Who We Are

Our History

Clergy

Staff

Leadership

Our Synagogue

News & Schmooze

Upcoming Events

Member Profiles

Request Information

How to become a TI member

M'Kom Torah - A Place of Torah

Photo Gallery

Interim Director to Lead TI Religious School.........posted Sep 2, 2008

The Tikvat Israel Board of Directors has appointed Tamar M. Weinsweig, an experienced Jewish educator, as interim director of the synagogue's religious school for 2008-09.

Tamar, hired in the past week, already has assumed her duties as the new leader of the religious school. She will be a full-time manager of the school's formal classes and its various support operations. She will be responsible for supervising instructional programs, managing the school's budget and monitoring the recently received external grant supporting special arts programming.

Jonathan Solomon and Brenda Brooks served as co-chairs of the TI Religious School Committee, which conducted the search. They said of the new director: "We were pleasantly surprised to find someone of Tamar's caliber this late in the hiring season. She is knowledgeable, personable, creative and hard working. What also impressed us was how quickly she picked up on the aspects of Tikvat Israel that makes it such a wonderful place to belong. We all made an immediate connection. In describing what a great find she is for Tikvat Israel's religious school, the parting comment made by her previous supervisor said it best. He told us, 'You couldn?t do any better.' Based on our interview of her, we couldn?t agree more!"

Tamar succeeds Sandy Levine as director. Sandy resigned in early summer after 11 years in the leadership post to accept a teaching berth in the Montgomery County Public Schools.

The TI Religious School serves children in kindergarten through 12th grade, providing art, music and resource services along with regular school programming.

Tamar worked for the past two years at the Washington Hebrew Congregation as Hebrew department supervisor, overseeing 24 Hebrew teachers in two locations with student enrollment of 900. In 2004-2006, she was a 7th grade Judaic studies teacher at the school.

Previously Tamar served at Beth Shalom Congregation in Potomac, Md., as a preschool teacher and at the Community Day School in Pittsburgh as a Hebrew teacher. She also taught English in Budapest, Hungary for a year and spent two years with the Israel Defense Force in Haifa, Israel.

Tamar recently completed the two-year program of study offered by the Florence A. Melton Adult Mini-School. This is an intense course of study for serious adult learners, taught by master educators in the Washington, D.C., area. Additionally, she was an active participant in the first cohort of the Israel Educators Institute, which met to study about Israel and ways to integrate Israel programming into congregational life. Both of these programs are offered under the auspices of the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning. The Melton courses met weekly for 30 weeks over two years; the institute met monthly for two years and incorporated a class trip to Israel.

She recently returned from the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education conference where she was a presenter to her Jewish educator colleagues from across the United States.

She is a 1998 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with a bachelor of arts in sociology.

Tamar lives in Rockville with her husband and three daughters (a kindergartener, 4th grader and 8th grader).