The New York Jewish Week: Connection the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Friday, 22 August 2014
Dear Reader,
It's back to school season
here at The Jewish Week, too. We've got a special section that takes
a deep dive into education topics.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/special-sections/education-careers/education-august-2014
Education August 2014
Jewish studies programs in unlikely places; Birthright’s new focus on trip leaders; Bracing for the campus Israel wars.
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
Hebrew Union College Going Green
Q&A College Students Asking ‘Big Questions’
Khan Academy Contest Finalist Got Late Online Start
Eisen’s Case For Proactive Conversion
The ‘Mainstreaming’ Of Jewish Studies
The Campus Wars To Come
Birthright Turns Focus On Trip Leaders
Sephardic In The Heights
The Case For ‘True Pluralism’
What Should Day School Students Know, And When They Should Know It?
Teachers Teaching Teachers — With A Lot On The Line
Hebrew Union College Going Green
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Also, a slew of other
ed-related articles that have been really popular on the website.
For example, YU has not only
rescue its women's Torah study program from budget cuts, but has also hired a woman to run it --
a first.
SHORT TAKES
Woman To Head YU’s Women’s Torah Study
University rescues master's degree program from budget cuts and hires alumna Nechama Price to run it.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Nechama Price will be the first female director of YU’s Graduate Program for Women in Advanced Talmudic Study. Courtesy of YU
With women’s roles in some corners of the Orthodox world changing rapidly, it was no surprise that when it was reported that Yeshiva University’s advanced Talmudic study program for women was on the chopping block, there was a real outcry.
“This would undercut the progress that has been made in women’s learning in the Orthodox community in the last few decades,” one angry woman enrolled in the Graduate Program for Advanced Torah Study (GPATS) wrote in a student newspaper.
The anger might have paid off. This week, despite YU’s $1 billion budget hole, the university will, in a first, hire a woman to run the all-women’s program, The Jewish Week has learned.
Nechama Price, a professor of Judaic studies at YU, will head the two-year master’s program beginning next week when classes resume for the fall semester.
“The women of GPATS need someone who can relate to their challenges as they enter a field that is predominantly male,” Price, who is herself at GPATS graduate (2001-2003), told The Jewish Week. Since its establishment in 1999, the program has helped to remove the stigma of women’s Talmud study in the Orthodox world, though Price is quick to point out that she faced a lot of opposition when she finished her course work.
“When I graduated, the program was still very controversial. It was very hard for graduates to find jobs in communal leadership and in teaching,” she recalled.
Today, Price serves as the Yoatzet Halacha (female Jewish-law adviser) for Englewood, Tenafly, and Long Branch, N.J. She was among the first five U.S.-trained yoatzot to receive certification last November. Price hopes GPATS will enable more Orthodox women to assume similar positions in the future.
“High levels of Talmud study and leadership for women are becoming more and more accepted, which I’m so happy to see,” she said.
As part-time director of GPATS, Price will serve as a personal mentor for students and run recruitment efforts for the program. This year, the program only has nine students, all of them either in their second year. Rabbi Kenneth Brander, vice president of YU and the dean of the CJF, did not accept any new students while the program’s prospects were uncertain.
Financial plans for the program remain murky. Under Rabbi Brander’s leadership, the program, once housed at Stern College, will now fundraise from independent sources, though this year’s funding will still come from Stern’s budget. Rabbi Brander plans to start a rigorous fundraising campaign after the 2014-15 “transitional year.” Other changes include a significant reduction of student stipends (Stern once paid women $15,000 a year to study in the program), he said. This, Rabbi Brander said, would help make the program “sustainable.”
Though there were rumors about significant curriculum changes in the program, Price denied these claims.
“The curriculum will be staying by-and-large the same, with a heavy focus on the study of gemara and halacha [Talmud and Jewish law], and additional seminars preparing women to be leaders and educators,” she said.
Price hopes to see her role as director expand in coming years. “If women want to learn in an intense way, they should always have the chance to do so — for me, that’s priority,” she concluded.
editor@jewishweek.org
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Writer Amy Sara Clark takes a
look at how various student groups are preparing for the start of
school on college campuses as the Gaza conflict grinds on. From JStreet to
the Israel Action Network, she's got the sources.
NEW YORK
Campuses Hone Tactics As BDS Wars Loom
In wake of Gaza conflict, local students, officials expect tense atmosphere as semester begins.
Amy Sara Clark
Staff Writer
Brooklyn College Hillel's Creative Coexistence group shares some of their work. Courtesy of Tanger Hillel at Brooklyn College
In Gaza, there may be a cease-fire, but for Jewish college students, the war is about to begin.
