Each year, our students look forward to Shiriyah because it captures the true essence of �鶹����: a place where each student can grow in so many ways, be a part of a close-knit community and flex their individual talents in art, music, dance, drama, Torah knowledge and more. Our students have the chance to develop tangible leadership skills and strengths in so many different areas.

Students stay after class late into the night (and, sometimes, into the early morning) working diligently side by side with their friends and peers to create beautiful, inspirational masterpieces of song, art, drama and dance. Anyone who drops by to observe the exciting atmosphere and controlled chaos, for even a few moments, can glean the significance of Shiriyah to our students. It is a time when so many beautiful memories are formed, friendships are strengthened, and creativity and inspiration soars.

This year’s underlying theme is Kedushat Z’man: Yomim Noraim (9th Grade), Shalosh Regalim (10th Grade),��Chanukah and Purim (11th Grade) and Shabbat (12th Grade).

There is simply nothing like the camaraderie, ruach, and excitement of Shiriyah. We hope you will come and join us next week to witness the �鶹���� spirit for yourself, or drop by any evening to observe the magic behind the curtains—you won’t regret it.

One more way to keep your pulse on the week’s festivities? Our social media, which gets co-opted for all things Shiriyah. If you don’t already, follow us on , , and for inside looks at what our students are working on and some of the beautiful bonding that goes on during the crazy and amazing week.

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Just last year one of the freshman parents brought it to our attention that parents who are new to The �鶹���� School do not necessarily know what Shiriyah is all about and, therefore, cannot possibly comprehend why hundreds of students will be in school voluntarily all day today (Sunday) and will be staying late into each of the next three nights. But as we write this we think it makes sense to send this to all of our parents, even to long-time Shiriyah veterans.

Those of you—we hope nearly all of you—who will be at school on Thursday night will really be experiencing only the tip of the iceberg. You’ll be hearing the songs that the kids have been practicing all week; seeing and hearing the presentation of each grade’s banner (each of which is created behind locked doors by a group of student artists somewhere in the building); and experiencing the stomp presentations of the juniors and seniors which express the teams’ themes. (The freshman and sophomore stomps are presented to the entire student body after school, but before the start of the official Shiriyah presentation, late Thursday afternoon). Each grade is accompanied by its own band made up of some of our incredibly talented young men and women.

Much of the work of Shiriyah goes into the creation of each grade’s corridor. The kids spend time exploring the concepts of their theme—e.g. for ninth graders, Chessed— through specially designed classes and through the study of biblical and rabbinic sources with their grade advisors and then both decorate their corridor—although, as I hope you will see, the word decorate does not begin to express what they create—and create a narration, including small dramatic vignettes, which they present to the judges (and which we film and you can subsequently view) on Thursday afternoon. The combination of art work, scholarship, writing, and drama—which becomes more sophisticated as one goes from the freshmen to the seniors—is breathtaking (and incredibly time consuming).

Another group of artists, advised by our art teacher, spend their days and nights painting the grade murals—you’ve seen them both upstairs and downstairs—which portray the themes through images and biblical and/or rabbinic quotes. For those of us with limited artistic ability or vision the creation of the murals as they develop from pencil sketches on Sunday into works of art—which usually are finished about three minutes before the Thursday afternoon deadline—is a wonder to behold.

Then there are the kids who are preparing Divrei Torah which are to be presented at various Tefilot through the week. And there are young men and women who are creating, filming and acting in each grade’s stop action video, all of which are shown to the students on Thursday evening (before the 7:30 presentation). We’ve found some extraordinarily talented young film makers through the years.

If that isn’t enough, a major component of Shiriyah involves raising money for Tzedakah (with the recipients chosen by the students). The kids raise thousands of dollars each year. How? Mainly by turning The �鶹���� School into a weeklong Shuk during which kids sell everything from falafel, to neckties, to just about anything that kids will consume.

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But if you really want to know what’s most beautiful about Shiriyah it’s the excitement and camaraderie which permeates the gym and which, after all is said and done and the presentations are over, bring nearly 600 young men and women to sit with arms around another singing Shirei Kodesh and then explodes into spirited dancing late into the night.

We’ve been working together on �鶹���� Shiriyah for years and it still is, year after year, one of the highlights of our year. We hope you will join us.

