As I’m checking out of Ralphs, this old lady in pants says to me, “Do you believe in tikkun olam?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Then why are you using these?” she says, and points to the paper bags holding my groceries.
I give her a dismissive wave.
The Gentile checker asks me what the lady is talking about.
“She’s giving me a hard time for not bringing my own bags,” I explain.
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The community is in shock over this. Employees at the elementary and middle school didn’t know that it was closing down.
Los Angeles, CA – March 17, 2010 – The Shalhevet School (“Shalhevet”), a
Modern Orthodox Jewish school, today announced that after a strategic financial
review, it will discontinue the operation of its Middle, Elementary and Early
Childhood schools at the end of the current 2009-2010 school year and focus on
the ongoing success of its High School.
The Shalhevet board determined that this was the best course of action after
conducting a thorough review of school operations with the assistance of an
outside consultant who specializes in Jewish schools and is associated with the
Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education. The review determined that
Shalhevet Middle, Elementary and Early Childhood schools could no longer
sustain themselves financially. As a result, Shalhevet leadership has decided to
concentrate its energy and resources on the successful operation of the High
School, which was found to be a unique and dynamic long-term option for
students in the Los Angeles Jewish community.
“The steps we are taking today will ensure that Shalhevet High School will
continue to offer a leading model of Jewish education for current and future
students,” said Esther Feder, President of the Shalhevet Board of Directors.
“This was a very difficult choice to make, but our responsibility to our families,
donors and community compelled this painful decision. We are confident that
our renewed focus on Shalhevet High School will allow us to continue operating
as a leading model of Jewish education for generations.
Rabbi Elchanan Weinbach, Head of the School, added, “We care deeply about
the students, parents and faculty impacted by this difficult decision, and we will
do everything we can to help assist them during this difficult time. Shalhevet
administrators will work closely with affected faculty members, students and
parents to help provide support and guidance during this transition. We have
already begun to work with placement agencies in our community to help care
for our families and staff. Students and faculty will be assisted in finding new
educational and teaching opportunities.”
Los Angeles is currently home to two dozen Jewish elementary schools.
Shalhevet maintains strong relationships with many of these schools, many of whom have sent their students on to Shalhevet High School. Shalhevet will turn to these schools to partner in placements of students and staff.
Rabbi Weinbach continued, “We take great pride in everything that Shalhevet offers to its students, faculty and the community. Although this is a difficult day, especially for many of our cherished Middle, Elementary and Early Childhood school students and faculty, we know that today’s action will be for the continued success of Shalhevet High School.”
ABOUT THE SHALHEVET SCHOOL
The Shalhevet School, founded as a high school in 1991 as an innovation in Jewish education, is a Modern Orthodox Jewish Day School in Los Angeles, California. The school is dedicated to the multi-dimensional goals of Modern Orthodox Judaism, in both its religious and general education, with a unique school-wide emphasis on ethical values and behavior (menschlichkeit). For further information, visit www.shalhevet.org.
1. Which schools are closing? When will these schools close?
The Shalhevet Middle, Elementary and Early Childhood schools will discontinue operation at the end of the current school year.
2. Why are these schools closing?
Shalhevet determined that this was the best course of action after conducting a thorough review of school operations with the assistance of an outside consultant. The Shalhevet Middle, Elementary and Early Childhood schools could no longer sustain themselves financially. These schools were operating at a deficit which sapped our resources and limited Shalhevet’s financial flexibility. However, the High School is growing with increased enrollment and increased net tuition income compared to tuition cost. As a result, Shalhevet leadership has decided to concentrate its energy and resources on the High School, which is already operating within a manageable deficit range that is on par with other schools.
3. Is the school running out of money?
No. The school is not running out of money. Unfortunately, the Elementary and Middle schools received reduced enrollments, and the percentage of net tuition collected compared to the actual tuition cost went down. The Middle, Elementary and Early Childhood schools were operating at a deficit and their operation was no longer feasible. Shalhevet has therefore decided to concentrate its energy and resources on the successful operation of the High School, which is already operating within a manageable deficit range that is on par with other schools. In response, donors have committed to continue funding the High School.
4. Who conducted the school review?
The review was conducted by the educational consulting firm Measuring Success, LLC. They specialize in Jewish schools and are associated with the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education.
5. Why wasn’t I notified of these closings earlier?
As soon as we received these recommendations from our consultants, the Board and Executive Committee met to decide the school’s course of action. We let everybody know as soon as the decision was made.
