Three months into his job as headmaster of South Peninsula Hebrew Day School, Allen Selis has a special way of determining whether parents, students and staff are bonding.
“My test is the carpool pickup and drop-off,” he says. “Seeing who talks to each other, and seeing the overlap in different groups of people: That’s the evidence for making community.”
Those curbside conversations are a mix of English and Hebrew, fitting for an institution that immerses its students in the language of modern Israel. Selis, 45, says he loves his job and is working toward positive changes at the Orthodox Jewish school in Sunnyvale.
School board president Yonit Shemtob says during the interview process she was impressed by Selis’ openness to diversity and his passion to educate in a cutting-edge technology environment.
“He was about making sure every kid was educated in the right way,” she says. “He has a clear commitment to the [school’s] mission. This is an Orthodox day school that wants to bring in any Jewish child who wants to learn, and he loves that.”
Founded in 1971, SPHDS is a K-8 institution serving a cross-section of the local Jewish community. Selis notes that the student body of 235 includes children of Israeli, Iranian and Latin American descent, from families across the denominational, linguistic and ethnic spectrums.
He’s already instituted changes. For one, because students need to be tech-savvy, Selis helped secure a $200,000 upgrade to SPHDS’ computer systems. But at the same time, he has ushered in a new approach in the kindergarten, one he calls “no-tech.”
Teachers provide the children with what Selis calls “open-ended materials,” such as water, sand, clay, wooden blocks and paint. “It’s not Montessori, but it is grounded in kids’ creativity,” he says. “Parents say their kids are coming home asking more questions, experimenting with things.”
Another addition: He brought in Rabbi Yitzchok Feldman to serve as the school’s first posek, or Jewish legal authority, to make halachic decisions.
Two things Selis says will never change at SPHDS are the school’s Orthodox orientation and its solidarity with Israel. “We are passionate in our connection to masoret [tradition] and Medinat Israel,” he says, using the Hebrew term for the State of Israel. “We want children to have access to what is Jewish by referencing its primary texts. That’s how to empower children and families: access to authentic sources.”
Growing up in a Reform household, Selis says he did not seize much opportunity to study those texts as a youth. Despite living among the large Jewish population of north Miami Beach, he remembers thinking people who celebrated Shabbat were as far outside his world as “someone who lived on Mars.”
“That was a shame,” he adds. “It was impoverishing. It left me with fewer reference points, to not have access to the full breadth of our people.”
As a political science major at Dartmouth College, he rediscovered Judaism. Selis participated in Hillel events and took his first trip to Israel. .
He went on to receive ordination and a master’s degree at the Jewish Theological Seminary. After several years as a pulpit rabbi in Boulder, Colo., and Washington, D.C., he pursued his career in Jewish education.
Selis served at Jewish schools in Rockville and Baltimore, Md., and, for the past four years, headed the Solomon Schechter Day School in St. Louis. He recently earned his doctorate in curriculum theory and development from the University of Maryland.
Living in Palo Alto, Selis says he, his wife, Lisa, and their two children quickly have adapted to California life. He also says his passions for Hebrew, Israel and Jewish studies dovetail perfectly with SPHDS culture.
The school’s approach to Jewish life and education reflects traditional Orthodox practice, with a twist.
“My metaphor is the banquet,” he says. “Our job is to have a full table, and with their parents [students] have to figure out what they’re going to eat. It’s not my job to put less on the table. It’s to put more.”