The Jewish Education Experience Podcast

119: Being the Guide on the Side with Rabbi Avi Horowitz

• Yasminah Huberman • Season 5 • Episode 119

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Rabbi Avi Horowitz grew up in Scranton, PA. He studied in Baltimore in Yeshivat Ner Israel where he received his Semicha. He has a Masters in Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. He studied at YU at Azrieli where he received a Masters in Education. Rabbi Horowitz was a community rabbi and school principal for 23 years in Santiago, Chile. In 2019, he made Aliyah and started an elementary school in Israel. Now he’s a tour guide and works for Moreshet Hakotel in the Old City. Rabbi Horowitz is also completing a Masters in Jewish History. He’s married with six children and many grandchildren. He loves biking and tennis. 

www.rootsandroutesisrael.com/home-1-2

https://www.maagalot.org

Gems:

  • If you can’t explain complex ideas to laymen, then you can’t understand what you’re learning.
  • Make sure to get a mentor.
  • Knowing Hebrew as a Jew is completely different.
  • Help students feel comfortable with the basics of the language and Tanach.
  • Expose students to Israeli culture.
  • Jewish education is about building relationships.
  • Students need us to be the “guide on the side”. 
  • Education is passed down parents to children first.
  • Return to the basics.
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Welcome And Program Sponsor

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Welcome to the Jewish Education Experience podcast with your host, Yasmina, featuring inspiring conversations and gems of wisdom from Jewish educators around the world. This episode is brought to you by TIPA.

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There's a growing movement reimagining Jewish education, one grounded in a simple but powerful idea that real thinking starts with real reading. A movement that believes teachers should be teachers, not therapists. And that every Jewish student deserves to understand how Judaism has shaped the human story. TICFA, a leading organization in this space, has partnered with the University of Dallas to offer a master's degree that reflects that vision. An MA in humanities with a concentration in Jewish classical education. This isn't just a program for classroom teachers. It's designed for educators, yes, but also for parents, school leaders, and anyone who wants to engage deeply with Western civilization and culture through a Jewish lens. If you're looking to strengthen both your teaching and your own learning, this is a program worth exploring. Applications for the upcoming year are now open. To learn more, visit Jewish Classicaleducation.org.

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Again, Jewish Classicaleducation.org. And thanks to TICFO for supporting our show. I'm

New Book And How To Support

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really excited to share that my new book, A Hundred Gems of Wisdom from Jewish Educators, is now available on Amazon. So you can search for that on Amazon, you'll find it. And you can also find it in the link to the podcast. When you search for the podcast, you'll be also able to see it there. And it's a short book, it's an easy read. It has some quotes that various educators that I've interviewed over the course of podcasts have mentioned. It also has a story that goes along with the quote that the educator mentioned. And then it has some practical tips for each educator or even a parent or administrator to implement into their lives, into their classroom. So I hope that you will check that out and that you'll enjoy reading it also. To our audience, thank you so much.

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We really appreciate your support. And because of you, our podcast has reached 10,000 downloads and growing. It's continuing to reach Jewish educators, parents, principals, administrators, and also students. Also, please consider supporting our podcast by joining our Patreon community.patreon.com forward slash Jewish Education Experience podcast. And to all of you, Jewish educators and students of Jewish education around the world, Hisku the Intsu. May you be strengthened and encouraged in your holy endeavors.

Meet Rabbi Avi Horowitz

SPEAKER_02

In this episode, I interview Rabbi Avi Harowitz, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He studied in Baltimore at Yeshivat Neriesterel, where he received his SMIFA. He has a master's in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. He studied at YU at Azrieli, where he received a master's in education. Rabbi Horowitz was a community rabbi and school principal for 23 years in Santiago, Chile. In 2019, he made Aliyah and started an elementary school in Israel. Now he's a tour guide and works for Moretchetakhotel in the old city. Rabbi Horowitz is also completing a master's in Jewish history. He's married with six children and many grandchildren, Barch Hashem. He loves biking and tennis. If you're interested in booking a tour with him, you can go to his website, www.roots and routesisrael.com. And if you're a single young woman living in Israel and you're looking for an opportunity to connect and join with other women and have more of a community, you can go to maagalot and the website is www.maagalot.org. And I will include the links to both of those websites in the show notes. I really enjoyed the opportunity to be able to speak with Avi. I was at a Shabbaton a f about a month or so ago with my family. And we had the opportunity to meet his daughter, Leia, and her family. And I mentioned something about my podcast, and she said, My dad is an educator and he lives in Israel and he does tours. And I'm gonna reach out to him and see if he might be interested in being interviewed for your podcast. And thankfully, for Hashem, that he was willing to come on and be interviewed. Some things that stick out from our conversation is first and foremost, being able to explain complex ideas in a way that other people can understand. Many of the things that we learn in Torah are complex. And if you if we are able to kind of break it down and make it simple and break it into different parts when we're teaching someone, then that's how we know that we are truly, truly understanding what we're teaching. A common thread through many of the educators that I've interviewed over the past six years have said how important it is to have a mentor. Find someone that you know, like, and trust, who will give you feedback, who you can learn from, and someone who will teach you and guide you. It's so crucial to becoming the best that you can be. Help students to feel comfortable with the basics of our holy language, Hebrew, and also Tanakh, our holy books. It's very important that we are familiar, we understand, we know how to read Torah, how to read Nakh, and how to read Ketuvim, that we are really able to read it and understand it, and then that we're able to also transfer that over to our children and students. Expose our children to and students to Israeli culture. And he had mentioned that he did that with his students that he taught in Chile, and it really helped them with their learning of Hebrew. Another common thread that we I've seen over the course of this podcast is building relationships. And no matter what information we're giving over to our students, we're trying to teach them and guide them, it's not going to get deeper into their hearts and into their minds if we don't first work on building that relationship with them, meeting them where they are, and then working with them and guiding them along the process. Similar to what in a previous interview with Rabbi Rietti, he mentioned, um, Avi also mentioned about being the guide on the side and being more of this facilitator with our students and with our children, and allowing them to really take ownership of their learning. And lastly, returning to the basics and understanding that it is our role as parents first to educate our children and to pass that down to them. Yes, I know schools meet a specific need, and there are many parents who don't have the knowledge and the wherewithal to teach their own children in depth. However, don't forget those in those times where you are able to teach and guide your children, teach them Hashem, teach them right and wrong, teach them what are how to be a mentor, how to be a good person, and the things that are important. And return to the basics. What are the most important things? So I really hope that you enjoy this episode. Our

Learning By Teaching Complex Ideas

SPEAKER_02

guest today is Rabbi Avi Harowitz. Hello, Avi. Welcome to the podcast today. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02

Definitely a pleasure to get to speak with you and learn about your background. Jump right in. Will you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you began your journey in Jewish education and also what you're doing today?

