While teaching religious school this year at Temple Isaiah in Lafayette, Marla Kolman had her students corresponding with Israeli teens, using the latest technology to talk about themselves and share what their lives were like.
She calls her program “Partners in Peace,” and hopes to duplicate it elsewhere.
Two of those kids went to Israel with “Let’s Go Israel,” the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay and the S.F.-based Bureau of Jewish Education’s summer trip, and agreed to stay on for an extension with Kolman.
Her goal was for them to meet with the Israelis they had been corresponding with in Jerusalem after the Let’s Go trip was finished. But that was not to be.
To no one’s surprise, the war caused the teens’ parents to want them home when the official trip ended. Even if they had stayed, Kolman learned that in this tense situation the Israeli teens’ parents didn’t want their children traveling from their small town homes to Jerusalem. It was deemed too dangerous.
It was not only terribly frustrating, but a “huge bummer,” Kolman said.
She was, however, able to find the bright side. She visited the Let’s Go Israel contingent early the week of July 23 before they flew home, and despite everything, she was greatly moved by some of her students, who before this trip, had not felt much connection with Israel.
Being there when war broke out had a profound effect.
“These are not the same kids I brought here a month ago,” she wrote in an email. “None of them want to leave. It’s amazing. They have been totally transformed by this experience in the most positive ways, and it was incredible for me, as their teacher who struggled with them all year trying to get them to care and engage around the subject of Israel, to see the passion and enthusiasm and support they now feel and express.”
Kolman was to return home this weekend.