Dr. Kalman Stein

Rabbi Eli Ciner

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Shiriyah 2015 has barely begun but below you can already see Instagram highlights from our various grades hard at work.

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As many of you undoubtedly already know, Shiriyah “broke out” this morning. I cannot begin to explain the ruach of the break out or the extraordinary contributions of so many of the adults who spend their days at �鶹����. Ask your son/daughter to describe it for you. I don’t need to tell �鶹���� parents how wonderful the night of Shiriyah is-it’s next Thursday evening; a “formal” invitation will follow-but for those of you who are new to �鶹���� this year I assure you that it’s well worth your while to spend next Thursday evening with us.

Shiriyah has many components so our kids can demonstrate their skills and strengths in so many areas: art, music, scholarship, drama, dance, leadership, and Torah. It creates a spirit of camaraderie which permeates the school and glows throughout the entire school year. The themes chosen each year reflect an aspect of our Torah Studies curriculum. This year’s underlying themes are the four core values of Chesed, Gevura, Emet and Tzidkut,��as expressed in Sefer Breishit.

Every one of our students finds their niche in Shiriyah. But in a school of nearly six hundred it is inevitable that there will be a few youngsters who find it a little difficult to find their place. That’s our job to fix. If your son/daughter for any reason is feeling that he/she is not participating in the week’s activities in a gratifying way please email me or Rabbi Goldfischer, and we will make sure that the grade deans reach out (quietly and seamlessly) to him/her and find an appropriate avenue to integrate him/her into the flow of Shiriyah.

The best part of Shiriyah is not the magnificent Thursday night extravaganza. If you have time, and can handle being surrounded by (almost) controlled chaos, drop into school any day or evening next week to see how it all comes together. If you can’t do that be sure to come early on Thursday evening to walk through each grade’s corridor before the start of the evening’s activities.

Best,

Rabbi Eli Ciner

Principal

P.S. Shiriyah is such an important part of life at The �鶹���� School that it would never occur to us to sell tickets of admission. But Shiriyah is very expensive. Just setting up the seating, audio-visual arrangements, and decorations in the gym is quite costly as is the extraordinary amount of material which goes into the kids’ transformation of the building into a Shiriyah theme park. Please consider making a contribution- email Rachel.Roth@frisch.org��–to help defray this large (but so worthwhile) expense.

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This past week has been that most magical time at , Shiriyah. Shiriyah is more than just a singing contest or a color war. It is a week-long festival for our students to showcase all of their creative talents. This post will focus on what it is like to be a father of two current �鶹���� students, a son who is a junior, and a daughter who is a sophomore, during Shiriyah.

When I asked my wife about her experience as a �鶹���� parent during Shiriyah, her first response was that Shiriyah meant that she did not see our children much the entire week, until of course she came to the Shiriyah finale and was able to shep nachas about their accomplishments. Our kids, together with most of their classmates, voluntarily spent much of Sunday at school and then stayed at school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights until 8PM, 10PM, and 12AM respectively. All this leading up to the finale on Thursday night. Obviously, my wife and younger children saw little of our older children this past week.

I am lucky to be in a different position. As both a �鶹���� parent and faculty member, I could not only be amazed at my children’s unwavering devotion and wonderful accomplishments during Shiriyah but I could watch their progress throughout this magical week.

What is it that makes Shiriyah so special for so many students including my own children? As I taught my sophomores this week whose team was Kedushat Hamikdash, the Holiness of the Temple, the work of Shiriyah is very similar to the work of the Mishkan. The Torah devotes four plus parshiot to the work of the Mishkan both to its conception and construction. This is more space than almost any other mitzvah in the Torah. The reason I believe is because the Mishkan is the one holy endeavor that involves all of the creative activities known to humanity. It includes artists and artisans, goldsmiths and seamstresses, musicians and construction workers, and the list goes on and on. Similarly, Shiriyah with its songs and hallways, Cake Boss, Project Runway and video teams, banners and murals just to name a few involves students using every one of their creative talents.

Watching my own children this week, I realized that Shiriyah is even more than that. It is about our children and students discovering the creative talents within them that they did not even know they possessed.

Let me list four examples.