Groups as varied as J Street U and the Israel Action Network are bracing for what many insiders believe will be the most contentious school year yet.
Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, who directs the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU, agreed that pro-Israel students are facing a challenge when they return in the fall.
“I think it’s widely held that this is going to be one of the most difficult semesters for Israel on campus in a long time. It’s not just because of the war over the summer, but it’s also because the BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] moment has been gaining steam over the past few years, and the war over the summer just provides the fodder for the momentum to continue,” he said.
Through leadership training conferences and strategy meetings throughout the summer, pro-Israel Jewish campus organizations have built upon a strategy of proactive, rather than reactive education.
The approach focuses on having Jewish students meet other students directly, sometimes one-on-one, sometimes in small groups, to press Israel’s case. The strategy — a marked contrast to the often guerilla theater tactics taken up by BDS supporters — emphasizes “civil discourse,” offering a range of opportunities for students, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to learn about Israel apart from the conflict.
The approach also stresses building positive relationships with campus officials, faculty and student leaders, not being afraid to criticize Israel, mourning the loss of lives on both sides and showing a “genuine empathy” for the hardships faced by Palestinians.
Campus leaders and officials believe these techniques, rather than counter protests, work best to counter anti-Israel groups, the most prominent of which is Student for Justice in Palestine, known as SJP, which engage in such strategies as proposing divestment resolutions and provocative, media-grabbing actions such as die-ins or mock checkpoints. Or as happened at NYU last semester, slipping fake eviction notices under dorm room doors to highlight the plight of Palestinians whose homes have been bulldozed.
“I think for sure there is a recognition that images of Palestinian students protesting on one side of the campus and pro-Israel students protesting on the other side is not going to help us,” said the Hindy Poupko, director of Israel and international affairs at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. “Students are perfectly capable of being disinterested in the both of us.”
And, she added, “What we all have going in our favor is that the groups on campus, primarily SJP, that seek to promote divestment votes on campus are so far to the extreme, and that as long as we have the opportunity to educate the student body on the true nature of these extremist groups, then we often win the battle.”
After an anti-Israel group set up fake checkpoints at Brooklyn College, said Nadya Drukker, who heads its Hillel, pro-Israel students “wanted to run around campus and draw bodies to show what happens when you walk through a checkpoint with an explosive.” But instead, they set up a table with posters showing terrorism in New York on 9/11, in London, and in Israel and information on why Israel needs checkpoints.
At both Brooklyn College and Columbia University, students regularly set up information tables on campus where students can come and ask questions. At Columbia, students are planning to do even more of that this fall.
“Part of the plan will be a heavy on-campus demonstration — setting up tables on the main thoroughfare of campus, encouraging students to sit with us and have a conversation,” said Brian Cohen, who heads the Columbia/Barnard Hillel.
The goal of that conversation, Cohen continued, is “to both learn more about what’s happening in Israel but also to express concerns or share things that they’ve heard and to be able to have very civil conversations with students of all backgrounds.”
Organizers at J Street U, which advocates a negotiated two-state solution, are focused on setting up “spaces,” such as small-group discussions where students from all political perspectives can discuss the conflict.
“Some students will be coming off of a summer of seeing really nasty rhetoric on Facebook, for example,” said Sarah Turbow, J Street U’s new director. “Others will be wanting to totally disengage from the conversation as well as other students who are thinking about these issues for the first time because of how prevalent it’s been in the news. So I think we’re coming back to campus with a student population that is far more aware and probably very angry and very frustrated about the current situation regardless of their political faction.”
For their part, national organizations such as the Israel on Campus Coalition, Hillel International and J Street U have are focused on training campus professionals and students and providing them with whatever resources they need to support the strategies they come up with.
Efforts include a micro-grant program launched by Israel on Campus Coalition for pro-Israel initiatives on campus and Hillel International’s new Hinenu initiative that includes Israel advocacy pilot programs and grants to 50 college campuses for pro-Israel programming.
Both groups, as well as J Street U and Jewish Voice for Peace held multi-day intensive training sessions, and Birthright Israel’s NEXT division changed its “welcome back” to include information and resources about the conflict. Since the change the percentage of students who opened the email jumped from about 20 percent to about 50 percent.
The Open Hillel movement, which seeks to eliminate the standards for partnership in Hillel International’s guidelines, is planning its first national conference for the fall with speakers “spanning the spectrum of political views on Israel-Palestine,” including Judith Butler, David Harris-Gershon and Rashid Khalidi. So far, more than 150 people have registered, said organizer Emily Unger, and the group has raised more than $13,400 to fund it through a social media fundraiser.
Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports BDS and “seeks to end the Israeli occupation,” has seen its supporter base — those who have participated in events or signed online petitions — jump by about 50,000 over the summer to, at last count, about 170,000 supporters. They are branching into campus organizing in the fall and expect more than a dozen campus chapters to open in the fall, said campus liaison Gabi Kirk.
Back on campuses here, student groups are also focusing on educating student leaders, both Jews and non-Jews.
Brooklyn College’s Tanger Hillel is ramping up its “Da Israel Initiative,” moving the sessions to a weekly basis this fall, said Drukker to give students “an opportunity for students to really dive in, understand what’s happening and be advocates for Israel on campus.”
There will also be a daylong Israel advocacy workshop run by Makor and weekly education sessions for the broader campus community through the Israel on Campus Coalition.
For the first time, the Hillel will host two pre-army Israeli “shinshinim.” It will also be working with visiting Israeli professor Anat Maor. A former Knesset member, Maor will teach classes on Israeli politics and women’s studies in a position jointly funded by Brooklyn College's School of Humanities and the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.
In addition to education, organizations are focusing on building relationships with non-Jewish student groups on campus.
At NYU, the student group “Bridges: Muslim and Jewish Interfaith Dialogue at NYU” is planning a dinner the first week of September.
Brooklyn College has two groups: Creative Coexistence, where music, theater and visual arts students work on art projects together, and a volunteer group that tutors homeless children twice a week. Both are attended by a diverse group of students allowing them to form relationships, said Drukker, “so when there are issues on campus that relate to the Middle East we have a forum for conversation and really articulating what these issues are and explaining the complexity of the situation,” she said.
“And it’s worked very well,” she added.
This year Brooklyn College’s Hillel is also starting a program that trains “student ambassadors” to “reach out to faculty members and start building relationships, and sort of get friends on campus,” said Drukker.
Another strategy that both Columbia’s Cohen and NYU’s Rabbi Sarna put a lot of effort into is getting students to go to Israel.
“For me, what will always remain as part of our core strategy is getting as many people to go to Israel as possible on experiences that get them to meaningfully engage with the society,” said Rabbi Sarna.
This year, about 70 NYU students participated in the CLIP: Onward Israel program, funded by the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Agency for Israel, which sent students to Israel for eight-week internships with primarily Israeli start-ups.
“Between Birthright and CLIP and students who went to Israel independently, we have over 100 students coming back from the summer having spent significant time in Israel at a time when Israel is significantly exposed,” said Rabbi Sarna. “And they are coming back with a deep understanding and a passionate attachment. And that in many ways is the best preparation for a semester like this.”
amy.clark@jewishweek.org
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And in his weekly column, Jewish Week
Editor and Publisher Gary Rosenblatt offers 10 lessons from Gaza.
GARY ROSENBLATT
The Editor's Desk: 10 Lessons From The Gaza War
The JW's Gary Rosenblatt reflects on empathy, anti-Semitism and ISIS.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
If you listen carefully you can hear the fraying of the unity that has held American and Israeli Jews together over the last six weeks of the war in Gaza.
Until now polls in both countries have shown overwhelming Jewish support for Israel’s military and diplomatic actions, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu given high marks for relative restraint in the face of more than 3,000 Hamas rockets fired at Israeli civilians and the revelation of dozens of “terror tunnels” intended for the murder and kidnapping of Jews in the south.
Inevitably, though, as the crisis continues with no dramatic solution that can assure Israel of security and deprive Hamas of a victory of sorts, voices of dissent and frustration are being heard, fingers are being pointed and commissions of inquiry are being formed to assess blame. Unlike the “miracle” Six-Day War of 1967 or the dramatic turnaround of the Yom Kippur War six years later, where Israel prevailed after a disastrous initial blow, conflicts in recent years with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza have resulted in temporary and less-than-satisfying stalemates.
Who “wins” and who “loses” a war can take decades to assess, and even then depends on one’s outlook. Did Israel’s conquering of the West Bank in ’67 signal a clear victory when so many view the settlements now as an albatross? Did Anwar Sadat’s initial success in 1973 give him sufficient pride to make peace with Israel six years later, or was it the realization that Egypt could not defeat Israel militarily?
Even now, before the fog of war has cleared, some sobering observations can be made about the current state of affairs for Israel in the international community and at home.
The first mistake:
In hindsight it seems clear that officials in Jerusalem should never have tolerated hostile rockets fired years ago, and consistently over time, into Sderot and other communities in the south. It signaled that citizens of Israel there, rather than in cities like Tel Aviv or Haifa or Jerusalem, warranted less protection. The refusal to take an immediate and more aggressive stand against forces seeking to kill Jews living inside Israel’s borders was a moral, military and diplomatic mistake.
