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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

November 2, 2007

Bearing witness a world away from L.A.

Leave a Comment / United States /

Two weeks ago, The Journal published an essay by Janice Kamenir-Reznik, founding president of the nonprofit Jewish World Watch, as she and two other JWW leaders departed for a two-week trip to Chad to visit Darfur refugees. As a coalition of about 60 Los Angeles-area synagogues, JWW’s mission is to educate and advocate on issues of genocide and egregious violations of human rights. It also works to provide relief to survivors of genocide.

In Chad, women in the refugee camps face danger of assault and rape by the Janjaweed marauders — as well as other rebels and even some Chad locals — when they venture out to collect firewood. To reduce this risk, JWW has been raising funds to provide two refugee camps — Iridimi and Touloum — with solar cookers. These low-cost aluminum-covered cardboard instruments are manufactured in the camps, are self-sufficient and have proven effective in keeping the women safer.

To evaluate their program, Kamenir-Reznik, Executive Director Tzivia Schwartz-Getzug and Solar Cooker Project director Rachel Andres traveled first to N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, to meet with officials from UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency. They then traveled with humanitarian workers, as well as Chadian environmental and refugee advocates, as they visited the Iridimi and Touloum camps, where more than 10,000 cookers are now in use. They met with tribal leaders and with more than 100 women who use the cookers. They listened to stories of hardship and triumph over unimaginable tragedy. The following are excerpts from e-mails the travelers sent home while en route:

N’Djamena, Oct. 15

The average life expectancy here is 47 years old, I can tell you that I have not seen one older person anywhere! I am 45 years old, and because of sheer luck or fate I was born in Los Angeles, as were my husband and my children, and based on life-expectancy rates in the United States, I should have many more years of life to experience. But the children here, the smiling beautiful children in their school uniforms, waving to us on a street corner — what chance do they have?

— Tzivia Schwartz-Getzug

N’Djamena, Oct. 16

While “touring” N’Djamena, Derk [Rijks, the solar cooker project founder] wanted to give a message to someone who happens to live in the poorest section of town. We were dropped off …[and] walked along an endless river of garbage: plastic bags, trash, bugs, empty containers, a few goats roaming, small fires burning … words can’t describe the smell and sight. On one side of us was the garbage with children walking across it and even wading into it, and on the other side were dung huts where families live in 10 x 10 hovels. There were a few children roaming about, some barefoot, as well as a woman braiding another woman’s hair, a skinny dog sniffing around for something to eat and finally the home of Martine.

Martine is a beautiful, poised, sweet woman who was so gracious and pleased to see us. It was putting this beautiful face and sweet personality to the reality of this slum-like living that was completely devastating. The realization that people were living, literally, on top of this trash dump hurt to the core of my being. This country and its people are supposed to be in good shape compared to Sudan … and we haven’t even arrived at the refugee camp yet.

— Rachel Andres

Iridimi, Oct. 18

Today we visited the Iridimi refugee camp, where our Solar Cooker Project was launched 18 months ago. The sense of being, literally, a world away, finally holding the hands of the women working to manufacture the solar cookers and speaking with the Sudanese refugees about how our project has impacted their lives for the better is something I will never forget.

Iridimi itself reminds me of how I picture the “neighborhood” where our

Post-Trip Speaker Series Dates

Nov. 2

Who: Rachel Andres
When: 6 p.m.
Where: Temple Israel of Hollywood, 7300 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles

Who: Janice Kamenir-Reznik
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Temple Adat Elohim, 2420 E. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks

Nov. 3

Who: Janice Kamenir-Reznik
When: 8:45 a.m.
Where: Valley Beth Shalom, 15739 Ventura Blvd., Encino

Who: Tzivia Schwartz-Getzug
When: 9:30 a.m.
Where: Adat Ari El, 12020 Burbank Blvd., Valley Village

Nov. 5

Who: Janice Kamenir-Reznik
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Temple Isaiah, 10345 W. Pico Blvd, Los Angeles — co-sponsored by Temple Beth Am and Temple Emanuel

ancient Israelite ancestors lived in Egypt. Low mud-brick buildings, some thatched-roofs, little vegetation, and roaming donkeys — truly a biblical scene resulting from contemporary inhuman behavior.

We began our day with an incredible meeting — we were ushered into a room of 20 “elders” of the camp, sitting on mats, dressed in long white gowns and tall turbans. These are the leaders of the Iridimi camp, and they were invited to meet with us to discuss the project. I have to say that I was terribly intimidated by this group, as I’m sure they have never seen three white Jewish women from Los Angeles (who, while trying to dress appropriately for our guests, ended up looking like Golde, Tzeitle and Hava!), let alone engaged in peer-to-peer conversation with them! But they were gracious, respectful and expressed extreme gratitude for the work we have done for their benefit and for the benefit of their families.

The other surprising thing was their willingness to listen to our “moderator,” Marie Rose, who, with Derk, now heads Tchad Solaire, the local organization formed to run the project. Just as we watched these men “shoo” the three women leaders of the camps to the back of the room, they listened as Marie Rose led the 2-hour long discussion, answered their questions and engaged them in sometimes difficult conversation. Finally, we three Jewish feminists took great pride and pleasure in witnessing the young Madame La Presidente des Refugies speak up from behind the rows of men and express her opinions about the usefulness of the project and her disagreement with some of the opinions expressed by the men. I believe we are witnessing a real cultural change, both in terms of empowerment of women in this society, as well as a grudging acceptance by the men. But isn’t that just history repeating itself?

My last thought is about kindness. As I sat on the dirt floor of two different “homes” this afternoon, I witnessed a kind of dignity and kindness that I will never forget. How do people who have lost so much — family, community and property — continue to offer to the stranger who enters their home whatever little food or shelter they have? Without a second thought to their own needs, these participants in our evaluations opened their homes to us, provided us with food and drink and gave us entry into their lives.

