2008 Woodie Awards
Yeshiva Alumni Recall Pioneering Israel Experience
David L. Lerner
Issue date: 4/18/05 Section: Features
- Page 1 of 1
In July 2004, a unique event took place in the Israeli town of Shoresh, not far from Jerusalem. Nearly all the participants in the Seminar li-Mesayemim le-Morim 'Ivrim [Graduating Hebrew Teachers' Seminar], a semester of training in Israel for Diaspora Jewish educators during the spring of 1954, gathered for a fiftieth anniversary reunion. The annual seminar, organized and supported by the Jewish Agency for Israel (the Sochnut), was initially a small, combined program for students from diverse religious backgrounds; it later developed into two separate programs, Machon Greenberg (the Greenberg Institute for Diaspora teachers' training) and the women's seminary Machon Gold (founded in 1958). Although the annual study program began in 1953, the Class of 1954 was the first group to hold a reunion.
Strong YU Connections
Although the seminar was not formally a Yeshiva University program, many of the students attending in 1954 were students at Yeshiva's Teachers Institute for men and women. (The men's division was the predecessor of today's Isaac Breuer College of Hebraic Studies, while the women's division was affiliated with Stern College for Women.) The group of twelve men and ten women attending the seminar in 1954 included one alumnus and eight undergraduates from TI and Yeshiva College, and three students at the Yeshiva's Teachers Institute for Women; at least nine of these students had graduated from Yeshiva University high schools. The remaining seminar participants included students from other Hebrew teachers' colleges in the northeastern United States.
I had the privilege of accompanying my father, Herbert "Josh" Lerner, MTA '51, YC '55, to the 2004 reunion events. For as long as I can remember, I have heard and enjoyed his anecdotes from the semester he spent in Israel. The seminar had clearly been a profound, formative experience for my father, and for all of his fellow students. Among my father's classmates from MTA, TI and Yeshiva, his closest friendships had developed with those who shared the powerful experiences of study and travel in the six-year-old state of Israel. Now I had the opportunity to meet most of his fellow students, hear their reminiscences, and even see film footage of some of their tiyulim and their encounters with early Israeli leaders.
One of the highlights of the reunion was this remarkable home movie footage, taken during the seminar by one of the students, R. Wallace Pruzansky YC '55. The footage included some of the many tiyulim around the country, meetings with dignitaries, as well as the voyage back to New York via Europe. The 2004 reunion also included a tiyul to Azeka, a hill overlooking the valley of Elah, site of the Biblical confrontation between David and Goliath. In the style of the tiyulim of the seminar in 1954, a guide taught a passage from Tanakh describing the battle while pointing down at the very spot where the encounter took place. There was also a visit to the Merkaz Klita [immigrant absorption center] in Mevaseret Zion, a transitional home for many Ethiopian immigrants, complete with children's computer labs decorated with bilingual Hebrew-Amharic posters, where a young Ethiopian-Israeli immigrant discussed his community's history in fluent Hebrew, and a Sochnut representative discussed aspects of immigrant absorption and education.
Outstanding Lecturers
The twenty-first century reunion was a striking contrast to the group's original voyage to Israel. In 1954, the group sailed from New York to Haifa aboard the Zim Lines' ship Jerusalem, landing on September 24. After a hot and dusty bus ride, they arrived in Jerusalem. The seminar was based at the Hotel Palatin, just off King George Street. One alumnus describes the hotel rooms as "quite monastic. There was seldom hot water when you wanted it, and eggplant was the staple of our main meals." Several alumni recalled that during their stay, Israel was still in its last year of post-War (of Independence) food rationing.
Although some material comforts were lacking, the educational experiences that followed were exceptional. The Seminar included formal study with remarkable teachers and lecturers including Nechama Leibowitz, Shmuel Safrai, S.Y. Agnon, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Joseph Klausner, and R. Judah Leib (Fishman) Maimon. Many of these scholars went on to win the Israel Prize; Agnon won it twice, and of course also received the Nobel Prize in Literature. There were visits to religious and political leaders, including R. Yitzchak Isaac Herzog (Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel), R. Isser Yehuda Unterman (then the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, who later also served as Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel), Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and other dignitaries. Rabbi and Mrs. Solomon Wind were the directors and advisors for the group in academic and other matters, and the students remember them very fondly; R. Wind is described by the alumni as "a gentle soul" and "a real mentsch."