Leadership and Teamwork

My son is highly intelligent, an out-of-the-box thinker, and is well liked by his peers. (I know, I am a doting father.) He is also often quiet and much prefers working by himself to group work. However, during Shiriyah, he transformed himself. He spent 5 days straight holed up in one room with six of his friends and the few other juniors who walked in and out creating a stop-motion video. This involved many strengths he already possessed like creating a script and mapping it out on a storyboard. It is also involved his taking a leadership position in working together as a team. He might have come up with many of the ideas for the video but he needed his team of masterful artists and collaborative partners to bring these ideas, and those of the other members of his team, to life. When the stop motion video was about to be played on Shiriyah night, the entire junior class started chanting his name. They recognized my son’s leadership role in the stop motion video team.

Persuasive Writing and Digital Citizenship

My daughter could not be more different than my son. She is a natural leader who always is at the center of her peer group. She excels at oral communication. However, communicating in writing comes hard for her due to her unique learning style. Over Shabbat after Shiriyah began, she had a very creative idea for her hallway. She wanted to communicate it to her peers as quickly as possible so they could start discussing it. So after Shabbat, since it was still Saturday night and her team would not be meeting until the next day, she chose to write up her idea on her team’s Facebook group despite her difficulty in written communication. She then respectfully but forcefully argued in writing for her position quoting a myriad of Torah sources and commentaries to boot through dozens of responses from her teammates. She wrote coherently and persuasively, spelling mistakes and all, and won many of her peers over to her creative ideas which were later incorporated into her hallway. This skill set, writing persuasively to her peers using social media, is probably something even my daughter did not know she was capable of.

Digital Storytelling

My son is not much a photographer. However, over the past few months, he researched digital cameras since he felt that one issue with his stop motion video , was the fact that the pictures taken mostly using an iPhone were not ideal. A month ago he purchased a , a camera that is a step up from a point and shoot but more affordable than a true DSLR. He purchased this camera primarily so he could use it for creating his Shiriyah stop motion video.

My son describes the process of creating these videos as something akin to making a silent film. The pictures and the music need to tell the story since there is no spoken dialogue. He also realizes that since these videos are so short because of the technical difficulty in making them, every moment has to be tightly scripted. As an illustration of how tedious stop motion videography is, during their first day, my son’s team created less than 15 seconds of video working for some 12 hours straight and even once they got a bit faster filming, it remained an exacting process with the entire 2 minute film requiring some 833 pictures.

You can watch his team’s completed video below. Note how the pictures, text, and music perfectly tell a story in 3 scenes. Even subtle details like the use of color or lack thereof, the rolling of the eyes, and the materials chosen for each scene all advance the plot line which matches the juniors’ grade wide theme- the holiness of time. You can also watch equally amazing stop motion films by the sophomores and seniors  and .

Resourcefulness

When I was driving my children home at 8PM this past Monday night, my earliest pickup all week, they noticed on every street corner discarded Christmas trees. What does this mean? More decorations for the Shiriyah hallways, of course! So when they got home, they each posted about the trees on their team Facebook groups. The juniors answered first. “Yes, please bring as many as you can!” So there I was, outside with my son in the plummeting temperatures, figuring out how to drag two evergreens into our SUV, which still smells from a lovely pine scent, so my son could help his team’s hallway come to life with some real live trees. There is no better father-son bonding experience than dragging “holiday” trees into our car at 10 o’clock at night in the freezing cold.

My daughter too learned the value of being resourceful this week, whether it was through “borrowing” some of my wife’s nursery school posters, a full length mirror we had in our garage, and a box of leftover floor tiles which we will probably never get back, all for hallway displays, or through figuring out how to color fondant brown using coffee grounds and how to mix a myriad of other color combinations for the cake boss competition. A common mantra in our time is “reuse, recycle”. During Shiriyah, our children practiced this first-hand, transforming one person’s throwaway or overstocked items into creative treasures.

These are just a few of the lessons that I watched my children learn this most special week. I am sure that this post could have been written by any number of the other 500+ �鶹���� parents with their long list of all their children learned from this most special example of project based, student directed learning.

In my children’s 4 year high school career, G-d willing, they will be blessed with 4 weeks of Shiriyah. That is one month out of the 40 months they will spend in �鶹����. I have witnessed first-hand how they probably will learn as much in this month as in the other 39 months combined. They will learn to utilize every one of their talents and discover hidden talents within themselves they did not even think possible. This could explain the tremendous anticipation, utter excitement, and single-minded devotion that my children and every other student at �鶹���� has to the magic that is Shiriyah.

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