Bearing witness a world away from L.A. Read More »

Israel’s teacher strike highlights cracks in the system

Leave a Comment / Education /

As much as he’s been wanting to complete his master’s degree in history, David Graniewitz would rather be standing in front of a classroom, teaching history or English to junior high and high school students.

Instead Graniewitz, who has taught in Israeli secondary schools for almost 20 years, has spent the past couple of weeks glued to his kitchen table, focusing — or trying to focus — on his own studies.

“I like being with a class,” Graniewitz, a 46-year-old father of four, said in his homey apartment in the southern neighborhood of Talpiot, surrounded by mounds of folded laundry. “I’m finding being home difficult. It’s boring.”

Graniewitz is one of the more than 40,000 teachers taking part in a strike launched by the Secondary School Teachers Organization (SSTO) on Oct. 10 to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Organizers say the strike, which is affecting some 400 junior high schools and 1,200 high schools in the Jewish sector according to the Ministry of Education, could end tomorrow or last for months. The Arab sector joined the strike two weeks ago.

Some secondary school teachers, who belong to the Israel Teachers Union, are not on strike because their union forged a deal with the ministries of Finance and Education several months ago. The result is a hodgepodge of teaching hours and a great deal of confusion.

As of press time on Tuesday, SSTO and Israel’s education minister had resumed talks, with Union of Local Authorities serving as a mediator. While sources on both sides say the gaps remain large, the parties agreed to negotiate intensively to try to end the strike, Ha’aretz reported.

The Israeli public, which has been less than sympathetic to the demands of highly paid striking dockworkers and electric company employees, does not dispute that the country’s teachers are vastly underpaid and subjected to poor working conditions.

“Teachers in this country are getting shafted,” said Jody Zaviv, a Jerusalem property manager whose 14- and 16-year-old sons have been home due to the strike. “I’ve heard their average take-home pay is 4,000 to 6,000 shekels [roughly $1,000 to $1,500 a month] and you can’t raise a family on that. I hold it against the government for refusing to pay a decent wage.”

Teachers, in fact, may earn even less than the figures quoted by Zaviv, according to Keren Shaked, an SSTO spokeswoman.

“A new teacher earns about 3,300 shekels [$825 per month], minimum wage before taxes,” and this is after three years of university. Teachers working 20 years average less than 6,000 shekels [$1,489].”

Independent studies confirm that Israeli teachers earn very little compared to educators in other countries. A survey of 2005 wages conducted by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 30 countries placed Israeli teachers in 29th place, above Hungary but below Slovenia, Iceland, the Czech Republic and Mexico.

Further, data released by Central Bureau of Statistics in July 2007 revealed that Israeli teacher salaries averaged only $1,464 pretax per month, while the average overall Israeli salary was $1,968. Monthly salaries in the electric company averaged $4,537; $2,658 in the industrial sector; $2,259 in the transport field; $1,603 in the health field, and $911 in the catering and hospitality sector.

“Honestly, I don’t know why anyone would become a teacher,” said Shaked, a teacher. “The teachers colleges are crying out for students.”

With few exceptions, Shaked said, Israeli schools “look a lot like prisons. If there’s air conditioning it’s because the parents raised the money. During the past few years, the rate of violence and drugs and dropping out has skyrocketed. Slash money from the education budget and this is what happens.”

Shaked said budget cuts imposed during the tenure of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have meant that teachers who once taught history or the Bible several hours a week to a classroom of students are only allotted two to three hours weekly.

“Teachers may be teaching the same subject in five or seven or even 10 different classrooms” in order to fill their quota and make ends meet, Shaked said. “More students mean more papers to prepare and grade, more students and parents to meet.”

To take home $1,863 per month this past school year, Graniewitz, an immigrant from England, taught matriculation-level courses in three separate secondary schools.

“The city cut back the hours it was willing to pay, which meant that a syllabus that used to take six hours to impart has to be condensed into three hours. You can’t do this and also hold discussions and do group work. Today everything is geared at passing the bagrut [matriculation exams]. There’s no time to impart values. I know it sounds pretentious, but we’re here to educate.”

Graniewitz said the teaching environment has deteriorated in recent years.

“I’ve been teaching in a school in a poor neighborhood, and you would think parents would appreciate teachers for helping their children get out of their rut. That isn’t happening. The amount of antagonism and aggression is shocking. Every day is a struggle. You don’t know if someone is going to throw a firecracker through the door or if your car is going to be vandalized.”

Standing under the protest tent set up by striking teachers within shouting distance of the prime minister’s office, Yael Pulvermacher, a 38-year-old special-ed teacher, said the $1,043 she comes home with every month “isn’t even enough to pay for the music school my sixth-grader wants to attend. I left a high-tech job to go into teaching, but unless something dramatic happens I won’t be teaching next year.”

Despite the many challenges facing Israeli teachers, Graniewitz said he is aching to get back to teaching.

“It’s my fix,” he said, smiling broadly. “Even with the bad parts, I’d still like teaching kids in Israel more than I would in, say, America. Most of our problems are universal problems,” he said.

Israel’s teacher strike highlights cracks in the system Read More »

Raising pint-sized ‘People of the Book’

Leave a Comment / Education /

To harried modern parents, few things sound more luxurious than a quiet weekend away — no cell phones, no televisions — with a pile of unread books. To the vast majority of their children, few things sound more torturous. It’s not that modern-day kids don’t enjoy reading. Most do. It’s just that an abyss of high-tech alternatives and jam-packed daily schedules have left them unlikely to discover that reading offers a world of excitement that could put their Xbox 360 to shame.

Nevertheless, as academic demands become increasingly grueling and college admission requirements increasingly stringent, strong reading skills might be more important to kids today than ever before. Studies consistently show better readers get better grades. Reading is, after all, the very heart of education. Reading enriches the imagination, builds vocabulary, teaches grammar and makes students better spellers and writers. If our kids are going to thrive and succeed in our fast-paced, achievement-oriented society, they need to be proficient readers.