SPEAKER_00

Okay. So my journey in education started, I believe, the minute I started enjoying learning. I always self-criticized that when I was young, that a little bit of what I process is too much about how I'm going to explain it. And as I got older, I I came to grips that that that's actually part of the Jewish mission, which is to teach. And so I was glad that naturally I always felt that way. That what I whatever I'm excited about learning, I'm really excited about teaching. So I would say it started at a young age. So I was always, in one way or another, looking for opportunities to teach. I didn't necessarily inform my decision about what I wanted to do with my life professionally, but eventually it did. And I started studying to be a rabbi at around 1920. And then I took a few degrees uh well in philosophy from Johns Hopkins and eventually uh education from Azraeli uh YU. And now I'm in the middle of a history, uh Jewish history masters from Tura. So um that that's a late degree. So uh but it but it all has a lot to do with the same, and I'll I'll explain because I was a rabbi, and then um when it was time to actually go out and rabbi um as a verb, um we were looking around in places where we didn't feel there was going to be like a hundred guys waiting for the same job. So we were going for like kind of odd places, and then all the while I was doing teaching informally, formally, here and there, and we ended up uh finding a position actually in a very raw community in Santiago de Chile, and we made the move in 1996, 1997, after learning uh quite some time, and learning that is learning Torah and uh these degrees. We lived there till 2019, so about 23 years. And along the way, I was a principal of the school for about 17 years. Maimonities school in Chile, I helped found other schools that were inspired by our model around South America and Tucuman and other provinces in Argentina. And um I was this community rabbi. We started Asha Torah in Santiago, Chile. Did a lot I had to do a lot of uh, as I said, a lot of teaching, a lot of explaining of what Judaism is to a lot of people, which informed in general my teaching model. I always felt that if you if you can't explain complex ideas to laymen, so then you really don't understand what it is that you're that you're learning. So that was a great uh, I guess, laboratory. Um just as an anecdote, I remember making Kiddush or Kiddush or whatever you people that are listening to this say it. Um uh the first night on Friday night, and we we were the first night there in Chile, we had a table full of people, and I'm looking around the table. I'm not sure if anybody has ever seen this before. I know that the language is was still a barrier. I didn't really speak Spanish yet. Um, and I just said, How in the world am I gonna do this when all these people don't know what I'm doing? So I just put the Kiddish cup down and I did my best in some kind of form of Spanish English to explain to them what Kiddush is, and and and it to me was a great experience because a lot of those things I hadn't even given much thought to really myself. So I think that model also is really good. It's just very enriching when you're given that opportunity to to present your your some of your deep beliefs to other people who really know nothing. Um, so and and then from there, after 23 years, uh it was hard to leave, but um I always wanted to move to Israel. I always wanted to live in Israel. I took many students to Israel over the years. I was very pro-Israel all the years that I was there, um, and pro-Israel in the sense of talking about it a lot. So we got an opportunity in uh place called Givatzev for whatever I wanted to do there, and I decided to open a school. So I opened a school, um, an elementary school. I ran it for I don't know about five years, four or five years. And as a principal in Israel, I really wasn't feeling that I was um being consistent to with my mission. I think a lot of what's involved there is principaling and many other educational uh jobs is more administrative than actual teaching. Actual teaching or actual any educational processes, it's very, very difficult. Um, if you're if you're raised there and born there, maybe you can weather this stuff a little bit more. But for me, this was like really sapping my my everything. And so I decided to get out and to go back to informal education, which through through um uh connecting people to the land of Israel through touring, tour guiding. Um so now I'm a tour, I'm an independent tour guide um with a focus on biking and seeing the land that way. And I work for the Moreshita Kotel, which is the holy places of the Kotel and uh Jerusalem, and I give tours for them as well. And that's what I do today.

Moving To Chile To Build Community

SPEAKER_02

Okay, I have a lot of questions. So let's we'll start first um with your experience moving to Chile, because I'm assuming there was not very many Jews there that you were interacting with, right?

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_02

However, some of them probably at some point in their history may have been descendants of the crypto converso Jews, right? And maybe they didn't even necessarily know that about themselves. Did you run into any of that?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah. Um interesting that you go there. Those are some of the more uh those are some of the more interesting, um, I guess, out of the out of the box moments. Uh I can bring up a lot of stories, but um one of them that's very striking was be is with a woman who was married to a man who ended up becoming a very good friend of mine, a very a very uh close biking partner, actually. It's like uh we would bike every Sunday for miles and miles. But her her um his wife was not sure about her Jewish origins. And when she first started telling me about it, why she feels that she's Jewish, her husband happened to have um converted independently. In other words, uh the husband wanted to convert because he was told that his wife was Jewish. His wife had this belief that she was Jewish, and in the other communities, I think I guess not the Orthodox communities, you know, that was enough. But when this woman came to the to us to explain why she thought that she was Jewish, she said, Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what it was. Um my mother, who I detested most of my life, um she said for the following reason, amongst other strange uh behaviors that she had, but one of them was I live I grew up in a place called Valparaíso, which is like on the coast of um it's a famous port in Chile. And um my mother didn't let le let me go out on uh Friday from sundown till Saturday night till sundown. Um she didn't let me leave the house. Um and all my friends, of course, were out, you know, doing things that teenagers do. And for some crazy reason, my mother never would explain to me. And as I got older, I just resented it more and more. And she tells me that her mother um died about a year ago or two years ago, she said, I don't remember exactly. She said um that when she was you know on her lasts, she told me that I was Jewish. And uh she didn't feel that she could openly profess Judaism, but she also couldn't, she felt, but she also felt that she couldn't drop many of the things that she felt were like basic, and she just didn't have the wherewithal to explain any of these things to her daughter for fear of whatever, so she felt that she was protecting. In any case, crazy story.

SPEAKER_03

Sure.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um a lot of other stories. I had a I had a woman in my school actually who who uh his last name was Salinas, um, who felt that she always was Jewish. And she told me that um her family lived in a very remote place in Chile in the spring, would bring out their uh kitchen utensils to the stream and dunk them in the stream and bring them back into the home. Totally unexplained why.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I don't know there's a lot of stories like that, but those are two that just come to the top of my head.

SPEAKER_02

So I I ask about that because that's my my dad's side of the family. That my grandfather's Rabbi Abel Respus, the Khanalibra, like what he was always taught you're you're a Jew, but they didn't really practice anything. They didn't really know. Thank God, thanks to him, he was able to finally learn and learn more about our history and eventually found the rabbi who would connect with him. And uh here I am today. And I've run into other people who also have these stories of, oh, my grandmother did one thing and used to light one candle or this or that. And I am always amazed when I hear people from different parts of South America and even Central America, they have some kind of tradition, and it you know, leads back to way back when with the It's a phenomena that I think should be recorded.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know anybody that has. I unfortunately haven't written down all the stories, but it was actually a community that grew up in Santiago in the middle, uh very modest community, but they called themselves Bene Anousin.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

You know, and I wasn't able to go through all their situations, but some of them, you know, were very, very, very keen on uh converting.

