Every year, the Milken Family Foundation gives public recognition and $10,000 each to education professionals \”who have made significant contributions to excellence in day schools affiliated with the Bureau of Jewish Education,\” according to the foundation.
My daughter flew home for Thanksgiving with two college friends in tow. At the dinner table, the conversation revolved around computers and the antics of the Stanford Band. At some point in the course of that whirlwind four-day visit, Hilary informed me that, though she\’s been diligently studying Hebrew since she started college, a Junior Year Abroad at Hebrew University is no longer part of her plans. It\’s not that she\’s changed her mind about someday returning to Israel, where she spent an amazing summer two years ago. But she\’s convinced that, given the stringent requirements of the high-tech major she seems to have settled on, even a semester in Jerusalem would derail her progress toward her degree.
It is 8:15 a.m. in the first-grade classroom in Jerusalem\’s Adam School. Ice cream-colored walls surround a large room decorated with silk cloths, woven rugs, stones, seashells, driftwood, sheaves of wheat, plants and hand-sewn dolls and animals. The blackboard is covered with a large, multicolored chalk-drawn tree with a bird\’s nest in its branches. A small, cozy room off the main classroom, painted in lavender and white, contains rugs, mattresses covered with Indian spreads, a doll cradle and a basket of small hand-stitched beanbags. The children sit quietly at their tables while their teacher, Eyal Bloch, moves from pupil to pupil, slowly shaking hands and greeting each one with a smile, pausing at times to exchange some brief words.
On a chilly autumn morning in late October, in a rooftop sukkahatop New York\’s Abraham Joshua Heschel School, a small group ofrabbis, Hebrew teachers and millionaire investors joined hands tomark what their leader called a \”defining point in American Jewishphilanthropy\”: an $18 million fund to help create new Jewish dayschools around the country, paid for by a \”partnership\” among a dozenof America\’s richest Jewish families.
Sometimes we all need a good nudge before we do the right thing.
Milken, affiliated with Stephen S. Wise Temple, kicks off itsschool year by sending students and faculty on a three-day Shabbaton.Under the majestic oaks of the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in SimiValley, participants schmooze and discuss, laugh and pray.
\”Israel has 5 million inhabitants and China has 1.2 billion,\” Kaveh said during a visit to Los Angeles last week. \”However, we are both ancient civilizations, which have survived much suffering and mighty empires.\”
Action by the Commission on International and Transregional Accreditation, commonly known as CITA, marks the first time that any Jewish supplementary school in the United States has been given CITA\’s seal of approval.
So, one has to ask, why did Rachel Wohlgelernter apply to Yale?
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