So what’s a 21st-century parent to do? Pile on the after-school tutoring? Threaten that the kids will lose their instant messaging privileges if they don’t finish their reading assignments?

Perhaps the philosopher Epictetus put it best: “If you wish to be a good reader, read.”

There never was and never will be any other way.

In celebration of Jewish Book Month, here are some suggestions for fostering critical literacy skills and igniting a lifelong love of reading in your child:

Give Reading a Prime-time Slot

Regardless of how much kids like to read, they won’t read if they haven’t any time to do so. By setting aside twenty minutes or so every day (right before bedtime usually works well), we provide our kids ample reading opportunity while sending the message that it’s an activity worthy of their precious time.

Check the Reading Level

When children take on books beyond their proficiency level, they can become rapidly disheartened. To determine whether a book is too hard for your child, have her read the first page aloud to you.0 If she stumbles over more than five words, put it back on the shelf and help her make another selection.

Enlist Hollywood

Seeing a story on the big screen (or a small one) can provide just the spark kids need to pick up the book version. Flicks like “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,” “Harry Potter,” “Harriet the Spy” and “Stuart Little” are sure to have your little stars hitting the library in no time.

Entice Them With Glossy Pages

Kids needn’t peruse classics to reap the benefits of reading. Magazines that zero -in on children’s passions — from skateboarding to fashion- – can inspire even the most reluctant readers to start flipping pages. Techno-savvy kids can pull up favorite magazines online at sites like Sports Illustrated Kids and Time for Kids.

Create a Library on Wheels

Propensity toward carsickness aside, keeping a supply of books in the car will turn all those idle hours in traffic into valuable reading time.

Turn Them on to Books on Tape

Listening to a book on tape while following along in the real thing gives struggling readers (or those who simply want to tackle a book that’s beyond their reading level) an opportunity to enjoy the story without getting bogged down by difficult words.

Money Talks

In addition to your child’s regular allowance, provide a small allotment exclusively for reading material. Even if all your kid can afford is a paperback book or magazine, you’ve helped your cause.

Start a Parent/Child Book Club

This hot new trend in book clubs offers benefits galore, ranging from heightened reading skills to multigenerational bonding.

It’s in the Bag

Stash some books in a tote bag and pull them out whenever you and your kids get caught in a holding pattern. Whether waiting at the doctor’s office or a restaurant, your children will be thankful to have books to bust their boredom.

Add ‘Book Night’ to Your Chanukah Traditions

Reserve one night of your Festival of Lights this year for family members to exchange hot reads. Spend the rest of the evening enjoying your new books together. Make your gift last all year long by tapping Family Reading Night as a weekly tradition.

Read to Your Kids

For kids who are learning to read — and even those who are old pros! — it’s always a treat to listen to a book. Use expression and intonation as you read to encourage your kids to do so on their own.

For more information, visit
Sports Illustrated Kids: ” target=”_blank”>http://www.timeforkids.com.
Find out everything you need to know about organizing your own parent/child book group at: Raising pint-sized ‘People of the Book’ Read More »

Class Notes: Rockies, Ramah, Shalhevet, Conejo Book-A-Thon

Leave a Comment / Education /

In an impressive show of collaboration, Denver’s Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center, Ramah of the Rockies and the Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado together purchased 360 acres of scenic land in Deckers, Colo., to open Camp Ramah in the Rockies and J-CC Ranch Camp at the Flying J Ranch. The purchase was completed in March 2006, and the Flying J Ranch — the consortium created by the organizations — is now kicking off a campaign to raise $35 million to $40 million to develop the property.

Surrounded by the more than 1.2 million acres of the Pike and San Isabel national forests, the Flying J Ranch brings two independent summer camps together on one site with distinct campuses. Ramah in the Rockies and the J-CC Ranch Camp, based in Denver, will share facilities that include a kosher kitchen, swimming pool, equestrian center, ropes course and rock-climbing facilities.

Ramah has seven camps serving more than 5,000 campers every summer, but many of its camps are full. The Ranch Camp, which has been operating for more than 40 years, was looking to move from its outdated facility 40 miles from Denver. The site will also serve as a conference and retreat center for national Jewish organizations, according to Jeff Robbins, Flying J director.

The new camp will serve the steadily increasing Jewish population of the Southwest. Rabbis from Denver, Texas and Salt Lake City recently visited the site in efforts to spread excitement and spur fundraising .

“I am absolutely amazed by the natural splendor of the new mountain site for Ramah in the Rockies. It will be a stunning and important addition to the Ramah camping movement,” said Rabbi Bruce Dollin, senior rabbi of the Hebrew Educational Alliance Synagogue in Denver. “Horseback riding, mountaineering and an appreciation for the ecological makeup and needs of the Rocky Mountains will be this camp’s unique contribution to Camp Ramah nationally.”

For more information, go to http://www.ramahrockies.org/; http://www.ranchcamp.org/.

… Ramah Everywhere Else

More than 450 professional and lay leaders, funders and camper and staff alumni from Ramah’s seven overnight camps, three day camps and Israel programs came together at the Jewish Theological Seminary last month to celebrate 60 years of Jewish camping.

“Ramah is one of the most successful endeavors the Conservative movement has ever created, because at Ramah we can create Jewish time and Jewish space without interruption from general society,” said Arnold M. Eisen, chancellor of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary. “We need to take the lessons and patterns of Ramah and extend them to many other aspects of our movement to inspire more commitment, more passion and more Jewish pride.”

Ramah programs currently serve more than 6,500 campers and 1,500 college-age staff members each summer, including about 1,300 kids at the Ojai camp in Ventura County.

Programs at the conference featured discussions on a wide range of topics, including Israel programming, leadership development, the educational mission of Ramah, special-needs camping and research studies on the impact of Ramah on the Jewish attitudes and practices of college students.

Trinity College demographer Ariela Keysar presented her extraordinary findings about the significant impact of Ramah on college students, noting that Ramah graduates are three times more likely to date only Jews, four times more likely to attend synagogue services and three times as likely as the general Jewish population to spend significant time in Israel.