SPEAKER_02

Sure.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

Crypto-Jewish Clues And Hidden Traditions

SPEAKER_02

How did you handle that being the rev there? Was there a process for people who did want their Judaism to officially be recognized? How did that come about? Was there anything yeah?

SPEAKER_00

So um unfortunately, it's it's not such a great story that I'm about to tell. So I'm gonna try to keep it as positive as possible. But um, but basically I'm sure you're aware that um for some communities of Jews, uh the idea of conversion is more of uh uh it's more of a social construct. Uh so when I got there, I was very, very aware, even Jews that were not religious, uh, you know, told me in frank conversation when I got there that there was a particular rabbi who was, doesn't matter what affiliation, not non-Orthodox, but um who was very, very um uh free uh at at converting, and it was very, very liberal at converting people. And and and I think a lot of Jews themselves, who again were not religious, felt that there was um just a certain lack of uh of of credibility going on in all of those processes. And uh, you know, you know it is a lot of times uh Jews that aren't religious as well just feel like um maybe they feel it from a sense of like being part of a club that all of a sudden there's people that in the club that they don't know why they're there because you know maybe they wanna whatever they have, whatever the reason is. It's whatever their their particular motivations were for telling me these things, um, it had a it had a very, very uh well-known name for just mass conversions. So as a rabbi coming in in 1993 for the first time and hearing about it, and then I came back in 1995 and then 1996 before I actually decided to move my family. Um I decided that I'm not doing it. Thanks. That I I in other words, I'm gonna help people as honestly as I can to do a process, but I'm not gonna be the one who's going to say, I have the You know, the whole apparatus that will take you from soup to nuts and will and will get you out to the other side. I I would just teach. I would teach. And when the people, whoever it was that was was willing to go that far, um, I would advise them to go somewhere else. Sometimes, in two cases, I actually took them, or I I brought one brought one to Miami, I brought one to where I come from, Scranton, Pennsylvania. And basically it was the rabbi over there in those two places that was taking the responsibility for the for the actual conversion, conversion and the papers and stuff like that. So I did what I could for them, and then I took them to the end to somewhere else. Sometimes they went to Israel. Eventually, when I started moving out um of the positions that I had, um the other people that were following in my in my taking my roles were a little bit more inclined to bring people in from Israel. So it started becoming a little bit more uh popular, I guess, because uh they can count on every couple years or sometimes once a year, a baked-in, you know, court would come in from Israel. And uh that's how started becoming a little more popular.

SPEAKER_02

How

Handling Conversion With Integrity

SPEAKER_02

is it for your children? I'm not sure how old they were when you moved down there. How was that and adjusting for them?

SPEAKER_00

A lot of these questions, of course, those that are married or are listening, know that we all have different versions of what happened during our lifetimes. Uh, some some couples can get it together a little bit more. Um, it happens to be my wife and I have different memories. Like we we really uh, especially these big moments, we you know, we talk about them in in different ways. And I think in this uh in this particular question, I would have to invoke my wife's memory because she's the one who really who was 100% convinced, because when we moved there, there wasn't a school yet, that she was going to do homeschooling. She brought a lot of material with her to do the homeschooling while I rabbid and tried to muster up interest in our community and do the things that I was doing, teaching and stuff like that for a very raw, you know, audience. She was with the kids and and eventually people got word of it, and then some other kids all of a sudden started jumping in the house. Anyway, the whole venture lasted, I think, a month. It's really hard to do getting some uh teachers' guides and going down there. And I hadn't been in formal, uh, I'd been doing informal teaching, but I hadn't done any formal, you know, principaling yet. I didn't uh complete, I hadn't completed my degree yet. So I I wasn't involved in it, and it was just it took its, it ran its course, and and my wife was a little bit humbled by by how difficult it was. And then luckily we had moved in September, already by the next March, full open in 1998. Kids had one big long vacation. They weren't that old when we got there. I mean, my my oldest was in first grade. There were other efforts um in the community to try to get uh something going here and there, you know, some groups, some learning groups, some hugim, some stuff. You know, the the kids weren't bored, they were doing a lot of exploring.

SPEAKER_02

They're kept busy, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And then fast forward, you moved to Israel, you make Aliyah, and you're living there, and you started a school. That's something that people say, oh, we want to try to do that, we want to get in a community and work with other people or see if we can build something. Okay, what was that process like? And then how were you able to manage it and manage the bureaucracy while trying to maintain a, you know, this is um, I'm trying to serve, I'm trying to teach, and um, how was it?

Aliyah And Starting A School

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, okay. Well, we just jumped, you know, 23 beautiful years in South America. Yeah. And it's hard to leave them behind so quickly, but but uh because it was a is in as much in my and in as much as in my mind I had it clear uh about what I was facing in Israel, I I knew I had a privileged position in in Chile, especially after that many years. Um running a school down there in a private sector, uh pretty much funded, you know, without having to worry about fundraising, a school that was um really doing well, um the student body growing. Um we're we were very well placed nationally. We were involved in you know very cutting-edge um educational processes. Um to jump to Israel was um I guess a leap of faith. And I was very happy to do it because I knew that I wanted to go to Israel to be able to contribute something to the society and not go like many people feel is the time to go when you know you're already retired and you're basically living off the fathom land, but but you're not really contributing in the in the typical sense, that is. Um so so yeah, thank God my wife was willing to go along with it. Uh, it wasn't easy. Um my wife really was also really, you know, involved in the community and feeling very personally accomplished and growing there. So to move to Israel was really based on conviction. That's number one. Jumping into the educational scene in Israel, in the public sector, which anywhere is difficult, certainly in Israel, was difficult. I'm starting to break out in a cold sweat already, you know, thinking what we had to go through. Unfortunately, I was kind of alone. Um I don't know how deep to get into this because I don't want to make people feel that this is a uh horrible thing, but thinking about it now again, I probably would have done some things different. And one of the things I would have done is make sure that I don't believe everything that I hear, uh, which is very important when you come to Israel. It's not that people are lying to you necessarily, but it means that there's a different culture and they have different ways of talking about things and what they hope and what's actually going to happen. So, one of the things I would have done differently is I would have really got in touch, even though I was in touch with some other principals, but I really would have formally got another principal to mentor me. That's number one that I would have done. So I would have been able to have that. Now, officially, the Mistrada Khinoch, this is a public school, so it was under the Mistrada Khinoch, the Institute Ministry of Education. They promised me that there was going to be what's called a Menahel Malaweh, an accompanying principal. Never really happened. Certainly not the first year, the second year a little bit. It wasn't really something I can count on. And also, they just assumed that I knew too many things. Like there was a lot of basic things that I didn't know about how they work in Israel. Before I knew it, COVID struck. So COVID struck, and we had this crazy anomaly of a year and a half almost. And as it was, things are super difficult. But to try to run a school that way was incredibly difficult. And starting the third year, we were still in COVID. The the beggar at the beginning of the third year was very, very, very stressful. I didn't know where we were going to be as far as the building goes because our new building wasn't ready and whatever. Anyway, COVID struck me personally. So I was completely stretched out on a bed for about a week. And thank God I usually don't get sick like that. But it was really COVID, and it and it and it hit my mind. I started looping, you know, from the stress that I was living. And that was to me like I, you know, it was scary. So that was like the knockout punch. Like it then it then I had pretty much, once I got out of it after a couple months, I really decided that this thing is uh is really starting to affect my health. So I looked for ways to get out of it, to get out of the principalship uh slowly and find someone else, which eventually I did. But what can I tell you? Everything about running a school, this this was a school that started from nothing, right? So you're talking about people slapping you on the back and going, Beitzaifritzolmech. I don't know if anybody anybody listens to this knows Hebrew, but Beitzaverzomeach means like, you know, they give you, yeah, Beit Savitzomeach, great new school, like you're a hero. And then you think that they're just being nice, but then you realize that they're really being serious, that you are a hero. Or in in words in English, in Hebrew, they say a friar, which is like a naive kind of person. Because what happens is when you start a school, nobody knows you, so you can't fill the classrooms. And if you can't fill the classrooms in 20 per class, it's the same ministry of education that gave you a big slap on the back, uh, you know, congratulating you for opening a new school, is the same ministry of education that won't give you a full uh backing until because they're counting heads. So you're basically running around like a chicken without a head with all the teachers, nobody has time to prepare anything because everybody's taking classes because there's not enough money to pay all the salaries.