6. How many students will be displaced?
There are currently 121 students in our ECC, Middle and Elementary schools who we will be unable to serve next year. We hope to help all of them enroll in local Jewish schools by the start of the next school year.
7. What will happen to students of the ECC, Middle and Elementary schools?
Unfortunately, we will no longer be able to serve students from Early Childhood to grade seven next year. In consideration of the unique needs of eighth graders, Shalhevet will operate an eighth grade for next year only. We care deeply about our students and their families and we want to assure you that we will do everything we can to help assist them during this difficult time.
8. Who can parents talk to about placement for their Early Childhood, Elementary and Middle School students in local Jewish schools?
Debra Markovic of the BJE will be operating from the Shalhevet campuses for the next week. She is an expert at determining student placements based on the educational goals of students and parents. Please contact her for assistance at 424-259-0277 and DMarkovic@bjela.org.
For additional information for Elementary and Middle school students, please contact Dr. Debora Parks at 323-930-9333, ext. 328. For Early Childhood, please contact Wendy Kellner at 310-556-0843.
9. I have a child in the ECC/Elementary/Middle school and I have already paid my Registration or Financial Aid fee for 2010-11. When will I get a refund?
Parents will receive refunds within 5 business days of Wednesday, March 17th. We thank you for your patience.
10. What will happen to the eighth grade students?
In consideration of the unique needs of eighth graders, for next year only Shalhevet will operate an eighth grade. Beginning Fall 2011, Shalhevet will serve grades nine through twelve exclusively.
11. What will happen to High School students?
High School students will continue on to graduation and we will work continuously to enhance our current program.
12. Will there be any changes in High School curriculum?
High School students will continue on to graduation with the same outstanding college-preparatory curriculum. With the financial future of Shalhevet High School on solid ground we will be able to make even greater investments in the High School program in the years to come.
13. Will Shalhevet be increasing tuition?
There will be no tuition increase as a result of these changes. After no tuition increase for the 2009-10 school year, the Board in December approved a tuition increase for 2010-11 and notified parents in their registration materials. We do not expect any further increase for the 2010-11 school year.
14. How many teachers will be leaving?
Unfortunately, nearly all of the faculty at the ECC, the Middle and Elementary schools will be leaving Shalhevet at the end of spring semester.
15. Who can teachers talk to about placement opportunities in local Jewish schools?
- For all teachers, Judaic and General Studies, Rabbi Glenn Karonsky, Director of School Personnel Services at the Bureau of Jewish Education, will be available at Shalhevet to meet with staff and assist in finding positions in BJE schools. Please contact Rabbi Karonsky at GKaronsky@bjela.org.
- Rabbi Elchanan J. Weinbach is available for assistance at 424-259-0278 or e.weinbach@shalhevet.org. You can contact our board of directors at board@shalhevet.org. Additional information can also be found by visiting our website at www.shalhevet.org.
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On his radio show March 15, 2010, Dennis recalled: “I learned this when I was 27 years of age… I had just published my first book. Out of idealism. I was brought out to California to direct an institute. It had a summer camp as one of its many many ventures. I spoke to the counselors of the summer camp and out of sheer idealism and out of my own money, authors don’t get any more than a handful of books for free, people don’t know that, they always ask authors for books, but the author has to buy it from the publisher, but out of my own money, I brought in a box of my books, hardcover, and I gave each counselor at this camp of which I was the director of the whole institute, a part of which the camp was, a copy of the book. By the tenth person, I realized what a terrible mistake I had made. I knew not one of them was going to read it and that none of them treasured it. Had I charged one dollar for the book, they would’ve appreciated it.”
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On Friday, Dennis Prager received a call on his radio show from a woman wanting to know his definition of “social justice”.
Dennis: “Social justice is overwhelmingly used by the Left when they don’t want to use the word ‘justice’ and they want to use terms to advocate their own policies. I have never understood why the word ’social’ was added to the word ‘justice’. Either there’s justice or there’s injustice. You tell me. What is the difference between ‘justice’ and ’social justice’?”
Woman: “I have no idea.”
Dennis: “That’s correct. The Left made it up. It means that it is not the same thing as justice. It is a euphemism for equality. There’s either justice or injustice. Social justice is the Left’s euphemism for equality. Equality is what the Left lives for. Not justice.”
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In my eleven years living in England I often observed, as did many others, that Anglo-Jewry lacked the vibrancy and innovation characteristic of American Judaism. The absence of an electrifying sense of Jewishness and communal dynamism was a subject much discussed among the Anglo-Jewish leadership. In areas like per capita philanthropy and social services, Anglo-Jewry led the world. But in communal programming and affiliation it was hemorrhaging numbers at an alarming rate.
