Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School • 11710 Hunters Lane • Rockville, Maryland • 20852

LVolume XXII • Issue 1

September 29, 2004 • 14 Tishrei 5765

THE

ION’STALE Maccabi glory for local Maccabi glory for local Maccabi glory for local Maccabi glory for local

athletes, athletes, athletes, athletes, communityHBO fi lm highlights HBO fi lm highlights HBO fi lm highlights HBO fi lm highlights

children in Gazachildren in Gazachildren in Gazachildren in Gaza

Featurepage 13

In-depthpages 8-9

Ehrlich visits following security grant

In events uncommon to the Upper School’s fi ve year history at its current loca-tion, several students have recently become the victims of local crime involving out-side teenagers.

Three separate incidents occurred over a one week period. They all involved the robbery of students by groups of older teenagers just after school while walk-ing to a bus stop on Ran-dolph Road, located behind the Upper School campus.

According to a Montgom-ery County Police Depart-ment press release issued on Sept. 24, four students were approached by four people, one of whom stole an un-

disclosed amount of money from one of the 13-year-old students. Earlier that day, a 14-year-old student was approached by six to seven people.

“The group surrounded

In theory, HBO’s Da Ali G Show sounds something like a cross between Candid Camera and John Stewart’s Comedy Cen-tral staple The Daily Show. In practice, in sounds something like this:

On the right sits 2000 presiden-tial candidate Pat Buchanan.

On the left right is British rapper Ali G, decked out in an outrageous, baggy white outfi t, a notepad resting on his lap. Between them is an uneasy silence. Ali G’s British-Jamaican hybrid

dialect breaks it.

Ali G: Does you tink dat religion

should be taught in schools?

Buchanan: If it’s voluntary, yes. If it’s man-datory, no.

Ali G: Does you tink there is a

way for people to

make the way them teach religion more in-teresting?

Buchanan: Yes. The movie The Passion of the Christ is a very effective teaching tool, I think.

Ali G: I heard it ain’t as good as Lethal Weapon 3.

Buchanan: No, I think it’s slightly better than Lethal Weapon 3.

Ali G: Ain’t it basically a ripoff of Glad-iator?

Buchanan: No, it’s not at all.Ali G: But it’s like that kind of thing, in-

nit?Buchanan: No, no, it’s about the death

and crucifi xion of Christ.Ali G: Ain’t you scared though that

‘cause it’s made so much cash, they’ll just make a sequel and it won’t be as good? Like, you know, have the bloke come back to life, whatever?

Of course, Ali G isn’t a real rapper. Nor is this a legitimate interview. And everyone knows this but Buchanan.

Ali G is one of a trio of clueless char-acters played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. In their guise, he travels the U.S. interviewing unsuspecting victims like

As a result of the Mary-land Offi ce of Homeland Security’s decision last May to grant JDS nearly $100,000 for security up-grades, new steel gates and high-tech security cameras were installed around both the Upper and Lower School cam-puses during the week of Aug. 30.

The grant was given to the school due to ef-forts by federal and state Homeland Security offi c-es and the Jewish Com-

munity Relations Coun-cil.

When the federal government ruled earlier this year that Homeland Security funds could be allocated to non-profi t, non-governmental orga-nizations, the Maryland state government decided that Jewish community organizations would be eligible to receive such funds.

Following this deci-sion, the Jewish Com-munity Relations Council began an outreach effort and informed the JDS ad-

ministration of the grant opportunity.

“The Relations Coun-cil is closely related with the Jewish Federation [of Greater Washington] and they know that we’re in-volved in ongoing secu-rity expenditure for the work that we do. They asked us if we would like to receive a grant and we said ‘Yes,’” said Head of School Jonathan Cannon.

“We apply for many grants. That’s our job—to get revenue from outside

Crimes by campus

by Jack Kider

SQUAD CARS LINED up out-side the Upper School as police investigated thefts. Ali G: funny, popular, offensive?

The notes begin to fl y fi ve minutes before the fi nal Friday bell:

“Give me Marvin Harrison,” reads one. “That way I’ll have the ‘Manning-Harrison hookup’ and I’ll give you whoever you want. My running backs crush yours. You can pick any one of them.”

“You’re a fool,” a student says to his neigh-bor after reading it.

“I can’t wait to show you both up this week-end,” says a third.

