This July, The Jewish Federation’s School Twinning Program held its 15th Joint Teacher Seminar in Budapest, launching the 20th year of the program. The Tel Aviv/Los Angeles School Twinning Program connects schools, students and teachers in Los Angeles with their counterparts in Tel Aviv and Vilnius, ensuring that when it comes to the Jewish future, we all share a common vision. Every year, 600 students in grades 6-10 from 40 schools in Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, and Vilnius participate in this transformative program that strongly connects students, families, school faculties, and communities to Israel and each other.
The theme of the week-long seminar in Budapest was Jewish Peoplehood, which is a core value of the School Twinning Program. By holding the seminar in Budapest, where today’s vibrant Jewish community has a rich past and a promising future, our coordinators experienced an authentic, immersive, and deep understanding of achdut – unity – and the global Jewish community as part of their year-long professional development. All 40 School Twinning coordinators, veteran and new, from Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, and Vilnius, learned together and shared best practices for their Twinning programs. The resulting profound conversations and deep realizations created a new lens through which participants could reflect on their own programs. The seminar also taught participants how to channel and share their meaningful learning experiences with their students, who will be going on their own journeys through the Twinning program.
Here are a few reflections from our Los Angeles coordinators on their fascinating week of immersive experiential learning:
From Robin Solomon, Twinning Coordinator at Adat Ariel Day School, twinned with Nitzanim School in Tel Aviv:
“It’s a small world after all!! Who would imagine that while attending the 15th Annual Joint Teachers Seminar and experiencing Shabbat at Szarvas, the only International Jewish Summer Camp in the world, I would run into someone I know from home? Even more, who could have imagined that person would be a former student of mine from Adat Ari El Day School, Ariela Wallace, who was a member of Adat Ari El’s first Twinning delegation to Israel in 2002. ? Ariela, a recent college graduate, has been spending a year in India working with the Jewish community of Mumbai. Ariela was accompanying a delegation of campers from India to the JDC Lauder Szarvas Camp when we ran into each other! This is what we would call ‘bashert’ in Yiddish – meant to be. It is evident that her early education, Jewish values, and School Twinning experience have laid a strong Jewish foundation for Ariela! She hopes to pursue a career in the Jewish community. This unbelievable meeting gave me so much to ‘kvell’/’shep nachas’ about!”
From Stu Jacobs, Jewish Studies Teacher and Twinning Coordinator from deToledo High School, twinned with Ironi Tet High School in Tel Aviv:
“I had the fortune to spend a few of my early mornings in Budapest going for a 10K run mostly in and around the island oasis of Margaret Island. I ran by a grand fountain area that had tons of benches surrounding it, yet the fountain wasn’t on, and the benches were all empty. This image refined for me the idea that building a park in any locale begins with a vision to create the space where neighbors can come together. I couldn’t help but connect this to the work we do as Twinning Coordinators — building upon our vision to create the experiential framework that enables our students to connect. In many ways, we have to create an educational exchange experience that will bring as much enjoyment, fulfillment, and feeling of community belonging that a day at the park can bring!
Throughout our seven-day conference, I was continually amazed by the people we met and the initiatives we learned about, which have been spearheaded by visionary leaders who created opportunities for Jews to search out meaning and fulfillment as members of this local and global Jewish collective. At the conclusion of the conference, not only did I feel more connected to my Twinning colleagues (and therefore to the Jewish People), but I left with a clear motivation to achieve one of the central goals of the partnership: facilitating meaningful connections between our students that help each of them to better understand the meaning of Jewish Peoplehood.”
From Rachel Kaufman, Co-Coordinator from LA Hebrew High School, twinned with Ironi Dalet High School in Tel Aviv:
“The first morning I arrived in Hungary, I put on my running shoes and ran to the beautiful Margaret Island (thanks to jetlag I was up at sunrise). Running that morning had a special significance, because my mother’s name is Margaret and she was born in Budapest. As I ran, I thought of her and the fact that I was running in her footsteps, along the streets and bridges of the Danube of her childhood. She miraculously survived the Holocaust, hidden in the ghetto with her mother and twin sister, but at the age of 12 they “ran” and escaped from Budapest, during the revolution, to Canada and eventually settled in Los Angeles. My father, also Hungarian and a survivor of the Holocaust, “ran” towards Israel after the war and then eventually met my mother in Los Angeles, where they married and raised a family. They both “ran” away from Budapest. Here I was, part of a delegation from The Jewish Federation Twinning Program, speaking to the young locals in Budapest. I too could have been born and raised here. A poignant moment during the trip was when I sat near the SHOE monument at the Danube. My heart broke as I memorialized the thousands who were shot and killed there, those who took off their shoes and had no place to run. Although I am first-generation American, my roots are Hungarian, and learning about my personal history and the history of Hungarian Jewry from the past to the present left a deep impression on my heart.”
Our Federation’s School Twinning Program is one of the biggest student delegation-based programs in the Jewish world. For more information, please visit the School Twinning Program webpage or contact Miri Ketayi at MKetayi@JewishLA.org or (323) 761-8246.
