The Late-Blooming Sage

Though genius is often equated with precocity, a quick search of "famous late bloomers" turns up David Sedaris, Julia Child, Alfred Hitchcock, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, to name a very few.

Though he didn’t make the Google cut, Rabbi Akiva was a late-bloomer par excellence. A Talmudic scholar in the late-first/early-second century, Rabbi Akiva is said to have started his formal education at age 40. Story has it that he was a poor shepherd working for the wealthiest man in Jerusalem whose daughter, Rachel, took a liking to him. Rachel saw something more in him though, and encouraged him to pursue formal Jewish study – which he did, though it kept them apart for 24 years.

Yeshiva children everywhere learn the story of Rabbi Akiva coming across a stone that had been hollowed out over time by drops of water and being heartened by the prospect of his own mind’s ability to adapt new knowledge, even though he knew it would take some time and hard work. As Malcom Gladwell wrote in The New Yorker: "Sometimes genius is anything but rarefied; sometimes it’s just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table."

A Visit To North Carolina's ‘Jewish Exeter’

The American Hebrew Academy is impressive, yet has trouble attracting students.

The boldest experiment in American Jewish high school education and leadership, unknown to most of us, is taking place on a beautiful 100-acre campus in Greensboro, N.C., that has to be seen to be believed.

Since its founding 11 years ago, I’d read and heard about the American Hebrew Academy, the country’s only co-ed and pluralistic college-prep boarding school, dubbed by some “the Jewish Exeter.” (The Jewish Week’s education writer Carolyn Slutsky visited the school for a feature we published in 2008.) But only after visiting recently and speaking to, and with, its students, faculty and administration, have I come to appreciate just how impressive it is physically, educationally and conceptually.

“We’re an elite high school that doesn’t want to be elitist,” explained executive director Glenn Drew, who described the academy as “a new paradigm in Jewish education.”

But one with serious challenges in terms of attracting students.

Founded by Drew’s uncle, Maurice “Chico” Sabbah, a wealthy, self-made American businessman who made aliyah as a young man, returned to the U.S. to fight in the Korean War and later settled in Greensboro, the school is an attempt to blend the warmth and cultural depth of Jewish life best represented by summer camps, with the academic excellence of the finest New England college-prep boarding schools.

In addition to faculty in both secular and Judaic subjects, the academy offers a full-time Jewish life staff — the four rabbis represent Modern Orthodox, Chabad, Conservative and Reform streams — to provide experiences for all of the non-class time throughout the week, and Shabbat and holidays during the course of the 10-month academic year.

Drew noted that Sabbah, who died in 2006, was concerned about Jewish continuity and wanted the school to instill leadership skills in its students. Based on the model of several top secular prep boarding schools, the academy seeks to create an environment that encourages students to take an active role in their own education.

Classes are limited to 12 students; they sit around a large, wooden oval “learning table” with their teacher so that they face each other.

Continue reading.

THE EIGHT DAYS OF HANUKKAH

A new song for the holiday:

(Note: The words "my true love" can be replaced with the Yiddish "mein Liebhen.")

On the first night of Hanukkah my true love gave to me
      Lox, bagels and some cream cheese

On the second night of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
      2 Kosher pickles and
      Lox, bagels and some cream cheese

On the third night of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
      3 pounds of corned beef
      2 Kosher pickles and
      Lox, bagels and some cream cheese

On the fourth night of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
      4 potato latkes
      3 pounds of corned beef
      2 Kosher pickles and
      Lox, bagels and some cream cheese

On the fifth night of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
      5 bowls of chicken soup
      4 potato latkes
      3 pounds of corned beef
      2 Kosher pickles and
      Lox, bagels and some cream cheese

On the sixth night of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
      6 pickled herrings
      5 bowls of chicken soup
      4 potato latkes
      3 pounds of corned beef
      2 Kosher pickles and
      Lox, bagels and some cream cheese

Continue here for the rest of the song and more humor such as the High Tech Dreidel Operator's Manual and Xmas vs. Chanukah.

Weight Obsession

My family’s obsession with my weight is ruining my life. But why do I let their words get to me?
Dear Lauren,

I'm almost 17. When I was 12, I gained a little weight – nothing much, but to my overweight mother, older sister, and aunt, it was an immediate and serious problem. They mentioned it to me every single day and they talked about it to me and to my other extended family members, who then kept mentioning my weight to me and telling me I had to lose weight. Food was locked in the freezer, no one helped me with breakfast or lunch any more, and I was essentially told to stop eating anything other than rice cakes, vegetables, and plain tuna or turkey.

I was hungry, of course, and I bought chocolate bars and potato chips in school, snuck junk food at home, felt physically lousy, and of course gained more weight. No one seemed to care if I were happy, if I were kind, if I were good. They only seemed to care about and talk about my weight.

After three years, my weight went back to normal on its own, mostly because I realized that no food is off limits and I should eat at least three meals a day and include healthy options and chill out and ignore every single voice other than my own. Like a baby who knows when she is hungry, I learned -- again -- when to eat. But the comments about my appearance have only gotten worse. In the last year and a half, every single visit by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins has brought comments about "how much weight" I lost, how I must be very disciplined, how I must be on some diet, and that it's so wonderful (and now I can be a success, get into a better college, have pretty babies some day, have a perfect, stress-free life...).

Continue reading.