The color commentary has begun, and the conversation spills into the hallway as the bell rings. Other students chime into a chorus of

by Elliot Levitt

Fantastic football a fan obsession

by David Feith

State gives school $97.5Kby David Feith

Governor speaks, attends briefi ng

Following a grant allo-cated to JDS for security ex-penses, Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. visited the Upper School on Sept. 21 to attend a security brief-ing and speak to the high school.

The visit was scheduled after Interim Principal Ro-slyn Landy was contacted by Ehrlich’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Ed Miller, in mid-September and told that the Governor was interested in visiting the school.

Upon his arrival, the governor met with Head of School Jonathan Cannon, Chief Operating Offi cer Su-san Brinn Siegel, members of the Board of Directors and other administrators to receive a briefi ng on the new security program at the school.

The press was not admit-ted to this briefi ng.

Ehrlich was then inter-viewed by members of the Lion’s Tale editorial board, before continuing on to

speak to the high school in the gym.

President of the Board Nancy Hamburger, Cannon and senior Julie Brinn Siegel introduced the governor.

Ehrlich spoke to the stu-dents, explaining the unique funding the school received from the federal and state departments of Homeland Security.

“I’m pleased to announce that this is the fi rst Jew-ish school in the country to benefi t from this source of funding. In fact, to my knowledge, Maryland is the fi rst state in the nation to al-locate monies towards the protection of Jewish sites,” he said.

Though the Governor’s message was heavily focused on the idea that “today we live in a less secure world—facing a nontraditional kind of enemy who has forced us to do things in new ways,” he left the students with words of encouragement.

“I want you to take ad

by Nicola Brodie

BRITISH COMIC SACHA BARON COHEN, an Or-thodox Jew, plays on Jewish stereotypes in his HBO com-edy Da Ali G Show.

MARYLAND GOVERNOR ROBERT L. Ehrlich, Jr. speaks to reporters outside of the gym where he addressed high school students during his Sept. 21 visit.

See GRANT, page 3 See VISIT, page 3

See ALI G, page 11See FANTASY, page 10

See CRIME, page 5

photo by Daniel Brujis

photo by Daniel Brujis

photo

court

esy H

BO

graphic by Daniel Brujis

THELION’STALE

September 29, 2004 News2

The one-year-old Drisha minyan, which was created to engage students in activities other than mandatory prayer, is operating this year on a new schedule requiring stu-dents to participate in conventional prayer once every three days.

Students will now rotate activities based on the school’s block schedule, a change from last year’s five-day rotation schedule in which students prayed only every fifth day.

Jewish Texts teacher Paul Blank, who leads the prayers, hopes to provide students with different types of services.

“I want to try to make [the service] as interesting as possible,” he said. “I want to make the prayer experience as diverse as possible.”

Interim Principal Roslyn Landy hopes that the new format will give the program more focus.

“When there was a rotation based on the days of the week, the Drisha minyan leaders felt that there was little continuity and some minyans met far fewer times than others,” Landy said.

The change in format means that stu-dents will not be exposed to all the possible Drisha activities in one year.

This will allow minyan leaders to re-use curricula in future years—an advantage of the change, according to Landy.

Judaics Director Rabbi Avi Weinstein hopes to build a three-year curriculum for the Drisha minyan program, which is cur-rently two leaders short of the 12 needed to run a three-year curriculum.

Taking over Amy Goott’s position as Board of Directors President, parent and active volunteer Nancy Hamburger will be serving as president for the next two years.

This year, Hamburger aims to continue to increase fund raising and non-tuition rev-enue by kicking off the endowment cam-paign.

“Increasing the endowment is just one way the parents of today and the Board of today can work to ensure the stability of the school for years to come,” she said.

Another one of her goals is to develop a stronger sense of community as the school grows in size.

“We are working together with the PTA and the administration to create communi-ties within the community. So we will be

A number of non-elective Judaics classes were added to freshman and sophomore cur-ricula this year. It was the first revision of the one-year-old Judaics elective program, which was originally implemented to give students more course choices.

With the revision, freshmen can choose between two Bible courses: Spirituality and Statehood or Parashat HaShavuah, but must take two Rabbinics courses: Cradle to Grave and Ethical Dilemmas, and a Jewish History class, Major Themes in Jewish History I.

Sophomores must take Major Themes in Jewish History II, a course that was not re-quired last year.