Throughout the day, Ramah alumni from 60 years reunited and told stories of the great impact that Ramah has had on their lives. Among those who met were the president of Camp Ramah in California, Julie Beren Platt, whose husband, Marc Platt, is the producer of the Broadway show, “Wicked,” and Caissie Levy, a member of the current “Wicked” cast on Broadway and a former camper and staff member at Camp Ramah in Canada. Levy will soon be the lead in the Los Angeles production of “Wicked.”

For more information, go to http://www.campramah.org/.

More News From Milken

Milken Community High School’s nationwide search for a head of school has come full circle — in fact it’s come right back home. Jason Ablin, who for the past eight years has been Milken’s director of general and integrated studies, will replace Dr. Rennie Wrubel as head of school in July 2008.

“Jason Ablin, the consummate educator, lives the mission of Milken each and every day,” said Wrubel, who will help with the transition before she retires at the end of the academic year. “With a sharp mind, generous heart and kind soul, Jason is a born leader who will surely bring Milken to new heights, educating the Jewish leaders of tomorrow.”

Ablin is a favorite among students and led the school’s successful bid for six-year accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The process helped him gain intimate knowledge of the school, according to a letter sent by Milken’s parent organization, Stephen S. Wise, and signed by Rabbi Eli Herscher and Metuka Benjamin, director of education.

Ablin said he is “thrilled and excited to lead a school which serves the entire Jewish community and which is committed to developing in every child all three pillars of Jewish life: Torah, avodah (service) and gemilut hassidim (acts of kindness).”

Search Is On, Awards Are in at Shalhevet

Shalhevet school has convened a search committee to find a new head of school when founder Jerry Friedman retires at the end of this academic year.

Friedman founded the school 17 years ago with a vision of encouraging children’s moral development and sense of responsibility. It has since added an elementary and middle school with 400 kids in grades K-12. Since its founding, Friedman has served as head of school and for a time as the president.

“Jerry has done an unbelievable job building the school and its vision,” board president Esther Feder said. “I think he’s comfortable that the school is on the right path, and it’s the right time.”

Class Notes: Rockies, Ramah, Shalhevet, Conejo Book-A-Thon Read More »

Milken students win first high school X PRIZE

Leave a Comment / Education /

Milken Community High School students joined the space race this week when two seniors won the first-ever X PRIZE competition for high schoolers. On Sunday, Michael Hakimi and Talia Nour-Omid took home the first Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award for their concept of developing bio-monitoring sunglasses to keep space travelers healthy during civilian spaceflight. The Conrad Award, named for the third man to walk on the moon, is sponsored by the same foundation that awarded Burt Rutan and his SpaceShipOne $10 million in 2004 for becoming the first privately developed rocket to carry humans to space.

The X PRIZE foundation challenged students to “develop a new, innovative concept to benefit the personal spaceflight industry within the next 50 years.” Hakimi and Nour-Omid developed a business plan, graphic model and technical paper on goggles that would non-invasively monitor and project a space traveler’s vital signs during flight. While NASA astronauts generally are wired to numerous monitoring systems, such machinery is too weighty and expensive to be practical for commercial spaceflight.

Hakimi and Nour-Omid’s mock prototype and video display won the most votes from the tens of thousands of attendees at the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup and Holloman Air & Space Expo in New Mexico, where the team was among 10 finalists from across the country. The team takes home a $5,000 prize, and will have their design and trophy displayed at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. A traveling display and trophy will make stops at science centers across the world, and Hakimi and Nour-Omid will get a trophy to take home as well.

“It’s a big deal for the school, and we’re happy we can bring it back to the school and bring pride to the Jewish community in Los Angeles, to let everyone know that there are Jews out there who want to benefit society through space, or business or whatever means possible,” said Hakimi, a Bel Air resident who, like Nour-Omid, has been at Stephen S. Wise schools since the elementary grades.

The award was presented by Nancy Conrad, wife of the late Apollo astronaut Pete Conrad and creator of the prize, and Erik Lindbergh, great-grandson of Charles Lindbergh and designer and sculptor of the first prize trophy.

“For Talia and Michael to be recognized as the first winners of such a prestigious science and innovation award shows us that the work we are doing here may contribute to the changing landscape of our world,” Milken head of school Rennie Wrubel said.

Roger Kassebaum, director of Milken’s Mitchell Academy for Science and Technology, alerted his students to the opportunity in late August, and Hakimi and Nour-Omid, along with one other team, were able to submit their entry by the early September deadline.

The other team, sophomore Nathan Schloss and junior Jonathan Hekmat, developed a plan to allow people on earth to rent time on remote-controlled photographic equipment aboard the spacecraft. Schloss and Hekmat accompanied the team to New Mexico, and Hakimi says they were invaluable in setting up the technical display that attendees judged. Hekmat built the booth, while Schloss — who Kassebaum calls a computer genius — got the display working.

The goggles were hooked up to a temperature monitor and other monitors that simulated measurable vital signs, such as blood pressure, red blood cell count, blood sugar level and pulse. Those signs appeared on virtual-reality-type goggles, as well as on television monitors.

“I think these glasses might have a market, and if someone takes the time someone can make a profit off of these,” Hakimi said, noting they could be useful in space as well as on earth, such as when people leave hospitals.

Kassebaum and Hakimi are looking into legally protecting the idea, even though Hakimi says the necessary technology is in development now and probably won’t be marketable for about 15 years.

Kassebaum believes the students were ready to move so quickly because as members of the Mitchell Academy for Science and Technology, founded at Milken in 2003, they conduct a two-year research project with local universities and professors. Some students have had papers published and several have placed at other science competitions, such as the Intel Talent Search, a young epidemiologists competition and an Israeli physics competition.

Nour-Omid herself placed first in a regional civil engineering competition. Her winning design, a bridge constructed of one pound of unbroken Popsicle sticks and white glue, withstood pressure of 1,060 pounds.

