WEST COAST NCSY CELEBRATES FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF YESHIVA DAY SCHOOL AND PUBLIC SCHOOL TEENS LEARNING TOGETHER
NCSYers receiving Award of Diligence from Rabbi FE Goldberg and Rabbi Josh Horwitz. Left to right: Rabbi Effie Goldberg, Rivkah Levine, Michelle Florentine, Marlon Meyerson, and Rabbi Josh Horwitz.
Earlier this month, West Coast NCSY celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Maimonides Scholar Program with triple the amount of participants than the program originated with in 2006. The Maimonides Scholar Program provides an opportunity for yeshiva day school students to interact and share their Torah knowledge with Jewish peers who do not have a formal Jewish education but are actively involved in Jewish culture clubs in their schools. For the past ten weeks, sixty public school and yeshiva/day school teens have been building relationships and studying a Torah text of their choice in pairs.
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In addition to the yeshiva/day school and public school students forming strong relationships with one another, it is also an opportunity for their families to meet and interact as they watch their children learn; bridging the gap between yeshiva students and public school students by learning Torah.
Rabbi Steven Burg, International Director of NCSY, joined the students to celebrate the dedication and accomplishments of the outstanding teens. The dinner was hosted by Rachel Gindi, of Los Angeles.
Rabbi Effie Goldberg, Regional Director of West Coast NCSY, declared, “It has been a privilege to see this program flourish and witness the spiritual growth of the teens.”
NCSY Alumnus Alison Snyder, of Los Angeles, described her experience as an active NCSYer and how incredible it is to see NCSY grow in both numbers of teens and programs. Although the Maimonides Scholar Program did not exist when she was an NCSYer, she would have been proud to be part of the program, she declared.
Darren May, an NCSYer at Calabasas High School says, “The Maimonides Scholar Program is a way for teens to grow in their knowledge and love of Hashem through authentic Jewish studies. It is also a perfect environment for students of different schools to form life-long friendships built upon the love of being Jewish. This is an invaluable asset to all Jewish teens.”
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