Hadassah Israel program reaches out to Orthodox youth

NEW YORK -- Hadassah wants to get the Orthodox out of the classroom and into the Israeli scene.

Each year for four decades, the Hadassah youth program called Young Judaea has offered about 125 graduating high school students a 10-month program in Israel called Year Course. Time is spent studying, traveling, working with underprivileged youth and staying on a kibbutz or moshav.

Until now, almost all of those students have been non-Orthodox. But Young Judaea has decided to target the Orthodox by adding a beit midrash (house of study) in Jerusalem next month.

"It's an accepted part of the yeshiva educational track [in America] that after graduating high school, Orthodox students spend time in Israel," said Deborah Geller, the Year Course supervisor in the United States. "But most of the time is spent studying in school, not out getting to know the country. We wanted to give them a more genuine way of experiencing Israel."

The new program, called Shalem -- an acronym for shnat limud uma'aseh, a year of study and service -- combines all that Year Course offers, such as seminars on the Holocaust and Arab-Israeli relations, cultural activities and a leadership training program, with the beit midrash featuring Bible, Talmud, Jewish law and classic Jewish wisdom.

Shalem students will live in apartments on French Hill with their own leaders, but within walking distance of the Year Course students who live on Mount Scopus.

"This way," said Geller, "they will be able to create their own group dynamic but still be integrated with the other students."

While targeting the Orthodox may seem a little unusual for Hadassah, a pluralistic organization, the program's creators assert that Shalem is in keeping with the multi-denominational outlook.

"Shalem came about for several reasons," said David Matkowsky, a modern Orthodox political science doctoral candidate who was hired to recruit for Shalem, which will begin the first week of September.

"The first is to fill a void in Israeli programming: to offer a program that's not just about learning 24 hours a day in a yeshiva, but a combination of Torah learning within an Orthodox framework and the active participatory components.

"Secondly, we want to build bridges between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox communities...While providing a requisite amount of separateness, we will also create a dialogue as we move on to the next generation."

While Matkowsky agrees that Shalem is not pluralistic in the same sense that most of Hadassah's programs are, he said that it represents an attempt to reach out to the modern Orthodox on their own terms and bring them closer, "so that makes it pluralistic."

"We're trying to create an opportunity to have kids from different backgrounds side-by-side under one umbrella," said Rabbi Yehuda Jayson, an Orthodox rabbi and resident of Kibbutz Ein Tzurin who will be running Shalem. "These kids will go back well-rounded, having had a much broader experience."

Noam Schimmel, a freshman at Yale University and 1997 alumnus of Year Course, said Shalem is a wonderful idea. "It's definitely important that there be interaction between the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox," he said. "There should be a give-and-take learning and sharing."

Schimmel, who has a modern Orthodox background but felt comfortable "because I had a pluralistic upbringing," understands that others might not feel at ease. But the highlight of his year was doing community service, living with Israelis and being able to give back to Israel.

The anchor of the program will be the Talmud class, with much time set aside to prepare in chevruta, or one-on-one learning teams, and in-depth Bible study, "something that is neglected in other yeshivot," he said.

Classes, even in Judaic studies, will be coed, "because generally most of the kids will be coming from mixed society or mixed schools and will be going on to mixed universities," Jayson said. "And it's important to learn from different perspectives. This way the men can learn from the women and vice versa. I don't think it will affect the seriousness of the learning or the kedushah [holiness] of the beit midrash.

"Many times, not always, separating gender is an excuse for teaching at different levels. Teaching at different levels should be done but should be based on ability, not gender," he added. "Learning Torah is how we connect to God, so women should have the same opportunities available to them as do the men."