Freshman Retreat is a formative right of passage into the �鶹���� experience, full of the ruach and fun that �鶹���� is known for, and one that forges memories for a lifetime. With students coming from all different schools, it is an art to form one cohesive group after only a few days away together. At this year’s retreat, the freshman, seniors, and faculty formed unimaginable bonds that will continue to be fostered over the next four years and beyond. The seniors added an energy and helped facilitate a genuine environment of warmth and spirit. On Shabbat, they animated the experience between and during the programs through singing, dancing, and spending time with the freshmen. Havdala was both meaningful and moving; everyone stood in a circle with their arms around each other, and were so deeply invested and present in the moment. No one was left out or left on the side, everybody participated. The theme of Freshman Retreat was celebrating everyone for who they are. I was amazed that although �鶹���� is a big school, within our grade it already feels like a small, warm community.

Our sessions with the different faculty members were amazing. We did icebreakers and learned together. It really felt like we were all one community. Each activity that the teachers prepared for us was thought out and intentional, including Beit Midrash sessions (“Veshinantam le’Cougarecha”), breakout sessions (“Butterflies and Cougarflies: Navigating the Web of High School”), and icebreakers like “speed Cougaring,” where we just got to talk with each other for two minutes and meet each other. The “Do You Know That Freshman” game show was fun and memorable. All the activities were meant to help the grade’s dynamic become one that is close and comfortable. We also had time for sports and swimming before Shabbat, a Friday night tisch, got to meet our teachers’ families, and of course enjoyed plenty of snacks. Every aspect of the entire Shabbaton was precisely thought out and executed with passion and our values, the core four. We came into Freshman Retreat not knowing even close to half the grade, but left feeling like we made friendships and bonded with the incredibly special people in the freshman class.

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As per its annual tradition, �鶹���� sent its freshmen to the Catskill mountains for a four-day weekend retreat where new students got to break the ice with their teachers and each other, learn the ins and outs of being a student at �鶹���� from their senior advisers, and revel in the trademark �鶹���� ruach for which the school is well-known. The weekend also offers students an opportunity to give over �徱��������Torah to their peers and grapple with questions of identity and perspective on the bigger picture, pressing issues for any teenager in the world today. A special Shabbat ���󾱳ܰ���given by Rav Jonathan Schachter, Rosh Beit Midrash at �鶹����, impressed upon students the meaning behind Selichot, which Jews around the world began reciting on motzei�����󲹲�������.

“Freshmen Retreat is a really special weekend and it’s heartwarming to see the excitement on students’ faces as they get to know other a little bit better and away from the classroom,” said Mrs. Sarit Anstandig, a member of the Tanach faculty and Freshman Grade Dean and one of the many teachers who attended the retreat. “Students are bright-eyed with anticipation for the opportunities that lie ahead of them at �鶹����, and the retreat is a wonderful entry into their high school career.”

“The retreat was an amazing opportunity to meet peers I didn’t know before and learn how to be a Cougar,” said Caroline Waxman ’20. “I especially enjoyed the bonfire on Motzei Shabbat because at that point, we had all become very comfortable with another and it made it such a moving experience.”

While the weekend itself has merit on its own as a fun way for students to relax and to assume leadership roles through speaking opportunities and being proactive during icebreaker sessions, the retreat also positively impacts students for years to come. By spending four days together and becoming closely aligned with the mission and values of �鶹���� in an informal but still-structured environment with carefully-planned programming, �鶹����’s caring and supportive school culture is solidified and helps students realize their potential in academics and co-curricular activities for the rest of their high school experiences.

“This was my sixth Freshman Retreat because I had often gone with my mother,” said Eitan Bernath ’20, whose mother, Mrs. Sabrina Bernath, is the Director of the Math Department. “This retreat was obviously the most special one yet because it was my first one as a student. While I’d always seen what went on during these retreats, being able to directly participate in the student ice breakers and sessions with senior advisers and �鶹���� teachers made it a much more meaningful and personal experience.”

