Purim has arrived, and the decibel level in the Denver Jewish Day School gym is rising by the moment. Many of the 160 lower division kids are dressed as Mordechai and Queen Esther, anxiously awaiting the Purim spiel.
As the conclusion of the spiel – including the requisite vocal disdain expressed at every mention of Haman – music quickly fills the air. Everyone is dancing and singing.
So is Rabbi Shalom Lebowitz. Dressed as Mordechai, he is prancing from group to group, injecting doses of enthusiasm. He pleads to an onlooker, “Dance with me.” Moments later, he hugs a small group of students, organizing yet another pod of celebration.
It is difficult to tell who is enjoying the Purim assembly more; the students dressed in Purim garb, or an energetic teacher bobbing up and down with his staff utilized as a conductor wand.
“I love this,” says Rabbi Lebowitz. “A day like Purim gets the fire going.
“This is one big dance that we’re all part of. Our truest natural state is when we take a couple of deep breaths, we return to the truly natural, joyous baby that we started off as.”
Lebowitz, 28, who teaches fourth and fifth-grade Judaica classes, arrived at DJDS six months ago. The road to Denver was anything but conventional for this rather free spirit.
Ten years ago, at the age of 18 and finishing yeshiva studies in the US, Lebowitz began his journey on a Birthright trip to Israel.
“I was looking for the next step, and the next step seemed to be going to college,” says Lebowitz, originally from Boston.
“Before that, I wanted to take a summer in Israel, to experience an opportunity to travel from top to bottom of our beautiful land and see the way that Judaism looks when it’s not far away.
“On the final day of Birthright, I realized I’m not going back to America. So I called up my parents, I’m like, ‘Mom, dad, I’m not coming back.’
“They’re like, ‘OK, you want to take another week?’
“I was like, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m not coming back. This is my home. This is my place. This is my people. I need to explore this.’”
“They asked, ‘What are you going to do? I said, I’ll figure it out.’”
Lebowitz spent four months walking around Jerusalem. Each day started at the Western Wall.
“I would go and pray there, and then I would go with my few books and my guitar slung over my shoulder and I’d walk about the city and see what great adventure was to be found,” says Lebowitz.
“I’ve met sheiks and priests and rabbis and travelers and tourists of every kind and color. I realized everyone had a lesson for me. This was the place where the whole world is meant to come and taste the spirit.”
So, Lebowitz spent what he planned as a gap year studying economics at Bar-Ilan University, and as a counselor in the gap year program. He also became a counselor of a traveling camp. The final stop on one of the tours was the artistic community of Safed (Tzfat).
“We spent the most unbelievable Shabbat in the city,” says Lebowitz. “The singing, the dancing, the ancient mystics and sages that we went to visit in caves, and all the other views, were unbelievable.”
At the culmination of that Shabbat, Lebowitz brought his students back to campus and said, “I’ll see you later.” Then he took the first bus he could right back to Safed. He emailed the university, thanked them for his gap year and told them he would no longer study economics.
Lebowitz stayed in Safed for eight years.
“What a magical time it was,” Lebowitz says. “I spent most of my time there engaged in Torah study and community programming. We ran Shabbat workshops, concerts, musical jam sessions, and I’d lead people on tours throughout the city.”
The rabbi also formed a band, called Shefa.
“It’s kind of like the shtetl meets the Sixties,” says Lebowitz.
Then, in October, 2023, war with Hamas arrived. Suddenly, tourism to Safed disappeared. The rabbi, his wife Dalya and son Razien happened to be visiting Denver for a Bar Mitzvah of one of Dalya’s brothers, when a light turned on.
“All of a sudden I had no more groups coming to Safed, and it was scary living in a place without a bomb shelter, where we had to run down the road in the middle of the night with a newborn baby as rockets are flying overhead,” said Lebowitz.
“I had a family to think about and I was wondering where my family would thrive. We were already in America, and my wife said, ‘Why don’t we spend a little time here, where we can spread a little light.’”
Hence, after quite the deliberation, another relocation – to Denver, and DJDS.
“We came to the realization that we were needed here,” said Lebowitz. “Even though I want with all my heart and soul to dig my toes back into sacred soil, America needs us.”
The rabbi surveys the raucous scene in the gym, and smiles.
“My fourth graders and fifth graders are rambunctious, holy, beautiful and deeply intelligent,” Lebowitz says. “They ask brilliant questions. When G-d was looking for a guarantor for the Torah, Moses pointed to the children.
“These are the ones who are going to carry the torch forward, generation after generation. These are the ones who are going to be the guarantors that the word of G-d is never going to be lost from our mouths.
“It is an honor and a pleasure to come into a beautiful school like this that welcomes such a diversity of opinions, and welcomes such a diversity of perspectives, and I get to share the Torah with them.
“That speaks to my soul.”
It should be noted that as the rabbi was dancing around the DJDS gym, Dalya Lebowitz was on the cusp of giving birth. The couple welcomed their daughter to the world on Oct. 19.
“People ask me,” the rabbi says, ‘“am I ready?’
By no means am I ready, because if I’m ready, that means that the blessing is so small that it could fit into my conception of what I know.
“When big blessings come along, they reach beyond anything we’ve ever been able to previously do.”
© IJN 2025