Occasionally, at Better World Preschool, we introduce our children to stories from the Torah in ways that connect to their everyday lives. Sometimes those connections are simple, like learning about the animals on Noah’s Ark or seeing a rainbow in the sky. Other times, the lessons feel much bigger, especially when we look at what is happening in the world around us.
This week, as we read Parashat Noach (The Story of Noah), I find myself thinking about the world we live in today, the hatred and division we continue to see, and the world we hope to create for our children.
What Can We Learn from Noah?
In the Torah portion of Noach, we learn that God saw a world filled with corruption, violence, and wrongdoing. People had lost their ability to treat one another with kindness and respect. The world had become so broken that God decided to send a flood and begin again.
When we share this story with young children, we naturally focus on Noah, the animals, the ark, and the rainbow. But underneath these familiar images is a much deeper message about how we treat one another.
The world cannot thrive when people stop caring about each other.
It is difficult to read this story without thinking about the hatred, violence, wars, and division we see in our world today. We see people judging others because of their religion, nationality, beliefs, or identity. We see communities struggling to listen to one another, and we see how quickly disagreements can turn into exclusion and hostility.
As adults, these realities can feel overwhelming. As educators and parents, they also remind us of the enormous responsibility we have to help raise the next generation.
We cannot shield our children from every challenge they will eventually face, but we can begin teaching them, from their earliest years, that kindness matters, differences deserve respect, and every person has value.
When the Values We Teach Are Put to the Test
This lesson has felt particularly relevant to me following the recent cancellation of a professional learning trip to Reggio Emilia, Italy, organized through the Paradigm Project.
The trip was intended to give Jewish early childhood educators an opportunity to learn, collaborate, and deepen their understanding of an educational philosophy that places children, relationships, creativity, and respect at the center of learning.
Instead, a dispute over a demand for a political statement concerning Israel’s actions in Gaza led to the cancellation of the trip, turning what should have been an opportunity for professional growth into a painful controversy.
What makes this especially difficult is that the Reggio Emilia approach emphasizes listening, belonging, dialogue, and respecting different perspectives.
How can we teach children the importance of inclusion if we do not extend that same respect to adults whose identities, experiences, or beliefs may differ from our own?
This question goes far beyond one educational trip. It challenges all of us to consider whether we truly practice the values we say we believe in, especially when doing so is difficult.
We can acknowledge that people hold deeply different perspectives about the conflicts taking place in the world. We can recognize the pain experienced by different communities. And we can still insist that dignity, respect, and belonging must never be conditional.
Our Jewish Values Have Always Been Our Foundation
In a recent article published in eJewishPhilanthropy, titled We Didn’t Need Reggio Emilia to Teach Us How to See Children, Yehudis Smith reflects on this controversy and the relationship between Jewish education and the Reggio Emilia philosophy.
One of the central messages of her article particularly resonated with me: Reggio Emilia may have given educators contemporary language and practices for recognizing children’s capabilities, individuality, and potential, but these values have long been part of Jewish tradition.
That idea speaks directly to what we believe at Better World Preschool.
Long before modern educational philosophies, Jewish tradition taught us that every human being is created B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. Every person has inherent worth and deserves to be treated with dignity.
We also learn Chanoch lana’ar al pi darko, to educate each child according to their own way.
These are not simply beautiful ideas. They are guiding principles for how we approach children every day.
At Better World Preschool, we believe in meeting each child where they are. We recognize that children learn in different ways, develop at different rates, and bring their own unique personalities, strengths, and challenges into our classrooms.
Through play, exploration, relationships, and hands-on experiences, children learn to ask questions, solve problems, express themselves, and understand the world around them.
And perhaps most importantly, they learn how to be part of a community.
These values are not exclusive to Jewish families. They are universal values that we are proud to share with every child and family who walks through our doors.
Building an Inclusive Community Beyond Our Classrooms
These values do not stop at the doors of Better World Preschool. They are also reflected in the larger community we are proud to be part of at Congregation B’nai Israel of Millburn (CBI).