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Many of our students enjoy writing both for class and in our extracurricular Creative Writing Club, just one of the many ways in which our student can pursue their passions.

Dr. Berkman, the faculty adviser for the Creative Writing Club, oversaw the last club meeting of the year earlier this week, where students discussed their work and concluded a great year of stimulating writing, collaborative workshopping and feedback, and fun.

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Tamir grew up in Baltimore and played basketball in high school, where he was ranked the country’s 25th top high school basketball player (and officially dubbed the “Jewish Jordan”). he received a full athletic scholarship to the University of Maryland, but turned it down because the university held practices and games on Friday nights and Saturdays. He accepted an offer to play for Towson University and found success there, but he experienced abusive behavior from a newly-hired basketball coach, who was not as accommodating to his religious needs as the previous coach had been. Despite this, Tamir persevered and signed to play with Maccabi Tel Aviv, and his dream of one day making aliyah came true. He went on to serve in the IDF, as well.

He eventually signed with Maccabi Haifa, but the injuries he sustained over the years forced him to officially retire from professional basketball in 2009. Since then, he has been able to reinvent himself and became a sought-after motivational speaker and coach. he runs basketball camps and clinics with Omri Capsi, the only Israeli athlete playing in the NBA. he also founded a company, Sport Strings Tzitzit, which produces compression-fit, moisture-wicking tzitzit. Tamir currently lives in Yerushalayim with his wife and their four children.

Tamir’s dedication to his faith before his sport, at which he excelled, inspired his teammates, coaches, and fans around the world. His words about finding the light amid the challenges- and persevering to find success when life doesn’t work out the way you plan – was a perfect way to inspire our own students during this festival of lights.

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Some student groups felt that these two anti-Semites were extremely similar, while other groups argued that they share some similarities but also significant differences. Other groups, still, argued that these two rulers were radically different from one another in their treatment of the Jews.

One group noticed that these ruthless tyrants both had reasons to feel gratitude to a specific Jew—for Pharaoh, it was Yosef, and for Hitler, it was Eduard Bloch, a Jewish family doctor who took care of his mother. Yet these feelings of appreciation were instead replaced with feelings of fear and hatred of the Jewish nation.

Excerpts from students’ writings are below:

“Both Pharoah and Hitler convinced people who weren’t initially against Jews to hate them. Hitler convinced a lot of the Germans and non-Jewish neighbors to kill Jews. Similarly, Pharaoh started off by only convincing the higher government officials but eventually convinced any Egyptian that they can take advantage of the Jews.”

“Pharoah only wanted to slow down Jewish growth, his ‘final solution’ was only created once his earlier attempts were unsuccessful and even then his main objective was to kill the baby boys and not total extermination.”

“Both Pharpah and Hitler had a personal connection to a Jew that they knew was Jewish and protected while targeting the rest of the nation.”

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Taking place over a period of four days – from Thursday to Sunday – at the Raleigh hotel in the Catskills, the Retreat allowed freshmen and their big brothers and sisters in the senior class to further deepen their connections with each other and the numerous faculty who came up to the hotel, many of them with their families; immerse themselves in Jewish learning and spiritual growth; and have a blast playing icebreaker games, sports and a beautiful Saturday night bonfire with singing and dancing.

“Our annual Freshman Retreat is an excellent way to instill some Cougar pride and for new students to �鶹���� to bond with each other in a setting outside of the classroom,” said Rabbi Eli Ciner. “These few days that we spend together learning, growing and having fun sets the tone for the rest of the year and the next four years of high school.”

Sessions included Thursday night icebreakers run by the seniors, designed to introduce freshmen to peers from other classes with whom they might not have had a chance to get to know.

“It was really interesting to be on the Retreat  as a senior adviser because I got to be behind the scenes and have a real hand in helping this year’s freshmen have the best experience possible,” said Abigail Raykher. “In a way, it was like coming full circle for me and my friends, who remember very well our own Freshman Retreat.”

