Ma Hadash? What's New At Barrack

Dear Barrack Community,

As we approach the end of a full and fulfilling school year and share this final edition of Ma Hadash, we also conclude a year in which our annual theme was Derech Eretz—“Everyday Ethics.” Throughout this year, in so many ways, we have explored the values that shape how we strive to live, learn, lead, and care for one another as a Jewish community.

Yet while this school year comes to an end, our commitment to our core Derech Eretz values carries on.

While we may spotlight our annual theme for a season, we continue to carry the conversations, lessons, and meaning into our shared future. Our commitment to Derech Eretz—to an ethical, compassionate, respectful coexistence—is deeply embedded in our school culture and community life. It informs our classroom behavior, guides our relationships, underlies our Jewish practice, and inspires the ways our students and faculty engage with the world around them. Derech Eretz is not something we set down at the close of a school calendar year, but rather reveals a lifelong practice—an ongoing commitment to living with integrity, compassion, responsibility, humility, and respect.

Throughout this year, we have witnessed our students embody and carry these values forward in meaningful ways.

Our middle school students created thoughtful “values videos” in their Advisory groups through the Sunshine Film Festival, creatively exploring the ethical principles that matter most to them and sharing their creations with their fellow students. Through the MSC Buddy Program, 8th graders stepped into roles of mentorship and kindness, helping our newest middle school students feel known, supported, and connected within our community.

In Jewish life programming, students deepened their connection to tradition, peoplehood, and one another—from our 6th grade Chagigat Shemot to the transformative experiences of the 8th grade Israel trip, our Upper School Shabbaton, and meaningful observances surrounding the Yoms and holidays such as Sukkot, Shavuot, and more. Our students welcomed October 7 survivors to campus with empathy and warmth, engaged in thoughtful Holocaust remembrance programming, celebrated the coming of Shabbat with song and dance each Friday, and learned alongside visiting Diller Teen Fellows from Israel.

Across our academic and co-curricular programs, students demonstrated perseverance, curiosity, collaboration, and ethical leadership. Whether competing at the highest levels in Moot Beit Din, DECA, VEX Robotics, TEAMS, and the Delaware County Science Fair; presenting at the Annenberg Science Symposium; or raising funds and awareness through Mini-THON, our students consistently reflected the values that define our community—through their exceptional accomplishments, but also in the ways they engage with others and walk through the world.

This year also saw the launch of exciting new initiatives that will continue offering students opportunities to live our values in the coming years. Through the Richman Fellowship in Pluralism, Jewish Peoplehood, and Constructive Dialogue and programs focused on Jewish leadership, students engaged deeply with questions about leadership, identity, disagreement, responsibility, and the future of Jewish communal life. These experiences reflect our belief that Derech Eretz calls upon us not only to strengthen our own identities, but also to listen deeply, hold complexity, respect others, and help empower our students to shape their world with wisdom, kindness, and purpose.

As we celebrate the class of 2026 and look ahead to all the 2026-27 school year will bring, I am confident that our graduates will carry our core values with them into the wider world, while our younger students will continue building a Barrack community rooted in kindness, responsibility, and respect.

I hope you will take some time to read through this final edition of Ma Hadash and reflect with pride on all that our students, faculty, and families have accomplished together this year. Thank you for helping make Barrack a community where Derech Eretz is not only something we spotlight for a season, but a set of values we carry with us each and every day.

I look forward to cultivating our special community alongside you in the years to come.

L'shalom,

 
Rabbi Marshall Lesack ‘97