Jewish Hasidic reggae artist Matisyahu will be playing a very special benefit concert on June 15th at Symphony Space in NYC to help raise money for Lamplighters Yeshivah, a new and progressive school in Crown Heights that the star co-founded.

It's not every day that a Grammy nominated, world-famous artist co-founds a school. VirtualJerusalem sat down with Matisyahu and his wife Tahlia, and on a separate occasion, with the head educator at Lamplighters, Devorah Kessler, to find out more about how it all came together.

VirtualJerusalem: How did the founding of Lamplighters even come about? What makes one decide to start a school?

Matisyahu: It was an idea my wife and a couple other families had together. We met Devorah, who ran an afterschool program that we really enjoyed and we spoke to her about wanting to start a school in Crown Heights. We had a vision for the kind of school we wanted our kids to be in, one that would have progressive education and child centered learning, while still having a strong Jewish and Hasidic theme.

VirtualJerusalem: Can you elaborate a little on what progressive education entails?

Devorah: My mission has kind of been to integrate Judaica with secular skills, science literacy, arts, etc. To me, those things are not necessarily separate, but they're intuitive to each other. When I read the first chapter of Torah, Bereshit, to me I see a rich opportunity for science, art, and for all the things that children should be exploring.

So when people ask questions, like is your school based on secular studies or based on Jewish studies, or exclusively Jewish studies... those things are intuitively integrated and not really separate. Over the years, I've been working on developing a curriculum that goes through Torah stories and Jewish holidays and then uses them as a platform and springboard for all development skills and all secular subjects that children should be exploring. That's what really inspired me to engage in Jewish education, to kind of bring those things together.

VirtualJerusalem: What do you think the biggest benefit of this kind of education is?

Matisyahu: The benefit of being in a small school is that you know the teachers and what's going on there, as opposed to sending your kids to a school when you don't really know what's going on. Personally, I had a lot of fears about putting kids in school. My own experience with school and organized education was not very positive. But the people we're working with are really dedicated and amazing, and that takes a lot for me to say because I don't believe in too many people.

I really didn't want to put my kids with teachers who were just "ok," or teachers who were just going to teach them how to read, but [rather] with teachers who were really amazing. I think that's the main thing we have going for us right now. Devorah is outstanding. When you find people that are amazing at what they do, it's very rare. Whatever profession it is, most people are ok at it, but to find someone who is unbelievably talented at something... that's rare. Devorah's our backbone, and then we have a great group of parents who are part of our school because they're extremely dedicated to what we're doing. So the dream is to just keep doing it and keep it going.

VirtualJerusalem: How have you guys seen your own kids benefit from being at Lamplighters?

Tahlia: They're taught to love the art of learning. They're very excited- whatever they do, it's so alive to them, and the curriculum is very amazing. It's the luxury of having less kids in class, but it's also in the way Devorah talks to them. She talks to the children as if they're adults, in a very mature fashion. Then I'm better able to reinforce that at home because she's doing it in school. It helps them mature in many ways, and in a spiritual way too. They learn as they absorb things, kids really are sponges.

Devorah: I think that... there's a very new movement toward not underestimating what children can teach each other or can learn from their own experiences. They could be teaching each other so much more than we realize.

VirtualJerusalem: Can you give us a specific example of something "typical" you take to the kids, but teach in a unique and child-centered way?

Devorah: For Pesach, we put out a grinder so the children could explore the process of turning wheat into matza. We thought that they could learn the halachot of matza and chametz that way. So we got some wheat stalks, real wheat stalks, and made a kind of wheat field, and we put the grinder out. I thought the kids would use it for maybe 40 minutes, but for two whole days the children were picking wheat, grinding wheat, they wanted to make flour, then they wanted to make rice flour and barley flour, and they wanted to make matza...

They really understood how bread is made, and how matza is made, and they really understood the difference between bread that rises and bread that doesn't rise, and they experimented with it. To me, that just felt like, 'wow,' the kids are really getting the scientific side, and the halachaic aspects of matza. And when you look at pictures of them looking at the matza and exploring the matza, they're so connected with that mitzvah because they now have the science, and the background, and the sensory, and the cooking, and all the different elements, even art, because they did artistic things with the matza, too.

It was really fun to watch them engage in the mitzvah, and learn about chametz, in such a multi-disciplinary way, and to see science as Hashem's creation, and as being connected to spirituality and they experience it that way, even though they're kind of young to articulate it.

VirtualJerusalem: Devorah, what would you say is the main thing you think is missing from the educational system in the United States in both the Jewish community as well as outside of it?

Devorah: Universally, education needs to be much more child-directed, much more child-owned. We need to stop underestimating what they can teach each other. That's the starting point to all learning. As far as Jewish education goes, the Jewish community needs to appreciate that science and Torah and arts and self expression are not separate entities. They're all intuitively connected and integrated, and if Hashem is one and nothing is separated from Hashem, then all those things are connected. We need to start educating more holistically. Jewish history and secular history and science... they're not separate.

VirtualJerusalem: Matisyahu, at the fundraiser on June 15th in NYC, what can your fans expect to hear?

Matisyahu: I have a new record that I'm working on so I'll play a couple of new songs, and I'll play the "hits" - "One Day," "King Without a Crown," and then I'll do what I usually do, which is improvise, as well. I feel that the best moments of any concert that I give are in between the songs.

VirtualJerusalem: You were in Israel recently with record producer Kojak, will you be playing some of the stuff you did together?

Matisyahu: Yeah, there's a song that we wrote together called "Sunshine", I'll probably play that and maybe we'll do "Miracle", another one we wrote.

We here at VirtualJerusalem have been fortunate enough to see Matisyahu play live and cannot urge you enough to head out to the show and show your support. As an added plus, after the special performance on June 15th, Matisyahu will answer individual questions from the audience in an open mike forum--a rare and exclusive opportunity for fans.

Tickets for the benefit are priced at $38, $58, and $108, which will include a premium seat and a VIP reception and photo opportunity with Matisyahu after the concert. One hundred percent of the concert proceeds will go towards benefiting Lamplighter Yeshivah and improving Jewish education.