March 15, 2013 / 4 Nissan 5773
Model U.N. Does It Again! In This Issue
Model U.N. Lands on Its Feet
Model U.N. The CJ Factor Spring Training Math Team Pi Day DECA Guest Speaker Blood Drive CJHS Meets CJDS Alumni in the News Chametz Drive Commnuity Film Screening Save the Date: Wagner Institute Neither snow nor rain
Library News STAND UPdate Alumni Trivia A Taste of Torah
Save the Date Sunday, March 17 Spring Musical Revue Monday, March 25 Pesach Break Begins
nor sleet nor bungled trains nor gloom of cancelled flights prevented our Model U.N. team from outdoing itself at this year's New York summit. A total of 45 countries were represented at the conference, including over 300 individual schools and a record-breaking 3,100 students from all over the world-among whom we were delighted to meet our Italian counterparts from a Jewish day school in Rome!
For the second year running, the CJHS team tied several much larger schools for Monday, April 8 second place in overall excellence! This victory is a School resumes testament to the rave reviews written by the many M.U.N. staffers as they individually rated the performance of each Sunday, April 14 committee member. Five of our students were honored to ACT serve on specialized agencies: Avidan Halivni and Charlotte Kamin on the Security Council considering the Sunday, April 21 situation in the Sudan, Elan Sykes and Dana Levin on Monday, April 22 the Historic Security Wagner Institute Council re-visiting the crisis in the Suez, and Friday, April 26 Adam Taitz on No School MONUSCO, whose focus was resolving the Hutu-Tutsi violence in the Eastern P. O. Corner Congo. On those committees, Elan Gelt Program Sykes, Dana Levin, and Adam Taitz won The P.O. is pleased to once again separate Awards of Distinction! Moreover, Sarah Levin, introduce the gift card "Gelt program" to our families and we Ruli-Warner Rosen, Hillel Schwartz, Joe Cohen, Josh have made it much easier (look Flink, and Rachel Small were all invited to present their for upcoming email with details respective committee's resolutions at the Plenary session: on how to register). Faculty and a tremendous honor! staff can also buy Gelt that will help to support programs provided for the school by the P.O. This program is designed to help families earn money toward their children's junior year Panim program and/or the Senior Israel Experience. The program is a passive earning system, in which you buy the things you ordinarily purchase anyway, and earn money which will be credited to your family for designated school trips. If you have any questions, contact Sheri Sandrof at ssandrof@cjhs.org or call her at 847.324.3723.
Community News and Events USCJ Annual Benefit Concert
A Celebration of Our Youth: An Evening of Musical Entertainment Sunday, March 17, 2013 7:00 p.m. North Suburban Synagogue Beth El 1175 Sheridan Rd., Highland Park, IL
This concert honors Chuck Kahalnik and our Regional Youth Commission Leaders and features the music of Sheldon Low. Click here to become a sponsor or to purchase tickets.
JUF Annual Jewish Day School Night We are pleased to invite you to JUF's Annual Day School Night: Tuesday, April 9 7:15 p.m. Holiday Inn North Shore 5300 Touhy Ave., Skokie "How to Communicate With
To say our team did well is an understatement: they worked as a seamless team under the most stressful and challenging conditions, distinguishing themselves with creativity, diligence, patience, fortitude, and extraordinary eloquence. We salute all 27 of our returning diplomats, each of whom performed with distinction as they expanded their knowledge of international relations. Read all about it in the Deerfield Patch, or watch the full honors video clips at http://cjhsmun.blogspot.com.
Your Children Without Losing Your Hair or Your Mind!" The event is free to participants, and it is a wonderful opportunity to show our support for JUF, mingle with other committed leaders, professionals and parents of the day school community, and listen to an interesting speaker. Michael Brandwein, writer and presenter of the Emmy award-winning television programs Parenting Puzzle, will be the featured speaker.
