By Cindy Mindell

WEST HARTFORD – When Susan Finkle helped start Noah’s Ark daycare and preschool program at Congregation Beth Israel in 1985, she had no idea whether the venture would succeed. “Not in a heartbeat did I believe that it would last this long,” says the director of the West Hartford nursery school. “Now here I am, 25 years later.”

Noah’s Ark is the first and only synagogue-based early childhood program in greater Hartford. Beth Israel will celebrate the center’s silver anniversary on Saturday, Nov. 13. All children and parents who have been associated with the program are invited to attend.
The idea for a daycare center at the synagogue came about in late 1984. Finkle, a congregant with five-year-old twins, worked at the Montessori School of Greater Hartford. Associate Rabbi Jody Cohen needed childcare for her toddler. The two formed a committee and, nine months later, Noah’s Ark opened with 12 children, aged six weeks to three years. Within a year or two, parents of the older children asked for a preschool, and a program for four- and five-year-olds was created.
Since its founding, the children of every assistant rabbi and associate rabbi at Beth Israel have attended the program, Finkle says. The decision to change the center’s name from “daycare” to “early care” was inspired by a four-year-old, she says. “He asked, ‘Why do they call it daycare? Don’t you take care of the children, not the day?'”
The early care and education center includes preschool and extended-day options, with a Jewish curriculum.
The children celebrate Shabbat every Friday with their teachers and CBI’s Rabbi Michael Pincus, and learn about the Jewish holidays. Finkle credits her “fabulous staff,” many of them long-serving, with the center’s success.
“Noah’s Ark provides a warm and nurturing environment that enriches the lives of young families,” says Pincus, who describes the center as “one of the jewels” of the synagogue. “As both a parent of children in the program and as a rabbi who gets to sing and tell stories to these children each week as we welcome in Shabbat, I am thankful to the teachers in this wonderful program who are doing such holy and sacred work.”
The celebration begins with a Havdalah service, followed by dinner, live music and entertainment, children’s activities, and singing by Noah’s Ark children. Special guests include Rabbi Jody Cohen and Rabbi Elissa Kohen, former associate rabbi of the synagogue.
“In the book of Proverbs we read, ‘Train a child in the way he ought to go; and he will not swerve from it even in old age,'” says Pincus. “Through the dedication and love of our teachers, our children grow up with the values and respect that hopefully will raise each of them to become a mensch. How wonderful to envision that the babies that start at Noah’s Ark as young as six weeks old may one day, after celebrating their consecration, bar- or bat-mitzvah, confirmation, a wedding, and other wonderful lifecycle celebrations within these walls, be the crowd that gathers in the future for our amazing Seniors for Arts, Growth, and Education program.”
For more information contact noahsark@cbict.org / (860) 232-5038.