Native Washingtonian and decades-long educator Sharon Tash says that she fell into Jewish educational work almost by accident, as she was always interested in Hebrew school but ended up making a career out of it after spending time working for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in the early 1990s.
Tash finds herself as the director of education at Temple Micah in Washington, D.C., where she’s been since July 2019. With 39 years of professional Jewish educational experience, she plans to work in education for as long as possible.
Can you tell me about your background and how you got into educational work?
I always enjoyed Hebrew school as a child. And I liked it so much that when I was a teenager, I started working in the classroom as a classroom assistant. During my senior year of high school, I was asked by the education director to basically be a full teacher and have my own class. And I taught all the different sessions. And that was sort of my training ground for a job that I did all through college and through graduate school.
I always thought I was going to be finished with Hebrew school at some point. But at this point, I’ve been in Hebrew school for probably 55 years. So, I’m never going to be done with Hebrew school ever. I fell into it.
And after studying Jewish history, it [education work] became an avenue once my children were born, it was a way to keep working and not have to pay exorbitant amounts in child care and still be with my kids, and work. So that’s what I ended up doing. And I ended up staying in a supplementary religious school setting.
What was it like working for Temple Micah and starting right before the pandemic?
I started at Temple Micah in July 2019 and was just getting to know the people and the way everything works there and then, suddenly, everything shut down. And we had to figure out what we were going to do. It was fortunate for me that I was in this job because it’s a field that I know and, after talking with my colleagues, we figured out what was needed. And I think we were able to get through it well in adapting to the situation of being at home and being on Zoom.
What we did was we worked up our curriculum and digitized everything. And we were able to get through that way. And we doubled the amount of tutoring time one-on-one. So, students were still receiving instruction during the Zoom, and we tried to create community and these other shorter time blocks. So that was our solution to COVID — not that anything is perfect.
How has the Jewish education profession changed since you started almost four decades ago?
I wouldn’t say that it’s completely unrecognizable, but it is so vastly different. I think that the teaching force is different. We do not have what I call the Hebrew school ladies. The people who used to work in the Hebrew schools when I was growing up were moms who were very Judaically knowledgeable. And there were a lot of them, and they rotated through a whole bunch of different schools in the area because I worked in many of those schools, and many of the same people were going from place to place.
Now, in most families, both parents work full time and there’s just not that possibility to find part-time teachers knowledgeable and willing to come and teach in a Hebrew school. So, we mostly employ college students at our school. And there’s a lot of upsides to that. And there are downsides to that. So, that’s one thing that has changed vastly, the amount of instructional time has decreased. But we still need to teach all the same stuff, we need to teach about the holidays and Jewish values and Torah, some Hebrew decoding … So, the demands are great still, and the time is lessened, so we have to do it as well as we possibly can.
What has kept your love for education strong throughout the years?
It’s important to keep trying new things but, to me, the main experience is being in the classroom because every single class is different every year. This is why I think teachers stick with it for a long time … it’s going to be different. Even if you’re teaching the exact same thing, it’s going to be different and fresh every single year. That’s what I love.
What has made you stay in D.C. for almost your entire life?
My husband and I tell people that we are provincials, we are the local D.C. Jews, and both of our families come from here, and our extended families are here for the most part. And that kept us here. Our parents were here, our siblings were here, our nieces and nephews were here and our kids [were here, before some moved]. But we are locals … we’ve always come back to D.C.
How did your upbringing and Jewish identity influence the career you got into and the work you continue today?
I just always sort of gravitated towards it [education]. It’s not that my family was so religious or traditional, but we were a little bit, kept kosher at home, we ate out. We did not keep Shabbat, but we went to shul and to Hebrew school. And it was a natural part of our life. I was very involved in high school in United Synagogue Youth — that was a huge part of my life. So, all of those things helped influence it. But again, I think it really was a sort of an accident that I ended up doing this work.