Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 9 · column 4 of 5 · from the scan, no model involved
to the project really came for the secondary things rather than the future village concept.
“At one point,” Rabbi Theodore said, “I realized that I had surrounded myself with individuals who were not interested in the project’s concept, I eventually took the opportunity to stop it rather than continue.”
Rabbi Theodore said that the Nethers School was based on the Sommerhill tradition that a child should be happy and that childhood should be playhood. “The focus was to create an environment where the child wants to learn,” she said.
Rabbi Theodore explained that Sommerhill created an educational movement in England which later sparked the free school movement in this country.
“Running the school convinced me more than ever before that it was the proper and most productive way to teach,” she said.
In 1977, seven years after the conceptualization of Nethers School, Rabbi Theodore closed it for good. “All in all, it was a very good experience,” said Rabbi Theodore. “However, we had our ups and downs along the way.”
“At one point, the county threatened to sue me for breaking the compulsory education laws,” she recalled. “Luckily, I got a good attorney and we were able to explain things to their satisfaction.”
After the school formally closed, Nethers became an informal educational retreat for poets and other types of artists. As a published author, poet and playwright, Rabbi Theodore gave poetry readings at the Rappahannock County Library and what then was the Gay Street Theater.
Today Rabbi Theodore lives simply in her mountain retreat, isolated from the world to a large degree because she prefers that no one drive up the mountain where she lives in order to preserve it as a “no-car mountain.”
While this reporter huffed her way up the last several hundred feet to Rabbi Theodore’s home tucked away in the trees, Rabbi Theodore waited offering a drink and a seat. “I walk it every day and it doesn’t bother me,” she said. “I guess I’m used to it.” Remarkable feat for a 69 year old.
Rabbi Theodore still thinks of herself as a poet and social activist. “There is a hutzpadick voice in Judaism,” she‘said, “which holds that God created us because he wants and needs our help - the help of humankind - to complete and perfect creation. It was to better understand and fulfill that mandate that I wanted to become a rabbi.”
Rabbi Theodore hopes to find a small congregation that doesn’t have enough money to pay a full-time rabbi who would like an ongoing relationship and a full-time committment of maybe meeting once a month.
She will be offering poetry workshops and introductory courses in the basic philosophical tenets of Judaism and in Jewish mysticism beginning in early September. At that time she can be reached at 987-8813.
81.1%