A Trilingual Jewish Preschool in San Francisco

This article was first published as “At this preschool, 1-2-3 comes in three languages” in JWeekly.

Jackie, 4, learns Hebrew letters and phonics, but some of her classmates are learning Russian.

“This is fun!” exclaims a little girl dressed all in pink, from her Hello Kitty hat down to her sneakers, as she traces the letters of the Russian alphabet.

She is doing the exercise as part of her Russian language pre-kindergarten class at Shalom School, which is run by Chabad of San Francisco.

She and her 4- and 5-year-old classmates sing songs and recite traditional Russian nursery rhymes with their teacher, Ella Kasminskaya.

Speaking with the children almost exclusively in Russian, Kasminskaya, a native of Uzbekistan who has been at Shalom School for 15 years, works on counting and basic conversation with them. They are especially engaged when she reads a picture book with them — calling out not only the names of each animal, but also the Russian versions of the sounds they make.

While it’s not uncommon to hear Hebrew and English at Jewish preschools, it is unusual to hear Russian.

At Shalom School, it’s a mix of all three.

Currently, there are 35 children at the Richmond District school — some from Russian-speaking families, some from families where a lot of Hebrew is spoken and some from households where English is spoken.

Seventeen of them are enrolled in one of two pre-K intensive language programs: 10 are in the Hebrew class and seven are taking Russian.

The language program — which will expand in the fall with the addition of a transitional kindergarten class — is the brainchild of Hinda Langer, the director of the 16-year-old school.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Innovation Alley

This article was first published as “Innovation Alley will showcase high-tech startups, nonprofits”  in JWeekly.

Adam Swig (photo credit: Daniel Murphy)

Adam Swig is becoming a go-to guy for putting together exciting events for young, community-minded San Francisco Jews. His latest offering: Innovation Alley, a new component of Israel in the Gardens celebrating high-tech and nonprofit startups.

“Word travels fast in the Jewish community,” said Swig, who helped organize the successful “Big Mitzvah” celebration for the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s Young Funders’ Impact Grants Initiative (IGI) earlier this year. It didn’t take long for the Israel Center to tap him to come up with something innovative for young people at this year’s Israel in the Gardens.

“I have met a lot of young Israelis who are tech entrepreneurs, so I thought it would be great to celebrate them and what they are doing,” Swig said. Inspired by the SXSW Interactive Festival model, a coming-together of the brightest minds in emerging technology, he decided to set up an area in the alley-like space between Yerba Buena Gardens and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts dedicated to Israeli tech innovation.

Visitors will find tented booths and tables where companies and cutting-edge nonprofits — all with a Jewish or Israeli connection — will showcase their products and their missions. “Young people should bring their resumes, and venture capitalists should bring their checkbooks,” said Swig.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

 

The Mirror in the Mikveh

This article was first published in the Forward.

Can a Jewish purity rite be adapted for teens? (illustration by Kurt Hoffman)

Ellie Goldenberg and Emily Blum are getting ready to immerse for the first time in the mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath.

One might assume that Ellie and Emily are soon-to-be brides; in traditional communities, women immerse in the mikveh for the first time before they are wed. But they’re not — Ellie is an 11-year-old fifth-grader at a Washington, D.C., Jewish day school and Emily is a 16-year-old junior at a public high school in the city’s Maryland suburbs.

Both were inspired to douse in the mikveh after they participated in “Bodies of Water: Honoring Our Jewish Bodies,” a new workshop at the Conservative Adas Israel Congregation in Washington that uses the mikveh as a tool to help girls and young women develop a positive and healthy body image.

“Mikveh has been an important part of managing my own body image for the past 13 years, and I kept thinking how it would have been better to have had this when I was younger,” said Naomi Malka, the director of the Adas Israel Community Mikvah, the only progressive mikveh — that is, open to any Jewish person for any reason — in Washington.

Malka is the creator of “Bodies of Water,” a three-hour workshop that combines nutrition education, yoga and an introduction to the mikveh. The Adas Israel Community Mikvah, which was founded in 1989, was originally used mainly for conversions. But today it is being used for creative and traditional purposes as well. Married women who observe Jewish purity laws immerse after their menstrual periods end to ritually cleanse themselves.

“I fully acknowledge how controversial it can sound to tell preteen and teenage girls that the mikveh welcomes them. In some communities and to some sensibilities this is tantamount to condoning premarital sex,” Malka said. An Orthodox rabbi consulted for this article confirmed that from a traditional halachic perspective, girls and young women should not be using the mikveh. As he sees it, staying away from the mikveh serves as a deterrent to sexual relations.

But Malka sees value in familiarizing teenagers with ritual immerson, whether they go on to use the mikveh for traditional or creative purposes. “I believe that in order for mikveh to take hold as a common practice — like kashrut or Shabbat — in progressive Jewish communities, it has to be introduced at a younger age and has to offer girls a healthy understanding of our bodies and sexuality within a Jewish ethic,” Malka said.

“Otherwise,” she continued, “[mikveh] will remain unexplored and we will raise another generation of Jews who are disconnected from this mitzvah.”

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.