From the moment we stepped onto the campus of Lauder Javne this morning, I felt embraced by the warmth, investment, and openness of the faculty and administration. Families will often share with me that they feel something special when they’re at our school – Adelson Educational Campus – in Las Vegas. I, too, experienced that feeling today on Lauder Javne’s beautiful grounds. Watching the children from preschool through high school move fluidly through their classes and their school, laughing and self-assured, filled me with optimism, and reinforced that our respective school families, though perhaps from profoundly different cultures and Jewish experiences, are connected. Within each of our school communities, we strive to forge and cultivate a connection to one’s Jewish identity and culture. Today, I observed students exhibiting menschkeit throughout the school – a six-year-old making space for her friend to sit at a crowded table, 
an upper school student who baked cookies to welcome our Vegas team to Budapest, and a preschool student who diligently swept her rather large pile of leaves to complete her task. It is this character that permeates the Lauder Javne and Adelson schools, that is a core tenet connecting our students to their Jewish roots and to each other despite the 6,000 miles between us.