A Friday morning session focused on the students getting pieces of paper listing all the things of which to take advantage at �鶹���� (classes and electives, sports and clubs, Israel activism, opportunities for religious growth and more) and then having students rate the top three things they wanted to work on during the coming year. Students also enjoyed an exciting and competitive panoply hosted by Rabbi David Goldfischer, Assistant Principal, where students realized that each of them has special areas of knowledge that will help the entire team advance in the game. A Shabbat afternoon activity, Zoom, involved faculty members showing groups of students a special picture book where each page zoomed out farther until the big picture, at the book’s conclusion, could be fully realized. It was a fitting metaphor for how students could retain perspective as they craft their own high school stories.

Shabbat ended with a beautiful and spiritually-uplifting havdalah ceremony and a round of singing and dancing. Students enjoyed a delicious dinner followed by a grand finale bonfire before a Sunday morning breakfast and departure back to school.

“Freshman Retreat was one of the best experiences ever,” said Addison Hartman, a proud new Cougar. “I experienced unity of a whole grade and met many new friends, who I will be close with throughout my �鶹���� experience. My favorite part of Freshman Retreat was the bonfire on Motzei Shabbas where everyone was together, standing around the huge fire and singing and dancing.”

Rabbi JZ Spier, the freshmen grade dean and Director of Informal Education, helped run the Shabbaton with Rabbi Goldfischer. “The theme of the Shabbaton, like the �鶹���� motto in general was to highlight the uniqueness of the individual, but the collective power of community,” he explained. “This retreat is a perfect way to introduce students to the culture of the school and get them excited to explore what makes them unique, but to remember that together, we are stronger.”

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“A lot of us take Israel for granted,” said Dr. Book, “and it’s difficult for us to have hakarat hatov, gratitude, when we simply expect something.”

Dr. Book told students about visiting Auschwitz this past year as a tour guide for a group from The Shoah Foundation, a group which included film director Steven Spielberg and survivors of Auschwitz. There, they encountered a group of IDF soldiers also exploring the grounds, one of the largest Jewish graveyards in the world.  Dr. Book asked them to join him in singing Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem, and the photo of this experience, which he displayed to students, was remarkable for its implications. As Dr. Book explained: “We live in amazing times. Jews might always be hunted, but now that we have Israel, and an army to protect it, we can now defend ourselves. We can take charge of our own destiny, and that is only because we have a country to call our own.”

Despite the fact that Jews can now defend themselves from those who wish to do them harm, Dr. Book gave several examples of how the media prints inflammatory headlines, lacking any context, so that Israel is painted as the antagonist in the Middle East. “This past week alone, there are now 13 new Jewish orphans, some of them who have seen their parents murdered before their eyes,” explained Dr. Book. “The world keeps painting a different picture with misleading headlines, however, preferring that Jews don’t fight back when they are attacked.”

In this vein, Dr. Book told students about Elan Bielski, the grandson of Alexander “Zus” Bielski, one of the Bielski brothers who banded together to save over 1,000 Jews from the Holocaust. Inspired by his family’s example of protecting the Jewish people, Elan became a lone soldier in the IDF in 2011. �鶹���� is honored to count dozens of alumni who have also made the difficult yet courageous choice to translate their Zionism into tangible action by becoming lone soldiers in Israel.

“We should be proud that we can defend ourselves from harm now,” said Dr. Book. “It might be difficult to be a Jew, but it is not a burden. It is a privilege.”

In the year ahead, Dr. Book will be teaching juniors and a special elective for seniors on the Arab-Israel conflict, equipping students with history and context and empowering them to serve as articulate advocates for Israel on college campuses and in general society. A foremost expert in Zionist education, Dr. Book will be utilizing a textbook he authored, “For the Sake of Zion: A Curriculum of Israel Education (JAFI: 2016), in the classroom. He is planning a series of lectures, trips and programs for all students to supplement their Israel education.