Last year, students were required to take a Bible course, Major Themes in Jew-ish History I, and two Rabbinics courses at some point over the two years.

Administration and faculty decided to make the change in order to pro-

vide students with a stron-ger foundation of Judaics knowledge.

After an elective sys-tem was phased in over the past semesters, the administration and teachers were worried that with complete free-

newsbriefs compiled by Adam Bradlow, Sam Jacobson and Rachel WexlerNewsbriefshaving programs, lectures and other occa-sions for people to get together,” she said.

These programs include Lehrhouse, chaired by Leesa Fields, an evening that serves as an opportunity for the faculty to teach and educate parents.

In addition, there was a committee cre-ated for the sole purpose of sustaining the feel of community, called the Community Building Committee, chaired by Elizabeth Oser and Elizabeth Smith.

Hamburger added that her past tenure as PTA president will especially help in build-ing a sense of community as she felt enhanc-ing the community sense of the school was a major part of that job.

Hamburger has been very active within the JDS volunteer community over the past many years, serving as PTA vice president, co-president and president, chairman of the Nediv Lev campaign, board vice president, and chairman of recruitment and retention.

According to Hamburger, she enjoyed working on recruitment and retention the most as the committee is focused on admis-sions, and she felt that it was very rewarding to see new JDS families become familiar with the school and its community.

Looking back on her term as Board President, Goott thinks that “the major ac-complishment was focusing the board on the importance of fund-raising development work and having everyone feel that they had a role in helping.”

She is very proud that people began to understand that “it was a number one prior-ity for the school to get to a higher level in the [fund-raising] development work,” she said.

Hamburger was selected following a process which began with the Nominations Committee proposing a slate of 11 candi-dates, who were then elected at the next meeting through a written ballot.

A candidate must receive more “yes” votes than “no” votes in order to become president.

The new co-vice presidents this year are Elizabeth Schrayer and Anne Mayerson, along with Secretary Jerry Pasternak and Treasurer Donald Kaplan, all of whom were included in the slate of 11 candidates and elected to office.

Drisha minyanrefocused, revitalized

SENIOR ANDREW GROSSMAN lends the melody of John Lennon’s Imagine to a photo montage during the commemoration of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The stu-dent-organized assembly included speeches, poetry, songs and photo displays.

Sept. 11 assembly evokes emotions

dom in their schedules, students were not getting some of the background essential to their education.

“It would be better for freshmen to com-plete their requirements in ninth grade,” said Interim Principal Roslyn Landy. “It would give them a stronger base of knowledge.”

Some students expressed dismay at hav-ing fewer choices regarding which Judaics courses they could take.

“The administration shouldn’t make more mandatory classes because they brought this new system of electives so we could choose what we wanted to do,” said sophomore Za-qui Misri.

“Now we can take only a few of the

classes we wanted to take,” he said.Freshman Ron Birnkrant, whose class

had fewer Judaics electives than the previ-ous freshman class, was not bothered by having fewer choices.

“Because I never experienced the course experiences that [the class of 2007] took I’m fine with the course choices now,” he said.

Other students were pleased with the ad-dition of the mandatory classes.

“While we have less choice than we did last year, I think I would still choose Major Themes II, for example,” sophomore Alex Gruhin said.

“It gives me a background to what we are discussing and studying in other classes.”

Board president to focus on community

Changes to ninth-, tenth-grade Judaics

Three years and two days after the at-tacks of Sept. 11, 2001, students gathered in the theater for a commemorative as-sembly, the focus of which was to memo-rialize the day’s events.

Students making jokes and talking with their classmates in the hall imme-diately stopped as they entered the the-ater and were greeted by a projection of Ground Zero on the stage.

After everyone had taken their seats, the lights were shut off and the American and Israeli national anthems were sung.

Junior Jonathan Sachs then spoke about the “duty of our generation to ‘al-ways remember’ being afraid…[and] our feelings of disbelief that airplanes could be used as weapons against our seem-ingly impenetrable and indestructible homeland.”

Sachs likened the attacks to those on Pearl Harbor in 1941, emphasizing the ability of Americans to “rise up to combat aggressors and defend their country…and to always remember.”

A short recap of the Sept. 11 attacks immediately followed the speech, as junior Nathaniel Zuk played John Len-non’s Imagine on the piano in the back-ground.

