Jerusalem in Winter 25 Tevet, 5775
This Week at CJHS CJHS Community Night Senior Israel Experience Driver's Ed USY News MLK Service Events Summer Opportunities From the PO Sponsored Breakfast Alumni Trivia A Taste of Torah
Save the Date
January 16, 2015
SUSHI AND SAKE TOO: Second Annual Chicagoland Jewish High School Community Event
Sunday, Jan. 4 Friday, Jan. 23 Senior Israel Experience Monday, Jan. 19 MLK Day: No School Monday, Jan. 26 School resumes for seniors Wednesday, Jan. 28 9:45 Start
Sunday, Feb. 8 ACT Monday, Feb. 9 Wednesday, Feb. 11 Jewish Advocacy Seminar for Juniors Tuesday, Feb. 10 Curriculum and Beyond Monday, Feb. 16 Presidents' Day: No School
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
Wednesday, Feb. 25 9:45 Start
Senior Israel Experience
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more pictures here
The weather in the mountains doesn't look too different from sweet home Chicago, but our coats are on and we are a-hikin' as usual! Neither rain nor snow nor sleet, nor change of plans nor news from tweets dampened our spirits as we explored the life and spirit of Jerusalem. After a beautiful
P.O. Corner 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.
Shabbat exploring the Old City--and running into friends and acquaintances in the street in true Israeli fashion!--we filled the stands at the Pais Arena to cheer on HaPoel Yerushalayim in their big game against GalilGilboa. Many thanks to American Jewish basketball legend Tamir Goodman for meeting us in the press box before the game-and for basketball practice later in the more pictures here week!--and to the nice soldiers who also hung around to chat and answer questions about life in the IDF. Go Hapoel! We're rooting for you! Monday was all about community. Schechter alumni went northwest to Ra'anana to pay a shiva call to the family of their former Hebrew teacher Mar Avi Naamat, whose teaching we remember fondly and whose passing we mourn.
Community News and Events JNF Tu Bishvat Community Fun Fair
more pictures here 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 8 right here at CJHS!
Shira Forester writes from the bus, "It was a bit quiet at first, but then we started telling stories about him, and they told us stories about him, which went on for about an hour.... We all told our stories in Hebrew, because most people in the room knew almost no English.... We are all so glad we were able
to go, because it was so meaningful for us and also for the family."
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.
Monday was also food pantry day! We worked the morning away at Pantry Packers, the Jerusalem food bank run by Tzedakah Central and Kolel Chabad, has been distributing food and aid to residents of our Jewish homeland since 1788! Would you believe we filled, packed, and labelled 720 bags of rice? more pictures here
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.
The Jerusalem stay focused on the many faces of Israel. From the Charedi community in Geulah to the question of LGBT rights and the fiery opinions on both sides of the two-state solution, current events were at the forefront. From Gush Etzion to the Parents' Circle, we had a lot of food for thought as we also toured the Jewish quarter and the Christian quarter of the Old City. Life as a minority in Israel will be a big part of next week's theme, too, as the we explore the streets of Tel Aviv and move north into the Galil. Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem from Mr. Kassner, Ms. Seymour, Rabbi Silver, and all our seniors! Follow their adventures at http://seniorisraelexperience.wordpress. com.
Driver's Ed Freshmen and sophomores! Drivers Ed starts this coming Thursday, January 22 at 4:10 p.m. For questions, contact Janice Dlatt at 847.470.6700. 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
USY News
dzidman@cjhs.org. Order forms are available online here.
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Congratulations to senior Eli Krule, now the Israeli Affairs VP of USY International Board! Only six teens serve as officers from across North America and over 700 USYers attended the convention this year. Currently Eli is the President of CHUSY Region.
Alumni Trivia Which other USY macher and staffer is now doing organic chemistry right near home?