Unforgettable Tiyulim
The most memorable instructor was Zev Vilnai, the guide on the tiyulim [tours and hikes] around the country. Vilnai, author of the books Legends of Jerusalem, Legends of Eretz Israel, and other works, was renowned for his expertise in all aspects of Israeli geography, history, and legend. His tours made the land and the Tanakh come alive; one alumnus describes his experience on Vilnai's tiyulim as "bonding with the land." Some of the alumni recall his wistful look at certain distant areas, such as the hills visible across the Jordan River, with the comment that they were "ka-rega lo be-yadeinu" [not currently in our possession].
One trip brought the group to Sde Boker, the Negev town where David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister, resided during a short-lived retirement. Vilnai led the students to Ben-Gurion's door without an invitation, and successfully cajoled the premier's protective wife, Paula, into granting the group an audience with her husband. Upon learning that one of the students was born in Israel but lived in America, Ben-Gurion asked her, "Eich kafatzt le-sham?" (loosely, "How did you end up there?").
At the reunion, IDF Major-General (Ret.) and current Knesset member Matan Vilnai, Zev's son, was a guest, invited to reminisce about his father. He noted that his father loved every aspect of the land of Israel, eventually arranging for a university to craft a personalized graduate program for him, allowing him to achieve a unique doctorate in "Land of Israel Studies."
MK Vilnai confirmed the recollections of some seminar alumni that the group had attended his older brother's Bar Mitzvah celebration in Jerusalem in 1954. He joined the group in watching the remarkable film footage of his father leading the group on tiyulim (including the unannounced visit to the Ben-Gurions). At the end of the evening, the younger Vilnai commented, "I was very moved."
Early Israel Study
Several seminar alumni noted the rarity of travel to or study in Israel in the 1950s; indeed, it was so notable that an article appeared in the Jerusalem Post on September 24, 1954, announcing the arrival of the Seminar group and several other student groups. Under the headline "Eighty Young Americans Come to Study," the article described the seminar students as "twenty-two Hebrew-speaking students of the five largest Jewish teachers' training colleges of New York, Boston, and Chicago, twelve men and ten women, the pick of their classes. Their five-month stay in Israel was made possible by the Jewish Agency Cultural Fund (Keren Ha-Tarbut), and they will stay in Jerusalem, except for travel as part of their course in Israel geography. On completion of their courses they will return to their respective colleges to prepare for teaching careers in Jewish schools."
One alumna, Mrs. Judy Genauer Brickman, recalls that "[s]pending time in Israel was so unusual in those days that when we came back, [the Jewish community of] Far Rockaway had a reception for [R.] Fred Horowitz, [R.] Judah Harris and me so we could tell them about Israel." Two of the alumni observed, "Today, fifty years later, it is de rigeur for young people to spend a period of study (at least a year) in Israel. We were the 'pioneers' who proved for future generations that this endeavor was very worthwhile," adding that "[i]f we could have had the advantage of today's students, traveling by plane, we could have enjoyed an extra three weeks' stay in Jerusalem!"
Lasting Impact
The fiftieth reunion began with a discussion session, intended as an opportunity for the classmates to get reacquainted and to summarize the events of their lives, families and careers over the past fifty years. Most of the seminar alumni of 1954 pursued careers in Jewish or general education. At least six alumni earned doctoral degrees. Among the twenty-two seminar alumni are four Orthodox rabbis (including RIETS musmachim Fred Horowitz and Mordechai Spiegelman), two Conservative rabbis, and five Orthodox rebbetzins; one of these women, Mrs. Orah Kreiser Rubel, is married to Rabbi Shabtai Rubel, who has taught at Yeshiva's High School for Girls for the last forty-five years.
