Zehava Dahan is no longer relying on textbooks to teach her students about Israel.
“You cannot teach children how to love a place. Only when you have friends in a place do you feel connected to it,” said Dahan, the Israeli-born director of Judaic studies at Brandeis Hillel Day School in San Francisco.
In response to a growing body of research that indicates young American Jews feel disconnected from Israel, four day schools in the Bay Area — Brandeis Hillel in San Francisco and San Rafael, Ronald C. Wornick in Foster City and Gideon Hausner in Palo Alto — are pairing their students and teachers with Israeli counterparts, a process that is changing the curriculum and culture of Israel education on campus.
The effort began two years ago as a joint initiative of the S.F.-based Bureau of Jewish Education and the Israel Center of the Jewish Community Federation. The agencies sought to improve Israel education and to deepen the relationships between Jews in Israel and the Bay Area.
“It’s not just Israel for the sake of Israel. It’s learning about Israel for the sake of strengthening Jewish identity,” said Ilan Vitemberg, director of the Israel Education Initiative and school twinning at the BJE.
Vitemberg traveled to his homeland to find appropriate matches for Bay Area day schools. If principals at both schools “clicked,” he said, their partnership would trickle down, gradually linking teachers, staff, parents and students.
“Ultimately, we’re trying to change the culture of the school,” Vitemberg said, “so that Israel is in every aspect of the school, not only in Judaic studies.”
At Brandeis, for example, Jewish and general education teachers traveled to Israel in June. They spent 14 days working with their Israeli counterparts in Etzba HaGalila.
Batshir Torchio, a Judaic studies teacher at Brandeis Hillel, said it’s not only the Bay Area teachers who stand to benefit from school twinning. During her summer trip to Israel, the teachers were excited to hear about Jewish learning and community in a country that is not a Jewish state.
On 6, the Israeli teachers from Etzba HaGalila traveled San Francisco for seven days of fine-tuning what they worked on in the summer.
“I don’t want to indoctrinate students to love Israel,” Torchio said. “I do want them to feel excited about Israel before they learn about the conflict. I do want them to feel some sort of attraction to this place.”
Brandeis Hillel in San Francisco and Wornick in Foster City (twinned with a school in Haifa) began their twinning processes earliest and are the furthest along.
Recently, Brandeis eighth-graders sent students in Etzba HaGalila visual representations of their identities. Students made photo collages, decorated stuffed animals with things they loved and painted sneakers with words that described them.
The artwork was accompanied by personal letters explaining why they chose the symbols they did.
Meanwhile, Israeli students worked on a similar project, en route to San Francisco.
“It’s such a great project because to understand a different culture, you have to understand individual lives,” said Elijah Jatovsky, 14.
In February, Elijah and his classmates will go to Israel to meet their pen pals. Educators hope it’s only a beginning.
“We’re hoping for a greater sense of Jewish peoplehood,” Vitemberg said. “We are one people, we share a lot in common. We share a history, and we have the same destiny.”
School twinning is funded by the BJE, San Francisco’s JCF, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, Koret Foundation and Makom (a project of the Jewish Agency for Israel).