“I try to remove any hurdles for anyone who has a special interest in science,” Kassebaum said.

Through the Mitchell Academy, Nour-Omid is working on cancer research with a lab at UC San Diego, and Hakimi has a paper about to be published on the economic impact of international terrorism on the Dow Jones.

The Conrad Award is the first X PRIZE for high schoolers.

Team Gad Astro from Northbrook, Ill., won the $2,500 second place award with their concept of a self-healing material that would rapidly fix any punctures, maintaining safety in space. Team Penguin Education from Friendswood, Tex., won the $1,500 third place award with their idea for a company that works with private and public schools to provide a high level of space education.

The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. In 2004, the foundation awarded Burt Rutan and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for the world’s first private vehicle to travel to space twice in two weeks. The foundation has since expanded its mission beyond space exploration to offer new prizes for breakthroughs in the areas of life improvement, equity of opportunity and sustainability. Last year the X PRIZE Foundation announced the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for genomics, which will reward the first private effort to map 100 human genomes in 10 days. It is also developing a prize for a super-efficient, mass-producible car.

For more information, visit milkenschool.org or xprize.org.

Milken students win first high school X PRIZE Read More »

Are school trips worth the cost?

Leave a Comment / Education /
  • Sixth-Grade Trip to Catalina: $400
  • Senior Trip to Poland and Israel: $4,000
  • Educational Value: Priceless

Milken Community High School 11th-grader Rebecca Suchov considers her elementary and middle school trips to Colorado, Arizona and Washington, D.C., — and any number of local weekend retreats — as some of her most formative experiences, so she expected a lot from her four months in Israel with Milken last spring. But she never anticipated just how lasting the impact would be.

“Before I left, my mom told me I’d come back changed, more mature, and I thought ‘OK, whatever.’ But I never felt so much more grown up, or so much more alive, like I know what is going on with the world. I feel like a completely different person,” said Suchov, who was one of 40 10th-graders to participate in Milken’s Tiferet Israel Fellowship in the program’s inaugural year last spring.

That response is just what educators are looking for when they offer students out-of-classroom experiences to augment what they learn from lectures, projects and textbooks. Those trips — ranging from a few nights of local camping to pilgrimages to Washington, D.C., to overseas travel — have become part of the curriculum at most Jewish schools and at other independent schools.

“Families are going to Jewish day schools because they can get these kinds of experiences,” said Larry Kligman, middle school director of Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School in Northridge. “There is no question that the kids are more confident, that they have a stronger Jewish identity and that the classroom experience is more beneficial for them because they have these trips, these journeys and adventures.”

But the trips also pose challenges to schools and families. Schools often subsidize the trips and offer assistance to families who can’t pay, but for parents already struggling to pay day school tuition — ironically, cutting their own travel budgets, among other areas — trips bring added pressure, especially with everyone-else-is-going guilt from kids. And administrators concede that some families opt out of the trips because of cost — anywhere from $100 for a Shabbaton to thousands for an Israel trip — widening the economic divide already present in schools.

Other trips are selective, bringing only a small group, leaving others behind and perhaps resentful. Some parents also complain that the educational content on some of these trips is minimal.

“The bottom line that we have to be asking ourselves is: Does it fit into our curriculum? Is it something the family could do on their own or something the school can uniquely provide? And is it something we can offer at a reasonable cost? And that — the reasonable cost — that has become an issue, as far as I’m concerned,” said Barbara Gereboff, head of school at Kadima Academy in West Hills. “I want to make sure we are not falling into this trap of taking trips because everyone else is doing it.”

Gereboff said she and her staff are opening up a conversation about exploring less costly, more local alternatives to the Washington, D.C., or New York trips her middle schoolers take.

Kadima and the newly merged Kadima-Heschel West Middle School won’t be doing away with the trips, she emphasized. Like most educators, Gereboff sees great value in kids learning in a hands-on, natural context, and in building bonds with each other and with staff in a way that doesn’t happen in the school building.

“Is it a luxury? Absolutely. But given the range of luxuries these kids are exposed to, I think it’s a good one,” said Madeline Levine, a Marin County psychologist and author of “The Price of Privilege” (HarperCollins, 2006). “Even though it does require financial scraping for most of us parents, I think it is a better place to spend our money than on more hors d’oeuvres at the bar mitzvah. Most parents and kids spend resources on stuff — material goods — and I like the notion of spending money on an experience that is enriching in some way.”

In fact, taking kids out of a homogeneous middle-class environment can be good for suburban kids, says psychologist Wendy Mogel, author of “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee” (Scribner, 2001).

“I think our students in L.A. are a little bit bubble-wrapped, and so these trips give them an opportunity to wet their feet in life a little more,” Mogel said. “My experience in talking to kids is that they love these things, and one of the reasons they do is because they are kind of nature- and culture-deprived.”

Lina Suchov, Rebecca’s mom, says she jumped at the chance to have Rebecca go on Tiferet, which included intensive classroom study, interaction with Israeli teens and their families, and trips all over Israel. Having seen her three children — now 16, 17 and 20 — go on school trips through Milken and Heschel, Suchov is sold on their value.

“All the trips were a culmination of their studies, so it made a lot of sense to put into practice the concepts they had learned,” Suchov said. “I really believe in experiential learning — they come away with a good sense of purpose of the trip and how it applies to their studies, they make new friends, they see their teachers in a casual environment, and they get used to the idea of separating from their parents,” she said.

Most schools start trips in fifth or sixth grade, with local adventures that involve camping or a science component and usually cost in the range of $200-$500.

Kadima sends its fifth-graders on a science-oriented trip, such as Astrocamp. Seventh-graders in the newly merged middle school will take a social studies trip to New York — a change from Kadima’s usual Catalina camping trip. Students will get that outdoor experience, including challenging hikes and a few days in tents, on a sixth-grade science adventure in Washington state.

