Distance Torah Learning

I'm happy to feature this guest blog post by Laurie Rappeport on the new world of Jewish distance learning:

As a teacher who received her teaching certification in the '80s, the challenge of moving to an online venue was daunting, to say the least. I taught in the States before my aliyah and taught English in Israeli classrooms in the '90s. However,  when I first saw the advertisement for JETS Israel, an educational concern which facilitates teaching North American kids about Judaism and Israel through distance learning, I almost didn't apply.

Sure, I knew how to Google, email and even find friends on Facebook but who was I to run an interactive lesson on iPads?

Turns out that techie-phobics like myself were exactly what JETS was looking for. JETS educators are committed to Judaism, committed to Zionism and committed to bringing these elements of Jewish identity to kids in North American day schools and congregational schools. The technological details are secondary.

After completing an 8-week online JETS PD course called "No Teacher Left Behind," in which I was challenged to do what I would be expected to do with my classes, I was ready to roll. My assignment was an afternoon school in the Midwest, meaning that, in order to teach them at 6:30p.m. their time, I had to wake up at 2:30a.m. my time. Well, if the kids didn't mind seeing me in my jammies, I didn't care.

Our subject for the year was "Tikkun Olam" and we proceeded through the year by connecting various elements of tikkun olam to the seasons and holidays of the year. I began teaching right before Tu B'Shevat so we used videos and online work sheets to examine the Talmudic saying "Man is like the tree of a field." As the students collected their answers about the Jewish view of environmental responsibility they stuck virtual sticky notes on our online blackboard, created google drawings and documents, watched inspirational videos and shared their thoughts about their personal relationship to various textual materials that brought the connection between ancient Judaism and modern environmentalism alive.

Tu B'shevat got us talking about tithing the kids were surprised to hear that many Jews continue to tithe in modern times. We spent a lot of time on that subject. The online framework enabled a much more active discussion than would have been possible otherwise as the kids traded questions, thoughts and impressions using Earthtools, Wikis, social posters and other engaging multimedia.

My favorite Tu B'shevat lesson occurred when I threw  out the question "Why does man, like a tree, need soil? How does a person's deeds root him into the ground?" The kids came up with some great topics for exploration such as "What do we do in our lives that roots us?" and they then shared their thoughts on our online bulletin board.  

I don't think that anyone will ever mistake me for a technology maven but after my first year of distance teaching I became a believer. There are many different options within the world of online education that are simply not available elsewhere. These tools create a learning environment of engaging and interactive excitement. Distance learning isn't an answer to all Jewish educational needs but it definitely has a place in the Jewish classroom of the 21^st century.   

Irena Sendler: Righteous Amongst the Nations

I am delighted to feature this guest post about a remarkable woman who through her thousands of people were rescued from the nightmare of the Nazi plans for Jewish extermination:

Over the years many different accounts have surfaced regarding the actions of gentiles who, at great risk to their own lives, saved Jews in Nazi occupied Europe. One of the most amazing tales to emerge from the era involved Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who is believed to have saved over 3000 Jewish lives. She was honored by Yad Vashem in 1965 but her story was subsequently ignored until a group of amateur historians -- high school girls from rural Kansas -- uncovered the events and publicized the story.

Irena Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland. Sendler was employed by the Warsaw municipality's Welfare Department and she took care of the dispossessed Jews in the city after the Germans occupied Warsaw. Historians estimate that Sendler assisted over 500 Jews who went into hiding during those early years of the war.

When the Nazis established the Warsaw ghetto in 1941 Sendler secured documents that identified her as a nurse who specialized in infectious diseases, enabling her to enter the ghetto to bring in food and medicines.

Sendler quickly realized that although the supplies that she brought into the ghetto might ease the circumstances of a few people she could better impact more lives if she were to smuggle people out of the ghetto. Sendler felt that the children had the best chance of surviving outside the ghetto walls and she began to smuggle children out, first  street orphans and then, over time, approaching families in the ghetto to ask them to allow her to take their children out of the ghetto and put them into hiding.

In an interview that Sendler conducted over 50 years after the war Sendler described the heartbreak of those events. "I talked the mothers out of their children" Sendler said as she described the events of the war years. "Those scenes over whether to give a child away were heart-rending. Sometimes, they wouldn't give me the child. Their first question was, 'What guarantee is there that the child will live?' I said, 'None. I don't even know if I will get out of the ghetto alive today."

Sendler and her underground compatriots employed a number of schemes which  enabled her to smuggle the children to safety. Young children were sedated and hidden under tram seats, in toolboxes and luggage and even under piles of garbage in garbage carts or under barking dogs which distracted the German guards. Older children could be guided out of the ghetto through the sewer system that criss-crossed beneath Warsaw.

Once Sendler had removed a child from the ghetto she was obligated to immediately find him a secure hiding place. Sendler and her Zagota comrades forged documents for the children and brought them to safety including to homes of sympathetic Polish families who were prepared to accept the risk of hiding a Jewish child. In addition, as a social worker, Sendler had a network of contacts with many institutions and she was able to secure hiding places for the children in convents and orphanages including at the Rodzina Marii (Family of Mary) Orphanage in Warsaw and in convents in Lublin, Chomotow and Turkowice.  

Sendler listed the name and coded address of each child on tissue paper and placed these pieces of paper into glass jars which were buried in her neighbor's yard hoping to reunite them with their community once the war ended.

After the ghetto was deployed Zagota appointed Irena Sendler, whose underground name was Jolanta, the director of the Care of Jewish Children. Historians estimate that Sendler, together with Zagota members, saved over 2500 Jewish children.

On October 20 1943 the Nazis arrested Sendler and tortured her to force her to reveal information about the hidden children but Sendler did not reveal any information about the children's whereabouts or about her Zagota compatriots. The Germans sentenced Sendler to death but Zagota members managed secure her release and she lived out the remainder of the war in hiding.

In 1999 a group of Uniontown Kansas high school students heard a rumor about Sendler's wartime activities and began their own research project. Their research culminated in a wide-ranging series about Sendler's activities. This project attracted the attention of a Jewish businessman whose funding help them create Life in a Jar, which has now developed into a website, a book and a staged performance.