SPEAKER_02

And all the funding comes from them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, all the funding. And not only that, but uh in the second year, I was like, this is crazy. I gotta I gotta bring in some nonprofit. And then I found out that they have rules that you can't bring in nonprofits to help schools, you can't bring in any private funding. Gotcha. Okay. Um, so I brought them in anyway to help in like, you know, ways that only Israelis would understand how that works. But eventually I got some funding. It wasn't really for what I needed, it was whatever I could get. So I'm giving you a little bit of a taste of how challenging it is to run a school in Israel, besides the fact that the idiosyncrasies of the culture and the children and the oh my gosh, on and on, the municipality, all the different layers of uh bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy, COVID, And Burnout

SPEAKER_02

Oh yes. So basically, was it you started with your your own children, and then you had to try to persuade other parents to take their children out of other schools to bring them to your school?

SPEAKER_00

Is that that's that happened in Chile.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00

So that happened decades before in Chile. That was really the story in Chile. When we opened in 1998, we had 15 children. Um three were mine, three were a friend that was there, three was the only other Frum couple, the only other religious couple in Chile that we knew that had young children.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, and then, you know, just by the grace of God, some people decided to trust us way back in the beginning. School took off. The second year was 30, 30 kids. The year after that was like 45, then we went up to 60, and then and then to 100, whatever it grew pretty well after that.

SPEAKER_02

Amazing.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, so in Israel, how how did you start it? Like you had to have some kids, no?

SPEAKER_00

No, so that's the thing. That's why I'm kind of contrasting the question. Because whereas in Chile, in your chutzlar, it's and you're starting a rel a what people are afraid of, which is a religious school in a place that never had a religious school ever in the history of the country. The the the level of of mistr of distrust and suspicious uh talk is uh like you know unbelievable, like you know, from a different world. And Israel, the reason why the country the government itself is willing to open up a school is because there's a bikush, there's a need in that particular area to open a school. So there's a natural there, there's never an idea of opening a school and then nobody comes. I mean, you're always gonna have at least 10 kids in a grade. Sure. If you want to have 20, you know, you'll have you'll have kids. The because thank God there's just a wonderful amount of children running around Israel and the Givatzev area is not serviced uh that well for Dati schools, certainly not the type of school that I was opening. So kids were coming. I, you know, we didn't have to work too hard. The only thing we had to work at was when I realized that we weren't going to get the same funding, is that we needed to get 20 in each grade. Okay. Very, very difficult because once you start first, second grade with um not enough, you know, whatever, 15 to 20 somewhere, but not 20, uh, then that ship has sailed. So so the kids that have already gone to other places, they're not just jumping, you know, unless something happens or you know, you the the percentages go way down. So you have to just pray that you can still fill those grades.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, wow, that's so different. Oh my goodness. So my

Switching To Tours And Informal Education

SPEAKER_02

other question for you is okay, so but by the third year, fourth year, you you were done. How did you then transition to doing tours?

SPEAKER_00

Um, well, the truth of the matter is when I was a principal as well, I was willing to make as much of an impact as possible. So I was doing other things anyway on the side. Can't even remember the amount of projects. I try to make an app, you know, like these uh social apps for like exercising apps. I do. Like communities, like exercising communities, like I don't know, fit on or something like that. We made a we made a model with a fellow who had experience a little bit in something like this to to try to make a model of by to to teach the entire Jewish world um how to introduce themselves to the Jewish library. Um so we worked on that for a year. Um it was a really great idea. We it was really pretty developed. Um but the thing is back then AI still hadn't taken off as like it did today. It's funny because I probably should regurgitate this whole thing and do it because it's so easy to make an app these days. But back then we were talking about, you know, this guy helped launch it with me, but then he says, okay, now you're on your own, you have to raise the money. And I to raise like then we thought to get it going, and then to it would be like a million and a half dollars. And I like I was still a principal of school, so I like I just didn't so that was one that I had to shelf, and then um I started another um I was teaching in seminaries in the night in women in uh different seminaries, but one of the seminaries that I most loved, now that you know a little bit of my history, had to do with teaching women who were uh either converts or uh Balichuva, who were mostly living in Israel alone. I was

Creating Community For Single Women

SPEAKER_00

teaching in seminaries like that, and those are the ones that I most enjoyed teaching, like the typical ones where the you know from girls are coming from New York, and I didn't really connect to those places that much. I didn't think that there was a lot of enthusiasm in any of those places to really study. But in in these other places I did, places like Nive and places like uh whatever, whatever. I don't know if you know the names of these places, but it doesn't matter. Aish, I realized that there's a lot of single women that are in Israel that are alone, uh, really, really, really alone. I was hearing from the different seminaries, the Sharim and these other places, that the women are in their upper 20s, they're holding on, you know, with their fingernails to these institutions. Um, because the institutions were giving them ultimately what a community gives. And you know, get leaving the institution meant like fending for themselves completely alone, and they were overburdened by all these layovers, and they were asking me for help. And so I founded OMC Organic Micro Communities, something like that, to try to help women integrate. Anyway, I don't know how much you're interested in this, but but I started it, and then after running it for a year, I realized that it's not really for me to do because it's all single women and Israel that much. So I got my wife to do it. Who my wife was very interested in doing this anyway from the beginning. She helped by bringing some know-how from different places, but she also had a different vision of how to run it. I gave it to her and she runs it now very successfully. It's called Magalot.

