Email from Hannah Goldman

Gary:
It is ridiculously late and I have just finished packing for our early departure tomorrow. (What am I talking about - it is early now") During these last few hours in Israel, I wanted to share an experience that I had in Jerusalem on Thursday, which you may or may not include in the blog as you wish. After a tour of the new Yad Vashem museum, I of course, made a mad dash to begin my shopping marathon. I stopped at the Michal Negri store in the Inbal hotel and ended up in a conversation with the owner and his wife, both "secular I told her what we had been doing in Israel, she immediately started talking about how important it was, "because the schools don't give them anything." She said that she has three children, 29, 18 and a high school teen, and that she could see that the levels of Jewish identity have steadily decreased in her own children. She noted that her older children had the benefit of the influence of their grandparents, who were able to pass along to them some knowledge of tradition. However, the youngest child did not have the same opportunities for interaction with the grandparents and so, knew very little.It may sound like these stories are anecdotal, but they are not, because these concerns are repeated over and over again by parents all over Israel. At the Gordon School, which is a fairly well known ( and somewhat elite) public secular school in Tel Aviv, the parents themselves bear the full cost of enrichment programs which include holiday celebrations and kabbalat shabbat every Friday. Might one have ever imagined that teaching Israeli elementary school kids in a public school about kabbalat shabbat would only be available to those who can pay for it?
Hannah