The lesson: You fire on our citizens and we will respond with full force. Will that be the case going forward?
Judge combatants by their intentions, not their accuracy:
One can only imagine, with horror, the result if Israel did not have the Iron Dome and if thousands of Hamas rockets had found their targets: Israeli civilians. Would the nations of the world have been more sympathetic then to Israel’s plight? Maybe, but it is better to have their anger than their pity.
Don’t confuse “Palestinian” with “Hamas":
Those who insist that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza lack political understanding as well as basic human empathy. The fact is that most Gazans are the victims of circumstance, virtual prisoners of Hamas, which is committed not to their security but to the destruction of Israel. Speaking out against Hamas from within Gaza is dangerous, if not suicidal. We have to acknowledge the tragic suffering of so many citizens of Gaza, whose leaders use them as human shields, literally as well as metaphorically. The blame may well be on Hamas for initiating a war of aggression and refusing to step down, but that should not blind us from compassion for the lives lost.
Anti-Semitism is real, and growing:
The blurring of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence, rhetoric and political views has come to the surface, particularly in Europe, to an alarming degree. Most egregious, perhaps, is the United Nations and its ongoing, blatant bias against Israel. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay of South Africa calls Israel guilty of defying international law when in fact no other country, including the U.S., goes as far in seeking to avoid harming civilians as does Israel. Pillay also blamed the U.S. for not supplying Gaza with the Iron Dome system.
More recently, and cynically, the UN Human Rights Council established a commission to investigate war crimes in Gaza, headed by Canadian law professor William Schabas, who in a speech once said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be “in the dock of an international court” and is “the single individual most likely to threaten the survival of Israel.” Schabas has refused to label Hamas a terror organization and refused to make clear whether his investigation will review Hamas’ actions. A total sham.
There’s “daylight” in the U.S.-Israel relationship:
It’s no secret that President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu are a dysfunctional duo; the question is how much effect their dislike of each other will have on Washington’s support for Jerusalem at this critical time. For all the talk of the administration not allowing any daylight between the positions of the U.S. and Israel, it is delaying arms for Israel in its fight against a U.S.-acknowledged terrorist group and not insisting on the disarmament of Hamas. Deeply worrisome.
Connect the dots:
There is a common thread and threat to Mideast headlines … ISIS, the new Islamic state, is increasing its murderous advances on Syria, which already has lost close to 200,000 citizens, and on Iraq, negating the decade-long, hard-fought gains of American soldiers and would-be peacemakers. Hezbollah controls Lebanon, Hamas gains international support by making war on Israeli civilians, and Iran stalls and dodges efforts to prevent it from going nuclear. What we have is The War of the Islamic Militants on Western Culture, though it is politically incorrect to label it as such or counter it with a unified approach.
Media bias continues:
Whether it is a misguided sympathy for the underdog, a failure to provide context to a complex conflict or simple anti-Israel bias, much of mainstream media has failed to point out the impossible position Israel is in, castigated for fighting back against a terrorist regime bent on destroying it and its people. “Defend yourself, but not too much” is neither practical nor helpful advice. And displaying photos each day of suffering Gazans — and no militant fighters — has played into the hands of Hamas, who only now are being called out for intimidating and threatening the media.
Doves and hawks double down when assessing the crisis:
Has anyone changed his or her mind based on the reality of these last few weeks? Hawks point out that one Hamas rocket closed Ben-Gurion Airport and argue that a West Bank state would present a far greater threat to Israel. Doves counter that the war and destruction only prove that there is no military solution to the conflict, which must be resolved by diplomacy and compromise.
Support for Israel is slipping:
Americans remain significantly more supportive of Israel than of the Palestinians. But there is serious slippage among the 18-to-29-year-old cohort, including Jews, especially when it comes to whether Israel’s military response in Gaza is justified. Younger Jews tend to have less knowledge of modern Israeli history than their elders and are ambivalent and conflicted about Jerusalem’s military stance and the lack of a peace deal with the Palestinians.
True colors come out in times of stress:
Many Israelis and Jews around the world have come to see themselves as family during this Gaza war. They speak of a common bond of support for Israel’s right to defend itself as it sees fit against an enemy willing to sacrifice its own children to destroy the Jewish state. A number of American Jews have rallied, raised funds and traveled to Israel to show their love and support while some Jewish groups have focused primarily on criticism of Israel’s conduct, and that is telling.
Vibrant discussion and debate are the lifeblood of a nation. But at its core must be a sense of shared values. In a crisis, friends help, not harp.
“Tough love” is acceptable – as long as “love” truly is part of the equation.
Gary@jewishweek.org
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Shabbat Shalom,
Helen Chernikoff Web Editor |
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The Jewish Week
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