Many alumni noted the lasting impact of the program not only on their career paths, but on their personal lives as well. Two of the couples attending the reunion, Stella Novick Horowitz (TIW) and Rabbi Fred Horowitz (MTA,'55YC, B, R), and Naomi Kogen Spiegelman and Rabbi Mordechai Spiegelman ('55YC, R), had met in the seminar in 1954 and later married; Rabbi Solomon Wind, the seminar group's advisor, officiated at the Spiegelmans' wedding. Another woman in the group was introduced to her husband by a friend whom she met in the seminar.
Only one member of the group, Nehama Walles Sobel a"h, has passed away, in 1966, of injuries from a traffic accident. One alumnus, R. Judah Harris, MTA '51, YC '55, speculated that the statistically unlikely longevity of nearly all of the group members could be attributed to the avira de-ar'a, the special atmosphere of Israel which the students absorbed in their youth.
Inspired to Make 'Aliyah
Some seminar participants moved to Israel soon after the program, and others did so years later; many of those who remain in the United States maintain second homes in Israel. Some 63 percent of the children of all the seminar students, and scores of their grandchildren, now live in Israel as well, a testament to the Zionist ideals instilled in the students during their time in Israel, and faithfully passed on by them to their families.
One member of the seminar group, Professor Michael Rosenak, MTA, YC '54, is now the emeritus Mandel Professor of Jewish Education, at the Melton Center for Jewish Education of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He made 'aliyah in 1957 and devoted his career to Jewish education and teacher training. In a 2003 article, Professor Rosenak wrote about how deeply the experiences of the seminar influenced him: "In Israel, Jewishness was comprehensively serious, and many people, in ways sometimes profound and sometimes ridiculous, took it seriously. And showed me how much there was to it." He praised many of the Seminar's distinguished lecturers, adding, "All these people ... took Jewish matters with absolute seriousness, but not only as scholars. They were constantly arguing as though the most weighty issues were now being decided, maybe for good, and they had incredible funds of data at their fingertips that indicated not only how much they had studied, but also what it was that really interested them." Contrasting his experiences in the young state of Israel with his perception of Jewish identity in the Diaspora, Rosenak wrote, "The general impression was that Jewish matters were finally back where they belonged; all one had to do was to pick up some threads and continue working on the original tapestry, hoping the half-forgotten picture of the future would then come into view." He concludes that by the end of the semester, "I knew that I would spend my life in Israel, that it was the only place for me."
Looking Back Proudly
In a welcoming letter to reunion attendees, Alan D. Hoffman, the Director-General of the Department of Jewish-Zionist Education of the Jewish Agency, wrote, "Fifty years ago, you came to Israel for a seminal life experience: a semester study program in Israel with some of the leading figures of Hebrew learning and culture in Israel. The Jewish Agency worked closely with you, understanding that such a group was a critical resource in enhancing the engagement with Israel of North American Jews." Hoffman added that he is "impressed with how you have exemplified the values of aliyah, commitment to Israel and dedication to Jewish life. Through lay and professional capacities, you have taken upon yourselves key roles in building the close and lasting bonds between Israel and the Diaspora, and have contributed greatly to the difficult task of ensuring the Jewish vitality of the next generation." He concluded by expressing his department's "appreciation for your years of service and your ongoing contribution to our common goals."
At the wedding of Seminar alumni Naomi Kogen and Mordechai Spiegelman in 1956, Rabbi Solomon Wind, the group's advisor, quoted Bereishit 43:11, "Kechu mi-zimrat ha-aretz" ("Take of the bounty of the land"), and urged the couple to make their Israel experience an integral part of their future lives. Each of the Seminar alumni has fulfilled this mandate in his or her own unique way. Looking back on five decades of professional and personal commitment to Israel and involvement in Jewish education, the alumni can be proud that through their roles as educators and community activists, and in many cases as 'olim together with their families, their small group of twenty-two students has made influential contributions both to building Israeli society and to strengthening her bonds with Diaspora Jewry.