Following the recap, junior Jacob Ber-man read the Mourner’s Kaddish which preceded a moment of silence. Then, the song Higher by Creed was played and a slide-show of images from the day of the attacks concluded the ceremony.

According to sophomore Zoe Fox, Creed’s song was a poor choice for an as-sembly that was so meaningful.

“It took away the meaning that was

originally there in the assembly and left me with a catchy song in my head which was not appropriate,” she said.

According to junior Jacob Lerner, he and many students surrounding him were teary-eyed in response to the touching ceremony. “Three years later it evokes the emotions much more powerfully than it did on that day,” Lerner said.

The assembly was set up by the five members of an assembly-planning com-mittee: Sachs, Berman, and juniors Ezra Deutsch-Feldman, Daniel Maughan and Daniel Green.

According to Sachs, the committee was disappointed that there was no as-sembly last year. Sachs reiterated that he truly believed in what he said in his speech, stressing the importance of re-membering the attacks for many genera-tions.

It was good that we remember three years later, “but it is about 20 years and 25 years later” that we should remember and teach our children, he said.

In addition to the assembly, seniors who attended the grade Shabbaton over the weekend of Sept. 11 held a memorial ceremony in which students and teachers sat around a campfire and recalled per-sonal memories of the morning of the at-tacks.

Most students were within the halls of JDS that morning, and many had memo-ries shared with others in the group. The remembrance, which lasted almost two unscripted hours, was a new way for many students to remember the tragedy.

According to senior Sybil Ottenstein, who attended the Shabbaton, “everyone found the memorial meaningful and was very moved by the ceremony.”

NEW BOARD PRESIDENT Nancy Hamburger

photo by Daniel Brujis

photo by Daniel Brujis

by Sam Jacobson

THELION’STALESeptember 29, 2004 News 3

this project. An additional reason for reno-

vation is that in the prior location of whole school administration, offices were spread out and dis-organized, not allowing them to function effectively.

“The logic was that it would enable the administration to work

more effectively, be able to com-municate with one another better and also that their offices would not necessarily be in a high-traffic area,” said Weinberg.

According to Siegel, previously administrative offices, including

Due to a need for more admin-istrative space and organization, a problem that was left unsolved but open to future planning after the completion of Operation Excel-lence, a new office suite was built this summer within the Lower School building.

When the Lower School was renovated before the 2001-2002 school year as part of the Op-eration Excellence project, which also funded the renovation of a new Upper School campus, the Lower School was not designed to accommodate all future admin-istrative staffing needs, said Chief Operating Officer Susan Brinn Siegel.

According to Siegel, the addi-tion of new administrative posi-

tions, including the move of for-mer Judaics Director Yoram Bar Noy to the Lower School in the capacity of Assistant Principal as well as the need for new develop-ment and business offices, neces-sitated additional office space.

“The footprint of the building is a constraint. We have to maximize the utility of the space we have,” she said.

According to members of the Board of Directors, expansion was not included in the Operation Excellence plans in order to save money.

“To some extent things were stopped because we did not want to go over budget,” said Amy Goott, whose tenure as Board president expired this past June. “It was always considered that if we needed to do more later, we

would do more, when we had the resources and a better sense of what our needs were.”

“When Operation Excellence rebuilt the Lower School, in order to save money, at the time they didn’t do this. This is a move that makes sense to make our school a better place,” said Board member and parent Matthew Weinberg.

According to Head of School Jonathan Cannon, the funding for this project came from the school’s capital budget, which consists of funds set aside each year for capital improvements and replace-ments.

“The administration’s job is to plan ahead. If we determine that the school will have a need, we try to make sure the resources will be available to meet it,” said Siegel, regarding the money used to fund

sources,” Cannon said.Press stories, however, have

mischaracterized the process by which JDS received the money.

“The ‘aggressive lobbying’ line,” Cannon said, “is just inac-curate.”

In an interview with The Lion’s Tale, Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. described a com-petitive selection process through which the state determined JDS was the best fit for the grant.

“We like any competitive sys-tem that looks at the merits of a particular venue. We look at the threat levels, we look at the coun-ty, we look at the environment, and we look at existing security sys-tems—where the venue is at the present time and how many addi-tional dollars it would take to get to the next level,” Ehrlich said.