CJHS announces The CJ Factor, at 7:00 p.m., Sunday, March 17, at the historic Skokie Theatre at 7924 Lincoln Avenue in Skokie. Our amazing cast utilizes spoken word, dance, poetry, vocal artistry and mastery of individual musical instruments to shine for this one-evening event; and tickets are only $10! Once you see and hear it, you'll know what that special something that our students possess is - what we call the CJ Factor! Tickets are limited - contact www.gorillatango.com to reserve your seat now!
Spring Training Begins
Arizona is for wimps; real men warm up their pitching arms on the half-frozen American Friends of tundra of Goodman Field right here at Israeli War Disabled CJHS! In a truly historic moment, the longPresents... awaited CJHS baseball team took to the "Everything Is Illuminated" field last week for its first organizing meeting and practice sessions. Team leaders Sunday, March 17 include Aaron Drexler, Larry Bender, and Isaac 2:00 p.m. Johnston; Isaac reports, "We are planning on having a Noyes Cultural Center 927 Noyes Street, Evanston club team this year with a couple practices per week and 3-4 games. Mr. Gleicher will be the head coach with assistance from pitching coach Mr. Danko and assistant The Next Theater Company's upcoming production is Jonathan coach Rabbi Robkin. CJHS baseball is still undefeated!" Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated, adapted for the stage by Simon Block. It chronicles a young Jewish man's journey as he struggles to unlock the secrets of his past. It follows the quirky journey of Jonathan scouring the rural Ukraine landscape in the search of a woman who may have saved his grandfather from the Nazis, accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous and excitable dog named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr., and an irreverent translator with a unique grasp of the English language
Look both ways before crossing the hallway after school: you might get run over by a streak of Tigers! That thundering sound of running feet you hear is the women's soccer team, on the move and training hard. They're not a bit put off by their first two games of the season being snowed out, and they're looking forward to taking on Our Lady of Tepeyac and Woodlands Academy next week.
Math Team Concludes Winter Season
A chilly breeze blew through the wind tunnel as the CJHS mathletes boarded the bus for their final competition of the Join us at 1:00 p.m. before the year. The math team concluded show for an hour of light refreshment and camaraderie at its inaugural season in the North the Noyes Cultural Center in the Suburban Math League (NSML) studio right next door to the this Wednesday at the 2012-13 theater entrance. The Conference Meet at Evanston play begins at 2:00 p.m. Advance copies of the script will Township High School. Over 50 local high schools were be available and we are invited represented at the meet. Team member Maya Behn to a special post-show discussion reports that CJHS continues to lead in points per capita for with members of the cast and all mathletes across the North Shore; congratulations to
artistic team.
Benji Fishbaum for earning a perfect score in the Senior Competition! Congratuations to all the mathletes for their The cost for this wonderful effort and dedication to making this a successful first afternoon is only $36.00 per person. Make your checks out to season in the NSML, and to our stalwart coaches Dr. Yuen, AFIWDF. Contact Esther Ms. Charous, Ms. Gitlin, and Mr. Baumstark. Calamaro at 847.679.4199 or esthermosh@aol.com.
Pi Day
Sharia and Halakha in America April 15-16 * Presented by Chicago-Kent Law School, and the JewishMuslim Initiative at the University of Illinois-Chicago * Coordinators include CJ parent Mark Rosen of Chicago-Kent Law School and board member Prof. Sam Fleischacker at UIC Islamic religious law - shari'a has come under fierce attack in recent years, as a system that threatens American freedoms. More quietly, there has been an attempt in San Francisco to ban circumcision, a ritual central to both Jewish and Muslim law; bans on both Jewish and Muslim modes of slaughtering animals have been enacted in a number of European countries. Indisputably, prejudice and hatred have played a large role in motivating these developments, but they have also raised some deep questions about how liberal democracies can and should accommodate legal systems. This conference will explore these questions, as they pertain to both shari'a and Jewish law (halacha), from a variety of angles. It will address the challenges faced by both Jewish and Muslim legal systems, and invite people from the two traditions to learn from one another's experience.