Many of the seminar participants are also members of the Yeshiva College Class of 1955. Having gotten into the reunion spirit a bit early, my father and his classmates are now eagerly looking forward to their fiftieth-anniversary college reunion, which will coincide with this year's YU Commencement on May 26, 2005.
Dr. David L. Lerner is an Assistant Professor of Radiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Inspired by his father's Israel experiences, he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem during his junior year of college.
Strong YU Connections
Although the seminar was not formally a Yeshiva University program, many of the students attending in 1954 were students at Yeshiva's Teachers Institute for men and women. (The men's division was the predecessor of today's Isaac Breuer College of Hebraic Studies, while the women's division was affiliated with Stern College for Women.) The group of twelve men and ten women attending the seminar in 1954 included one alumnus and eight undergraduates from TI and Yeshiva College, and three students at the Yeshiva's Teachers Institute for Women; at least nine of these students had graduated from Yeshiva University high schools. The remaining seminar participants included students from other Hebrew teachers' colleges in the northeastern United States.
I had the privilege of accompanying my father, Herbert "Josh" Lerner, MTA '51, YC '55, to the 2004 reunion events. For as long as I can remember, I have heard and enjoyed his anecdotes from the semester he spent in Israel. The seminar had clearly been a profound, formative experience for my father, and for all of his fellow students. Among my father's classmates from MTA, TI and Yeshiva, his closest friendships had developed with those who shared the powerful experiences of study and travel in the six-year-old state of Israel. Now I had the opportunity to meet most of his fellow students, hear their reminiscences, and even see film footage of some of their tiyulim and their encounters with early Israeli leaders.
One of the highlights of the reunion was this remarkable home movie footage, taken during the seminar by one of the students, R. Wallace Pruzansky YC '55. The footage included some of the many tiyulim around the country, meetings with dignitaries, as well as the voyage back to New York via Europe. The 2004 reunion also included a tiyul to Azeka, a hill overlooking the valley of Elah, site of the Biblical confrontation between David and Goliath. In the style of the tiyulim of the seminar in 1954, a guide taught a passage from Tanakh describing the battle while pointing down at the very spot where the encounter took place. There was also a visit to the Merkaz Klita [immigrant absorption center] in Mevaseret Zion, a transitional home for many Ethiopian immigrants, complete with children's computer labs decorated with bilingual Hebrew-Amharic posters, where a young Ethiopian-Israeli immigrant discussed his community's history in fluent Hebrew, and a Sochnut representative discussed aspects of immigrant absorption and education.
Outstanding Lecturers
The twenty-first century reunion was a striking contrast to the group's original voyage to Israel. In 1954, the group sailed from New York to Haifa aboard the Zim Lines' ship Jerusalem, landing on September 24. After a hot and dusty bus ride, they arrived in Jerusalem. The seminar was based at the Hotel Palatin, just off King George Street. One alumnus describes the hotel rooms as "quite monastic. There was seldom hot water when you wanted it, and eggplant was the staple of our main meals." Several alumni recalled that during their stay, Israel was still in its last year of post-War (of Independence) food rationing.
Although some material comforts were lacking, the educational experiences that followed were exceptional. The Seminar included formal study with remarkable teachers and lecturers including Nechama Leibowitz, Shmuel Safrai, S.Y. Agnon, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Joseph Klausner, and R. Judah Leib (Fishman) Maimon. Many of these scholars went on to win the Israel Prize; Agnon won it twice, and of course also received the Nobel Prize in Literature. There were visits to religious and political leaders, including R. Yitzchak Isaac Herzog (Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel), R. Isser Yehuda Unterman (then the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, who later also served as Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel), Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and other dignitaries. Rabbi and Mrs. Solomon Wind were the directors and advisors for the group in academic and other matters, and the students remember them very fondly; R. Wind is described by the alumni as "a gentle soul" and "a real mentsch."
