Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

June 27, 2019

A Southern Gentile’s Year-Long Odyssey Teaching at an Orthodox School in New York

Borne with grace, barukh hashem.

Upon finishing her graduate degree in education, Caroline Drew, a Methodist from Alabama, was happy to have been offered a job teaching English at an Orthodox girls’ school in New York City. Recounting a variety of cultural adjustments—ranging from wondering whether she, too, should wear a wig, to daily prayers, to the befuddling Jewish calendar, to learning the phrase barukh hashem (“Thank God!”)—she reflects on the experience with sensitivity and humor. She describes chaperoning a class trip to Washington, DC thus:

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