Many thanks to Mike Byster, the human calculator, for coming in to entertain our school for Pi Day! Mr. Byster was able to solve in only a few seconds the most complicated math problems our mathletes could invent for him, zipped around the calendar identifying days of the week for any date that
we could throw at him, and even showed our students his "Brainetics" memory approach for how to rack up these calculations faster than even reaching for your cell phone's calculator. It's Sessions on Monday, April 15 will amazing what the human be held in Room 580, Chicagobrain can do! And thanks to the math department, as Kent Law School; sessions on always, for the pies. Tuesday, April 16th will be held in the Institute for the Humanities, Stevenson Hall, University of Illinois-Chicago. All sessions will be open to the
DECA Guest Speaker
public, and the conference will run from 9 to 6 on the 15th and from 9 to 4 on April 16. To register, and for more information, click here.
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. An announcement will be made in Tefillah and in the dining hall, and the occasion will also be listed in our weekly E-News.
Marvin Lutz, a high-yield bond portfolio manager at Allstate Investments, is joining DECA, our business and finance club, on Wednesday, March 20, during lunch. He will be leading a discussion on institutional investment management, with a particular focus in his area of expertise, which is high yield bonds. After a brief open Q & A session, Mr. Lutz will present promptly at 11:52 p.m. and take 15 more minutes of questions at the end. Join us in room 311 for a very informative session!
Blood Drive The Va'ad is hosting a Blood Drive on Monday, March 18, from 11:45-4:00 p.m., in Room 244. Students and staff age 16 and older can drop by and help save a life someday! To sign up, contact Josh Silverman. If you donate blood, you will also receive lots of snacks and a free t-shirt. And who doesn't love free t-shirts?
CJHS Meets CJDS
If you have any questions, please call 847.324.3713 or email idrazin@cjhs.org. Order forms are available online here.
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Last Friday, the CJHS vocal ensemble gave its annual preShabbat concert for the Chicago Jewish Day School. Becca Abrams, Elizabeth Barras, Gabi Pretekin, Talia Canter, Sarah Comar, 2012-2013 Year Jonathan Tupper, Orli Schlessinger, Calendar Matthew Dulberg, Eleanor Dunietz, Remy Kaskel, Hana Lieber, Rachel Rubinstein, and Arielle Kaye performed a selection of hymns and Lunch Menu zemirot, plus a selection of Broadway songs from our upcoming show, The CJ Factor! It's always great to get together with our day Join the Tiger school buddies in the city! Club
Colleges Take Note of CJHS While visits from college representatives primarily occur in the fall, several are visiting this spring. First time visitors include Tel Aviv University and the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) who were here this week. A representative from the University of California at San Diego will visit CJHS on Wednesday, March 20, and Wake Forest University will visit on April 15.
Alumni Trivia CJHS students continue to make headlines! Which of our recent graduates was interviewed on Israel's Channel 1 Yoman last month?
Chametz Drive We only have one more week before spring break, meaning that Pesach is only a week and a half away! As you're cleaning your house of all Chametz, make sure to donate your nonperishable Chametz (and various other nonperishable food products) to DRIVES, which is collecting food for the Chicago Food Depository. The collection ends next Friday, March 22.
Film Screening: Race to Nowhere
SSDS and CJHS invite you to join us for a community screening and discussion of the award-winning documentary Race to Nowhere: Leveraging the Power of Community to Transform Education, right here at CJHS. Wednesday, April 17, 2013 7:00 p.m. There will be a discussion with Solomon Schechter and CJHS educators following the film. Tickets are $10/person
at the door. For more information or to RSVP, contact Jodi Morady at moradyfamily@sbcglobal.net or Melissa Spellman melissawspellman@gmail.com.
