Girls who live or study in Greater MetroWest are eligible to apply.
(Courtesy of JCF of Greater MetroWest NJ) It is fitting that a new scholarship for gap-year study, named in Alisa Flatow’s memory, launched just after we read Parshat Noach in shul last Shabbat. As Stephen Flatow, her father, recounts: “My daughter’s first public dvar Torah was composed for this parsha. As a 7-year-old, she wrote about the birds Noach sent forth from the ark, but she did not know how to spell ‘raven.’ So, she wrote the word in Hebrew—resh, vav, nun.” That precocious youngster grew up, attended day school at JKHA and Frisch, and pulled her parents into a life of religious observance along the way. Stephen admits that Alisa was “the driving force for yiddishkeit in the family.”
As a college junior, Alisa took a semester off from Brandeis to study at Nishmat, a women’s seminary in Jerusalem. She was thrilled to be in Israel and to be learning Torah intensively. “We welcomed Alisa’s perception and her sense of humor,” noted a fellow student. “She was endlessly patient and amusing, encouraging and yet seriously conscientious.”
Tragically, Alisa Flatow died at age 20 on April 10, 1995, as the result of a terrorist attack in Israel. A suicide bomber drove a van loaded with explosives into a public bus, ending her life and that of seven others.
To honor her memory, the Alisa Flatow Memorial Scholarship Fund was established at the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater MetroWest. Between 2001 and 2016, the fund provided financial awards to more than 150 students learning at Israel gap-year programs, before it went dormant. But thanks to a generous legacy gift from Edith J. Lowen, z”l, in honor of Pearl P. Stein, z”l, the fund will once again provide scholarships and grants in 2025 and beyond.
Since Alisa grew up in West Orange, New Jersey, girls who currently reside or study in Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest’s catchment area (Essex, Morris, Sussex, Union and parts of Somerset counties) will be the beneficiaries of the renewed scholarship program. The application process is competitive, and three awards of up to $5,000 each will be granted to girls who intend to study full-time at a Torah-learning institution in Israel during a gap year.
Speaking from his apartment in Jerusalem, Stephen noted: “We’ve all heard the saying ‘When you educate a boy, you educate a man.’ I believe that when you educate a woman, you educate an entire family. That has been the case with my family. I strongly believe that immersive learning of our traditional texts in Israel is one of the most powerful tools we have as a people to ensure a firm connection to our traditions, give our young people the ability to counter antisemitism whenever and wherever they encounter it, and imbue them with a love of the State of Israel, the people of Israel and the Torah of Israel.”
The application for the 5786 academic year (2025-26) is now open; the submission deadline is February 11, 2025. For more information and to access the application, visit https://jcfgmw.org/alisafund/ or call Pam Greenwood, fund coordinator, at 973-929-3005.
