Cheryl R. Finkel
Cheryl R. Finkel was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up there and in Asheville, North Carolina. Her parents, Herb and Freda Rubinstein, raised Cheryl and her brother Michael in these southern “outposts,” far from their lively extended families in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Visits to and from Canadian relatives, especially Freda’s mother, Bubbie Necha Kliman, spiced their home with Hebrew prayers, Yiddish songs and stories, passionate Zionist orations, and inspired Ashkenazic cooking. The Rubinsteins participated actively in Asheville’s small, close-knit Jewish community, sending their children to Hebrew school three days a week, preparing them for their b’nai mitzvah, attending synagogue on Shabbat and holidays. B’nai B’rith Girls enriched Cheryl’s high school life, providing her with contact with Jewish youth from other small towns in the Carolinas and Georgia and with six powerful, life-changing weeks at the 1963 BBYO Israel Summer Institute.
While earning her BA in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Cheryl found herself concerned about the challenge underprivileged children encounter in school. In 1968 she entered the Harvard Graduate School of Education determined to wipe out illiteracy (and, thereby, poverty) in America. Harvard offered Cheryl inspiring teachers like Erik Erikson, Jerome Bruner, Jerome Kagan, Ted Sizer, Robert Coles, and Jean Chall. She came out with an MAT degree, a passionate commitment to high educational standards, and a belief that every hour with students is a precious opportunity, a time to use with respect and care. Striving to become an excellent teacher, Cheryl worked for the next five years in public and private schools in Boston, New York City, and Israel.
Cheryl began her journey to Jewish day school leadership while living and studying in Israel from 1971 to 1975. Troubled by the gap between her outstanding secular education and her rudimentary Jewish one, she mastered Hebrew and put it to work to unlock tefilah, Tanakh, and the modern Jewish culture of Israel. After marrying Edward Finkel and returning to New York in 1975, Cheryl’s fluent Hebrew and strong general studies background won her an administrative post at Manhattan Day School. There she experienced the educational power of the Jewish day school and became passionately committed to its seamless integration of intensive Jewish living and learning.
The Epstein School, Solomon Schechter School of Atlanta, appointed Cheryl R. Finkel its head in 1983. In the sixteen years of her tenure, she has joined with hundreds of teachers and parents to light sparks of Jewish wisdom and goodness in the minds and hearts of Atlanta’s children, including Dan and Nina Finkel, Edward and Cheryl’s children.
Her vision of the school as a community where everyone learns helped Epstein grow from 108 students to 675 children from the age of two through the eighth grade. Always striving to meet children’s needs in new and better ways, Epstein’s staff is known for creative initiatives in many areas, including rabbinics and community service, Jewish family education, special education, and professional development for teachers.
Cheryl’s own continuing education includes 18 years of Judaic study with Emory University scholars. Since 1998 she has taken on the important challenge of helping develop new leaders for America’s growing day school enterprise by serving on the staff of the Jewish Day School Leadership Institute at the Jewish Theological Seminary. As eager to learn as she is to teach, Cheryl’s recent study of leadership development is improving her own practice and bringing new depth to her work with Epstein School’s outstanding administrators and teachers. It is her hope that she will be granted continued health and years “to learn and to teach, to observe and to do” holy work in Jewish education.
