Day School has hired a new director of Jewish studies who belonged to the school’s first graduating class, Rabbi Moishe Steigmann. He began work in July and is supervising 13 full- and part-time teachers out of a total faculty of more than 50 who teach about 200 children.
He is married to Rabbi Hannah Greenstein, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s community outreach specialist (see page 28), and they have two children.
Freelance writer Susan Ellman interviewed him for The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle. Selected and edited excerpts from their conversation follow.
WJC: Our readers would be interested in a little biographical information.
Steigmann: I was born and raised in Milwaukee. I attended MJDS from fourth grade through eighth grade, and I was in the first graduating class. My mom, Stisha Steigman (ironically, we spell our last names differently; it is supposed to have two n’s, so the article’s going to look weird) was a long time Hebrew and Jewish studies teacher here, so in that sense I’m a second generation Steigmann here — and my son is going to kindergarten here, so he represents the third generation. I went to Nicolet High School and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Originally, I had plans to study patent law. I was going to major in engineering and then go on to law school. I ended up majoring in Hebrew and Semitic studies and receiving a certificate in Jewish studies.
After that I worked at a synagogue in Boston. The title was synagogue educator. I taught religious school, advised the USY youth group, and coordinated all of the holiday and Shabbat services for the children.
WJC: Can you say a little more about why you decided to leave your previous course of study?
Steigmann: I realized it wasn’t something that I had the passion to do every single day. I also always loved teaching and working with kids. I was babysitting or tutoring or helping [at MJDS] around the office when I was at Nicolet, and I’ve always enjoyed the education world. So I decided to shift my focus there and eventually I decided to work with my love of and passion for Judaism. And that brought me to the rabbinate.
Then I attended the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York for six years, where I earned both my ordination as a rabbi and my master’s degree in education. I then had a pulpit in Westchester. I was the assistant rabbi, associate rabbi, and interim senior rabbi.
After six years, it was a natural time to look for another position, and to my tremendous surprise and pleasure, this job was open, and the opportunity to come home was thrilling.
WJC: What attracted you to this job?
Steigmann: I found the opportunity to come home very compelling. MJDS was the school that helped raise me. In fact, four of my teachers from when I was a student are still on the staff.
MJDS continues to be a wonderful place. It creates a compelling sense of Jewish pride and identity and a love of being Jewish. It has a family feel, and a sense that teachers who work here care about you as a person.
I love teaching and working with children. The opportunity to help guide their Jewish learning during these formative years is a unique and inspirational privilege.
WJC: What do you hope to achieve as head of the Jewish studies department?
Steigmann: There are three major components to the curriculum. First, there is content knowledge, such as Jewish texts. Second is Jewish life and ritual, not just to know where the laws of Shabbat are in the Torah but how to live it and how to love it and how to celebrate it. The third is mentshlikheit, or character, creating good human beings.
There’s a wonderful program called “Standards and Benchmarks” which is supported both by the Avi Chai Foundation and JTS. Essentially, it’s a Bible curriculum. There’s a cohesion and accountability because we have these benchmarks that need to be met each year. In addition, it’s a fantastic pedagogic curriculum. We have a wonderful curriculum already, but this will allow us to continually assess it in a way that helps us realize a goal.
WJC: Could you mention a few particular ideas you’ll be implementing this year?
Steigmann: This year I will be teaching part of the eighth grade Jewish studies course, and as part of that, I’m going to be introducing a rabbinics unit in order to cover the basics of Talmud. One of our key goals will be that the students who graduate from here are knowledgeable about the major foundational Jewish texts.
One thing that we’re going to relaunch is the Israel Fair, which had been a hallmark of what MJDS had done over its multi-decade history.
I also run the middle school tefillot (prayers) and what I’ve done every morning is I just start singing a niggun, a wordless melody to shift the mood and shift the focus. That helps create the idea of sacred time and sacred space, to distinguish what we do walking down the halls here or walking at Bayshore Mall or hanging out at a Brewers game from what we’re doing at other points. We act differently. We’re more conscious of God’s presence.
WJC: As a non-denominational community school, what challenges do you face?
Steigmann: Everything has unique challenges and unique opportunities. For us, the opportunity is to expose our students to the varied ideologies and viewpoints and beliefs within Judaism. We hope that our graduates will feel comfortable in various synagogues or camps, or at Hillel houses in college, and in environments where it’s not exclusively Jewish, and that their Jewish identity will be personal, ingrained, and strong.
In that sense, a nondenominational school really allows us unique opportunities to work with these students and help them develop their own sense of Jewish identity in a complex world.
It’s also important that what we teach here is something that each student can take home and express it and live it in a meaningful way that’s in concert with choices that the parents have made. We are here to help give the students the tools and the skills and the confidence that they need to make meaningful Jewish choices as they get older. That transcends denominations and ideologies.
WJC: Anything else?
Steigmann: It’s very important from my perspective to build relationships between MJDS and other Jewish institutions here in the city. After all, we’re all in the same business, to create strong, passionate, learned, committed, independent Jews. Our primary focus is the Jews from the age of four to 14, but we have the opportunity to engage with their siblings and their parents and their friends and members of the larger community.
WJC: What do you like to do when you’re not here?
Steigmann: My first priority is family. Second is work, and third is the Green Bay Packers. Also the Milwaukee Brewers, Milwaukee Bucks, the UW Badgers. I love games of any kind.
Milwaukeean Susan Ellman, MLIS, has taught history and English composition at the high school level and is a freelance writer at work on a historical novel.
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