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‘It Was Chaos’

David Kosak, a 35-year-old rabbinical student from the University of Judaism, was lunching with classmates at Hebrew University\’s Frank Sinatra cafeteria on Wednesday when the bomber struck.

The New Face of the UJ

A high-profile lecture series of top American and Israeli personalities is generating national attention and an unexpected financial bonanza. The university\’s continuing education arm is innovating new programs and drawing close to 10,000 participants. Enrollment in the young rabbinical school is running higher than anticipated.\n\n

Learning Lessons

One of the most riveting – and controversial – photographs to have emerged from the recent violence in Israel was that of a bloodied and dazed young man with an angry Israeli policeman standing behind him shouting. While the young man was first identified by the Associated Press, the photo\’s source, as a Palestinian, it soon became clear that he was an American studying in an Israeli yeshiva – a victim of Palestinians, who had dragged him from a car, beaten and stabbed him; the policeman had been shouting at the Arab assailants. The New York Times, which ran the photo and mistaken caption, published a subsequent correction and follow-up article. Grossman, who is recuperating and undergoing physical therapy for his wounds, feels not only blessed to have escaped his would-be murderers, but richer in a sense for his harrowing experience. He penned the piece below for Am Echad.

Sharing Hope for Peace

On Nov. 9, five years after the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Milken Community High School students reached across 7,563 miles and 10 time zones to their sister school, Tichon Chadash, in Tel Aviv.

Majoring in Courage

These are tense days for the Los Angeles parents of Jewish students studying at Israeli universities and yeshivas. Their sons and daughters are among some 4,000 Americans studying in Israel this year in a wide range of programs. Major universities, yeshivas, kibbutzim, the Israel Defense Force are just a few of the institutions that offer American students programs in Israel. According to the Israel Aliyah Center, there are l00 students from Los Angeles currently studying in Israel.

The Master Class

Not all of them were Jewish, but they were definitely the chosen people — five Los Angeles and 33 Israeli film students brought together for a two-week \”master class\” in screenwriting at Tel Aviv University. Held under the auspices of the Tel Aviv-Los Angeles partnership, the class was designed to give a boost to Israel\’s film industry by improving the capabilities of Israel\’s future scriptwriters. A further aim — a subtext, to use the screenwriting term — was to strengthen sympathy for Israel among American film professionals.

Education Israel as a Core Requirement?

My daughter flew home for Thanksgiving with two college friends in tow. At the dinner table, the conversation revolved around computers and the antics of the Stanford Band. At some point in the course of that whirlwind four-day visit, Hilary informed me that, though she\’s been diligently studying Hebrew since she started college, a Junior Year Abroad at Hebrew University is no longer part of her plans. It\’s not that she\’s changed her mind about someday returning to Israel, where she spent an amazing summer two years ago. But she\’s convinced that, given the stringent requirements of the high-tech major she seems to have settled on, even a semester in Jerusalem would derail her progress toward her degree.

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Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.