The following testimonials are taken directly from the most recent postings on the JCC Stories Blog located on our website.
The Way Hanukkah is Meant to Be
Last week I had the good fortune to be able to volunteer with the JCC to deliver Hanukkah meals to some folks who were in need. Judy and Jeremiah were wonderful and made it very easy. The packages were delivered and a Happy Hanukkah was enabled for the first night. Then on Sunday the JCC held a most delightful Hanukkah meal and menorah lighting. What a joy. Many thanks to the other Judy, Natalie, the Rabbis, the wonderful staff, the caterer and all the attendees who were joyous and loving. The way Hanukkah is meant to be.
Regards, Elizabeth LaBar
We Love Just Kids!
I just wanted to let you know how pleased our family is that we have become part of the larger Just Kids family. Our son is participating in the Just Kids Program in the five year old room. His teachers are excellent. I never worry. I know that he is safe, cared for, and learning new and wonderful things every single day. The staff are caring and genuine folks who have the kid's best interests at heart. But beyond that, they are happy people who are happy doing what they do best. Who could ask for more? What a wonderful and loving environment you all have created. We are so lucky to be part of the JCC and Just Kids community, wish we had found it earlier. - Eva Chazo
Three-Year-Old Is Excited to Go To School Again
I had expressed my appreciation to Sherrill for what she has done for Abbie and wanted to pass this along to you as well. When Abbie was at her other daycare she learned a ton, academically, and I was happy with the care. What I did notice increasingly happening,were, meltdowns as soon as we were in the car. She was a pent up ball of anxiety, frustration and stress. There were a couple hours of letting her release all of this, followed by a slow decline in her happiness overall. Since being at the JCC, she is back to her carefree, light hearted, fun, happy self. I pick her up, she gets in the car, and we have the best conversations and all the meltdowns have stopped. She is excited every morning to get to school. I have seen her transform back to a positive little 3 year old, with a new interest in exploring and learning about the world around her. Thank you ALL so much!!!
Amy White Alpine Photography Inc
Learning About Judaism in Just Kids After School Program
I want you to know that my child who was christened in the Catholic church is in love with Judaism. Abby loves to sing the prayers and explain to me what she learns about your faith. It makes me happy to watch her grow in her faith in God.
Posted by: April Suttles @ 11:13 am
JCC & Purim Carnival Gives Meaningful Connection to Community
This story is republished from my website: http://YogaMamaMe.com.
It is, perhaps, the most remarkable change that motherhood has wrought: I looked forward to the JCC Purim Carnival for weeks before it was upon us. This is remarkable because -- although this was my first Purim Carnival -- it was certainly not my first opportunity to attend one. My only previous brush with a Purim celebration occurred my sophomore year in high school. My friend Brenda and I scored some cool 60's dresses my mother had buried in a closet (since disappeared, to my periodic chagrin) and headed out to a party for the teenagers of a congregation to which Brenda may or may not have belonged. I certainly didn't, and I know for a fact that she is the only one of the two of us who would have heard about and expressed interest in a party at a synagogue, even one at which boys might be met. While nominally Jewish myself, my entire exposure to what this meant consisted of: 1) attending a number of Bat Mitzvah's at the Sportsmen's Lodge in Tarzana during eighth grade; 2) having my parents tell me a whole lot how important it is to marry Jewish (that one plainly never sunk in); and 3) during the fall of my sophomore year of high school informing my mother that I would be taking Yom Kippur off from school to attend services with my friends and having her respond, "Take the day off if you want, but don't waste your time in services!"
So, as little as I recall of that spring's Purim party, I can say with assurance that Brenda set the whole thing up. And that it was enough to push me over the edge and away from any synagogue-sponsored activity for, well, ever, since this last carnival was sponsored by the JCC, not a synagogue.
The reason that spring of '82 Purim party so turned me off to the joys of Purim remains rooted in memory, even if all the other details of the evening have faded. Brenda and I arrived just in time for a stand-up routine by some kid consisting entirely of racist jokes. I was so horrified that, to this day, I have steadfastedly ignored Purim. Plus, I generally don't have any idea when it is, being only nominally Jewish and all.
And yet, a few weeks ago, when the announcements went up at Shalom, I was thrilled. Not only because I knew without a doubt that there would be no racist fourteen-year-old comedians at the JCC's Purim Carnival. But because I truly was looking forward to taking Jack to the celebration.
Speaking honestly, my sense of Jewish identity -- never strong -- has become less and less important to me over the years. Was it the earnest Hillel students in college who drove me away? The belonging I didn't want to belong to going to law school in New York? The moment one of my own law students rather condescendingly thanked me for canceling class on Yom Kippur, saying, "You're the only non-Jewish professor I've had cancel!"? Her face went a shade whiter when I told her that her assessment was off, though I'd like to think I would have canceled anyhow, since I obviously wasn't going to services myself or anything.
It says a lot about the world I've grown up in that I never felt a need to hold onto my Jewish identity, nor did I feel a loss in not nurturing it. I felt, in fact, that bringing it to the fore would only subject me to pre-judgments and expectations, just as any sort of label can. Sometime between law school and yoga teaching I even stopped declaring myself a feminist because I realized everyone seems to think they know what that means and no one really does. Identity, I came to conclude as I cut through the layers of it in my yoga practice, comes from within, not from labels.
Until, that is, I had a chance to get Jack into the daycare program at the JCC. Suddenly, for the first time ever on a form asking for my religious affiliation, I became "Jewish." Not that that moment was a turning point of any sort. Indeed, during Jack's first year at Hilde's House I was pretty well neutral on the whole religious component of his schooling, probably because "religious component" is a bit of an overstatement when you're talking about kids under the age of two. Playing with plastic matzoh during Passover hardly qualifies as preparing my child for his Bar Mitzvah, after all.
