{"id":5834,"date":"2014-07-25T00:03:41","date_gmt":"2014-07-25T07:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=5834"},"modified":"2014-07-23T15:01:19","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T22:01:19","slug":"kesher-hadash-teaches-about-israel-in-all-its-complexity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2014\/07\/25\/kesher-hadash-teaches-about-israel-in-all-its-complexity\/","title":{"rendered":"Kesher Hadash teaches about Israel in all its complexity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2014 Davidson School group on Vision and Voices, the 10-day trip that precedes Kesher Hadash. The goal of this day in January was to explore the connection to the land and visit Ben-Gurion\u2019s Desert Home in Sde Boker. The conversation there focused on David Ben-Gurion\u2019s vision for Israel in general and for the desert in particular, as he wanted to make the desert bloom. (photo from Davidson School)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Growing up attending Jewish day school in Vancouver from nursery until Grade 12 gave Elana Wenner a strong connection to Judaism and Israel, but not a full understanding of the realities and complexities of Israeli society. With the goal of one day becoming a teacher in Jewish day schools in Canada, and eventually Israel, Wenner wanted a more comprehensive education \u2013 and went about getting one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to learn for myself and to be able to teach a more nuanced version of what\u2019s going on in Israel,\u201d said Wenner, 26.<\/p>\n

To do so, she participated in Kesher Hadash from January to May 2014. The immersive, semester-long program is offered by the Jewish Theological Seminary\u2019s William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education in Israel, although you do not need to be a student of the Davidson School\u2019s master program to participate. Kesher Hadash strives to give the cohort of Canadian and American students a deeper understanding of Israeli politics and society, a chance to go beyond the picture students are taught in Jewish day school education.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had regular history classes teaching \u2026 history not just from the Israeli perspective but from other perspectives, from all sides of the political spectrum,\u201d said Wenner. \u201cWe took classes at the [Ma\u2019aleh School of Television, Film and the Arts] where we watched movies made by religious filmmakers expressing political views through film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is to explore the Israel-Diaspora relationship, to look at the educational vision of Israel and how we are going to teach Israel: what are we going to do, what are different ways to teach [about] Israel, what is the Israel we want to expose our students to?\u201d explained Ofra Backenroth, dean of the Davidson School. \u201cWe believe you can\u2019t be a Jewish educator if you don\u2019t understand Israel and all its complexities.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The program\u2019s name articulates the two core aspects of the program:\u00a0kesher<\/em>, meaning connection, shows the goal of creating a deep connection with Israel, and\u00a0hadash<\/em>, which means new, expressing the desire to re-imagine the contours of the Israel-Diaspora relationship and suggesting new approaches to contemporary Jewish education.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The program\u2019s name articulates the two core aspects of the program: kesher<\/em>, meaning connection, shows the goal of creating a deep connection with Israel, and hadash<\/em>, which means new, expressing the desire to re-imagine the contours of the Israel-Diaspora relationship and suggesting new approaches to contemporary Jewish education.<\/p>\n

The program, said Backenroth, is life-transforming, as the students interact with different segments of the Israeli population: secular and religious, Israeli Jews and Arabs, Palestinians and others.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe learned the nuances between lots of different aspects of Israeli society that are often not brought up in day school, that go beyond just the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also the conflict between religious and secular Jews and the differences between Arab Israeli citizens and Palestinians,\u201d said Wenner.<\/p>\n

One of their weekly classes was made up of nine North American Jews, nine Israeli Jews and nine Israeli Arabs, where they discussed tough questions about Israel\u2019s existence, history and politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe often got into big disagreements and really had to experience for ourselves what it\u2019s like to be faced with someone who has an opposite opinion and learn how to be respectful of their opinion,\u201d said Wenner.<\/p>\n

The journey for students is not easy, she noted. On the school\u2019s website, however, many say that it opened their eyes to the realities of the difficulties and benefits of Israeli life.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe need to be able to understand that there are not just Jews living in Israel but other people living there and it\u2019s their country, too.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIt was really difficult,\u201d acknowledged Wenner, \u201cbut it wasn\u2019t supposed to be easy. We need to be able to understand that there are not just Jews living in Israel but other people living there and it\u2019s their country, too. During one program, we went on a guided tour of Bethlehem and met Palestinian families and talked to them about what goes on a daily basis. For a lot of people, it was a very challenging experience because it\u2019s so contrary to what we\u2019re used to hearing and knowing about the conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wenner, who is currently pursuing of master\u2019s of arts in Jewish studies at Concordia University in Montreal \u2013 and who is doing an internship this summer at the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia \u2013 hopes to take the knowledge she learned during this program and apply it as a Jewish educator in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people don\u2019t want to teach about any of the difficult or bad things going on in Israel because they think then we won\u2019t love Israel. I was raised believing you should love Israel like you love a baby \u2013 you want to give it everything and, no matter what, love it anyways.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we want to love Israel like we love a teenager, where you help it grow and change and try to show it the right way,\u201d she continued. \u201cAnd that, to me, is the role of educators in North America. That\u2019s the kind of love we should be teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vicky Tobianah<\/strong> is a freelance writer and editor based in Toronto. Connect with her on Twitter, @vicktob<\/a>, or at vtobianah@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2014 Davidson School group on Vision and Voices, the 10-day trip that precedes Kesher Hadash. The goal of this day in January was to explore the connection to the land and visit Ben-Gurion\u2019s Desert Home in Sde Boker. The conversation there focused on David Ben-Gurion\u2019s vision for Israel in general and for the desert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[1645,1647,1646,1643,1648,1644],"class_list":["post-5834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-davidson-school","tag-elana-wenner","tag-jewish-theological-seminary","tag-kesher-hadash","tag-ofra-backenroth","tag-william-davidson-graduate-school-of-jewish-education"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}