The delegation of school principals visiting from Nahariya earlier this month listened intently as Englewood Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle described legislation she sponsored to combat bullying in schools. “We have the same problems,” said an excited Ilan Vaknin, Principal of Sch’chakim High School and Chair of the Nahariya Education Task Force. “This is great that we are addressing the same issues. Let’s send each other our programs to see what works.”

Moments like this are at the heart of the Jewish Federation’s Partnership 2Gether Program, in which Federations across the country twin with communities in Israel to share ideas and, most important of all, share each other’s lives. Over the past 10 years, The Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey (JFNNJ) and its twin city, Nahariya, have established relationships with educators, artists, physicians and lawyers, among other groups, from both communities. The education partnership, directed by Phyllis Miller and chaired by Barbara Gononsky, former head of the Frisch School Hebrew Department, twins Naharyia and North Jersey classes where students work on joint projects, sometimes with live Skype get-togethers. Additionally, Miller selects New Jersey teachers for an annual visit to Nahariya. Her counterpart in Israel, Mercedes Hadad, Coordinator of the Nahariya Education Task Force and english teacher in Ulpana High School, selects the educators who visit New Jersey. “We both see things we can implement from these visits,” said Miller. “It’s people to people; we form relationships.”

The Partnership is under the umbrella of JFNNJ’s Center for Israel Engagement, headed by Liran Kapoano. “The Partnership brings together people from different facets of Jewish life in support of Israel,” Kapoano said. “There really aren’t enough opportunities for us to dialogue, but Israel is a uniting force. With the education partnership, we’re giving thousands of kids a real picture of American and Israeli Jewish life.”

The Nahariya group’s core agenda on their visits here is to see Jewish education in action, make connections, and get ideas to bring back home. Hadad said an additional goal this year was to reach out to the public schools. “We want to reach out to the Jewish students in public school who are not exposed to the Jewish world and Israel,” she explained. “Every school has Jewish potential and future leaders.” In Israel, Jewish education is built into the educational system. The state schools are Secular (Mamlachti), Religious (Mamlachti Dati), Independent Haredi (Chinuch Atzmai) and Arab with some integrated Jewish/Arab schools. This year’s delegation included principals from both secular and religious schools. They visited Frisch High School, Solomon Schecter, Yavneh, Yeshiva of North Jersey, Bergen High School of Jewish Studies, Glen Rock Jewish Center, New Milford High and Teaneck High. A planned visit to Moriah was snowed out.

The principals were more than tourists; they interacted with students at each of the schools. At Frisch, Hadad taught a Hebrew class, and in an email discussion after the visit, said “the students speak very good Hebrew.” She was also impressed by the widespread use of iPads. “This technology is very well known in Israel, but we don’t have it in the schools. This is very innovative for us,” she said.

At Yavneh, the group was entertained by a special choir performance and enjoyed singing along. Afterwards, the principals addressed the students. “Rabbi Penn said he was very impressed with the way Nahariya welcomed the New Jersey teachers and he wanted to do the same for the Nahariya visitors,” Hadad commented.

For Kapoano, a highlight of the week was meeting Eric Sheninger, principal of New Milford High School, who has developed a national reputation for championing the use of social media in education. In an interview after the visit, Kapoano told me that Sheninger said he finally realized that instead of fighting the students’ attachment to cell phones, he could utilize it. For example, he could teach a lesson and ask the class, ‘who agrees?’ Then he could send a survey through the phone and have them respond immediately. “The Israeli principals were skeptical at first, they couldn’t believe it works,” Kapoano said. “But at the end of the discussion they were exchanging business cards.” His enthusiasm rose higher as he related the following conversation from that meeting: “We talked about a global partnership with Israeli and American public and religious schools thinking about how best to integrate technology into the classroom and exchanging best practices. To my knowledge, this has never happened before—anywhere—and here we are talking about launching it in Bergen County. Can you imagine how great that would be?”

I joined the principals on a few of their visits. At Teaneck High, the principals viewed the Holocaust Center, established five years ago for the benefit of the school and community. The Director, math teacher Goldie Minkowitz, showed her visitors creative projects done by students, including a wall sized mural, and took them to the library which houses almost 1,000 books on the Holocaust, donated by Jeanette Friedman (JLBC editor) and Philip Sieradski, in honor of their parents who are Holocaust survivors, and the Ores family, in memory of their husband and father, Dr. Richard Ores, a survivor who passed away in 2011. “It was very exciting to see the center in Teaneck High,” Haddad said. “There are no such centers in schools in Israel because our students go to Holocaust museums, study the theme each year and commemorate the memorials all the time.”

The group visited the Steuben House, a colonial era homestead in River Edge that is now a historical museum, where the curator told the surprised visitors that Jews fleeing the Inquisition were a significant minority in colonial New Jersey. And they visited Englewood City Hall, where Huttle introduced them to state politics.

After a spirited discussion about anti-bullying solutions, Huttle described legislation she is trying to pass allowing private schools to get state funding for therapies and special education. She explained that the Assembly is based in Trenton and that’s where laws are introduced and voted on. “Maybe you can come to Trenton, next time,” Huttle offered. Miller and Kapoano smiled. Something to think about for next year’s agenda.

For more information about Partnership 2Gether or Jewish Federation projects in Israel, please contact Liran Kapoano at 201-820-3909 or LiranK_jfnnj.org.

By Bracha Schwartz