Something I loved to do, when I served as the Education Director of our congregational school at Dorshei Tzedek, was to wander into Lesley's fourth grade class and take in a bit of what was happening there. Often, I would hear the most spirited singing filtering through the hallway and I knew I could open the door to her class and find her fourth grade students, song sheets in hand, singing with great ruach, or spirit. Lesley was generally a private, reserved personality; but there was intense joy that emanated from that classroom when she was singing with her students.
Morah Leah, as she was referred to by our 4th graders, came to teach at the Dorshei Tzedek Religious school in 1997 and taught in our school for 9 years. During this time I had the opportunity to get to know Lesley through both our work together at the school, and as a member of her Theatre Cooperative Board. Technically I was her supervisor for five years, but I like to think we learned from one another—I know I learned a lot from her, especially about teaching Torah. She was a woman of remarkable intelligence and creativity.
Lesley had her very unique way of teaching Torah. She knew how to make the stories of our biblical ancestors come alive for her students. She wrote the B'reishit (Genesis) curriculum, which we continue to use in our school with our fourth grade classes. As one of our current 7th graders remembers, she even made the text look fun, as she used different fonts on the same page, which had the effect of making the words seem to dance and call out to the reader.
Lesley made Torah study engaging and meaningful for students of all ages, and she was especially masterful and finding ways to teach her fourth grade students to enter into the text, as if it were a modern day story. Ellen Pashall, who's children attended our school, said, "Lesley's creative gift of teaching helped children see and understand God on so many levels and her teaching pushed them to recognize their own views of the eternal. The times I witnessed her teach she was able to elicit with students abstract conversations about Adonai that many adults are not yet capable of reaching. The integration of theater and learning worked so beautifully with her class".
Lesley clearly brought her love and expertise of the dramatic arts into the classroom as she empowered her students to enact Torah stories, write their own modern versions of the stories – or midrashim and to ask questions, always to look deep for the questions that the stories would generate for them.
As I have thought so much about Lesley these past couple of weeks since her death, I always come back to the singing. Of all the different settings I saw her in, I think she was most vibrant when she was singing those songs with her fourth grade students. There was a particular favorite—"shiru shir hadash": Shiru, shir halleluyah, shir hadash L'Adonai- the English translation is "sing, sing praise to God, sing a new song to God"
In her version, for some reason that I have never understood, this song ends with the singers shouting out "nutty, nutty peanut butter!" Every group of students she taught, reveled in this spirited tune with it's raucous ending. Irreverent…? Some might say so, but fun and memorable….? Absolutely!
I can't begin to know what happens when we die, but I like to think that her soul has been set free from the pain and the darkness she experienced, especially over these past few years. I like to imagine that soul, floating in the big out there, singing a new song.
Cindy Shulak-Rome
Congregation Dorshei Tzedek
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