Ramaz Names New Head of School

By Vatisha Smith Paul Shaviv, the newly appointed Head of School of the Ramaz School on the Upper East Side, is a longtime educator who was born in the U.K. and studied at Oxford University. He recently left a 14-year stint as Head of School at the Tanenbaum Community Hebrew School of Toronto, Canada, to replace Judith Fagin, who was headmaster at Ramaz for seven years. Fagin was honored at the Ramaz annual awards dinner, which also celebrated the school"s 75th anniversary on Jan. 8. Shaviv has three married children and eight grandchildren living abroad in Israel and Europe. He laughed about his family"s enthusiasm about his move to the Upper East Side. â??They"re very excited to come visit. They"re already thinking about shopping in New York, he said. â??Probably at their dad"s expense. Over coffee, Shaviv talked with Our Town about everything from his passion for education to his vision for the Ramaz School. Our Town: You"ve been involved in education most of your life. What drew you to that field? Paul Shaviv: The first two degrees that I had were in architecture, but I"d always been active as a student and a teenager in the Jewish community, particularly in educational affairs. I love teaching other people and I decided that I should follow what my heart wanted's I went off and did further training and studies, Jewish History in particular, and then I went into education. You were at Tanenbaum for 14 years. How did you come to the Ramaz School? Well, the Jewish school world is in a world all its own. There"s a lot of contact between the schools's I"d been at Tanenbaum for 14 years and I had a feeling that I"d done most of what I wanted to and this was a challenge that was so special that it was irresistible. Also, my first wife passed away some years ago and a year ago I got remarried to a lovely lady who lives on the Upper East Side, and that was a powerful incentive. What is your vision for Ramaz? All private schools, and private Jewish schools in particular, are going to be facing a lot of different challenges in the next few years. The cost of education is going up. The ability of families to afford private schooling is under huge pressure. We are in the middle of a huge cultural revolution as well. Education is going to change from paper to digital platforms. I think literacy and culture are changing as a result of the digital world. So every school has to be positioned to face those challenges, and I think many schools will probably be unrecognizable in 10 years" time. My vision at Ramaz is to make sure that the school is positioned and ready to deal with those pressures and changes. Also, the Jewish community is changing and the school has to be ready for those changes. You"ve been here a few months now. What do you like most about New York? I love the buzz of the people. And the little...what do they call them, â??shops on the Upper East Side. There is so much culture from shop to shop. I just love it.