This trimester, The Idea School students were engaged in a unit entitled the pursuit of justice and were asked to consider what it means to be a good citizen; what happens when personal morality conflicts with law; what are the levers people use to make ethical decisions and how the Talmud and other Jewish sources inform the sense of citizenship and morality.

On Thursday, February 21, at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades, The Idea School welcomed its parent body along with prospective students and parents, and many community members to view a collection of the students’ projects this trimester in a museum style, walk through exhibit as well as live demonstrations of a Rube Goldberg machine and a mock trial of Sophocles’ character, Antigone. Students took guests through the exhibit areas and presented their project objective, their accomplishments and obstacles and what they learned. Among the projects on display in the main hall, were “one pagers,” visual representations of books and Jewish texts students had read, advice letters students wrote to incoming freshmen using Newton’s laws of motion and a Mishna from Pirkei Avot, videos of the students engaging in chavruta learning in beit midrash and essays on prison reform that included Jewish texts and sources.