Breakthrough Jew - Ilan Zechory

By: Sarah Bauder for ShalomLife

Name: Ilan Zechory
Age: 29

Hometown: Detroit, Michigan

Breakthrough Cred: One of the co-founders of annotation website, Rap Genius

Ilan Zechory, at least by conventional standards, could be characterized as an “odd egg”. He attended Yale University with a focus on religious studies, graduating in 2006. For his senior thesis, Zechory chose to discuss a hermit who created his own religion in the ‘80’s.

Ivy league diploma in hand, Google came calling, where he worked as a project manager. Fast forward to July 2009, where Zechory found himself in an East Village apartment with two Yale pals, Mahbod Moghadam and Tom Lehman. The former was attempting to explain to the uninitiated latter, the complexities and metaphor of rapper Cam’ron’s lyrics. What spawned from that evening’s discourse, was the concept for Rap Genius.

“Rap Genius is... a lot of things. It's a Wikipedia of annotated texts that started out as a side project for annotating rap lyrics. It was just a few friends talking about rap lyrics and throwing out interpretations, interesting historical information, and poetic analysis. It quickly grew and expanded to music beyond rap, music in other languages, non-musical texts like poetry. Before we had 15 songs on the site, there was a Bob Dylan song. Before there were 50 songs, there was an Emily Dickenson poem. We started noticing that people interested in annotating rap were really interested in annotating lots of different stuff, not just rap. Rap was obviously a fruitful place to start for annotation because it is so dense - there's a lot of wordplay and reference and whatnot. So Rap Genius has grown and expanded into a platform for annotating all sorts of texts,” Zechory explained to Education Week.
 
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A Summer Camp Counselor Turns Tears Into A Heart-To-Heart

by Shaked Karp for The Jewish Week

Editor's Note: Each year, the Jewish Agency for Israel sends a group of young emissaries (shlichim) to serve as counselors and specialists at Camp Ramapo, a summer camp in Northern New-York, Dutchess County, for children with special needs. A non-profit established in 1922, Ramapo gathers a wide spectrum of special needs children under one umbrella. The shlichim at Ramapo bring a cultural perspective that has become a special part of the Ramapo experience. Shaked Karp, 24, came to Ramapo three years ago after completing her service in an Israeli army intelligence unit and has has returned every year since. She explains why here.

It was a rainy July evening; I was in the middle of a forest at a New York summer camp, and after a long, hard day I found myself breathless and aggravated and chasing a 16-year-old boy who was crying in distress. He was one of the challenging campers, to say the least; he would turn any situation into a daily struggle that made coping with him very difficult and frustrating. Getting him to act according to our expectations and camp rules hard, and my relationship with him started off badly. “The staff supervisor with the weird accent is too tough," he said.

That night, he stormed out of the session we held every evening, in which we marked our favorite moments of the day, discussed our hopes for the next day and reviewed the schedule. The chase turned into an hour long heart-to-heart conversation where he told me about how he never fit in, and how nothing ever worked for him in life and how his true ambition was to excel at the camp by reaching the intern program and becoming a staff assistant.

For him, the camp was a stepping stone, a chance to break bad habits, old patterns and the labels he has been living with. All his life, he was the odd one out. Only in the special atmosphere of the camp did he realize he really had a chance. I too realized he had a chance. I pushed him to break his own boundaries until he was tired of me. He started to deal with issues he had always tried to forget, he tried to control his mood swings and reactions -- and one of the achievements I'm most proud of is that we empowered him to lead a session every day for a group of children with severe autism.

He has not transformed entirely. But I think that something sprouted and started to build inside him. There was a new level of confidence and self-acceptance. He started to demonstrate practical skills of coping with his moods and discovered new tools that will serve him in the present and future. I believe in him and in what he can do and I told him that every chance I got.

Maybe that’s the point: To believe in a child is to push him to not fear boundaries, not to lose hope in light of difficulties, to choose not to give up or run away. To find the right way to communicate with a child is to believe in him a little more.

Shaked Karp lives in Ramat Gan. During the year, she runs a project to bring Israeli kids to Ramapo.

Will My Son Be the Only Black Jew in High School?

