November 3, 2010

The timing might be a little off this year — with Chanukah so early in December — but organizers of the annual Chanukah Camp at Camp Max Straus in Glendale are not deterred. Chanukah camp packs a week’s worth of camp fun — campfires, hikes, sports, drama, arts and crafts, social service projects — into the first week of winter break, Dec. 19-23. And although Chanukah’s last night is Dec. 8, all of these activities will revolve around a Chanukah theme, including a concert, carnival and latke making.

Camp Max Straus, on a 112-acre wooded campus in the Verdugo Mountains, is operated by Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles. About 40 percent of the 100 or so kids who usually come to Chanukah Camp are little brothers or sisters in the program.

Chanukah Camp works on sliding-scale tuition, so the camp and the families determine a fee based on the family’s income. No one has ever been turned away for inability to pay, even if they could not afford even the $35 application fee, said Barry Vigon, director of Camp Max Straus.

Chanukah Camp is open to kids ages 7-14, with a counselor training program for older teens. Kosher meals are provided upon request. For more information, call (323) 456-1153 or visit jbbbsla.org.

After a successful launch in the San Fernando Valley, PJ Library has expanded into city ZIP codes, signing up 700 new kids over the past two months.

They will join the 65,000 children nationwide who receive a monthly gift from PJ Library of Jewish-themed books and CDs.

The PJ Library was created in 2005 by the Massachusetts-based Harold Grinspoon Foundation, which partners with local communities to pay for the program.

In 2008, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles sponsored PJ Library’s establishment in the Valley, where it signed up a full roster of families in less than a year. This past summer, PJ Library, with additional funding from the Jewish Community Foundation and private donors, officially opened its mailing list to additional residents.

The program has signed up about 2,800 additional kids in Los Angeles and has spots for 1,100 more.

The books are free — no strings attached, said Carol Koransky, executive vice president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

PJ Library is a way to “specifically bring Jewish values, learning and connections into families,” she said.

Depending on age, kids receive one of five different books each month. October’s book list included “Five Little Gefiltes” by Dave Horowitz and “Jodie’s First Dig” by Anna Levine.

“You get to start your own Jewish library in your home,” Koransky said.

But PJ Library now wants to engage families in “next steps” — book readings, holiday programs and gatherings for parents. The program recently sponsored a trip to the Skirball Cultural Center, where kids got to play at the Noah’s Ark exhibit.

Koransky is convinced the program is making a difference, especially in intermarried families. Last year, she received a call from a non-Jewish father around Chanukah time. He told her that his youngest child wouldn’t let go of her newest book. They were going to take out all the books they had received from PJ Library and light the menorah together.

“It becomes a warm, family-centered celebration that connects them back into doing things Jewish,” Koransky said.

Israel also has a new version of the program, known as Sifriyat Pijama (Pajama Library). The Israeli Ministry of Education is investing $500,000 in the program, an amount matched by the Grinspoon Foundation. Last year 3,000 underserved Israeli preschool children received books every month, and that number is set to expand to 44,000 children by the end of this academic year.

A Northridge Jewish day school teacher has received a $5,000 grant from former talk-show host Jenny Jones to create an 80-foot-long mural along the Los Angeles River as part of a beautification project.

Kathy Reynolds, who teaches science to fifth- and seventh-graders at Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School, is the latest of more than 85 people — out of 15,000 who’ve applied — to be awarded financial help through “Jenny’s Heroes,” a program that aims to give away $2 million of the celebrity’s money toward good works.

In this case, it was a project that hit close to home for Jones, a Sherman Oaks resident who had a TV talk show for 12 years.

“I walk along the river. I’ve lived in the Valley for years,” she said after announcing the award Oct. 14. “I think we forget we have a river because there’s no water in it so much of the time. It could look so much better.”

The money will go toward materials for the mural, which will be accompanied by explanatory signs. Done in conjunction with students and community partners, one portion will reflect the river’s journey from the mountains to the sea and the need to keep it clean. Reynolds said another element will be the Los Angeles River’s “sister river” relationship with the Yarkon River in Israel, which is what got her interested in the river in the first place.

It’s all part of a larger effort in which students at the school have adopted a 1.5-mile stretch of the river. Each month, a group of students tests the water, removes invasive plants and battles the mountains of trash that accumulate, Reynolds said.

“The entire foundation of our school is to give back, tikkun olam,” she said, referring to the Jewish concept of repairing the world. This project, she felt, “encompasses many, many communities and brings us together. … Just as the river is a conduit from the mountains to the sea, we’re the conduit … to bridge these communities together.”

Ask anyone who knew him: Daniel Pearl loved music. He joined bands in Atlanta, Paris and Mumbai, relishing the way a good melody can draw people together.

