The Jewish Chronicle February 2, 2012

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Style Jews on the Silk Road As Myanmar opens to the West, its Jewish Life awaits discovery

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february 2, 2012 SHEVAT 9, 5772

Vol. 55, No. 38

Pittsburgh, PA

Look out, mopeds!

Jewish movements ‘cross-pollinating’ on learning initiatives for its educators

Jewish engineering student to make durable EVs in ’Burgh

BY TOBY TABACHNICK Staff Writer

BY LEE CHOTTINER Executive Editor

A University of Pittsburgh senior, who plans to make aliya this summer, is starting his own electric bike company, which he hopes will be a hit here and in the Jewish state. Micah Toll, 22, was the subject of a recent USA Today story. His company, Pulse Motors, is a Pittsburgh-based startup that will provide two-wheeled electric vehicles to the students and the public. The PEV0, which is federally classified as a bicycle and not a motor-powered vehicle (no special license or registration is needed to own or ride one) comes with fully functional pedals, and can be ridden as a regular bike. The bike is fully electric; it can reach speeds of 20 miles per hour, can go up to 30 miles on a charge and takes three hours to be recharged. After he makes aliya, Toll said the headquarters for Pulse will stay in Pittsburgh, though he hopes to open a branch office in Israel within the year. Toll, a mechanical engineering major who also heads up the aliya group at the Hillel Jewish University Center, got the idea for Pulse two years ago as a way to get college students out of their cars and into more sustainable transportation modes for getting around town. “We’ve produced five [prototypes] of them so far, but they’re not available commercially,” he told the Chronicle. “We’re doing beta-testing; we’re giving them to college students in Pittsburgh, asking them to replace their standard forms of transportation with one of our PEV0s. “We’re getting a lot of good responses from students who have replaced them,” he added. Please see Toll, page 16.

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Chronicle photo by Ohad Cadji

Micah Toll thinks his PEV0 electric bike (pictured here) is durable enough for the hills of Pittsburgh and Israel.

When it comes to educating educators, Yeshiva University, the Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion are finding that collaboration has its benefits. “The three schools are cross-pollinating,” said Rabbi Scott Aaron, community scholar for the Agency for Jewish Learning. “They’re saying education should not be siloed.” Aaron himself is a case in point. Ordained at HUC-JIR, he will be teaching Jewish experiential education courses next year for both the JTS and his alma mater. Beginning next fall, Aaron will teach a yearlong course for the master’s of arts degree in Jewish education with a focus in Jewish experiential education at JTS’ Davidson School in New York. Aaron is currently teaching a distance-learning course for HUC-JIR’s certificate program in Jewish education for adolescents and emerging adults. The Jim Joseph Foundation is funding both of these programs, which train rabbis, educators and other youth professionals in Jewish experiential education. The foundation, established in 2006, is devoted exclusively to supporting the education of Jewish youth, and is now two and a half years into the implementation of its education initiative, which has awarded $45 million in grants to HUC-JIR, JTS and YU. Part of the grant money was designated specifically for collaborative efforts between the denominations. The program coordinators for the various experiential Jewish education programs of YU, HUC-JIR and JTS have been meeting regularly over the last 18 months to “share ideas, and provide feedback and support to each other. We are complementing each other,” said Mark Young, program coordinator for the Experiential Learning Please see Cross-pollinating, page 12.

B USINES S 15/C L AS SIFIED 17/C OMMUNITY 14/O BITUARIES 18 O PINION 6/R EAL E STATE 16/S IMCHAS 13/S TYLE 10

Times To Remember

KINDLE SABBATH CANDLES: 5:22 p.m. EST. SABBATH ENDS: 6:23 p.m. EST.


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