“We want them to try things they never thought they could do and come out of it feeling empowered,” Gereboff said.

A group of Kadima-Heschel West middle schoolers visit a sister school in Israel every year. Eighth-graders go to Washington, D.C., and spend months before the trip researching the sites they visit so they can serve as tour guides for their peers.

Gereboff said that trip will be on the table as the school explores whether kids might get the same benefit from a trip in the American Southwest, for example.

That would be a tough trend to buck, since eighth-grade trips to Washington or Israel have became standard in most Jewish day schools.

Heschel, in Northridge, used to offer eighth-graders the opportunity to go to both Washington and Israel, on an exchange program with a sister school in Tel Aviv. For kids who opted for both, that meant missing three or four weeks of school and paying $5,000.

So in the last few years the school has beefed up the East Coast trip with stops in New York and Philadelphia, and asked eighth-graders to choose between Israel and East Coast — an approach that so far has been successful, according to middle school principal Kligman.

At Yeshivat Yavneh in Hancock Park, eighth-graders traditionally go to Israel at the end of the year. Last year, parents had to pay only $600 for the trip, because of a fundraising concert and other efforts.

At some schools, the kids do much of the fundraising on their own.

“It teaches the kids honesty and responsibility,” said Rabbi Boruch Sufrin, head of school at Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy in Beverly Hills, where eighth-graders raise money for their Washington, D.C., trip by selling challah and flowers at carpool line every Friday, running a snack bar after school, and countless other small fundraisers. A percentage of the money they raise goes to charitable causes.

Even with the fundraising, eighth-grade parents are usually left with a bill of more than $1,000 at Hillel, and up to $2,500 at other schools. Some kids contribute their own babysitting money or savings, and schools often offer payment plans and scholarships where necessary. Others roll the price of the trip into tuition. Occasionally, a few administrators admit, kids end up not going because it costs too much.

The stakes are even greater in high school.

Shalhevet’s senior trip to Poland and Israel costs $4,000, with aid available. New Community Jewish High School takes kids to Israel.

YULA tries to achieve the bonding and memory building at a lower cost. Last year, the senior boys went river rafting on the American River and visited San Francisco. The boys earned money for the trip by building sukkahs and running the student store. To cover the rest, the kids contributed $100 for the trip — a sum administrators felt the boys could earn themselves without having to tap into already taxed parental funds.

Milken Community High School holds trips for every grade, and often specific language, science or social studies classes take other trips. In addition to weekend Shabbatons, freshman go to Yuma, Ariz., and other grades go on rafting trips, exchange programs with schools in Tel Aviv or Mexico City, or social justice trips, such as to post-Katrina Mississippi. For the past few years in April, a growing number of seniors have been traveling to Israel and Poland with thousands of other teens from around the world to take part in the annual March of the Living.

“We see this as an exciting, engaging and educationally fruitful way to get our students into their Jewish identity and Jewish learning, and to bring the outside world into relationship with their Jewish identity,” said David Lewis, dean of student life at Milken. “This gets the kids off the hill in Bel Air and gets them into the real world.”

For kids who don’t like to or can’t travel, local options are usually available.

Mogel, who next year will publish her book about teenagers, “The Blessing of a B-” (Scribner), says that a graceful way out is important for kids who are not developmentally ready to take on a big camping trip or the commotion of an Israel trip.

“Our new philosophy of education is ‘the more, the earlier, the better,'” she said. “Better to think about readiness. For many students, these school trips provide a vista broader than their usual haunts, exciting opportunities and lifelong memories — but so can less-glittering adventures.”

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Concierges help families sort through education options

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Barbara Luboff and her husband were thrilled that their young granddaughters would be staying with them for six weeks over the summer. The family — parents and grandparents — wanted to give the girls “a good dose of Judaism while they were in L.A.,” Luboff said, in large part to compensate for the fact that the girls and their mom are the only Jews in Loja, Ecuador, where they live.

But Luboff found it difficult to get information on Jewish schools and camps. A longtime synagogue member active in the Jewish community, Luboff wondered if she was just “out of the loop” because she was a grandparent. Then she stumbled upon the Web site for the Bureau of Jewish Education’s (BJE) concierge service, a one-stop resource for all things Jewish for kids in L.A.

In short order, concierge Stacy Reznikoff Kent directed Luboff to a number of options. Luboff chose the preschool at Temple Ahavat Shalom in Northridge for Claire, 3, and for Annie, 6, Gan Alonim at the Brandeis-Bardin campus in Simi Valley, but with a convenient bus pickup/drop-off at Ahavat Shalom.

“It was a perfect solution,” Luboff said. Kent was “so knowledgeable, personable, friendly and reassuring.” And the programs themselves exceeded Luboff’s expectations.

“It was a real thrill to pick up the girls on Fridays and have them singing Jewish songs in the car,” she said.

Despite some unique features of the Luboff family’s situation, a lot of Jewish parents find themselves in similar straits. More than most cities, Los Angeles boasts a wide array of Jewish day schools, religious schools, camps and youth and family activities. But if you’re new in town, or a first-time parent, or just not familiar with the community, this wealth of opportunities can seem daunting.

Where do you begin looking for programs that suit your family’s needs? What if you want to compare different schools? How do you evaluate programs once you’ve found them?

In February, the BJE launched its Concierge for Jewish Education program, focusing solely on Jewish offerings. And unlike a growing number of related services — including locally published school guides or consultants who charge fees of up to $150 per hour — the BJE provides its service for free.

Funded by a two-year grant from the Jewish Community Foundation, the program currently employs two part-time concierges — one for the Valley, the other for the city — and features a Web site containing guidelines for evaluating schools, with tips on everything from educational philosophy to governance, personnel and costs. Encompassing information on more than 150 programs of all denominations (and nondenominational), it not only covers schools and camps, but Israel trips, special-needs programs, youth groups, cultural events and more.