Save the Date: Wagner Institute
"Creating a Just Society" The Isidor and Rose Wagner Institute for Leadership Development of The Jewish Theological Seminary in partnership with Chicagoland Jewish High School Featuring JTS Chancellor Arnold M. Eisen Sunday, April 21 - Monday, April 22
Library News The library is pleased to showcase the new Passover display! We have an eclectic number of titles including The Passover Saga: Myth or History?, The Interlinear Haggadah, And You Thought There Were Only Four: 400 Questions to Make Your Seder Enlightening, Educational and Enjoyable, and The Art of Jewish Living: The Passover Seder. Thanks to Ms. Snyder whose colorful graphics adorn the display.
STAND UPdate STAND secretary Yadid Licht reports, "This past week, the activist organization, United to End Genocide, created BashirWatch, a global network of citizens who will pressure governments to uphold their obligation to arrest President Omar al-Bashir. Omar al-Bashir is responsible for the genocide in the Darfur region of what is now South Sudan that occurred from 2003-2009, and continues to use similar tactics of direct ground attacks, aerial bombing, and blocking of humanitarian aid to displaced civilians in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan regions. Although the ICC has issued a warrant for his arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Bashir has yet to be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) due to the lack of political will of the members of the United Nations Security Council and the countries that are members of the ICC. BashirWatch will pressure policymakers, government representatives, and court officials to support the ICC's warrant for Bashir, bring him into custody, and transfer him to the International Criminal Court for trial. United to End Genocide hopes that through their efforts, they will
create justice in the world, and will send a message to all other oppressors that justice will catch up with them."
Alumni Trivia
Yoman Special Feature: Women of the Wall Special feature on Israel Channel 1
Noah Weinberg ('12) is one of the men on the ground interviewed in Channel 1 Israel's special program last month on religion and the state. Check out his thoughtful remarks at the 5:30 mark. Noah is spending the year in Israel studying on Kivunim. Correction: Aliza Shapiro from last week's article graduated in 2010, not 2011. E-News apologizes for the error.
Sponsored Breakfast Happy birthday to Linzy Upton-Spatz. Many thanks to her family for sponsoring bagels. A Taste of Torah: Vaykira
Our Rabbis teach us that the first thing that we are to teach our children is the Book of Vayikra, the various details of our laws, the cultic system which stood as the basis for how we related to
God. We read in midrash Vayikra Rabbah, in fact, that this decision has a form-follows-function pedagogic approach: "God says since the sacrifices are pure and the children are pure, let the pure ones come and study what is pure" (Vayikra Rabbah 7:3). During the first half of Sh'mot, we have soaring oratory, miracles of so many kinds - a burning bush, ten plagues, the splitting of the Sea of Reeds. Yet the essence of our lives is not found in the book of Sh'mot. Life is lived in the status quo, in the every day. And it is the book of Vayikra that gives us a narrative structure for how we navigate our time "in-between," giving sanctity to the mundane. The sacrifices that appear throughout this parasha are precisely the communal structure that can serve as a model for us today, as Chancellor Arnold Eisen of JTS discusses: "Such pleasures of the everyday, for all the routine trouble and inevitable dullness intermixed with them, and the many evils that continue in the world, likewise visible every day, enable one to say, 'Dayyenu. It is enough for us' Attentive to the foreground, part of a community which shares it, we know what it is to want only more of the same, and have a sense of what it might mean to live inside a sacred order. If I only had the world, I too would sing the praises of this everyday mightily and would not contradict those who discern in it, with keener vision than I possess, the activities of the Most High" (Eisen, Taking Hold of Torah, 106-7). We teach our children the laws of Vayikra first, it seems, because these details are precisely the essence of life. It is my blessing that we will be intentional about our sanctification of everyday moments, providing communal structures and opportunities to serve God, just as our people did in their enactments of sacrifices.
--Rav Beit Sefer Zachary Silver
Shabbat Shalom Candlelighting will be at 6:39 p.m. Shabbat shalom!