MLK Service Events Freedom for All: Combating Racism and Gender Inequality in Dr. King's Legacy Sunday, January 18 Anshe Emet Synagogue 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Dr. King famously said that we must "Create a place that is safe for all of God's children." Various faith organizations
and social justice groups will come together the Sunday before Martin Luther King Day to discuss faith, the legacy of Dr. King, and systematic racism and gender inequality in our community. We'll talk about what we can do to remedy these injustices, and we'll conclude by breaking bread together, as we reflect on how to create change together and realize Dr. King's dream. Click here for details.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Interfaith Event Monday, January 19 at CAIR-Chicago Offices 17 N. State St., Suite 1500 12:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. The world is full of religious based bigotry, hated and violence. Join us as we honor Dr. King's dream for a better world by discussing interfaith solidarity with Jewish, Muslim and Christian teenagers from across the Chicagoland area. Teens will then join together to hand out flyers promoting peace. Click here for details.
Summer Opportunities for Juniors and Seniors
Tikvah Institute for High School Students at Yale June 21 - July 2, 2015
Open to current juniors and seniors, the Tikvah Summer Institute for High School Students at Yale University will explore the biggest questions of meaning and purpose, war and peace, politics and economics, and culture and technology. University-style seminars will be taught by leading academic, political, and religious scholars. The institute is fully subsidized by the Tikvah Fund,
including tuition, room and board, books, and all activities. Apply by February 2. For more details on course options, click here. Research Experience for High Schol and Undergraduates "Genes and Addictive Behavior" is accepting applications for research! Stipends of $2,000 for high school students are available for this summer. Information about the program is at www.ratgenes.org. Winners will be matched with faculty researchers and lab associates from 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. Want to see the parts of our globe that the tourists never visit? Josh Sadagursky, a rep from Rustic Pathways, will be visiting on January 30 during lunch. Go to http://rusticpathways.com/ for more information.
Upcoming Events From the P.O. Tuesday, February 17, at 7:00 p.m. Join us for 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 7:00 p.m. Join us for a 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.
Breakfast Correction Apologies to the Treister family for misspelling their name in last week's edition!
Alumni Trivia Alex Krule ('12) is in his senior year at Northwestern studying chemistry. He will graduate this spring and will continue his studies at Northwestern to earn a Masters Degree in Chemistry in 2016. In addition to his work in the chem lab, where he worked on finding a molecular basis for memory, Alex is currently the president of AEPi at Northwestern and will be traveling to Poland with his Hillel over spring break with classmate & friend Lisa Wiznitzer ('12). The past few summers Alex has worked for USY, staffing USY Eastern Europe Israel Pilgrimage and USY on Wheels Pacific Northwest. Good for you, Alex!
A Taste of Torah: Va'era
This is the parasha in which God repeatedly hardens Pharaoh's heart. Traditional commentaries, like ourselves, find this concept extremely problematic. Hardening of the heart should not curtail human independence solely for making one person into an example for the profit of others: even the Pharaoh, depraved as he is, cannot merely be the means to an end. Addiction is one method by which we can see natural forces hardening a person's heart--that is, causing them to make the same bad decision over and over again, even against their express wishes to break the pattern. Social conformity is another: many psychology experiments, the Stanford prison experiment most grisly among them, have demonstrated the unwillingness of a single human to be the sole voice for reason and rightness in the face of a whole group bent on doing wrong. And yet, both the addict and the wallflower (some might say both the addict and the coward) are expressing their free will.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, "The conditions of slavery the Israelites experienced in Egypt were often enough felt historically by Egyptians themselves. The great pyramid of Giza, built more than a thousand years before the exodus, before even the birth of Abraham, reduced much of Egypt to a slave labour colony for twenty years. When life becomes cheap and people are seen as a means not an end, when the worst excesses are excused in the name of tradition and rulers have absolute power, then conscience is eroded and freedom lost because the culture has created insulated space in which the cry of the oppressed can no longer be heard. "That is what the Torah means when it says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Enslaving others, Pharaoh himself became enslaved. He became a prisoner of the values he himself had espoused. Freedom in the deepest sense, the freedom to do the right and the good, is not a given. We acquire it, or lose it, gradually. In the end tyrants bring about their own destruction, whereas those with willpower, courage and the willingness to go against the consensus, acquire a monumental freedom." --Mrs. Shira Eliaser
Shabbat Shalom Candlelighting this week is at 4:28. 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 ֵפ ָּלה ל,וְׂיֹוצִיאֵ ם ִמצ ָָּּרה ל ְִׂר ָּוחָּה ּו ִבזְׂמַן ק ִָּריב.