Hello from Israel 18 Tevet, 5775
This Week at CJHS Senior Israel Experience Research Opportunity CJHS Community Night From the PO Exam Schedule Sponsored Breakfast Alumni Trivia A Taste of Torah
Save the Date
January 9, 2015
Senior Israel Experience
Sunday, Jan. 4 Friday, Jan. 23 Senior Israel Experience Monday, Jan. 12 Friday, Jan. 16 Winter Exams Monday, Jan. 19 MLK Day: No School Monday, Jan. 26 School resumes for seniors Wednesday, Jan. 28 9:45 Start
Monday, Feb. 9 Wednesday, Feb. 11 Jewish Advocacy Seminar for Juniors Monday, Feb. 16 Presidents' Day: No School Wednesday, Feb. 25 9:45 Start
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P.O. Corner
The senior class touched down in Israel on Tuesday to start their three-week seminar on life in our Jewish homeland. This week, our seniors learned about Zionism, coexistence, and renewal as they explored the desert from their home base on Kibbutz Ketora. The dunes of the Negev provide endless possibilities, not just for reflection and self-discovery, but for environmental development at the Arava Institute and the kibbutz's renewable energy initiative, which is providing other villages across the globe with information and tools necessary to utilize available resources to produce natural energy without a power grid.
The P.O. is pleased to offer the gift card or "Scrip/Gelt" program, designed to help families earn money to apply towards their students' Shabbatonim, Junior Class trip, and Senior Israel Experience. By purchasing gift cards through the school for vendors where you ordinarily shop (groceries, gas, household items, etc), a percentage of what you spend each time will be placed in your family's account to be used for these trips. Gift card orders are placed every Thursday. Please contact Sheri Sandrof at ssandrof@cjhs.org or 847.324.3723 with any questions.
Grandparents and Special Friends Association Help us get in touch with some very special people in your students' lives! Please reply here with the names, addresses, and emails of their grandparents and/or special friends so we can forward them a membership form to join our "Grandparents and Special Friends Organization". If you provide an email address, they can also begin receiving CJHS e-news. Contact Sheri Sandrof at 847.324.3723 or ssandrof@cjhs.org with any questions.
Community News and Events JNF Tu Bishvat Community Fun Fair
Sunday, February 8 11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. 1095 Lake Cook Rd. The annual Chicago TuBishvat Community Celebration will take place on February 2 right
Hiking, art expression, and dance parties provided some lighter moments as our team soaked up some rays in Eilat before braving the cold in Jerusalem for erev Shabbat. Mark Lazar welcomed the seniors to Jerusalem with a theatrical introduction to Israeli culture before a Thursday afternoon trip to the shuk. Everyone is looking forward to meeting up with our alumni at the Fuchsberg Yeshiva after an erev Shabbat walk around the old city.
here at CJHS! Bring your kids-- or your grandkids-- to the yearly environmental fun fair for arts and crafts projects, sapling planting, performances by local Jewish choirs and Israeli dance troupes, storytelling for young children, visits with Smokey the Bear and Blue Box Bob, and Israeli food for the whole family.
Younger siblings at Schechter and other Jewish schools can see their paintings displayed and come for the judging of the annual Tu Bishvat art contest! Co-sponsored by the JCC's, the JCYS, and the United States Forest Service.
Sponsor Breakfast What's better than a birthday celebration with friends? Celebrate your student's birthday or other milestone with a special breakfast at CJHS.
For a donation of $180 (10x chai), bagels, cream cheese, and orange juice will be served to everyone. Announcements will be made in Tefillah and in the dining hall, and the occasion will also be listed in our weekly E-News and on the school announcement board. If you have any questions, please call 847.324.3713 or email dzidman@cjhs.org. Order forms are available online here.
Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem from Mr. Kassner, Ms. Seymour, Rabbi Silver, and all our seniors! Follow their adventures at http://seniorisraelexperience.wordpress. com.
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Alumni Trivia Which of our recent graduates is now published in the Times of Israel with a very thoughtful response to North America's outcry about the new USY leadership standards? And who is he studying with these days?
Research Opportunity: Genetics and Addiction Juniors and seniors! REHU 2015 "Genes and Addictive Behavior" is accepting applications for research! Stipends of $2,000 for high school students are available this summer (June 15 - August 21, 2015) for resereach. Information about the program is at www.ratgenes.org. Winners will be matched with faculty researchers and lab associates who will mentor REHU (Research Experience for High School and Undergraduate) activities. There will be a mid-summer working lunch and informal journal club program to discuss research projects and papers. At the conclusion of the REHU, students will produce a written report and present research findings
at a REHU symposium. The NIDA Center is led by the University of Chicago but includes collaborating investigators at the University of Michigan, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, University of Buffalo, and the Medical College of Wisconsin. Deadline for receipt of application materials is February 9, 2015. To apply or read more, click here.
SUSHI AND SAKE TOO: Second Annual Chicagoland Jewish High School Community Event
Reconnect with old friends, meet new ones, and see what's happening in the halls of CJHS! Saturday, January 17, 2015 27 Tevet 5775 7:30 p.m. Suggested Couvert: $50 per person RSVP to Michelle Friedman TODAY!
