Welcome
Welcome to the Project HiBuR: Hugim-Beth El Relationship website! Over the course of the next few years, you will be using this website to get to know your peers in the Boston area and Haifa. You will have opportunities to chat with one another, discuss current events, share opinions, and learn what it’s like to be a teen in the U.S. and Israel. This website will also be a place for you to share thoughts related to lesson plans that you will be doing in your respective classrooms. While the internet is one way to meet one another, we know that it cannot take the place of face-to-face meetings. So, during the course of high school, you will also have organized opportunities to visit one another in the U.S. and Israel. We want this website to really be your community, so let us know what we can do to make it user-friendly. Let the conversation begin!
Project HiBuR Overview
The Project HiBuR experience will span 3 years and 3 different major curricular topics. It will include web based interaction, video conferencing and face to face mifgash periods in both the United States and Israel. The program will focus on the students in both Hugim and Beth El that will enter their freshman year in the fall of 2006 (graduating class of 2010). The target group size is 15 – 18 students.
- Year One: Curriculum is to study leaders (Israeli, American & from Jewish History). During this year a custom secure web portal will be created and used for communication. During the spring of this year (2007) a group of four Beth El students with 2 leaders will travel to Hugim as ambassadors. In addition 2 video conference periods will be held (one in the fall and one in the spring).
- Year Two: Curriculum is to study Judaism in our individual communities and how it reflects Judaism as defined in the Text. This will be a period of Life as a Jew in Israel and then Life as a Jew in the world of Liberal Judaism in the United States. Utilization of the web portal and video conferencing will be included. This year the delegation from Hugim will travel to the United States for a mifgash beginning in New York and ending with a home stay period in Metro West Massachusetts.
- Year Three: Jewish History and Biblical History. A look at how the Jews have made it from Egypt to contemporary Middle East conflicts and much in between. The Web portal and a video conference will be utilized. This year the Beth El delegation will travel to Israel to see first hand Jewish History then and now culminating with a home stay period in Haifa.
Project HiBuR Goals
Through fostering an ongoing mifgash between the students at Beth El and Hugim we hope:
- To create an interactive engaging connection between the Beth El and Hugim communities through web based interaction, video conferencing and face to face mifgash periods (one in Israel and one in the United States). During this 3-year program the students and their leaders will connect, learn and develop relationships in structured and sustained mifgash periods.
- For students to both understand and appreciate the broad ways for Jews to express their Jewish Identity through the study of each other’s communities and how they live “Jewishly”. Both Liberal Judaism in the United States and everyday life in Israel will be studied and explored.
- To learn about each other “beyond the headlines”. How do Israel teens live their lives and how do American teens live their lives. Is it terror and politics in Israel and MTV and daily trips to the mall in America? If not, then what is daily life like and what does each community want for themselves now and in the future.