SPEAKER_02

So it's like a way for women to continue to have that community, that other people to connect with and it's to help single women, usually Anglos, mostly Anglos.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, it's made for Anglos, um, find themselves and find each other, create community for themselves so that they can really and get helped because of it in so many different ways that uh that they'll actually, you know, be able to show their best self.

SPEAKER_02

Sure, that's probably needed.

SPEAKER_00

I would super needed when you talk to anybody in any community, they're like, Oh my gosh, I wish you could do something like that here. Um, that's a separate, I mean, it's a it's a super duper large phenomena going on today, a lot of single dumb singlehood going on.

SPEAKER_02

It definitely is.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and it's uh it's very, very necessary. And and I I think we have the right, I think. Well, I'm not saying there aren't other approaches, but a lot of times part of the major, major problem in religious communities, especially, is that when they look at a woman who's 35 and she's not married, they're like, Why aren't you married? You know, and that and that's like all over her face. Um, and it's very hard for people to get past that. And these, and what we're doing is we're not even talking about that, we're just trying to have the women network as best as they can amongst themselves, and they create these worlds um where they you know get stronger, they support each other, um, they're supported of course by the institution, but ultimately it's about having them support each other.

SPEAKER_02

And it's such a great idea, actually, because there are so many women who, for whatever reason, they're not finding someone to marry, or for there's all these different reasonings, but there are a lot of single women out there, and women we naturally do want to connect and be around other women, and especially a woman who is coming to Israel and she's making Aliyah and she doesn't have any family or any friends, and that's so needed. I have not been shared that with people that I know that are there.

SPEAKER_00

I'm talking about a particular demographic. Anglos who have moved to Israel. Sometimes we have second generation, you know, that grew up with in an Anglo house. But generally speaking, we're speaking about, you know, Anglos have moved to Israel who are alone and uh religious, generally speaking. Again, it's not like Magalot will say if you're not religious, you can't become part of the thing, but yeah, but generally speaking, it's run religiously.

SPEAKER_02

So

Practical Hebrew Learning That Sticks

SPEAKER_02

talk about Israel, not talk about Hebrew. So, how has Hebrew played a part in your journey there from starting the school and then also with what you're doing now?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I ran the school in Hebrew. My Hebrew is good. Uh, I wouldn't say svatem yet, but I always spoke Hebrew. I like languages, I did pretty well with Spanish. I taught in university level, taught Jewish studies. It was the first course of Jewish law in the history of the country to be taught in the University of Chile. I don't know if after I left, they actually got somebody else to take my place, but uh it was a cute anomaly. Um anyway, but Hebrew was great. Uh, you know, I liked it being challenged uh linguistically.

SPEAKER_02

Definitely good to learn languages for sure. And even getting our brain to think in other languages and and especially Hebrew, it's our holy tongue, you know, it's so important to know it.

SPEAKER_00

And I agree. I I think that the experience of a Jew knowing Hebrew is completely different. Yes.

SPEAKER_02

Any advice for maybe Americans or maybe families who maybe they don't have access to an Israeli speaker or they can't get their how to incorporate more Hebrew, I guess, into our daily lives so that even in America, our kids are really comfortable with the language.

SPEAKER_00

That's a good question. I think when I was more on this side of the planet, I would have a little bit more particular information for you. Right now, the only thing I could tell you is what we did in Chile and in my other experiences. Um, in our school, we you children need to learn a solid in their schools that they go to. They need to learn a solid Hebrew. That doesn't necessarily mean speaking Hebrew, but they need to learn, they need to feel comfortable with the basics of the language, which is tiktuk, which is uh uh grammar. And um, and when they know grammar and they know the basics of Tanakh, of they could read on their own, their their uh their comprehension is good. So even if they'll feel a little embarrassed here and there if they go to Israel, whatever, but they'll feel confident enough that they can. Um that's number one. Number two is what we did was that um we obviously very pro Israel, and that would mean on certain times during the year that's all about Hebrew and different chugimes in Hebrew, but um we also led um created a lot of excitement about. The high school trip. We brought our students for almost a month, three weeks between three weeks and a month during our summer to Israel. Our summer in the south in the southern hemisphere was you know December, January, July, uh, February.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And um, that's when we did our what's called the Spanish Viaje de Studios. And um, you know, it's also great. A lot of exposure to Israeli culture, a lot of exposure, exposure to the things that you want to show them about Israel, which is very important that you have a hand in running the show. But Hebrew, of course, is one of those things. Um, other than that, kids can pick it up, you know, once if you're willing to send them, and if you're willing to send them in the gap year, if you're gonna send them to an American program, forget it. They're not gonna learn Hebrew. But there are plenty of programs. Um depending on where you are in spectrum, really. If you're like very super haredi, uh it's not likely you're gonna pick up Hebrew because there's no institutions that I know unless you go to Israeli yeshiva. Sure. But um, but if you're not that haredi and you can go to somewhere else, you can there are plenty of ways to to find uh programs that actually incorporate Hebrew. And I know a lot of kids that pick it up. Uh you know, um my some of my machutani, my my consuegros, how do you say that in English? My uh in-laws, my in-laws, yeah, that we may have married children with. Um they um they were one of those, some of those people that you know they went on a kibbutz, you know, because they weren't religious, but they went on a kibbutz for a year or whatever, and they never forgot the Hebrew, you know.

SPEAKER_02

It's really important for sure.

SPEAKER_00

It is. I have to say also that in other communities in South America, the kids come out, even in religious schools, which is surprising, by the Svardim, by the Svardim, um, the Khalabim, that's the you know, the ones from Khalab from Aleppo, from Syria. Um, their schools in in Argentina, the kids actually speak Hebrew. I was always very impressed with that.

SPEAKER_02

That is impressive.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I never knew where that came from. I think it a little bit has to do with Zionism. I mean, uh, you know, the the halabim, the ale the alapinos, as they call the the Alepos, they um they were always very Zionistic, you know. Uh a lot of them moved to Israel after getting kicked out of uh Syria. And the ones that didn't, you know, um worse had their eyes on Sion all the time.

SPEAKER_02

And so

Tour Guide Training And Biking Israel

SPEAKER_02

now with your tours, how does that work? Are you you're giving tours of all of Israel? You're focusing on your shalayim, how how uh how do you do it?

SPEAKER_00

Right. So uh first I study for about two years. It's a it's a pretty intensive course to become a tour guide. A lot of history, a lot of everything, a lot of the entire history of everything in like you know, very short period of time. And uh it's interesting because you learn like a lot of the history of the world, but it's all having to do with how it affects you know what happened in the land of Israel. So, you know, you talk about 622, the uh the the Muslims uh you know took over basically the world stage, you know, you you really talk about 638, which is when which is when they you know they arrived in Israel, mostly, you know, when they famous battle against the Byzantines that they they won the Byzantines a particular place near the land of Israel. So um everything is it's kind of like all of Jewish history, but about Israel. I mean, all of yeah, all of Jewish history and almost all you know, a lot of world history, but how it affects the land of Israel, uh, which is a very interesting take. And um so that's long. The testing is pretty difficult at the end. A lot of people don't pass.