Upcoming Events From the P.O.
Tuesday, February 17, at 7 pm Our second CJHS PO Book Discussion Second Person Singular, by Sayed Kashua A Palestinian who writes in Hebrew, Sayed Kashua defies classification and breaks through cultural barriers. Second Person Singular is a gripping tale of love and betrayal, honesty and artifice, which asks whether it is possible to truly reinvent ourselves, to shed our old skin and start anew. Wednesday, March 18, doors open at 7 p.m. Baking demonstration and tasting by renowned cookbook author, Paula Shoyer The author of The Kosher Baker, The Holiday Kosher Baker, and soon to be released The New Passover Menu, Shoyer will also be signing her cookbooks available for purchase. Light refreshments will be served.
Final Exams
Stay warm, and happy studying, everyone! Click here for next week's exam schedule. Please note that there will be no cafeteria service next week, so be sure to brown bag it!
Sponsored Breakfast Happy birthday to Bea and Sol Triester! Many thanks to their family for sponsoring breakfast.
Alumni Trivia "I, too, see the impending doom of Conservative Judaism in the events of the past [month]," teases Avidan Halivni ('14) in his blog "Peshat and Derash" in the international news center at the Times of Israel. Of course, the rest of his thoughtful and well-written article indicates how much hope an interested pedant can find, not in the dry dictates of party line divorced entirely from meaning and context, but in the human faces of young Conservative Jews and the lives they live. Our movement, Halivni writes, and indeed all of Jewish study through the ages, lives in the nuances, the interpretations, and the living, breathing midrash of the mere words on the page.
Avidan is studying with his bros Evan Gorstein ('14) and Nathaniel Moses ('14) at Yeshivat Maale Gilboa, the kibbutz dati overlooking the Yizrael (Jezreel) valley. The boys study Bava Kama together in the mornings; Avidan is studying Avoda Zara, Nathaniel is doing Yoma, and Evan is doing Makkot. They are also learning Tanach, chasidut, theory of halacha, and Rav Ethan Tucker's tshuva on the role of women in the synagogue. We're behind you, bochurs--keep up the great work!
A Taste of Torah: Shmot There arose a new Pharaoh over Egypt, one who had not known Joseph [personally]. He said, "Look, the nation of the children of Israel is more numerous and strong than we are. We must deal cleverly with them, lest they grow; it will happen, when there is a war, and they add to our enemies and they will fight us, rising up from the Earth!" --Exodus 1:8-10 Jews all over the world begin to read this week how our people were mistrusted, enslaved, and made the subject of terrible atrocities. The new administration had its own agenda and its own version of recent history: never knowing Joseph personally, it was easy for the new king to view his predecessor's nepotistic flunky Tzafnat Paneach (as Yosef was known in court) as a power-hungry, manipulative yes-man who played on the old king's fears to the advantage of himself and his extended family. No one attempted to correct his narrowminded opinion; Israelites were animal-keepers who did not move in court circles, and so Pharaoh Raamses chose the path of escalation instead of the path of dialogue. It is easy to be angry and bitter at Pharaoh and all his willing helpers for perpetrating the atrocities and becoming the most brutal slavemasters in our history. But the echoes of his voice still ring true in our world. About which minorities do we catch ourselves saying, "These people are too numerous for our own good?" Whose crimes scream from the headlines and whose equally heinous violence is brushed aside without notice? Whom do we suspect--perhaps even rightly!-- of starting a war
before one has started? The Egyptian enslavement was not wholly without precedent: at the end of Genesis, Joseph reduces the free Egyptian people to serfs as part of his duties to the Crown. Just who is it now who may rise from the Earth to destroy our way of life? And who might well live with us very peaceably if given the chance? Pharaoh did not discriminate. He targeted all Israelites, killing the young and enslaving the old, leaving their girls alive to be used by his own people as means to an end. His was a despicable moral failure, and it began because he did not know Joseph. Do we know Joseph? Do we know Jósef, José, Yussuf, Ussup, and Yossele? When given the power to choose and the strength to defend ourselves, what kind of Pharaohs can we be? --Mrs. Shira Eliaser
Shabbat Shalom Candlelighting this week is at 4:20. Shabbat shalom! ַהנְׂתּונִים ְׂבצ ָָּּרה,ַאחֵינּו כָּל בֵית יִש ְָּׂראֵל הָּעֹומְׂדִ ים בֵין ַבי ָּם ּובֵין,ש ְׂבי ָּה ִ ּו ַב ַהמָּקֹום י ְַׂרחֵם ֲעלֵיהֶם, ַבי ַ ָּבשָּה, שתָּ א ַב ֲעגָּלָּא ְׂ ַה,שעְׂבּוד ִלגְׂ ֻאלָּה ִ ּו ִמ,ְׂאֹורה ָּ ּו ֵמ ֲא ֵפלָּה ל,וְׂיֹוצִיאֵ ם ִמצ ָָּּרה ל ְִׂר ָּוחָּה ּו ִבזְׂמַן ק ִָּריב.