H eadlines
New Barrack Head Looks Back — and Forward
L OCA L
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
AT A DELICATE moment for
Jewish day schools and private
schools across the country,
Rabbi Marshall Lesack was
hired as the new head of school
at the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew
Academy. Beginning this summer, he
will replace Sharon Levin, who
has been in the position since
2011 and at the school since 1986.

The announcement was made
on Dec. 23, and Lesack intro-
duced himself to the community
with a letter on Jan. 14.

Lesack, who graduated
from the high school in 1997,
accepted the position at a time
when Jewish day schools are
trying to answer some thorny
questions. Some of them, like
enrollment, tuition costs and
a slowly building opposition
to private schooling, predate
the pandemic and will outlast
it; others, like navigating
COVID-19 and reckoning
with race at predominantly
white institutions, are newer,
and hardly restricted to day
schools. But they are being
asked no less urgently.

All of that is on top of the
typical trials that come with
trying to manage the diverse
religious constituencies of a
pluralistic Jewish day school.

But the search committee feels
like it found the man for the job.

“We were looking for
somebody like Marshall
Lesack,” said
Howard Treatman, president of the
Barrack board and a member of
the search committee, adding
that Lesack’s “warm personal
qualities, as well as his intelli-
gence and his sophisticated way
of thinking about pedagogy”
were immediately apparent.

Michele Levin, a member
of the board and the search
committee, praised Lesack’s
“very calming and supportive
demeanor”; Lisa Sandler,
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Rabbi Marshall Lesack
Photo by David Steinberg
vice president of the board
The Cherry Hill, New
and a member of the search Jersey, native played on some
committee, praised Lesack’s of the school’s more successful
understanding of what it is to sports teams during his time
run a pluralistic institution.

“Barrack is an unbelievable
Name: Masonic Village
school, and it is an unbeliev-
Width: 5.5 in
able community, and it’s got
Depth: 5.5 in
such a long, impactful history,”
Color: Black plus one
Lesack said. “The opportunity
Comment: JE
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to not only lead a community
and an institution of its name
and its possibility is rare, but
the opportunity to lead a place
that you graduated from, and
that had a big impact on who
you’ve become in your life, is
even rarer.”
Lesack, 42, had been the
high school principal at the
Donna Klein Jewish Academy
in Boca Raton, Florida, since
2015. Prior to that, he was a
jack-of-all-Jewish-education- al-trades in Atlanta, holding
various concurrent positions in
the field at a synagogue, Emory
University’s Hillel, the Brill
Institute for Jewish Learning
and Camp Ramah Darom,
the branch that serves Jewish
campers from that region (he
was a Ramah in the Poconos
camper himself). He’s a
graduate of Rutgers University,
where he studied history,
and the Jewish Theological
Seminary. JEWISH EXPONENT
at Barrack — then still Akiba
Hebrew Academy — and
remembers his time in high
school fondly. He won’t have
to look far to find familiar
faces; several teachers who
remain with the school were
there during his time as a
student, and one teacher, Aron
Freidenreich, was a classmate.

Even with those continu-
ities, there will be plenty of new
terrain for Lesack to explore.

For starters, there’s the
literal ground, as Barrack has
moved from its old Merion
Station campus since Lesack
was a student, settling in its
Bryn Mawr location. But
beyond that, there’s a new
community and a new context
that Lesack says he will spend
his first year getting to really
know. COVID-19 will make
that difficult, but Lesack is
taking that into account.

“When we’re going through
this time together, especially
with the opportunity of a new
head of school coming in, I’m
really going to be focused on,
how do we build community
for our students, for our faculty,
for our parents,” he said. “How
do we connect our alumni and
our community members to
the school? Because this has
been a year that has upended a
lot of those things.”
Levin, who will hand the
reins over to Lesack on July
1, is pleased that an alumnus
— “someone who has the
mission and the vision in their
neshama” — will be the head
of a school she spent so many
years leading. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JANUARY 21, 2021
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