SPEAKER_02

And all in Hebrew.

SPEAKER_00

Uh you can you can opt to take you can opt to take the courses in English, which I did. There's not that many offerings like that, but I wanted to learn English because it was so much more comfortable with it. And I don't like the technical words of the places, it just takes that much more brain space to figure the stuff out when you're listening to it, even though now I think I'd be comfortable with it. But then I wasn't, then yeah, and then the testing could also be done in English. So so to become a general tour guide, that's why I do tour guiding all over the land of Israel. And I my my one of my niches is biking, which I like showing people by bike. I think it's a different experience than getting on a bus. Yes, if you can. I like I said, I work for the Mareshita Kotel, like I'm hired by them officially to give Kotel tunnel tours, which is two or three tours that are in the area of the Kotel. There are a couple of them that are being developed now. There's more digging, there's more excavations going on, so there's going to be more places to tour. City of David. Um, I give it in English and Spanish. And every once in a while, when they need a pinch hitter, they'll call me to give the ones in Hebrew as well.

SPEAKER_02

How do people find you?

SPEAKER_00

I have a website, but it's it's like half baked. I have to warn you or whoever else looks at it, because it's just been one of those things. Like I um I got my wings, you know, whenever I got my wings like a year or so ago, a year and a half ago. Um, I really feel that I know the land of Israel well, but you know, to get a business started was it's a separate thing. I wanted to make sure that I'm, you know, really like wheels are greased and everything like that. I've done major tours for major groups of people, um, I've including major biking tours too. And as of now, I work through word of mouth. So I haven't really gotten on this social media game. I don't really want to have to. I'm really hoping I won't have to. Uh, but most people, when they get started, you know, they have their account on Instagram and on Facebook and stuff like that. I don't yet. Um, I have a website which is uh my company's called Roots and Roots. Um I like that. Yeah, Roots and Roots Israel. And um and you'll see, I think even on this thingamajigger, you'll see uh my uh my insignia or whatever they call it, my logo. Uh yeah, and it's exciting. Like, thank God I haven't had to work that hard to find clients until now. I think once I get back to Israel, I'm gonna start getting a little bit more serious about uh finishing the website and creating packages for people so that they can just see um what they like on the website without having to look much further. However, having said that, what I really, really what I do as a it's more my style is once people contact me, I really give them all the time that they need to create the trip that they like. That's what I do. I like talking to people. Like I I like, you know, you could offer something, you know, just uh cookie cutter kind of tour, but I'd like to know what people are looking for, you know. If people are willing to give the time to plan, you know, at least one or two conversations, I think everyone ends up a lot happier. Um and I have to say uh I have to say that people that aren't interested in talking about the plans that they might have for doing this major trip to Israel are not necessarily the client clients that I would I'm looking for. You know what I'm saying? I'm not I'm I really I like I like the teaching and the connecting part of it, just to go, you know, to to get paid, to bring somebody to Masada, you know, while they're looking at their phones, you know, I'm not I'm just really not into that. So I want to make sure that people are excited if they're excited enough to come and to plan, so usually it's a kind of group that you know is mildly too seriously curious.

SPEAKER_02

Um, Jews, non-Jews, is there a particular clientele?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I do everything. I do everything. Um, I have I obviously because I'm in a circuit of word of mouth that's Jewish, so it doesn't happen that much, but I have had uh groups that are very interesting from Germany. Um, and that happened also through experience when during the war I went to do some uh volunteering. And uh at the volunteering places on some of these farms, and this happened to have been a you know a vineyard, there's a lot of volunteers that come from Europe that love Israel for different reasons, and a lot of Germans come. And I met this uh woman who we got talking, this and that. And before I knew it, um she had me all over her things, and a lot of them came to to Jerusalem just to talk to me. They didn't necessarily want tours, but they just wanted to meet somebody so they can talk. They, you know, you just you feel like a rock star when they wanna when they reach out, like they just want to talk to you, like uh a legitimate you know, Jew lives in Israel, who's also religious, you know, who's also willing to talk to us, they were also willing to shake our hands, you know. They're just uh they go bananas. And um, and so I've had uh some of them reach out because they want to have tours. And I, you know, they're the greatest. They're so interested in everything, so interested in everything, uh, especially Tanakh. They don't want to hear the Christian stories, you know. They've heard they've been heard the Fed that the whole they don't want me to bring them to, you know, the Holy Sepulchre. They want me to bring them to the Jewish sites and they want to hear Tanakh, you know, they want to hear how David did this and how Solomon did that, and you know that that's what they're excited about.

SPEAKER_02

I forgot to ask you, how long have you been giving the tours?

SPEAKER_00

About two years.

SPEAKER_02

Wow, amazing. So, would you say that this is a phenomenon that has happened since October 7th, that people really want to feel and see what's the real, what's the truth, what's Israel really like, what's the land like?

SPEAKER_00

I would say it's a heightened interest, but it's just didn't start with October 7th. This um love of the Israel and the love of the land of Israel is something that uh has its history in um evangelical thought. It's not nefarious, you know. I don't know what people are thinking when they hear that because I'm sure they've heard that you know all the you know, the end game is that the the second coming and then whatever. Right. But it's not all that. I I think a lot of them have just um they just feel that the Jewish people are the people of the book, and they want to be able to reach out to them and have some contact with them. It happens, you know, it's uh it's it is a phenomenon.

SPEAKER_02

It is, it really is. Um, all eyes on Israel, I think.

SPEAKER_00

You know, there's so much um yeah, whether for good or for bad.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, but either side. It's for sure. How

War Reality And Tourism Uncertainty

SPEAKER_02

have you noticed the war with Iran, though, affecting your business and and touring?

SPEAKER_00

And I guess even in your experience, Israel in general, being that you live there and you're you're seeing firsthand well, I can tell you that for tour guides, um, this has been very difficult five years. Uh first COVID, then the war, and the war is not ending. Um, and I don't know when it's gonna end. Uh I don't know how it's gonna be possibly ending.