Federation Vice President Miriam Prum Hess — who as director of day school operations at the BJE also looks after all nonacademic concerns of the 36 Los Angeles-area BJE-affiliated day schools — traces the genesis of the concierge program to trends in Jewish birthrates and education that were first noted more than a decade ago.

A 1997 Federation demographic study, which Prum Hess oversaw, revealed both decreasing birth rates among Jews and declining enrollment in Jewish schools. In addition, the study noted that of all the schooling options available, the largest percentage of Jewish kids — 51 percent — were in Jewish preschools. But it also revealed that “of those 51 percent, we lose about a third of them when they complete nursery school. And of course, that still means we’re not reaching 49 percent,” Prum Hess added.

Then, in 2005, the Avi Chai Foundation released a study titled, “Linking the Silos.” Under the direction of Jewish Theological Seminary Provost Jack Wertheimer, a group of prominent researchers found that over the years, Jewish educational institutions had become isolated from one another, with each operating as “a silo … vertically organized operations, divorced from constructive, horizontal interaction with others.” The study urged Jewish organizations “to build cooperation across institutional lines … and to help families negotiate their way through the rich array of educational options created over the past decade and longer.”

The BJE lay marketing committee was determined to tackle the challenges raised by the study. But the committee members perceived an additional challenge: When it comes to Jewish education, people already connected with the community know where to turn, but “for people who aren’t already involved … it’s hard to find the information, to find a place of entry,” Prum Hess said.

That “place of entry,” the committee believed, might be found when parents first participate in organized activities with their child. Kent, concierge for the city — and the mother of four children under the age of 8 — said they’ve had good responses from placing postcard advertisements “where parents hang out … indoor gyms for kids, places where parent-and-me classes meet, pediatricians’ offices, malls or coffee shops,” as well as on Internet listserves for new parents.

Stefanie Somers — religious school kindergarten teacher, mother of two young children and concierge for the Valley — said she and Kent have also had success organizing coffees for groups of moms. While the kids play together, the concierges talk to the moms about what to look for in a preschool or how to tour/interview/ask questions of directors, for example.

Many of the program’s clients are Jews who were once affiliated but “for whom Judaism had been absent in their lives for some years. But now that they have children, they’ve come full circle and are looking for a Jewish preschool” and, perhaps, synagogue affiliation as well, Kent said.

While the BJE already has a large database of information on Jewish schools and programs around the city, the concierges also visit programs in their territory, “meeting with directors, finding the strengths and uniqueness of each school,” adding to and revising their information, Prum Hess said.

They also use a Web-based customer relations management program, Salesforce, in which the concierges continually update information gathered from each client contact; they do the same with details about programs, schools and even one-time activities. Each new item entered into the system triggers an e-mail to families for whom it is appropriate. Once a client’s information has been entered, the software also triggers reminders to the concierges to contact clients at times of transition, i.e., from preschool to elementary or day school to religious school.

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Bratz : They’re cool, hot and controversial

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Depending on whom you ask, Bratz are odd-looking multiethnic dolls with big eyes and skimpy clothes – or they’re, like, the coolest things ever.

The dolls — with their “passion for fashion” demonstrated through midriff-baring tops and micro-miniskirts — have been criticized by many parents as being overly sexualized and therefore bad examples for little girls.

But ask a 6- to 10-year-old girl about them, and she’ll say they’re sooooo awesome. The sales of Bratz nearly rival that of Barbie — topping more than $2 billion by 2006 — and now, with the wide release last summer of the live action Bratz feature-length film, they’ve secured their place as pop-culture icons for the pretween set.

Bratz were created in 2000 by Isaac Larian, an Iranian Jewish immigrant turned toy entrepreneur, who had set out to create an anti-Barbie. Legend has it that Larian was turned off by the swollen-head prototype a designer showed him, but his then-11-year-old daughter, Jasmin, was enthralled by it.

Thus, the first of the Bratz pack, Yasmin, was born. Soon afterward, her totally multicultural BFF (that’s “best friends forever”) followed, including Jade, Cloe and Sasha — all of whom are characters in the live-action film, which is scheduled to be released on DVD Nov. 27.

Unlike Barbie — with her WASPy blond hair, penchant for pink and lame steady boyfriend, Ken — Bratz represents a different type of feminine ideal. They reflect the mixed messages that are fed to young girls today: a “girl power” mantra combined with a tarty, sexed-up image, a la Britney Spears. With ethnicities ranging from Asian to African American to a unique blend of Jewish Latina, the dolls trumpet their message loud and clear: It’s OK to be yourself, as long as you look totally hot when the boys are around.

Perhaps it is no accident that this new, aspirational doll had a Jewish creator. After all, back in 1959, Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler — the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants — created Barbie.

Back then, assimilation was not the dirty word it is today; it was a goal. As such, Handler, a savvy businesswoman, convinced her husband to turn his Lucite and Plexiglas furniture-making hobby into a lucrative business. It resulted in the creation of Barbie, the ultimate American fantasy: the leggy, buxom blonde who remade herself as the notion of the ideal American woman and changed with the times, from stay-at-home mom to the uber-careerwoman who does it all and still looks good.

Still, despite Mattel’s attempts to diversify the line, Barbie has had trouble keeping up with the times. Larian’s dolls speak to the girls of the 21st century, a time when the melting pot has given way to multiethnic stars like Jessica Alba and a hybrid like Chrismukkah is practically a national holiday.

That Larian — a Sephardic Jew who arrived in the United States at age 17 with $750 in his pocket — is this new arbiter of kiddie cool also reflects the normalization of Jewish culture in American society at large, where today, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has a national television show, bagels can be bought coast to coast and Yiddishisms like “oy vey” are a part of everyday American dialogue.

But somehow muddled up in the Bratz phenomenon is the notion that image is everything. And many don’t approve of the tarted-up image they see.

In her latest book, “Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good,” author Wendy Shalit takes Bratz to task for its overtly sexy image.