At CBI, we believe that every individual and every family deserves to feel welcomed, valued, and included. This includes individuals with disabilities and their families, interfaith and multi-heritage families, and families with different backgrounds, traditions, and experiences.
Through inclusive programming, opportunities for connection, and a commitment to making Jewish life accessible and meaningful, we work to create a community where everyone can find a place to belong.
Inclusion is not simply about inviting people into a space. It is about making sure they feel that they are truly part of that space, that their voices matter, and that their differences are recognized and respected.
This is the same message we share with our youngest learners every day. Just as we teach children to welcome a new friend into their play, to recognize that everyone has different needs, and to appreciate what makes each person unique, we must model those same values as adults and as a community.
We recognize that inclusion takes intentional effort. It means creating opportunities for individuals with disabilities and their families to participate in meaningful Jewish experiences. It means welcoming interfaith and multi-heritage families and recognizing that there is no single way for a family to look or experience Jewish life. It means listening, learning, and continuing to find ways to make our community more welcoming and accessible.
Especially at a time when we see so much hatred and division in the world, we believe it is more important than ever to create spaces where people can come together, build relationships, and learn from one another.
We may not all look alike, believe exactly the same things, or experience the world in the same way. But we can all choose to treat one another with kindness, dignity, and respect.
That is what it means to build a better world, not just within our preschool, but throughout our entire community.
Teaching Kindness Is More Than Talking About Kindness
In early childhood education, we know that children learn through experience.
We cannot simply tell a child to be kind and expect them to understand what kindness looks like. We have to help them practice it.
Kindness happens when a toddler offers a toy to a friend who is upset. It happens when a preschooler learns to wait for a turn, when children invite someone new into their play, or when a teacher helps two classmates work through a disagreement.
It happens when we teach children that someone can think differently, look differently, or celebrate different holidays and still be our friend.
It happens when we recognize that not every child communicates, learns, or participates in the same way and that being fair does not always mean treating everyone exactly the same. Sometimes it means providing each person with what they need to feel successful and included.
It also happens when adults model respectful conversations, acknowledge mistakes, listen to one another, and show compassion even when they disagree.
These may seem like small moments, but they are the building blocks of something much bigger.
They are how we begin to create a world where people care about one another.
And they remind us that the values we teach in our classrooms must also be the values we practice in our communities and in the wider world.
The Rainbow Is a Promise, but Also a Reminder
At the end of Noah’s story, God places a rainbow in the sky as a symbol of the covenant never again to destroy the world through a flood.
For young children, a rainbow is something beautiful and exciting. But for us as adults, it can also serve as a reminder of our responsibility to care for the world and the people in it.
A rainbow is made up of many different colors, each one contributing to something beautiful. In much the same way, our communities are made stronger by the different people, backgrounds, traditions, and experiences that make them unique.
The lesson of Noah is not simply that the world was once filled with wrongdoing. It is that we have the opportunity, every single day, to choose a different path.
We can choose kindness over cruelty, understanding over judgment, and connection over division.
At Better World Preschool and Congregation B’nai Israel, building a better world is more than a name or an idea. It is a commitment to the way we teach, the way we welcome others, and the way we care for one another.
We know that we cannot solve the world’s conflicts inside a preschool classroom or within our synagogue community. But we can help children develop the empathy, confidence, curiosity, and respect that will shape how they treat others throughout their lives. We can create a community where people of different backgrounds and abilities feel they belong. And we can model what it means to treat one another with dignity, even when we disagree.
The story of Noah reminds us what can happen when humanity loses its compassion. Our responsibility is to make sure that the next generation grows up knowing that kindness, respect, and inclusion are not simply words we teach. They are values we live.
Building a better world doesn’t begin with grand gestures. It begins with the small choices we make every day, the communities we create, and the values we pass on to our children.
That is the world we want to help build, one child, one family, one relationship, and one act of kindness at a time.
Inspired in part by Yehudis Smith’s article, “We Didn’t Need Reggio Emilia to Teach Us How to See Children,” published in eJewishPhilanthropy.
