After more than a decade serving Gesher Jewish Day School as a principal, Jodi Hirsch Rein will soon take the reins as the new head of school, succeeding Aviva Walls.
The longtime Jewish educator and native northern Virginian’s appointment as head of school, effective July 1, 2026, was announced in November. Hirsch Rein first joined Gesher in 2014.
“I’m super excited to be able to give back to the community that raised me and that gave me such strong Jewish values,” Hirsch Rein told Washington Jewish Week. “I feel very honored and very blessed that I’ll be able to continue to build the school stronger.”
“Mazel Tov! I know Gesher will be in excellent hands with Jodi!!” Walls commented on the Facebook post.
Hirsch Rein described her current role as the principal of culture and student success as “supporting every learner.”
“Everything I do connects back to students, families, teachers and learning,” she said. “My work ensures that our academic program helps every child grow and succeed.”
The head of school is responsible for Gesher’s academics, admissions, finances, enrollment, development, endowment and communications, Hirsch Rein said: “It’s sort of the overarching umbrella versus just being in one branch of the school.”
Born and raised in Reston, Hirsch Rein holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Columbia, a bachelor’s in Talmud and rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a master’s degree from Brandeis in Jewish education, the latter to which she’s dedicated her career.
Hirsch Rein has big goals for the pre-K–8 school in Fairfax — she hopes to promote belonging, strengthen Jewish identity and elevate academic excellence at Gesher.
She said pluralism is a “major part of” Gesher that sets it apart from other Jewish day schools in the area. It’s personal for the mom of two.
“One of the reasons I moved back to the D.C. area and to Virginia was because I wanted my own children — who are now 13 and 16 — to grow up in a pluralistic community, but in a community that loved Judaism,” she explained.
Being a Gesher parent herself makes her a better leader of the school, according to Hirsch Rein.
“I’ve lived my entire career as a parent of Gesher students, so I understand what it is to be a parent raising a Jewish child,” she said. “I think it’ll make me a stronger leader. I think understanding the challenges of parenting in today’s world is so crucial to being a leader where I am going to be raising everybody else’s children.”
Hirsch Rein hopes to secure Gesher’s place as a local Jewish institution and resource, not just a school. Gesher has recently expanded its partnerships with neighboring synagogues and community partners, thanks in part to Walls’ leadership.
“I [want to] help carry that mission forward so that we can serve as many Jews in northern Virginia as possible,” Hirsch Rein said. “We’ve got every denomination — practicing and culturally Jewish — within our school,” she added. “One of the things we’re thinking about is, ‘How do we do pluralism? How do we serve the entirety of the northern Virginia Jewish community well? How do we strengthen Judaism within our own families but also within northern Virginia and connect the entire community?’”
These are the questions Gesher’s leaders are considering as the school’s student body increases.
“‘How are we serving all of these families so that every single family walks away connected to Judaism?’” Hirsch Rein said.
She hopes to foster an academic space where students engage in constructive dialogue.
“I love the fact that we can teach our kids … how to come to school and have different opinions and a place to discuss them … and know that the world isn’t always black and white, but it is OK to have those healthy discussions and to be different, and yet part of the community,” Hirsch Rein said.
Not only are Gesher’s students held to high academic standards, but so are its teachers, she added. “One of the things I think we do really well is how we use teacher leadership in terms of gaining academic excellence,” Hirsch Rein said.
She said she hopes teachers at Gesher will continue to model for students not just a final product, but the thought process and “how to get there.” The faculty recently discussed artificial intelligence and how to implement such new, “chaotic” technology into classrooms.
“We’ve done a lot of work with our teachers and faculty around how we’re making sure that we are giving students the right tools,” Hirsch Rein said. “It’s about education being an iterative process, and our academics shifting and changing accordingly.”
Looking toward her new role, Hirsch Rein plans to utilize Gesher’s 28-acre campus to its full potential for learning and community engagement.
“[We’re] thinking about what it would look like to be able to use our indoor and outdoor spaces a little more flexibly, as we’re thinking what 21st-century classrooms look like,” she said. “I know that the technologies will change and the pieces will change, but what we’ve taught [students] to do is be problem solvers, to learn from each other, to engage.”
