Grads defer college for Israel experience

Women choose travel program

By Deborah Moon

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Two Portland teenagers have decided to defer college for a year to participate in Kivunim: New Directions, a year-long program for high school graduates based in Jerusalem that includes extensive field trips around the globe.
   
Wilson High School graduate Leanne Silberberg and Catlin Gabel graduate Adina Menashe decided to defer their enrollment at, respectively, McGill University in Montreal and Wheaton College in Massachusetts until fall 2008.
   
According to its Web site www.kivunim.org, the program “seeks to forge a lifelong relationship with Israel and the Jewish people by traveling across the world to gain understanding of other cultures, religions and worldviews. … We introduce students to the world of Arab-Jewish co-existence, perhaps the greatest challenge to the State of Israel and the Jewish people of our time.”

   
Both of the young women said they were attracted by the travel combined with the Israel experience.
   
“I chose to go on this program because its goal is to teach young Jews about the different Jewish communities of the world,” said Silberberg. “Kivunim offered me an incredible way to not only spend time in Israel, but also learn more about the world that we live in. We will be based in Jerusalem where we will take classes and then every five weeks we will travel to different countries including India, Morocco, Spain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Turkey and Greece.”
   
Menashe concurred: “I chose it because it is Israel centered but not exclusively so; we also travel to other countries. The classes I will take are Middle Eastern culture, civilization, Hebrew and Arabic.  The program combines history, with travel, coexistence and language studies, which is why it appealed to me.”
   
Silberberg said she has become much more involved in her Judaism in the past year and feels this program will help her define “the Jew who I am.” Last year Silberberg was president of the Portand Jewish Student Union and the Portland chapter of NCSY. She was a member of the Oregon Jewish Community Youth Foundation and taught Sunday School at Congregation Shaarie Torah.
   
In October 2006, Menashe went to Israel with the Oregon Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East—a group led by the Rev. Rodney Page and Rabbi Joshua Stampfer, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Neveh Shalom to which Menashe’s family has belonged for many years.
   
“There is where I would say the coexistence component of Kivunim appealed to me because I will be expanding on the knowledge I acquired on that trip and even visiting/volunteering at the same organizations I saw,” said Menashe.
   
Silberberg said she has never been to Israel and decided “to defer my admission to University because I have always wanted to go to Israel and university will still be there next year.”
   
“I knew I wanted to take a gap year because it seemed like all of the people I talked to about deferring said it was one of the best decisions they had made,” said Menashe.