The Heschel School

Opening Minds, Bridging Differences, Living Jewish Values.

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About Heschel

When the Abraham Joshua Heschel School was founded in 1983, a new model of Jewish day school was created. Named after one of the great Jewish leaders, teachers, and activists of the twentieth century, The Heschel School opened with a commitment to creating a pluralistic Jewish community dedicated to the values that characterized Rabbi Heschel’s life: intellectual exploration, respect, integrity, love of the Jewish people and tradition, and a commitment to social justice.

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The Heschel Experience
The Heschel Experience

The Heschel experience embraces both what it means to be a pluralistic community and the values that characterized Rabbi Heschel’s life: intellectual exploration, respect, integrity, love of the Jewish people and tradition, and a commitment to social justice. Learn more.
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Academics at Heschel
The Abraham Joshua Heschel School fosters critical thinking and a love of learning in an environment of intellectual challenge and academic excellence. By weaving together Jewish and general studies we nurture each student’s intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual growth.
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Admissions
Welcome to The Abraham Joshua Heschel School. We are a unique pluralistic Jewish day school, emphasizing academic excellence as well as awareness of social and communal responsibility through an offering of a superb integrated curriculum of general and Judaic studies.

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Parents' Association
The PA is comprised of all parents in the school, including Early Childhood, Lower School, Middle School, and High School. We foster communication between the parent body and the administration, faculty, and staff. Throughout the year, we engage families by creating and producing community-building and educational programs.
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Alumni
Alumni

Heschel's alumni, now over 1,400 strong, span the continent and the world. We are proud of their accomplishments and celebrate their successes as artists, educators, scholars, journalists, business and financial leaders, and rabbis, with the foundation of a Heschel education.
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When you give to the Annual Fund, our number one fundraising priority, you support all of the ways in which we strive to achieve Heschel’s mission, including supporting our exceptional faculty and staff and our talented student body. Your gift enables us to provide our students with a unique and exceptional education and to nurture our distinct and special pluralistic and socio-economically diverse community.

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High School Holds Powerful Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Program

Jan 13 2020

The High School held its Martin Luther King, Jr. Day program with a focus on incarceration and criminal justice. Guest speaker Kempis Songster addressed the High School community and then led a session with a Grade 10 Social Studies class. Kempis Songster was imprisoned in 1987 at the age of 15 for murder. Despite his age, he was certified as an adult, convicted of first-degree murder, and received a mandatory life sentence without parole.

Junior Sarah Horvath interviewed Songster as he spoke about his story, his experiences with the criminal justice system, his release, and the work he does towards criminal justice reform. While in prison, Songster developed and facilitated programs to help people behind the walls with him, as well as programs to help people on the outside. He also co-founded organizations such as Ubuntu Philadelphia, a project that creates opportunities for communities to work together to change the culture and environment where violence and victimization are characteristics, to one that produces peaceful, safe, and caring communities.

Since his release, Songster has joined the staff at the Amistad Law Project, where he continues to work for the release of others, as well as to end the sentencing of human beings to life without parole/death by incarceration. He is also a member of Ecosocialist Horizons, where he has joined the fight for a more livable planet.