Over the past few months of having Jack at Shalom, however, I've found myself rather thrilled to see how much Jewish culture is integrated into the program for the older kids. Jack love-love-loves Shabbat on Fridays. While I found it pretty adorable that he used to call it "Sha-bop," I found myself equally pleased last month when he corrected my erroneous pronunciation. He brought probably the biggest bag of change in school to another holiday celebration -- even though I can't even remember the holiday or what the point of all that change was. Something to do with planting trees, which seemed like a pretty good reason to clear out the parking meter stash in my car. Nearly every day when I pick him up, he grabs the plastic challah that sits on a shelf next to his cubby and raises it over his head, chanting, "Up, up, up, challah!" I have no idea what it means, but I feel quite certain it is part of a Jewish tradition he knows far better than I.
"I'm so happy," I now find myself saying to my husband. "Jack is learning about his Jewish heritage and I don't have to teach it to him!"
So why was I the one itching for the Purim Carnival? Why did I insist on walking to it even as Jack fell asleep in the stroller -- and wandering through for long enough to awaken him to the cacophony of costume contest award announcements; kids yelling as they swooped down the big, inflatable slide; and me and my husband engaged in loud attempts at conversation with other parents we knew?
That last one has a lot to do with it: I felt like I belonged to something.
I felt a part of Jack's school, and the other kids and parents in it. After a year of struggling to "use" the Mommy connection as a way of making friends in a new town, there was no struggle. Instead, there are friends in yoga class who happen to have kids at Shalom as well. And the truly cheerful greeting of the lawyer who drafted our will as we bumped into each other picking our kids up the other day. And the moment a few weeks ago in Old Navy when Jack nonchalantly walked by a little boy we had encountered earlier in the mall playground and identified him by name: "Did he know that just from the playground?" the boy's impressed mother asked me. Equally impressed, I raised my hands in a gesture of I-can't-take-credit-for-my-child's-brilliance. "Unless he goes to school at the JCC," I said. Turns out I can't take credit for my child's brilliance because that was exactly how he knew the other boy.
In short, Saturday's trip to the Carnival was about a lovely walk on a lovely day, socializing with friendly people, watching my two-year-old earnestly throw baseballs nowhere near the target, and feeling like I was part of a really good community.
"I love that we can go to something like that and run into people we know," I said to my husband on our walk home.
"And I love that we don't know everyone," he added, pointing out that Asheville seems to be just the right size for us.
The right size, the right community. A community, it turns out, that is, in large measure, not only partly Jewish, but determindedly, importantly so. A place I want to be a part of my child's life. In other words, a community that -- at this moment for me -- allows me to let my Jewish background be a part of me as much as it is a part of Jack. A Buddhist-leaning, yoga-respecting girl from a Jewish background who's never been Bat Mitzvah-ed, knows maybe half of the standard Jewish prayer, is happily married to a former altar boy, and loves every bit of her background that shares space in her beautiful boy with the background his father brought to the genetic and cultural table as well.
Posted by: Melissa Essig @ 10:15:05 am
Quotes about the work of the Center for Diversity Education
Students assume other religions are isolated from their typical Christian views. They are surprised to learn how much various religions overlap in terms of principles, teachings, prophets, and literature. Students made genuine efforts to avoid making statements that stereotyped. They would also correct peers who made such statements. Students were very excited to share information they obtained/experienced on the trip. They could accurately describe landmarks and explain the significance of the structure to peers and adults and grew from the exposure to the different religions. The textbook can describe it for hundreds of pages and never come close to the experience of students actually seeing a structure and understanding its importance.
Middle School teacher
"Teachers tell me how much more it means to hear from a person who experienced some of the Holocaust than the other means of learning about it. The questions the students ask are the best part of this for me. They range from what was the gas used in the gas chambers? to 'how did they know in Darmstadt who was Jewish?' Some of the information I have to look up and get back to them.
I get thank you letters that range from a collection of the students' research on the Holocaust to issues they want to work on (since I always challenge them fix something they see is wrong). One response was a collection of hard things that happened in the students' own lives." Lotte Meyerson - Survivor
Dear Mr. Feldstein,
Thank you very much for coming to our school, I really appreciate it that you spent your own time to have us learn about some events of the Holocaust from someone's perspective. I never knew that Immigration to America was as painstaking as it is today legally. It shocked me that boys would take part of Germany's hate also. The Holocaust confirms the fact people can do horrible things to others over minor differences like how you look or having a different belief...In the end, people of different color and beliefs are of the same species. Nobody is superior over another because of looks or beliefs, and it definitely does not give them the right to murder over their misguided opinions. Hopefully, some day we will live in a world when all people are equal and will not send others to their deaths over differences.
Thank you for clearing this for me.
Jerry Murillo (AC Reynolds Middle School Student)
Jennie Burroews on Women's Philanthropy
Hi Janet,
Thank you for allowing me to speak. I had no idea there were going to be that many amazing women there! It was such an honor to have been in the presence of so many talented, successful and inspiring women. I am proud to say that I have met many of those who attended, and only wish I had been able to get to know some of those I had not met before.
I feel that this opportunity speaks highly to the benefits of Hillel that I spoke about. This room full of gracefully empowered women that has and does provide an open and caring environment for young adults to grow into the vibrant Jewish community. I feel privileged to have been able to become a part of this community and look forward to my involvement in my Jewish community (wherever it might be) in the future.
Thank you
Jennie
National
| Artem | Chelsea |
| Ivan | Miranda |
| Nechama | Nodari |
| Sanford |
