September 8, 2010

At Yeshivas Ohev Shalom, an all-boys Orthodox high school on Fairfax Avenue, students receive something more than an experimental general studies education — and something less than the universally accepted form of classroom learning.

Unlike at other yeshivas, where rabbis teach Jewish studies and secular instructors teach general studies subjects like chemistry or English, Yeshivas Ohev Shalom students take their general studies classes online.

The students remain on site in the yeshiva’s single classroom, where they sit in front of laptops sent over by a state-recognized online program run by the Kaplan Academy of California and chartered with the Lynwood Unified School District.

In short, they learn individually with online education software.

Rabbi Chaim Tropper, principal of Yeshivas Ohev Shalom, describes this hybrid model of education as “revolutionary.” The aim, Tropper said, is to reduce student tuition fees while maintaining a high standard of general studies education.

Indeed, compared to the approximately $25,000 to $30,000 that local yeshivas typically charge for annual tuition, students at Yeshivas Ohev Shalom will pay $7,500 for the next school year — or even less because the school offers scholarships, Tropper said. The school, which opened in August 2009, started its second year Sept. 1.

Yeshivas Ohev Shalom is the only known Orthodox high school to incorporate online secular education into the classroom. But that may change, said Rabbi Saul Zucker, director of day school and education services of the Orthodox Union. Zucker said that administrators at Orthodox day schools are increasingly open to finding innovative ways to adjust to today’s rough economy.

Of the hybrid model, “It’s a new idea,” Zucker said, noting that there are other yeshivas outside of California that are also experimenting with it. “Schools that are doing it to whatever degree are getting attention,” he said.

On a regular school day last year, extension cords ran across the floor of Yeshivas Ohev Shalom’s classroom, powering up laptops. One student wore soft, bulky headphones, listening to an art history video lecture playing on his laptop. Another student sat in front of his laptop, balancing chemistry equations in a Word document. Seeing that his chemistry teacher, whom he had never met in person, was online — indicated by her screen name popping up on his buddy list — he sent her an instant message, asking whether she had corrected one of his previous chemistry assignments.

The teacher wrote back immediately, saying she had corrected it and that it should be in his e-mail in-box, adding that she had also just e-mailed him a duplicate.

Nothing in the student’s demeanor or expression indicated that he saw anything unusual about this exchange; for high school students nowadays, apparently it isn’t unusual to know someone’s personality only to the extent that it translates through IMs and e-mails, even if this person is a teacher. The student simply typed his response thanking his teacher and clicked “send.”

“NP” — no problem — the teacher wrote back.

Thus, the students of Yeshivas Ohev Shalom, after hours of traditional Torah study, immerse themselves in drop-down menus and sidebars, online quizzes and interactive exercises for their general studies subjects. When they log in to their personal accounts and click on one of the courses, a syllabus and announcements for the day appear on their screens. There is a tab they can click on — “Gradebook” — to find out their grades for assignments, quizzes and exams. Sidebars list every section of each course or subject. Students complete one section (or unit) per week.

Because the students take their laptops home — and giving the Internet to an Orthodox high school student is like giving him “a loaded gun,” Tropper said — Tropper takes care to monitor the students’ online activity with a program called LogMeIn.

“The use of the Internet is 100 percent supervised,” said Rabbi Dovid Tropper (Chaim Tropper’s father), who runs the synagogue attached to the school and helps teach Jewish studies. He added that they are “more than cautious” in monitoring the students’ Web use.

Jessica Anderson, principal of Kaplan Academy of California, explained how a state-funded charter school can be used in a religious private school like Yeshivas Ohev Shalom. For purposes of their general studies, Anderson said, “they’re public school students. We’re not teaching religion. We’re providing a public education. … We’re not connected to Ohev Shalom, other than that we share some students that are enrolled in both schools.”

This year, the students will increase time spent on general studies, Chaim Tropper said. They will work within the Kaplan school program from 2 to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, for one hour and 45 minutes on Fridays, and again for four hours on Sunday — thus, essentially a 10-hour school day.

The general studies portion follows several hours of Jewish learning. The boys daven together for morning prayers at 8 a.m. and then split up into two tracks for the Jewish studies — a regular track that offers in-depth study of Talmud, halachah and Chumash, and a remedial track that focuses on Mishnayot, the book of Prophets, Chumash and discussions about religion.

Offering two tracks is also what sets Yeshivas Ohev Shalom apart from other yeshivas, Tropper said. The boys reconvene for afternoon prayers around 1:30 p.m., he said.

From November through April, when the students finish their general studies portion of their day, they have the nighttime prayers at 6:05 p.m. On Thursday nights, the students continue Torah studies after a dinner break. Last year, they did this twice a week, but with increased secular load, it’s harder for them to stay and do Torah studies. More time has to be allotted for online education, Tropper said.

Moshe Brownstein, a Yeshivas Ohev Shalom student who just started 12th grade, explained why he likes the online model of education.

“It’s as good as you’re going to get in most programs,” Brownstein said. “It’s the state giving you everything. And you can work at your own pace.”