SPEAKER_02

But what I got damn nose.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, exactly. Uh no, we're really we're really in an intractable situation. You know, once we poked the head of the snake, as we've constantly called Iran, yep, you know, now we're in a war. So uh uh, you know, I I don't know. I it it's uh it's a huge, very complicated chess match. Now the the the in our backyard as far as touring goes, it's kind of I could tell you personally, March. I had scheduled March, April, May this year that I had to no more, March, April, May, June. I had to cancel this year of any foreign clients coming in to tour. So that's four months where it's just there's no foreign clients, it's just whatever I could scrap up, you know, in Israel. Plus the fact that I'm working in the Muresh Takota, which is always pretty busy.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

So there's soldiers coming and there's Israelis coming, and there's people that you know are kind of like families coming, you know, people that aren't afraid of going to Israel, you know. But a couple that I was working with for literally uh, I don't know, days of conversation, great people, just too elderly, I don't know, middle-aged couple, like my sweet spot. Like I love that age where they're not too old, you know, to have to worry about how many bathrooms there are on the way and if they can walk for more than five minutes. You know what I'm saying? They're around 60. Um, but they have time, they're semi-retired, they're interested, they're curious, and they have all the time in the world, and they're just laid back. And that that's like my sweet spot. And I was planning for this, these two couples in Atlanta for quite some time, and then boom, and then the war broke out. There was, you know, missiles raining down, and they said, Look, I we're really sorry, but you know, we'll hopefully we'll do it some other time. It was really nice meeting them, and I really hope they come back. And she always asked me how I'm doing, you know, in the war, especially when it gets like a little bit hairy in Israel. But yeah, that's that's just an example, but that's basically how it's been.

SPEAKER_02

Definitely. It's um, I think it's important for people also just to hear perspective from people in Israel, just because there's so much in the media, in social media, in the world that those of us living outside of Israel are hearing. And it's nice to be able to talk with someone in Israel and and get a feel, or it I know it's impossible to really feel what it's like. You know, we're not having missiles raining down on us in America. Yeah. Thank God. But uh for someone living in Israel, it it's a constant. It's it's daily and it's um your your life is affected and your business is your livelihood is affected. And it's really difficult.

SPEAKER_00

Um, yeah, I mean, I I'm really not even scratching the the surface with this. I mean, the the people that are really, really suffering are the people that are have just given their lives to uh to defend us. I mean, my son is in the army, thank God he's well. But you know, he I can tell you this much. He he got married a week before the the war broke out, and for the first year of his marriage, he was more in the army than at home. So you can imagine what that's like.

SPEAKER_02

That happened with my brother-in-law, also. Uh, he got married and and then the war broke out, and actually, she also is uh is like a manager in the army, and both of them were just in the army on their base, and he was here, she was there, they would come home different times. And do you have any other kids in Israel with you?

SPEAKER_00

Y'all thank God. Uh, once we moved, um all of my kids came. Uh, we've six children, and uh thank god they're all they're all in Israel except for one. My I have a daughter who actually lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania, interestingly enough.

SPEAKER_02

Who we met, we actually had a chance to meet her.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, right. Oh, right. That's how this whole thing happened, right? Right, that's right. Leah. So you know her. Okay, so she lives there. Um, but all my other kids live uh with us in Israel. Um my son who's going into the army uh in a couple months, another my youngest son. Uh, but I'm talking about as far as you know livelihood, you know, nobody talks about these things. No. What we talk about in Israel is how are we gonna help these people? You know, that's what everybody's worried about. How are we gonna you know, there's always a campaign to try to help nobody's complaining, but we all know of somebody who lost a business, you know. How how long can you hold on to a business, you know, without really, you know, uh without really working it?

SPEAKER_02

Definitely. Wow. Um yes, uh we hope, please God, that this is all gonna work its way out and end and we'll have peace. And I know we've been praying for that for so long. Um, but you know, it should be soon.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we were very hopeful. We were look, maybe naively, uh, but we were hopeful in the beginning that we were gonna see like a real collapse of our greatest enemies.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

But it looks like uh who knows? Who knows? Maybe it could happen tomorrow, but uh it's certainly not gonna take on that spectacular form that we were all dreaming of in the beginning.

SPEAKER_03

It's true.

SPEAKER_00

It's hopefully it'll take on a different spectacular form.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

But we're kind of like used to it already. It's it's it's it's a grind. It's a grind. And and you know, Israelis are super resilient. We as a people, the Jewish people are very resilient. You know, we like complaining and like talking things through, and everybody likes shouting their opinion and stuff. But in the end, you know, we get it done.

Aliyah Advice That Saves Pain

SPEAKER_02

Um, any advice for people who are maybe on the fence, they're thinking about making LEA, but they're not sure. You know, there's the war, there's this, you know, I have my job where I'm living and all this stuff. So any advice for them?

SPEAKER_00

Well, that's a big question. Well, I what I like tell what I like telling is uh is the thing that I know the most, which is two things. One is don't try Israel unless you have a full backpack of ideology that's bringing you to Israel. It's not it's not it's not uh it's not child's play. You have to really want to be here. Um you have to really want to be here. Yeah, you you have to you have to ideologically feel the importance of being in Israel. And it's an it's an important exercise regardless, whether you end up here or not. You know, you have to ask yourself, like, what is Israel? What is Israel vis-a-vis the state uh of Israel as it is today? What is the meaning of Israel historically? What is the Israel as it stands uh as probably the center of the of uh center of Jewish life today? Um, you know, there's a lot of questions to ask yourself, and and if you're really there and you're ready to go, the second thing I would tell you is do not come if you are not independently wealthy and you do not have a job in Israel. If you have not secured a job, don't come. Make sure you have a job before you get here. It doesn't have to be your dream job, but make sure you're making money. Again, if you're not independently wealthy, if you have, you know, if that's not your issue, I'm not talking to you. But if you have, you know, if you have to make money in order to survive in Israel, don't come to Israel thinking that it will somehow resolve itself. You have to do your homework before you get here. You have to even come for interviews to make sure you have something nailed down. It doesn't have to be the job that will last you for 20 years. It could be a year or two, but you'll already be living here, making money, and you'll you'll create contacts. That's what Israel is amazing at. You jump on a bus, you meet three people who know this guy, who know that guy, who know this. I mean, you'll find what to do afterwards, but don't come empty-handed like that.

SPEAKER_02

That is good advice. Because sometimes I think people say, oh, it'll work out, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, I've seen too many of those go south.