Unforgettable Tiyulim
The most memorable instructor was Zev Vilnai, the guide on the tiyulim [tours and hikes] around the country. Vilnai, author of the books Legends of Jerusalem, Legends of Eretz Israel, and other works, was renowned for his expertise in all aspects of Israeli geography, history, and legend. His tours made the land and the Tanakh come alive; one alumnus describes his experience on Vilnai's tiyulim as "bonding with the land." Some of the alumni recall his wistful look at certain distant areas, such as the hills visible across the Jordan River, with the comment that they were "ka-rega lo be-yadeinu" [not currently in our possession].
One trip brought the group to Sde Boker, the Negev town where David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister, resided during a short-lived retirement. Vilnai led the students to Ben-Gurion's door without an invitation, and successfully cajoled the premier's protective wife, Paula, into granting the group an audience with her husband. Upon learning that one of the students was born in Israel but lived in America, Ben-Gurion asked her, "Eich kafatzt le-sham?" (loosely, "How did you end up there?").
At the reunion, IDF Major-General (Ret.) and current Knesset member Matan Vilnai, Zev's son, was a guest, invited to reminisce about his father. He noted that his father loved every aspect of the land of Israel, eventually arranging for a university to craft a personalized graduate program for him, allowing him to achieve a unique doctorate in "Land of Israel Studies."
MK Vilnai confirmed the recollections of some seminar alumni that the group had attended his older brother's Bar Mitzvah celebration in Jerusalem in 1954. He joined the group in watching the remarkable film footage of his father leading the group on tiyulim (including the unannounced visit to the Ben-Gurions). At the end of the evening, the younger Vilnai commented, "I was very moved."
Early Israel Study
Several seminar alumni noted the rarity of travel to or study in Israel in the 1950s; indeed, it was so notable that an article appeared in the Jerusalem Post on September 24, 1954, announcing the arrival of the Seminar group and several other student groups. Under the headline "Eighty Young Americans Come to Study," the article described the seminar students as "twenty-two Hebrew-speaking students of the five largest Jewish teachers' training colleges of New York, Boston, and Chicago, twelve men and ten women, the pick of their classes. Their five-month stay in Israel was made possible by the Jewish Agency Cultural Fund (Keren Ha-Tarbut), and they will stay in Jerusalem, except for travel as part of their course in Israel geography. On completion of their courses they will return to their respective colleges to prepare for teaching careers in Jewish schools."
One alumna, Mrs. Judy Genauer Brickman, recalls that "[s]pending time in Israel was so unusual in those days that when we came back, [the Jewish community of] Far Rockaway had a reception for [R.] Fred Horowitz, [R.] Judah Harris and me so we could tell them about Israel." Two of the alumni observed, "Today, fifty years later, it is de rigeur for young people to spend a period of study (at least a year) in Israel. We were the 'pioneers' who proved for future generations that this endeavor was very worthwhile," adding that "[i]f we could have had the advantage of today's students, traveling by plane, we could have enjoyed an extra three weeks' stay in Jerusalem!"
Lasting Impact
The fiftieth reunion began with a discussion session, intended as an opportunity for the classmates to get reacquainted and to summarize the events of their lives, families and careers over the past fifty years. Most of the seminar alumni of 1954 pursued careers in Jewish or general education. At least six alumni earned doctoral degrees. Among the twenty-two seminar alumni are four Orthodox rabbis (including RIETS musmachim Fred Horowitz and Mordechai Spiegelman), two Conservative rabbis, and five Orthodox rebbetzins; one of these women, Mrs. Orah Kreiser Rubel, is married to Rabbi Shabtai Rubel, who has taught at Yeshiva's High School for Girls for the last forty-five years.
Many alumni noted the lasting impact of the program not only on their career paths, but on their personal lives as well. Two of the couples attending the reunion, Stella Novick Horowitz (TIW) and Rabbi Fred Horowitz (MTA,'55YC, B, R), and Naomi Kogen Spiegelman and Rabbi Mordechai Spiegelman ('55YC, R), had met in the seminar in 1954 and later married; Rabbi Solomon Wind, the seminar group's advisor, officiated at the Spiegelmans' wedding. Another woman in the group was introduced to her husband by a friend whom she met in the seminar.
