Shalom Parents!
Another great week ended. Your children have been here for almost a month! It is crazy how time flies so quickly… I think that we can definitely say that your children have found their comfortable zone here.
On Monday evening, Lauren, our mental health consultant came to the moadon and talked with the students about substances abuse. It was a mandatory activity. At the beginning the students were upset about it saying, “we know all those things, we had a lot of those talks in school,” etc. Having expected this sort of response, Lauren came prepared and faced the challenge by dealing with these issues in a way that was different than they had heard before. According to nearly all of the students polled afterwards, the activity was really important and beneficial. Lauren talked about the dangers of drinking and did a simulation with the students about common situations involving alcohol and drugs. She also discussed some “legal” substances that are better to steer clear of.
On Tuesday, we went to The Palmach Museum. The Palmach, acronym for Plugot Maḥatz – “strike forces”. was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmach was established on 15 May 1941. By the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War it consisted of over 2,000 men and women in three fighting brigades and auxiliary aerial, naval and intelligence units. With the creation of Israel’s army, the three Palmach Brigades were disbanded. This and political reasons led to many of the senior Palmach officers resigning in 1950. The Palmach contributed significantly to Israeli culture and ethos, well beyond its military contribution. Its members formed the backbone of the Israel Defense Forces high command for many years, and were prominent in Israeli politics, literature and culture.
The next day we organized a “Boys & Girls Night Out” and each group went with their counselor to do some fun! The girls went to a place called the “Bar Mitzva”. It is a great place located near by the office. They all met with the Madrichot in their apartment, to chit chat for a while and went out. It was a great informal way of sitting and getting to know each other better. The boys went with Elad after also doing some chit chatting in the boys’ apartment. The student said that it was really intimate time with Elad and some cool talks.
On Thursday, before classes an organization called “Core 18” visited our students. Core 18 is an organization who brings together ambitious thinkers and natural leaders to creatively address the challenges currently facing Jewish students on college campuses. Graduates of our program will have the ability to conceive and execute dynamic game-changing programs to tackle these challenges. The students were invited to join Core 18’s seminars and activities. If you think that your child is the type of person who can build up in those sessions, please encourage him/her to do so – it will improve their experience here and will certainly give them tools to deal with a lot of what is expected from them during college and life in general.
Another amazing story belongs to Kimberly Baum. Kimberly started her internship in a place called HomeGroup. It is a startup company which help promoting new Israeli startups company around the world. Kimberly was offered to fly with her supervisors to the US for a big conference meeting happening in NYC. That is pretty impressive – Good Job Kim!
By the end of the week, Dr. Harold Goldmeier sent a review of his Business Class to his students:
“It was my pleasure to meet you this week and begin sharing with you course work for the semester. Attached is the class syllabus. My goal is to familiarize you with the language and basic concepts of business and management, we discussed the central point of business is to make money—doing good deeds, giving charity, building a brand are means or strategies but not the end target.
We examined the 5 functions of managers and how you measure their success: effectiveness and efficiency that we will pursue in more depth.
I will continue throughout the course discussing real companies and how the concepts we study affect real life situations. Begin thinking about a business you are familiar with whether a family business, a store where you like to shop, where you worked for a summer, etc. because your first Real World Paper will use a real life business.
We also began discussing the differences between managers (one who organizes the resources to succeed) and leaders who see the possibilities and work magic to succeed.”
On Sea Sports Track, the group went out of the sea this Wednesday for rock climbing activity. Elad pushed the students to their limits with some cool competition on the wall.
That is all for now,
Shabbat Shalom,