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Rabbi David Goldfischer, Assistant Principal, introduced the program, held each year during the Aseret Yemai Teshuva, with a thought from Rabbi Yehuda Amital, ��›�, the former Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion. “The secret of getting close to God,” explained Rabbi Goldfischer, “is getting close to your true self.” A short video accompanied his message, featuring the pivotal scene from Disney’s The Lion King where Simba realizes that he must stop running from his responsibilities and become who he was always meant to be. Blinkoff took the stage next, continuing the Disney theme, and started by telling students the origins of his professional path. “I always loved to draw, and when I saw the movie E.T., it made such a huge impression on me that I knew I wanted to be a director one day,” he said. “Eventually, after seeing The Little Mermaid, I decided I wanted to be a Disney animator—but I had no clue how to get there.”

Blinkoff drew laughs when he spoke about how his devoted mother toured the Walt Disney animation studios with him asking how someone might get a job as a Disney animator, until an employee gently pointed them in the direction of professional art schools from which Disney regularly recruited graduates. Determined to succeed, Blinkoff began his studies at the Columbus College of Art and Design, where, he readily admits, he was the least talented student there. After several failed attempts to land a coveted Disney internship, Blinkoff worked harder on his craft each day until finally, he achieved his dream. “I want to impress that on you again,” he told the students. “I was a really motivated guy without talent who worked really, really hard to achieve his dream job.”

For awhile, it was a dream: Blinkoff worked on such seminal Disney films as Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Mulan (murmurs of appreciation could be heard throughout the audience).When the animators didn’t have anything to sketch, they would ride roller-coasters or camp out at Disney hotels. But a trip to Israel with his parents during this time left Blinkoff with a seed of curiosity about his Jewish roots and heritage—a seed that didn’t come to fruition until three years later. “I had everything I ever wanted, but something was missing,” he explained. He decided to enroll in a short yeshiva program in Israel, called Isralite, run by Rabbi Binny Freedman and Rabbi David Aaron.

There, Blinkoff learned of the mezuzah’s role on a doorway to signify a place of transition. He began asking certain questions for the first time. “What am I going out into the world for? What kind of home do I want to create?” he told the students. His Jewish journey had begun in earnest.

Eventually, his questions and search for deeper meaning led Blinkoff to a fully observant lifestyle. Today, Blinkoff works as a director for Disney and says he sees himself as not just a filmmaker anymore, but a Jewish filmmaker. (He often infuses the films he now directs with Jewish symbols, like adding a mezuzah to Piglet’s door in Winnie the Pooh.)

He lives with his wife, Marion, and four children in Los Angeles. Two of his children, Meira and Asher, are involved in voiceover work for major motion pictures. Asher voices a key character in Hotel Transylvania 2, coming out in just a few weeks. “The Hollywood premier is on Shabbos, but to us, it’s not even a question of whether or not to go,” said Blinkoff.

Blinkoff closed his talk with a thought. “It’s not easy to figure out how you’re going to live as a Jew, but it’s really the best kind of work,” he said. If the round of earth-shattering applause he received from students is any kind of indication, his message—amid the cool anecdotes from a veritable Hollywood insider—hit close to home.

“It was pretty cool how he made his dream job come true,” said Michal Karben, a junior, “but it was even cooler to learn that he was able to take the Jewish beliefs that he eventually found and combine it with his dream job. I know people worry about how to pursue certain professional areas given the fact that they are religious Jews, and to see someone who made it work, like Saul Blinkoff, is very inspiring.”

Following his talk, the student body and faculty had an inspiring kumzits and then enjoyed a dessert with �鶹����’s unique spin on a sweet new year: chocolate fondue stations with a selection of fruit and candies.

“�鶹���� is thrilled to have hosted Saul Blinkoff as part of its annual Teshuva Program,” said Rabbi Eli Ciner, �鶹����’s principal. “As we head into Yom Kippur, I am confident that Saul’s message—the importance of seeking one’s place in the world and growing spiritually—will linger in the minds and hearts of our students.”