So imagine how the slain Wall Street Journal reporter, killed by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002, might have felt watching the second-period choir class at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School as its members stand, roll their shoulders back and belt out a lilting rendition of “Seasons of Love” from the musical “Rent.”

“I look around and think, ‘How did we get here in one year?’ ” marveled principal Janet Kiddoo, her eyes welling up as she surveyed the classroom.

This fall, Daniel Pearl Magnet High School (DPMHS) celebrated its second year as a stand-alone high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) by moving into its own facility in Van Nuys. Formerly a part of Birmingham High School, the magnet and its parent institution parted ways when Birmingham became a charter school last year. With 315 students, the Pearl magnet is now the smallest comprehensive public high school in the district.

That’s not all that makes it special. Taking cues from the other love of the man for whom it’s named, the magnet is the only school in the district that focuses on journalism. That means students learn the craft of writing and reporting news while also taking traditional subjects like algebra, literature and physics.

“Our mission is to send students out as leaders, in any context,” Kiddoo said. “This school is dedicated to the importance of the written word. Our hope is that wherever these kids go, they become great communicators and live by the principles of honesty and integrity.”

Specialized classes include Journalism I and II, and media workshops in which kids use cameras and editing software to produce short broadcast journalism segments. Yearbook is also a full-time class, turning school memories and class photos into substantive lessons in layout and publishing. On top of that, the school is in talks with California State University, Northridge, Pierce College and “NBC Nightly News” to offer internships to students.

All of this lets kids know that “they go to a unique school,” said Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s father, a UCLA computer science professor and a Jewish Journal columnist.

Layout of The Pearl Post, the school’s newspaper, gets a critical review. (Photo by Dan Kacvinski)

Speaking recently by phone from their home in Encino, he and Daniel’s mother, Ruth Pearl, said the school’s efforts to pay tribute to their son have created a rich learning environment for students.

“The school has a name that is recognizable the world over,” Judea Pearl said. “That gives students a sense of uniqueness, togetherness and purpose — they can feel like they’re part of a movement. Learning journalism teaches them about serving the community and being citizens of a ‘global village.’ I don’t think many high schools have this window to the world.”

A cursory glance at the pale, squat building, nestled between school district offices on Balboa Boulevard, might not suggest anything extraordinary. But inside is a different story.

Walking through the halls during the students’ morning break, Kiddoo greets by name every student she passes, and most smile widely as they greet her back. Laughter rises from small groups of students gathered around picnic tables in a courtyard.

Whether they plan to pursue journalism as a career or not, kids say they appreciate the school’s emphasis on writing as a means of self-expression.

Stara Jackson, 14, wants to be an obstetrician, but she likes to utilize her writing talent on the school newspaper. She’s written op-eds on immigration and the closure of Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensaries, subjects that have sometimes landed her in hot water with friends: “I’m very opinionated,” the amiable sophomore admitted.

For Sarkis Ekmekian, 17, journalism classes with teacher Adriana Chavira awakened a love of the craft he didn’t know he had. Now editor in chief of the school newspaper, The Pearl Post (students last year came up with the name themselves), he enjoys covering campus events for an audience of his peers.

“I like the feeling of being in the newsroom — the pace and the excitement,” Ekmekian said, waiting in the journalism room with friends for class to start. “You contribute to informing the student body and spreading the word about what’s going on. It’s an important task, and it’s a lot of fun.”

Having someone like Daniel Pearl as a role model is a boon for teens at the school, Kiddoo believes.

“We want kids to be able to relate to him — to see him as a model of a young man who had a sense of humor, loads of integrity, who was a beautiful writer and a down-to-earth person,” she said. “I don’t want his to be just another name on a school. I want students to feel like they can connect with him as a human being.”

Or, as Judea Pearl tells kids whenever he visits a school: “Danny was one of your peers — he carried with him a laptop and a violin, and he went out into the world to learn and to spread friendship. His example says, ‘Look — you can do this, too.’ ”

As the population of the Daniel Pearl magnet grows, media teacher James Morrison wants to have roving teams of students produce a weekly broadcast news show. Kiddoo wants to add an ethics class. And science teacher Stephen Schaffter has proposed a novel idea: To skirt the hassle of lockers and save on the cost of textbooks, why not buy a Kindle (Amazon’s portable e-book reader) for each student?

Currently, the school still has space for more than 150 new students. The Pearls would like to see more Jewish kids in the wildly diverse hallways, where students speak Russian, Armenian, Hebrew, Spanish, Farsi and Korean, to name a few.

Selling points include the school’s first-year Academic Performance Index (API) score of 776, and the fact that 94 percent of its first batch of seniors last spring graduated — compared with LAUSD’s overall graduation rate of 52 percent.

Kiddoo is proud — but not surprised. “Any student can flourish if you teach them well,” she said.

For the Pearls, that’s music to their ears.