By Alina Adams for Raising Kvell

Every year, just like clockwork, The New York Times writes their annual article expressing shock that the most competitive public high schools in New York City are primarily Asian, with a much lower proportion of black and Hispanic students then there are in the overall system.

They charge that the test is racist and should not be used as the sole criteria determining admittance into a New York City Specialized High School. (I am not going to get into the politics of that charge, except to note that the argument to use other, less standardized factors such as letters of recommendation and extracurricular activities was initially introduced in America specifically to keep Jews out of elite universities, for fear that there would otherwise be too many of them.

In 2013, of the 963 students accepted to Stuyvesant, the high school that requires the highest score on the admissions exam, exactly nine of them are African-American. Had they counted my son, they would have at least made it into the double-digits. However, because my son is biracial and refuses to check only one box, the city of New York literally doesn’t count him at all in their overall racial statistics (“Isn’t it cool, Mommy?” he asked me. “I’m an un-person, just like in 1984!”)

I’m not going to talk about the politics of that, either.

What I am going to talk about is the implication of sending my son to a school where he will be one of only 10 black students (if not less; just because nine were accepted, doesn’t mean all nine will choose to go… conversely, there may be other biracial kids who also weren’t counted like him, but I doubt that will seriously alter the proportions), and quite possibly the only black/Jewish one.

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Israeli mom’s search for a meaningful bat mitzvah leads back to Schenectady

The Lifecyclist; By Debra Rubin for JTA

(JTA) — In Zoe Coleman-Becker’s Tel Aviv circle of friends, bat mitzvah typically means a surfing party, an overnight in the desert or a Japanese tea party. But Zoe’s mom, Pamela Becker, wanted her daughter to have much more than that. She wanted a celebration that also was a meaningful Jewish experience.

“It’s relatively status quo to make a bar mitzvah in Israel,” said Becker, who will be making a bar mitzvah for her four sons.

A bat mitzvah, on the other hand, is “hugely difficult — you have to think totally out of the box” to have the type of service she remembered having back in the United States.

She decided the best way to accomplish that was to plan a bat mitzvah celebration for Zoe in her childhood synagogue, Agudat Achim in Schenectady, N.Y. — even though Becker’s parents, who live in nearby Loudonville, no longer belong to the Conservative shul.

Still, Becker and her parents felt an emotional connection to Agudat. In Tel Aviv, she says, “we don’t have any place that would be egalitarian and beautiful and have a sense of history.”

The plans began last fall with a big question: Would the synagogue agree that even though the family does not belong, Zoe could become a bat mitzvah there? No problem. The rabbi gave his blessing, with the board following suit.

“I knew this was a very special request and I was very touched that the family had a very strong connection to Agudat Achim,” said Mery Gross, synagogue president at the time. “The request was made during Agudat’s 120th year celebration and it really speaks to the impact that the congregation has had on its congregants.”

Once everyone was on board for the July 20 service, Zoe began studying her Torah portion and working on a d’var Torah. The family arrived in the United States on July 4; four days later, Zoe learned that b’nai mitzvah students also do a haftarah reading, along with the accompanying blessings. She was undeterred, wanting to do the same.

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Teens & The High Holidays

With the High Holidays just weeks away, and the start of school upon us, it’s the perfect period for our teens to make the most of their free time. For this sweet New Year, show them how to lend a hand, (tikkun olam) and help repair the world through volunteerism. What can our teens do to perform mitzvot in the next several weeks?

Here are 5 ideas:

1. Assemble packages with High Holiday greeting cards, distribute holiday foods (apples & honey) and create handmade picture frames to deliver to seniors at local centers throughout your area.

2. Sponsor a family in need via your local Jewish Family Services chapter. Raise funds through a baked goods sale (Jewish Apple Cake should be a big seller around this time!) or conduct a synagogue-wide car wash during Labor Day weekend.

3. Take advice from this article about how teens can atone for their sins on Yom Kippur. Reflection on a teen’s addition to technology (Instagram or Facebook would be the main culprit here) or poor procrastination habits can be changes by a teen’s self-introspection.

4. During the days of Elul, take time out to answer these questions as NFTY has outlined for Jewish Teens in North America.

5. Enroll in Shofar lessons to join a growing trend of younger and more senior shofar blowers. Teens may volunteer to blow the shofar at children’s services or practice a lot to see if they may take on the congregation at large!