In honor of the 50th anniversary of Community Day School, music teacher Eileen Freedman set out to create a meaningful and lasting gift to the school that could be enjoyed by generations of CDS students to come—an official school song!
The process began by crowdsourcing words and phrases about the meaning of CDS from our faculty members during a staff meeting. These thoughts and ideas were used as inspiration to compose the music and write the lyrics of the song in collaboration with CDS teacher David Knapp and former student Mitchell Dubin, who is now a freshman at Yale University and spent a pandemic gap year in 2020-2021 teaching music at CDS.
This amazing team of musicians also received help in Hebrew translation from Michal Schachter and Adi Sampson and in American Sign Language from Janice Myers.
The result is the first-ever CDS School Song, which was performed by the entire school at the 50th day of school celebration on November 15. The students spent several weeks learning the words and hand motions to accompany the original composition in preparation for this premiere.
The lyrics are as follows:
Our community is like a growing tree
CDS is more than just a school
With prayer, love, open hearts and minds
Together, together through time
הקהילה שלנו היא לא רק בית ספר
קהילתנו היא משפחה גדולה
עם תפילה, אהבה, ולב פתוח
ביחד לומדים את מעגל החיים
Hakehila shelanu hi lo rak bayt sefer
K’hilateinu hi mishpacha g’dolah
Im t’fillah, ahava, v’lev patuach
B’yachad lomdim et ma’agal hachayim
Listen to the Song
Learn the Hand Motions
We look forward to many more special occasions for decades to come where we can gather together and sing these words and appreciate this beautiful music that truly captures the essence of who we are as a CDS community.