Still, Tropper said, this type of learning “doesn’t work for everyone.” He explained that a couple of the students, who “learn better in a classroom setting,” did not return this year.

So, in an effort to make the setting feel more like a traditional learning environment, this year Yeshivas Ohev Shalom hired one teacher to come in every day to aid in the online learning. As of press time, the school had 12 students enrolled. Tropper hopes to increase that number to 15 and, eventually, to grow the school to 35 students.

Anna Olswanger is 56 and childless, but she doesn’t want to sit around being sad about it. A few weeks ago, Olswanger, a New York-based literary agent and children’s book author, started yerusha.com, a Web site with resources, forums and support for Jews who don’t have children.

“I just want us to find our worth and to know that we do have something to contribute, even if we have been led to believe, or have convinced ourselves, that we don’t have anything to contribute to the Jewish people because we’re childless,” said Olswanger, who married for the first time at 55.

Yerusha means legacy, and part of Olswanger’s mission is to help childless Jews leave a legacy without having children.

On her site, she has created a page of notable people without children, who’ve left an imprint on the Jewish world: Rabbi Akiva of the Mishna, Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold, Bais Yaakov girls schools founder Sarah Schenirer, scholar Nechama Leibowitz, and Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Olswanger chose to write children’s books in part to carry on her family’s traditions. “Shlemiel Crooks,” selected as a PJ Library book and honored by the Jewish Library Association, tells the story of when her great-grandfather’s St. Louis saloon was held up in 1919.

The Web site is only a few weeks old and already has gotten thousands of hits, but so far only a few have posted on the forums page. Olswanger thinks it’s because of the pain and shame many feel for not having children.

“We’ve gotten so public about so many things that used to be very personal, but maybe it will take time for people to feel comfortable talking about this,” she said.

Olswanger hopes the site will spawn in-person groups around the country. “I don’t want to stop with, ‘Aren’t we sad.’ I want to go on to the next step.”

Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services recently broke ground for a new education center on the campus of its special-education Vista School.

Founded as a Jewish orphanage in 1908, Vista Del Mar is now one of the nation’s largest comprehensive care facilities for children and adolescents experiencing social, behavioral, emotional, or developmental challenges. Its 45 programs serve about 6,000 children and families annually.

Al and Hedi Azus donated $1.3 million toward construction of the new building that will bear their name and established a $500,000 Vista Del Mar children’s fund.

Al Azus, who has been on the board for more than 25 years, was a client at Vista decades ago. Unable to stay afloat financially, he brought his two children to Vista, where they were placed in foster care while he searched tirelessly for employment.

Today he is the founder and president of Alna Envelope Company in Los Angeles.

“Like so many of us you have always placed a priority on education, and we have every reason to believe that Vista can become the best private, special-education school in California,” Vista Del Mar’s Board Chairman Carol Katzman told the Azus family during a groundbreaking ceremony last month. “Your gift provides a facility for children with special needs to learn and thrive, enabling them to leave Vista with the capacity and desire to succeed in the world.”

In the early 1960s, when Jewish delis, kosher butchers and bakeries lined the Venice boardwalk, Temple Mishkon Tephilo was Aliza Wine’s neighborhood social hub.

Wine and her Hebrew school friends would take drama classes and plan their Rosh Hashanah outfits together. The local Jewish tailor was a fellow congregant. Every week, it seemed, she would run into peers, family friends and former babysitters in the synagogue’s seaside social hall.

Today, Mishkon’s winding stairwells and airy, domed sanctuary exude a timeworn quality congregants tenderly dub “shabby chic.”

The neighborhood has changed; the paint and carpets have faded, but Mishkon members’ desire to preserve the spirit of the nearly century-old temple has not.

In June, the synagogue — the oldest still operating on the Westside — held a 90th anniversary party featuring a catered dinner, period music performed by the Palisades String Ensemble, speeches and trivia games. Organizers erected a “memory wall” of artifacts and photos, some from the Mishkon archives, others submitted by longtime congregants.

The occasion for the fete, however, was somewhat of a misnomer. Sure, Mishkon Tephilo is at least 90, but congregants know the synagogue is actually “90-something.”

Mishkon Tephilo might have been founded in 1914, when records show a group of Ocean Park Jews got together for the first time to hold High Holy Days services. But it could have been 1917, when the congregation’s Articles of Incorporation are dated. Or maybe it was 1918, the year the first recorded board meeting was held.

“This sort of thing is difficult to pinpoint,” said Marvin Wolf, Mishkon’s treasurer and informal historian. “It may have started with a minyan meeting casually in someone’s living room, getting together to daven.”

The pieces of history that are known for sure are as colorful as the pastel storefronts populating the synagogue’s Main Street location.

Mishkon’s first facility was built in 1922 a couple of blocks from the old Fraser Pier. At early High Holy Days services, when all the chairs were filled up, young men in the congregation would carry in benches from the beach to seat all the worshipers.

During Prohibition, Mishkon allegedly had a rabbi who was investigated by the feds for selling wine, which religious institutions were allowed to keep on hand for rituals.