Some said that Anglo-Jewry’s relatively small number accounted for fewer truly original ideas. Others spoke of the natural reticence and lower-key disposition of the English in general and Anglo-Jewry in particular.
In truth the principal reason for the stagnant state of Anglo-Jewry relative to its American counterpart lay elsewhere. Anglo-Jewry is profoundly hierarchical while American Jewry is profoundly meritocratic. Britain, for example, has a Chief Rabbi who is the community’s titular head and Ambassador to the wider community while in America a rabbi’s standing is judged not by any communal appointment or particular title but by effort and impact alone. The absence of a communal hierarchy means that individual Rabbis and communal leaders can innovate and try new and transformative programming without having to fit into an existing infrastructure of control or thought.
In both countries it is interesting to note that its two most successful ideas over the past two decades – Limmud in the UK and Birthright in the United States – originated with activists who were working outside the main organs of the established community. And that’s because giant bureaucracies often stifle originality. But in the UK where the bureaucracy affects the most important leaders of all – its spiritual guides – it is extremely challenging for Rabbis to go up against the spiritual status quo.
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For years, people thought of me as just a big head. I was an intellectual. The rest of life I rushed through to get to what I do best — think.
Thanks to Alexander Technique, I am now a complete human being. Like Woody Allen, I am a triple threat — I can think, feel and move.
I am reading volume two of the Congress Papers from the eighth International Congress of the Alexander Technique.
Boy, were those some wild times in Lugano, Switzerland during that fateful week of August 10-16 of 2008.
Only now can the truth be told of what went on there. It made ancient Rome look like a nunnery. You lock a bunch of Alexander Teachers in a room together, turn off the lights, and what inevitably results is debauched kinesthesia.
I am currently studying the essay of Brigitta Mowat on “The Use of Touch in an Alexander Technique Context.”
Brigitta is a psycho-therapist and a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique.
She writes that early on “Freud used touch in the form of massaging his patents’ necks or lightly touching the head, the intention being to help a patient to release muscular tension and embedded, long-forgotten memories. However, he abandoned touch quite early in his career, yielding to the pressure of his peers, who feared that touch would stimulate sexual feelings. To this day, psychoanalysis adheres, at least in theory, to a non-touch policy.”
F.M. Alexander was a critic of psycho-analysis. He said it reinforced the mind-body dichotomy.
Brigitta writes that we need to understand the causes of underlying muscular tension.
She says that the psychological impact of touch is rarely discussed in the Alexander world, even though this touch is a big reason why many people getting hooked on having Alexander lessons.
Psychoanalyst Frances Sommer Anderson got Alexander lessons weekly for three years. She wrote:
Two-thirds of each one-hour session was spent standing, turning, and bending, very slowly, with keen attention to doing it correctly. I quickly suppressed my feelings that this exercise was tedious, boring, and to my surprise, infuriating… The last part of the session, I lay on my back on a massage table, fully clothed, with my head off the table, supported only by my teacher’s hands. This posture was absolutely wonderful. I had never experienced anything like it. Her supporting my head was blissful and soothing. For about three years I went for a class once a week, enduring the first part in order to get to the second part so that I could experience her holding my head. I had no idea why that was so important, and I never asked for the rationale for that part of the lesson.
According to Anderson, the table work portion of the Alexander lesson invites regression. Being held can help one integrate. The teacher has the power, and the student can easily feel childlike. A good teacher can help the student achieve emotional and physical balance.
Naomi Sharagai is also a certified teacher of Alexander Technique and a psycho-therapist. She writes on page 219:
Poor use can also profoundly change our capacity to assess reality, think clearly, and make constructive decisions.
With rigid use and tight muscles, one’s thinking becomes increasingly narrow and rigid as well. There is less mental space available to reflect and to allow for new and creative thoughts. The tendency becomes to repeat thinking in a less constructive manner.
In the same way that poor use leads to inefficient movement, it also leads to inefficient thinking. When solutions are not found and thoughts seem to overwhelm the individual rather than offer new alternatives, anxiety can develop.
With poor use, individuals find it difficult to manage feelings. They can either be overwhelmed by them (not knowing how to unwind) or out of touch with their feelings.
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It was the Spring semester of 1988 at Sierra Community College in Rocklin, California.
I stood in the parking lot talking with a friend of mine from Calculus class.
He said that girls in Southern California were really loose.
