Dear Midrasha Families,
I hope your summers are going well.
I wanted to let you know that the Midrasha registration materials were mailed on Wednesday, July 28, so you should be receiving them soon, if you haven’t already. If you’d rather get the information off our website, you can download both the catalogue and all the forms.(www.midrasha.org). Remember, even if you’re pre-registered, you need to fill out all the forms and don’t forget to deduct your deposit and pre-registration discount. Please remember that classes fill fast, so send in your forms now to assure space in the classes you want the most.
I also wanted to urge 10-12th graders who are interested in Abraham’s Vision to go to their website TODAY (ok, tomorrow night, after Shabbat) and fill out the application now. They have already received some applications from our students and there are only 8 spots remaining. There is more information about this WONDERFUL program below.
I don’t know how many of you read the J.,, the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, last week. There was a great article about Midrasha senior, Zach Piser and the work he is doing to organize and raise money for our 3-times monthly Midrasha meals to feed the homeless. You can read the article at:
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58738/teen-takes-on-hunger-student-ensures-midrasha-volunteer-program-will-keep-o/
Have a good Shabbat,
Diane
Dear 10th –12th Grade Students and Parents,
Midrasha in Berkeley will again be offering the Abraham’s Vision - Unity Program in the upcoming academic year. Abraham’s Vision is an inter-group educational organization that works with Jewish, Israeli, Muslim and Palestinian communities in the US and is based in San Francisco. The class will be offered in the second and third hour and will last until 12:45 pm. Some weeks students will be on site at Midrasha, either alone or with students from our Muslim partner school. Some weeks our students will meet at the other school and some weeks both groups will go on a field trip. The class will be taught by both a Jewish and a Muslim teacher, including Oren Kroll-Zeldin, our Jewish teacher from last year. Students need to register for Midrasha and also apply directly to Abraham’s Vision to be in this class. You do this going on-line:
http://www.abrahamsvision.org/unity-program/unity-program/course-summary.html
About Unity Program:
Unity Program is a high school course designed to educate students about the relationship between Islam and Judaism, the historical relationship between Muslims and Jews, and issues within North American Jewish and Muslim communities. Students will deepen their understandings of Jewish and Muslim individual and group identities in contemporary society as well as the textual, ideological, and historic relationship between and within each religious tradition. There are three major components of the Unity Program:
• Teacher-led classes on issues related to Islam, Judaism, and Muslim-Jewish relations.
• Jewish and Muslim guest speakers
• Inter-school meetings between students from both schools in which trained facilitators lead participants in group-dynamics sessions.
The Unity Program utilizes these methods, along with relevant field trips, to create an environment where students learn with and from the ‘other.’
We are delighted to be able to bring this opportunity to Midrasha students again for the 2010-2011 school year.
Aaron Hahn Tapper, Co-Director, Abraham’s Vision
Huda Abu Arqoub, Co-Director, Abraham’s Vision
Diane Bernbaum, Director, Midrasha in Berkeley
Newsletter Article , Summer, 2009, From Diane Bernbaum, Midrasha in Berkeley
I recently sat in the community room of a dorm at USF with tears in my eyes. But it wasn’t a sad occasion. It was the graduation of an amazing group of people who participated in a program:
Abraham’s Vision’s Unity Program. This is an inter-group education program for Muslim and Jewish High School Students. Midrasha in Berkeley was honored to be a site for the program this year. Here’s how it worked. Our nine students met weekly for an hour and a half each Sunday, taught by both a Jewish and a Muslim teacher, Samantha Witman and Yasmeen Peer. Then on a different day of the week the same two teachers taught the same curriculum to Muslim students in Oakland. Several times in the course of the year, the two groups met for facilitated conversations and field trips.
In her speech at the graduation ceremony, one of our students, Samantha Strimling, said, “Living in the Bay Area, it is easy to assume that we all live in the pinnacle of diversity. I certainly subscribed to this illusion prior to the Abraham’s Vision Unity Program. Then, on one of the first classes, I was challenged to name all the Muslims I know. After racking my brain, I could only come up with a couple – most of whom had been brought expressly from Israel to my Jewish summer camp to expose us to other cultures. I realized in that moment that I was more sheltered then I thought.” Another of our students, Owen Hall said in his speech, “I’ll tell you now, I’m the only kid in my group of friends who can talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict non-stop. I was so happy to finally find people who I can talk to about this. Abraham’s Vision has been a dream come true; it has given me a chance to dialogue about this topic which I feel so strongly about. Meeting the Muslim students helped me put a human face on the people I too easily thought of as the enemy. The program helped me get over my initial tribal anger regarding violence towards Jews and helped me separate the majority of Muslims from the actions of a few extremists.” Another graduate, Josh Magid, said, “The Unity Program has influenced my dreams for helping build a better future for all of us, and I know that the intelligent and kind people I’ve met through this program will have a bright future in whatever they decide to do.” And Sara Geliebter added,” This experience has taught me not to judge other groups, not to make stereotypical assumptions and that my opinion always matters.”
Congratulations to our Abraham’s Vision participants: Elana Cohen, Sara Geliebter, Avihai Guzy, Owen Hall, Josh Magid, Tsipora Prochovnick, Lani Rehm, Marsha Rosenblatt and Samantha Strimling. It was great that they represented four different synagogues and the unaffiliated community as well. If you know any 10-12th graders who would be interested in participating next year, have them contact the Midrasha office, 843-4667, diane@midrasha.org and visit the Abraham’s Vision website:
http://www.abrahamsvision.org/unity-program/unity-program. Students can come to Midrasha for this class only, or participate in other classes as well. In this year’s class three of the nine students came to Midrasha just for Abraham’s Vision and the others were veterans of the program. We’re looking for more teens with a passion for inter-group dialogue and personal growth.
So, why did I have tears in my eyes? Seeing these Muslim and Jewish students talk about how much they had grown in the course of the year and how they had come to understand The Other, it gave me a glimmer of hope that the world may yet be ok after all.
Course Purpose:
(1) To educate Jewish and Muslim participants about the histories, communal narratives, and individual stories of the ‘other’ religious and ethnic community, as they manifest in specific times and places; (2) to develop the awareness of the participants of the conflict within and between their communities; (3) to explore the role that each student plays in these dynamics; (4) to enable students to explore and evolve their identities through interaction with the ‘other’ in a safe and encouraging space; (5) to equip Jewish and Muslim high school students living in the US with the leadership and communication skills to express themselves and their opinions in a constructive and effective manner, both within and outside of their communities; (6) to assist students in understanding how their individual and collective identities relate to one another, to one’s own community, and to the ‘other’; (7) to prepare students who have been raised and/or educated in a particularly homogenous setting to interact with other groups; (8) to create opportunities for the greater community (i.e. schools, families, and religious communities) to become involved in conflict analysis and transformation programming, thereby forging new relationships and keeping the lines of communication open across these two communities; and (9) to create new relationships by bringing together young people who might not otherwise have a formal opportunity to meet and learn with persons of an ‘other’ community.