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Dr. Berkman – English

My  9H2 and 9H3 read Brave New World and immediately after saw and discussed the film, Gattaca.  Gattaca is set in the not-too-distant future.  A less-than-perfect man, Vincent Freeman,  wants to travel to the stars; however, society  has categorized him as less than suitable given his imperfect genetic make-up.  He has become one of the underclass of humans that is useful only for menial jobs. To move ahead, Vincent assumes the identity of Jerome Morrow, a perfect genetic specimen who is a paraplegic as a result of a car accident. With professional advice, Vincent learns to deceive DNA and urine sample testing.  Because a stolen birthright is a major motif in Gattaca, a comparison and contrast paper comparing and contrasting the film to the story of Yaakov and Esav from Chumash was assigned.  (Not only is the ability to construct a tightly structured comparison and contrast a valuable skill,  but the ability to apply knowledge of  Chumash to secular studies in high school and on into college can be an advantageous one.)  So when my students asked me if I knew that they were currently studying the story of Yaakov and ��������in their Chumash class: Serendipity

Mrs. Goldfisher – Chumash

Esav cries out to his father immediately after discovering that his brother Yaakov received the blessing that was intended for him and says: ‘Is not he rightly named Yaakov (root עקב) ? for he has supplanted (ויעקבני) me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing.’ (Genesis 37:36)

Is Esav correct? Did �۲�����DZ���trick him twice?

Esav is correct in that there were two separate stories where �۲�����DZ���comes out a winner: the sale of the birthright and the blessing narrative.  Students in �鶹���� studied both these narratives.  Here is a peek at what we learned about the first story, namely the sale of the birthright:

Students first analyzed the text carefully to develop ��������’s character and study the various methods of characterization at play in Genesis chapter 25.  After the textual analysis we asked essential questions to discover whether or not �۲�����DZ���acted unjust.  First and foremost can a birthright be bought and sold?  Did Esav desire to be the firstborn with all the responsibility it entailed? Was he willing to wait to reap the benefits of the birthright or did he only appreciate immediate physical gratification? We studied medieval commentators such as Rashi, Rashbam and Chizkuni and evaluated their approaches.  In addition, we placed the biblical story in its historical context, within the Ancient Near East, and looked to the Nuzi Tablets for historical and legal support.  If one can argue that �۲�����DZ���purchased the birthright from someone who did not value the birthright and that he paid a fair amount for this honor than certainly �۲�����DZ���cannot be called a trickster.

The narrator has the last word “and Esav despised his birthright (35:34).”  Esav might claim he was deceived with the sale of the birthright but we cannot take all his words at face value.

Ben Moskowitz – �鶹���� ninth grader

…The stealing of the birthright also gives the viewer a new perspective of Anton’s character. In the beginning, Esav didn’t care about his birthright and gave it up for lentil soup. However, Anton always cared about his birthright, and he always tried to prove to Vincent that he was the superior brother and deserved the birthright. This gives the viewer the initial reaction that Anton is good. Although Anton  tries putting Vincent down, he cares and appreciates his birthright. However, later when �۲�����DZ���gets the blessing instead of Esav and when �۲�����DZ���used ��������’s birthright, only then does Esav get angry. In fact, he gets so angry he attempts to kill his brother, which is why people who know the story view Esav as such an evil person. When Anton knew that his brother obtained his birthright, he got very angry, and he threatened to make Vincent’s  deception public and ruin his dreams, which is almost like killing Vincent. By seeing that Anton’s and ��������’s reacted in very similar ways when learning that the other person took their birthright shows the viewer how evil Anton was. Anton acts in a very similar way to Esav, while even though Anton probably didn’t go through with his threat, just making it allowed us to compare him to Esav letting the viewer view him as an evil person. By comparing Anton and Esav, the viewer gains a clearer perspective on Anton’s character.

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