Only one member of the group, Nehama Walles Sobel a"h, has passed away, in 1966, of injuries from a traffic accident. One alumnus, R. Judah Harris, MTA '51, YC '55, speculated that the statistically unlikely longevity of nearly all of the group members could be attributed to the avira de-ar'a, the special atmosphere of Israel which the students absorbed in their youth.
Inspired to Make 'Aliyah
Some seminar participants moved to Israel soon after the program, and others did so years later; many of those who remain in the United States maintain second homes in Israel. Some 63 percent of the children of all the seminar students, and scores of their grandchildren, now live in Israel as well, a testament to the Zionist ideals instilled in the students during their time in Israel, and faithfully passed on by them to their families.
One member of the seminar group, Professor Michael Rosenak, MTA, YC '54, is now the emeritus Mandel Professor of Jewish Education, at the Melton Center for Jewish Education of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He made 'aliyah in 1957 and devoted his career to Jewish education and teacher training. In a 2003 article, Professor Rosenak wrote about how deeply the experiences of the seminar influenced him: "In Israel, Jewishness was comprehensively serious, and many people, in ways sometimes profound and sometimes ridiculous, took it seriously. And showed me how much there was to it." He praised many of the Seminar's distinguished lecturers, adding, "All these people ... took Jewish matters with absolute seriousness, but not only as scholars. They were constantly arguing as though the most weighty issues were now being decided, maybe for good, and they had incredible funds of data at their fingertips that indicated not only how much they had studied, but also what it was that really interested them." Contrasting his experiences in the young state of Israel with his perception of Jewish identity in the Diaspora, Rosenak wrote, "The general impression was that Jewish matters were finally back where they belonged; all one had to do was to pick up some threads and continue working on the original tapestry, hoping the half-forgotten picture of the future would then come into view." He concludes that by the end of the semester, "I knew that I would spend my life in Israel, that it was the only place for me."
Looking Back Proudly
In a welcoming letter to reunion attendees, Alan D. Hoffman, the Director-General of the Department of Jewish-Zionist Education of the Jewish Agency, wrote, "Fifty years ago, you came to Israel for a seminal life experience: a semester study program in Israel with some of the leading figures of Hebrew learning and culture in Israel. The Jewish Agency worked closely with you, understanding that such a group was a critical resource in enhancing the engagement with Israel of North American Jews." Hoffman added that he is "impressed with how you have exemplified the values of aliyah, commitment to Israel and dedication to Jewish life. Through lay and professional capacities, you have taken upon yourselves key roles in building the close and lasting bonds between Israel and the Diaspora, and have contributed greatly to the difficult task of ensuring the Jewish vitality of the next generation." He concluded by expressing his department's "appreciation for your years of service and your ongoing contribution to our common goals."
At the wedding of Seminar alumni Naomi Kogen and Mordechai Spiegelman in 1956, Rabbi Solomon Wind, the group's advisor, quoted Bereishit 43:11, "Kechu mi-zimrat ha-aretz" ("Take of the bounty of the land"), and urged the couple to make their Israel experience an integral part of their future lives. Each of the Seminar alumni has fulfilled this mandate in his or her own unique way. Looking back on five decades of professional and personal commitment to Israel and involvement in Jewish education, the alumni can be proud that through their roles as educators and community activists, and in many cases as 'olim together with their families, their small group of twenty-two students has made influential contributions both to building Israeli society and to strengthening her bonds with Diaspora Jewry.
Many of the seminar participants are also members of the Yeshiva College Class of 1955. Having gotten into the reunion spirit a bit early, my father and his classmates are now eagerly looking forward to their fiftieth-anniversary college reunion, which will coincide with this year's YU Commencement on May 26, 2005.
Dr. David L. Lerner is an Assistant Professor of Radiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Inspired by his father's Israel experiences, he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem during his junior year of college.