SPEAKER_02

Um,

The Relationship Based Future Of School

SPEAKER_02

now just an education question. What do you see successful Jewish education looking like in the future? I know we we're not prophets, we can't predict, but what would you say would make Jewish education successful?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I love that question. Um okay, I'm gonna say something that's close to my heart. It's um I I'm gonna take um I'm gonna go on out on a limb, assuming that it will answer your question, but I'd rather stick with something that I I'm really passionate about, and that is that the the future of Jewish education is really the past of Jewish education, which means that ultimately what we're being forced to understand is that it's not the transfer of knowledge, it's not the transfer of information, it's not, it's really about relationships. And sooner we understand that, um, the more we'll be able to face the the challenges of the what children are bringing to the table these days. And I think it's quite clear. Uh in my experience, I see that really children react to how does the saying go? Um don't don't uh I don't care to know how much you know until I know how much you care, or something like that. Right? You know, it's but it's not cliche. Like you can really create a school. I think we created as much as we could, a loving school in Santiago of Chile. And I think that's why we were successful, because the kids just loved coming to school. They loved coming to school because it was a home. It really was a home for them. And it wasn't a lot of times you hear of these stories of the school being a home for underprivileged children. You know, that's where people realize, oh, you need to offer them a home. And it's really not that's not the case. I mean, all education needs to be that way. And the more it is that way, the more we'll be able to face what children are facing. Children have been telling us for already decades that they don't need us uh to be the sage on the stage, as we say in education. You know, they need us to be the guide on the side. They need us to be the ones that are gonna be with them, that are gonna stick with them, that are gonna really care for them, they're gonna show that they're passionate about what they're studying. And therefore, you know, I want to share with you what it is that I can share because it's so exciting for me. You know, get involved because this is great, you know. Um, it's you know, that is education. It always was. You know, the Jewish model is father to son or mother to daughter, and that's a loving relationship, you know, par excellence or per se. So therefore, if we're if we're you know, we're kind of backwards. We created these school systems to try to pattern the father, uh, son, the the the parent-daughter um relationship, and it kind of like drifted away from that. And I think that the modern technology of today, especially with AI, is kind of saying, like, let's get back to basics. This is what uh schooling is about. And therefore, that informs all kinds of things. That means no more massive classrooms. That means the ratio of teacher, uh student has to be much more realistic. Um, that means that you we don't have traditional classrooms anymore. We need we have groups, you know. You need to, I think it's a that's a must. This happens to be what my master's is in, but teachers need to learn differentiated education. They cannot walk into a classroom and think they can give some kind of a frontal whatever it is and think they're going to be successful. It's just more of the same. And kids are just going in so much more resentful of being put on in schools when they don't need you. Like, what is this? I mean, it's a phenomenon I can tell you in Israel that more and more and more students drop out of high school when they can. They would have dropped already out of uh of grade school. But kids from good homes, by the way, I'm one of them. My son, my son in in already in 10th grade, was already, you know, whatever, 11th grade. He was like, that's it. He's he's like independently wealthy, made his money online.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

You know, he did drop shipping, he was making hundreds of thousands of dollars. And like, why do why in the world am I here? Why tell me? And uh, okay, we have to work it out and the thing, and but in the end, whatever it is that you're gonna say, you're not gonna be able to say it too loud unless the school is working with you, right?

SPEAKER_02

You know, but how do we change that? I mean, the schools have been this way, it seems, for a long time. It's very hard to change, you know. I know it's controversial, it's very controversial.

SPEAKER_00

Well, yeah, I mean, also I I think um necessity is the mother of invention. And uh I think anybody with any educational sense sees this. Sometimes they're not able to implement it school-wide. Some people sometimes they're not able to implement it because they're they're running up against very traditional systems. Sometimes, unfortunately, the Haredi system is just a way, way too traditional, even though, unfortunately, I mean, it's really unfortunate because that really is the one that's you know, if you would have gone to yeshiva in Europe 150 years ago, you wouldn't see yeshiva that looks like the way it looks like today. You'd see like a bunch of boys, maybe five, in an old room with uh with their Rebbe, you know, and and they had this bond with him. You know, it wasn't it wasn't bells and uh things, you know, it was life. You were living life with the person who was much wiser than you, who was your lifeline, you know. So what have we done to ourselves? Um I'm sure you've seen and read, you know, the first one to speak out, I think Sir Robinson, whatever his name is, uh whatever his name is. He has a famous TED Talk where he talks about the manufacturing of schools, the uh how uh how schools became how they how they actually are to, you know, but well then it's an old video, but we need to be smarter. That's one of the reasons why I kind of got out of Misvarachinuch in Israel, is because it's such a monstrosity, it's such a bureaucracy. Oh my gosh, it's gonna take, I don't know, Mashiach to take that thing apart. So I don't know. I didn't want to be part of it anymore. I I know I don't want to leave it on like a sour note, but I'd have to say that people are getting it. I think people are smelling the coffee. I think uh kids themselves are finding ways to make their learning time much more meaningful, significant.

SPEAKER_02

I think that's important. And I you had mentioned this in the very beginning of our interview um about that love of learning. And I think that, yes, you know, they need to know how to dove and they need to know this and they need to know that, but I think ultimately we really want to create Jews who want to who really love learning and want to continue learning what it means to be a Jew.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Hey,

Prayer, Inspiration, And Honest Expectations

SPEAKER_00

it's you know, I I have to play a little devil's advocate. I'll give you a little pushback on that. Um, not because I disagree, but it's just my I remember when we started the school, you know, it was still raw, and the parents are all parents, I'd say 99.9% of our parent body in Santiago de Chile were all Balichuba.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And one woman very honestly and earnestly came over to me and said, you know, that she's very disappointed. And she wants to make sure that in the school the children learn how to love to pray. She wants her children to love to pray. I said to her, I understand you, but you should just know that if I could say that even 30% of Jews worldwide who keep Torah and Mitzvos are actually excited and enthusiastic to pray, I think I would be exaggerating a little bit. I I don't know if anybody, like it's it's an Avodah. It's uh that you have to punch in, you know, that at least to because it's an avodah. You have to also feel that you're connecting and you have to, okay. So you hopefully as you mature, I understand there's a lot that we can do about it, but um it's not something necessarily a school can do.

SPEAKER_02

It's sure I hear that.

SPEAKER_00

It's it's a you know, school in the end is an institution, and and this is something that's you know, uh even one-on-one, I don't know if you could actually do that. Um, so you have to have your targets, your educational targets pretty clear about what's doable and what's and what's not. But on the other hand, I agree. I mean, I know a lot of Jews today, young Jews in Israel, especially, that are just there's a little, there's they're super big into Neo Chasidut, which is um neochasidus, or whoever's listening, uh, which is finding more inspiration in Judaism, finding, you know, just not going to show. I know I know people that just cannot walk into a shool where people are just gonna go, May Ishmaelabrah, they just can't do it. They they they feel and and on what you know, Rev Cook would say, that's amazing. That is a spirit of of Hitchhad Shut. That's that's newness. That's that's what we need. Yeah, we need those guys. And uh slowly but surely people are coming around and embracing this type of attitude and trying to facilitate as much as possible. You know, the the schools are no exception.

SPEAKER_02

Well,

Final Thoughts And Farewell

SPEAKER_02

as uh Avi, thank you so much for uh coming on the podcast and sharing your story and um just sharing what you do. And I really appreciate you taking the time.

SPEAKER_00

No, it's a pleasure, Yasmina. I hope we meet someday. Yes, but I hope so too.

SPEAKER_02

You where are you living again in Israel?

SPEAKER_00

We're in Gibatzev.

SPEAKER_02

Gibatzev, okay.

SPEAKER_00

So make sure, even if you don't want to tour. Yeah, we'll definitely have to uh very happy uh to meet you, yeah, when you get there.

SPEAKER_02

All the best with you.

SPEAKER_00

Well, all the best.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, thank you, you too.