Decrying the come-hither fashions of Bratz Babyz — a spin-off of the original Bratz line — and the emphasis on looking hot in the Bratz books, Shalit agues: “If a little girl is young enough to be coloring and wearing glitter stickers, then she’s probably still too young to be worrying about boys and looking hot.”

“I think it’s a very confusing time, and Bratz is reflecting this confusion,” Shalit said. To really get at the root of the problem, she said, “we need to address the whole ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it’ philosophy, which many mothers continue to believe in.”

Even Sean McNamara, director of the Bratz film, saw the challenges in transforming pint-sized plastic hoochie-mamas into wholesome, real-life teenage girls.

McNamara, executive producer of the Disney Channel TV hit, “That’s So Raven,” was unfamiliar with Bratz when he was approached to direct the project, so he took a trip to his local toy store.

“I was blown away,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “There were two full walls of Bratz stuff. But when I saw them, I thought, ‘These aren’t cute dolls — they look like sluts.'”

“Bratz,” the movie — while keeping its stars clothed and chaste — bends over backward to hit home its message of diversity, often resorting to cliche.

Half-white, half-Asian Jade, for example, is a science geek who, under pressure from her parents to be a good little girl, totally rebels by secretly wearing the hottest fashions. Then there’s half-Jewish, half-Latina Yasmin — played by 25-year-old Nathalia Ramos, herself the daughter of a Spanish father and a Australian Jewish mother — who inexplicably has a mariachi band in her kitchen and sings “La Cucaracha” with her grandmother (played by Lainie Kazan), whom she inexplicably calls Bubbe.

The movie centers around the four Bratz as they enter high school, totally sworn to be BFF. Soon, however, thanks to the devious Meredith Baxter Dimly — the queen bee who is not only the school president but the daughter of the principal — they are forced into cliques that tear them apart.

With Meredith employing the divide-and-conquer thing, Sasha soon hangs only with the cheerleaders; Cloe is a jock; and Yasmin, the loner, gets saddled with the label of “journalist.” (As if!)

Two years later, thanks to a massive food fight and an all-important talent show, the girls are brought back together. Without giving away too much of the plot — which borrows liberally from far better teen movies — the Bratz, with their awesome performance and their totally hip style, break down the barriers at Carry Nation High.

But with all the “likes,” the “omigods” and the rampant commercialism — after all, a love of makeup and shopping are what bind these girls together — what kind of message is Bratz sending to young girls?

Larian, traveling in Africa at press time, was unavailable to comment. Back in 2005, however, he told Business Week magazine, “Kids don’t want to play with Barbies anymore.”

One has to wonder: Is that necessarily a good thing?

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Dear Abby of Cyberspace

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For a while this past year, several thousand girls between the ages of 10 and 14 read my words every day by logging on to Allykatzz.com, an Internet site for “‘tween” girls that provides a safe alternative to MySpace and Facebook.

They wrote to me about their parents’ divorce or their fear of seventh grade or their little eating disorder they hoped no one else would know about.

For several months, I became the “Dear Abby of Cyberspace,” the friendly counselor whose open door was only a cursor away, the virtual adult who answered a teen girl’s question when the actual adult in her life couldn’t even be asked.

When I was brought on to the Allykatzz staff, I expected that my blogging ‘tweeners would grapple with the same issues as I hear of in person from my at-risk adolescent clients: sex, drugs, and — rock ‘n’ roll not withstanding — anger, anxiety and despair. Although the emotional outpouring was similar to that of the kids I work with daily, some of the stories I was told by my nameless readers astonished me:

There was the girl who was raped when she was 8 and, at 14, wanted to know how to keep it a secret until she got to college; the girl who was born with a deformed limb and wanted to cut it out of her body; the girl whose father just died of brain cancer and who wanted to hypnotize herself out of grieving.

I tried to answer all of them, often urging them to advocate for themselves by seeking out counseling or a support group or by expressing their feelings in a positive, healing way. I made it a point to let each of them know they are cherished, unique young women and that, whatever confronts them, this too shall pass.

On a lighter note, the most frequent issue of all seemed to be the one I call the BFF Dilemma. For those of you who are ignorant of cyber-speak, a BFF is a Best Friend Forever. The problem for many of my bloggers was that, alas, the BFF actually shouldn’t be forever. Here is a typical (if not actual) letter:

“So, Leda, like HELP me!!!! My BFF who I no since we wuz in frst grade has gotten so ANNOYING!!! She IMs me all the time and talks about nothing! She even makes fun of me in front of other grls! She told one really cool popular grl my name is Jade and it is SO not Jade! She was OK til 7 grade and then she got WEIRD. My mom sez 2 ignore her but I cant! What to do?”

There were so many BFF Dilemma letters that they took on a weight equal to that of my occasional clinically depressed teen. Although a few of the girls face horrific problems, most of them were dealing with the simple process of being. I am constantly reminded in my work that an adolescent’s struggle to forge a mature identity can be a lonely one, as singular and as difficult as a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.

Part of that transformation is in deciding who will be compassionate and trustworthy enough to make the passage with them. When I was a teenager, I would become baffled and angry when my normally very progressive Jewish parents, who had a reputation among my friends for being especially hospitable, would shake their heads in wonderment and disapproval at some of my peers. “Di vos vaksn nit, vern kleyner,” my Yiddishkeit, immigrant father would tell me: Those who do not grow, grow smaller.

He was right.

BFFs, BBs (blog buddies) and BFs (boyfriends) will come and go, despite the best of intentions, simply because the level of maturity between adolescents is so uneven. Hopefully, for my readers, there will be new and better friends and perhaps a sympathetic adult or two on the road ahead as they travel from girlhood through adolescence into adulthood. It is my wish that I can be one of those adult voices who can support and cajole a young woman forward.

I am reminded of another bit of Yiddish wisdom: Each child carries his or her own blessing into the world. So far, I have been blessed many times over, and I am both grateful for and honored by them all.

Leda Siskind is a licensed marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles who works with adolescents, young adults and families. She can be reached at (323) 824-0551.

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