Sharon Freundel’s eyes light up when she talks about Jewish education and her former students. After all, she said, “once a student of hers, always a student.”
The Silver Spring resident is managing director of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge, a nonprofit initiative that aims to improve Jewish education in day schools nationwide, building upon her 47 years of working in the field. She previously directed Hebrew and Judaic studies at Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School for a decade, followed by two years as the school’s director of Jewish life.
Before that, from 1993 to 2005, Freundel taught as a long-term substitute teacher at what is now Berman Hebrew Academy.
“Once I stepped into the classroom, it really felt like a calling,” she said. “I love teaching Torah. I loved all of my students, and I believed I was making a difference.”
The impact on her students’ lives became clear in 2017 as Freundel sat shiva for her late father in Teaneck, New Jersey. About 10 former students showed up to support her, and seven of those 10 had become teachers. “They said, ‘We went into teaching because of you,’” Freundel recalled.
The students quoted things she had taught them decades prior. “I didn’t remember classes, but they did,” Freundel said. “Twenty years after these young people graduated, I found out that I actually did make a difference in their lives.”
Her passion for education dates back to her early years. The child of Holocaust survivors, Freundel grew up in Baltimore in an Orthodox Jewish home and attended the only Orthodox girls’ school in the city.
“When I got to high school, my mother said to me, ‘You’re getting too narrow of an impression of what the Jewish world is,’” she said.
Freundel took classes at the Baltimore Hebrew College High School a few evenings a week after school. “Indeed, [my mom] was right,” she said. “It gave me an appreciation of the Jewish people writ large.”
Surprisingly, Freundel’s career didn’t begin with Jewish education. She earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Maryland after attending Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women for two years. She then worked at The Johns Hopkins Hospital for two years before serving in a variety of different pediatric nursing roles in New York. “It was always about children,” she said.
In 1978, Yeshiva University put out a call for nursing professionals as part of an inclusion program for its retreats. Freundel served as a one-on-one facilitator for a child in the program, marking her first exposure to Jewish education as an adult: “It was informal Jewish education, but I fell in love with it.”
She eventually became head of the program for a couple of years, then became the nurse manager of Westchester Medical Center’s pediatric ICU. Having her first child in 1986 steered her away from the work as it “hit too close to home,” so she taught at the State University of New York.
Freundel moved to Washington, D.C. Nine months pregnant with her second child, Freundel took a step back from nursing and led classes at Kesher Israel Congregation.
In 1993, she received a call from what was then The Hebrew Academy of Greater Washington; the school needed a long-term substitute teacher. Freundel taught two morning classes under the mentorship of Rabbi Jack Bieler, the principal at the time. “I fell in love with Judaic studies teaching in the classroom,” Freundel said.
She pursued her master’s degree in Jewish education at the Baltimore Hebrew Institute at Towson University in 2005, working at the nearby Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School. Freundel was then recruited as an administrator at Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School in Washington.
There, her proudest accomplishment was co-creating a custom siddur that used non-gender-based language surrounding God with all different denominations of Judaism. The prayer book, which features students’ commentary and artwork, is in its second publication and is sold to other Jewish day schools.
She was instrumental in developing the text-based Judaic curriculum at Milton Gottesman and has taught students from kindergarten to college age. Freundel’s favorite age group? “Whatever age group is in the room,” she said.
She spoke to the need to adapt curricula to the students and rapidly changing times. “I often say you need to personalize the learning for each and every student,” Freundel said. “That means you need to get to know your students.”
But her educational prowess doesn’t stop at children and young adults. Freundel is also an instructor with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington’s Maggid program, which seeks to educate second-generation Holocaust survivors in telling their parents’ stories. At the time of publication, Freundel and a co-instructor have trained 45 speakers, with another 12 in their current class.
“It’s really meaningful work,” Freundel said. “Is it a way to honor my parents? Yeah. But I probably wouldn’t put as much work into it if I didn’t think there was a bigger aspect of tikkun olam in what I’m doing.”
Freundel derives joy from volunteering in the Jewish community. She serves on the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington’s Community Leadership Council and the board of Kemp Mill Synagogue, where she is an active member. She has served on the board of Young Israel Shomrai Emunah of Greater Washington, where she is also a member.
Freundel works with the volunteer organizations Yad Yehuda of Greater Washington, Bikur Cholim of Greater Washington and the Jewish Coalition Against Domestic Abuse, following in her parents’ philanthropic footsteps.
“[Volunteering] feeds my neshama — my soul,” she said.
Sharon Fruendel is a wonderful person, in addition to her excellent professional work.