In 1940, the growing congregation raised funds and began excavating to build a bigger facility. But as World War II intensified, construction materials were diverted to the war effort and the project halted. The hole in the ground yawned open for years.

When the war ended, congregants were keen to resume building, but hiring an architect would be costly. So the synagogue’s then-president asked his stepson, a returning Navy veteran, to take over the job. The young engineer had been a Seabee in the South Pacific, part of a construction battalion charged with building military bases to house the U.S. invasion forces. Could building a synagogue be so different?

Turns out not — the Seabee dug through his old blueprints from the war and, with a few modifications, drew up a Spartan but functional plan. Today, to a military veteran like Wolf, Mishkon’s downstairs social hall is easily recognizable as a standard mess hall and the sanctuary above it as a military base theater.

The congregation dedicated its new quarters in 1948. Founded as an Orthodox community, Mishkon joined the Conservative movement in 1952. It became the first Conservative synagogue in the Western United States to be led by a female rabbi when the congregation hired Rabbi Naomi Levy in 1989. She served until 1996.

Walking through the sanctuary and narrow halls now, history seems to hover in every corner.

“It feels like my grandfather could have davened here,” Mishkon vice president Debbie Berenbach said. “It feels timeless.”

In the 1950s and ’60s, the synagogue served as many as 1,000 local families. Venice was then a haven for Jewish retirees and families, who flocked to the beachside district colloquially known as “the Coney Island of the West.” But as the Jewish population in Ocean Park declined, so did Mishkon’s membership. Now, most of the synagogue’s 170 member families drive in from neighboring Mar Vista, Santa Monica and Marina del Rey.

Not that any of this has diminished Mishkon’s sense of community.

Asked what it’s like to lead the congregation, Rabbi Dan Shevitz said, “You’re really asking what it’s like to be with your family. Most of the time it’s exhilarating; sometimes it’s challenging.”

The atmosphere at Mishkon is “fiercely participatory,” said Shevitz, who has been at the synagogue for 15 years. “People feel enough ownership to pause in the service to ask questions or share an anecdote or explanation with one another. Sometimes the smartest thing I can do is just step back and let the magic happen.”

Shevitz is known around his congregation as a somewhat larger-than-life character. He is president of the Southern California Community Bet Din, a Talmud professor at the Ziegler Rabbinical School of American Jewish University (AJU), a licensed private pilot and motorcyclist, and the principal percussionist in the Palisades Symphony orchestra, where his wife, Amy Hill Shevitz, plays violin. On Fridays, he can be found with his accordion, entertaining the children at thesynagogue’s Susan Sims Bodenstein Preschool.

Usually, about 75 to 125 people attend Shabbat services. The sanctuary, whose pale blue walls rise toward an arcing ceiling, seats more than 700 beneath stained glass windows that, for lack of air conditioning, are usually open to the salty ocean air.

The turquoise stretch of the Pacific is visible from the steps leading up to the building’s column-lined entrance. In fact, a plaque on the lobby’s West-facing wall implores visitors to recite a Hebrew blessing that reads: “Blessed be the holy one who gave us the great sea.”

Congregants’ memories of Mishkon over the years are as textured as they are poignant: bar and bat mitzvahs, standout sermons, Purim costumes, the old mural of Jewish slaves leaving Egypt that decades ago adorned the wall near the bimah and now lies under more than 20 coats of paint.

One nugget of history that Mishkon revisits weekly can be found in the synagogue’s ark: a Sefer Torah that survived the Holocaust. The scroll once served the synagogue in Mezokovacshaza, Hungary, where Louis Sneh grew up and had his bar mitzvah before the war. In 1944, Nazis destroyed the town and sent its 900 residents to death camps. Sneh was one of the 17 who survived.

When Sneh, now a Mishkon congregant, learned that the Torah had been salvaged from the war, he traveled to Hungary with his family in 2003 to claim it. The scroll, which is thought to be more than 300 years old, was restored at Mishkon and is now used regularly at services.

Next on the congregation’s list of items to restore is its aging structure. The synagogue doesn’t have a parking lot (few locals drove cars when the structure was built), and years of deferred maintenance have taken a toll.

Lay leaders three years ago held a contest in which they invited architectural firms across the country to submit design ideas that would preserve the historic site’s character. Committee members chose a design by Michael Lehrer of Lehrer Architects in Silver Lake and are now determining costs and preparing to raise the necessary funds.

Aliza Wine hopes the renovation keeps the banisters out front intact — she and her friends used to slide down them, as children, in their holiday clothes.

Now a vice president on the board, Wine still sits in the same “ancestral row” for services — row 21 on the left side — where her family has always sat. Descendents of the same families still sit in front and across from her, too. Her son Ezra, 17, is now a teacher’s assistant at the synagogue’s religious school.

“I feel more at home there than anywhere,” Wine said. “There’s a sense of continuity. People have known me since I was a kid. They’ve known my parents, and they know my son. I hope to be at Mishkon for a long time.”