I was a virgin at the time and the prospect of loose girls seemed heavenly.
He gestured with his hands to describe how wide and moist they were in a certain passage. He indicated that one could do anything with them and they’d love it.
March 30, 1994. I drove for seven hours north from my parents home in Newcastle to UCLA. It was a couple of months after the big Northridge earthquake and traffic on the Five South was diverted on to side streets at one point.
It was raining. It was about 10 p.m. when I pulled into a UCLA dorm where I’d stay for the next couple of months with a member of the faculty.
The next week, I’d place a singles ad in the Los Angeles Times. I only remember one response. It was from a spunky woman who was all giggly and excited to meet me. She said, “I look like Julia Roberts, only I have bigger breasts.”
She picked me up that next evening in Westwood. She had a Julia Roberts smile and facial structure and her bust was plentiful.
She worked as a movie editor in Hollywood and lived in Studio City.
I was so happy to be back in LA after five bedridden years of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Her big breasts symbolized the bounty of Southern California. I couldn’t wait to get stuck in.
She wasn’t Jewish, but I didn’t mind. She took me to a sushi bar in Santa Monica where she ate dinner as we talked about my conversion to Judaism.
Then she drove me north on the Pacific Coast Highway, pulling off to the side in Malibu.
It was about 10 p.m. We walked out to some rocks beside the ocean and I put my arms around her and we started making out.
Then I got bold and reached for her.
“OK, but no further,” she said.
Then she drove me home.
A few evenings later, she picked me up again.
“I want to show you something,” she said, and drove me to the Holocaust memorial at Pan Pacific Park.
As we stood there in the dark, I tried to grope her, but she held me off. She didn’t think it was right to fool around in a Holocaust memorial.
I wanted to spend the night with her but she said she couldn’t drop me off in Westwood in the morning.
I told her I had access to a friend’s apartment in Westwood that was being renovated.
She dropped me off at the dorm. I ran inside and grabbed a blanket and then rejoined her in the car and we drove down the hill and then we parked and went up the elevator and I turned the key in the lock and in the midst of the reconstruction, I spread out the blanket and we took off our clothes and laid down together and began kissing.
I’d been imagining this moment for days but now it was strangely anti-climactic. I was so excited to have what I wanted most that I couldn’t rise to the occasion. And as I lay on top of her, her D-cup natural breasts no longer seemed that big.
Finally, I rolled off her and held her in my arms.
Then she drove home.
I don’t think I ever talked to her again.
I got busy with two women I knew from Rieber Hall at UCLA (1988-89).
Then this woman I knew flew in from New York for the Memorial Day weekend.
I let Julia go.
A few days later, I got a long letter from her. When I read it, I felt like she was holding me close once again and looking into my eyes while the ocean surged around us.
She talked about how much she treasured our time together. She thanked me for being gentle and considerate with her. She asked to reconnect.
I don’t know why I didn’t call her. She had everything I wanted in a woman (aside from Judaism).
I guess I was spoiled. I’d been in LA for a few weeks, and I’d already nailed various women who’d previously been out of my league.
I lived in the city of angels and felt that Julia wasn’t such a big deal.
I was wrong. I was very wrong.
Many nights when I go to bed alone, I think about Julia.
I don’t reread her letter in my mind and wonder what might have been.
I don’t picture what she looks like now.
I don’t replay us wrestling beside the Holocaust memorial. Nor do I dwell upon my inadequate performance of the ultimate deed.
Instead, I see us standing on the rocks beside the ocean on our first radiant night together.
I see her lean away from my kiss to pull off her shirt and to unsnap her bra and to offer me breasts as big as the moon.
She stands above me as I sit on the rock and suck on her like a hungry child.
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Bob emails:
Luke, I am struck by the amazing popularity of the VH1 shows: “Celebrity Rehab”, “Sex Rehab” and “Sober House”. These shows take drug addled, sex crazed C-list celebrities and throw them in a house to fight out all their demons on the air.
I feel you could ride this wave of unsavory exhibitionism with your own rehab show with a decidedly Jewish spin. Here’s the pitch:
Six disgraced Rabbis
Six over-sexed porn starlets
One 500 ft studio apartment
One Alexander Technique practicing, vegetarian, CFS afflicted spiritual leader
All come together for an intense 28 day experience know as …
Shomer Hovel
Can Luke Ford rehabilitate these 12 desperate souls with posture improvement, soy milk, the music of Air Supply, Torah and 9,000 pages of Dennis Prager radio transcripts?
Tune in the fall to Shomer Hovel!
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