While the money was wel-comed by the administration, both Cannon and Ehrlich said that the grant does not represent any spe-cific threat information.

“Terms like ‘soft target’ or ‘hard target’ are often used subjectively and have different meanings to different people. Any organization looks to enhance its security and as Head [of School], I’m working to proactively do that. Not in re-sponse to any threat, but by look-ing at who we are, at the world in which we live, at the times in which we live, and by taking pre-cautions. That’s how I look at it,” Cannon said.

Ehrlich explained the need for increased security as a broad, worldwide issue—not one related to JDS being especially at risk.

“Today we live in a less secure world, facing a nontraditional kind of enemy who has forced us to do things in new ways. This re-quires imagination, out-of-the-box thinking and constantly planning ahead,” the governor said.

Despite this, some in the media have cited incorrect information about threats posed specifically to JDS. The administration has been considering how such stories—in-cluding one of men supposedly photographing JDS campuses—may affect perceptions of JDS in

the wider community.“If a parent were to read a re-

port and be influenced—inaccu-rately, in my view—to think that JDS is a dangerous place to send a child, that would be damaging. But I have found that parents are con-cerned no matter where their kids

are, and they come and they talk and they get to hear the realities. So I don’t feel overly concerned about it,” said Cannon.

“I’m always concerned about the issue of security at this school being in the public domain, as by

its very nature, the less that’s said about it and the less it is in the pub-lic eye, the better,” he added.

Administrators stress that it is better to have such security bar-riers than to have insufficient pre-cautions.

The main purpose of the new steel gates, according to Chief Op-erating Officer Susan Brinn Siegel, is “to control vehicle access to the campuses during school hours.”

Security Director Thomas Shia said that the gates serve mainly to

deter attackers, who now have to do more to reach the building.

“If someone drives through the grass and into the parking lot we’ll know…or if someone knocks the gate down with some type of heavy construction vehicle, we will hear it and be prepared,” he said.

Still, the gates are controversial among students.

“I think they are a waste of money because the main purpose of them is to block people from getting into school while the gates are closed, but cars can easily drive down the hill [off Boiling Brook Parkway] onto our property and into the building,” said fresh-man Eli Eisenstadt.

The funds, though, were allo-cated only for such security up-grades and could not be used in any other way.

“We were fortunate to be able to secure funding from external sources for two of the school’s highest priority initiatives. This money would not have been avail-

able to the school for any purpose other than security,” Siegel said.

Shia added that the adminis-tration plans on building a picket fence or planting new trees to fur-ther defend the school.

Once operational in late Octo-ber, the gates will be open at night, during weekends and before and after school, Shia said. They will be shut during school hours while students are in the building.

Additional reporting by Sam Jacobson

vantage of your God-given tal-ent in a safe environment,” he said.

Landy commended the stu-dents’ behavior.

“I was very proud of our students, who, whatever their political persuasion, were very respectful,” she said.

“It wasn’t a scintillating ex-perience, but the fact was that the governor was at the school. I thought most kids enjoyed it,” she said.

“And if they didn’t, the good thing is that when they were in the room they didn’t show it,” she added.

While most students ac-knowledged the unique oppor-tunity of a visit from the gov-ernor, many were irked by the nature of the experience.

Junior Ezra Deutsch-Feld-man, who passed out John Kerry campaign stickers prior to Ehrlich’s visit, said that “it was a nice experience to see the governor, but nothing was gained by him coming. It felt like he just came to take pic-tures of himself.”

Senior Rachel Cohen took a different approach. “My is-sue isn’t with the governor, it’s with the school,” she said.

“The governor was just do-ing what a politician does—he was politicking. But a school is dedicated to education, not po-litical propaganda and to miss class so the governor would have a chance to look good for cameras seems contrary to what a school should be about.”

“I didn’t mind the disrup-tion [of the visit],” said Science

Upgrades represent no specific threat

Governor addresses high school students

FLANKED BY STUDENTS, Gov. Ehrlich speaks about new actions the state must take to protect against new, unconventional enemies.

GRANT, from page 1

VISIT, from page 1

Administration reconfigures building for best space use by Jack Kider

THE FRONT OF the school as seen through new security gates in-stalled to control traffic flow in the parking lots during school days.

Today we live in a less secure world, facing a nontraditional kind of enemy who has forced us to do things in new ways. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. Maryland governor

See SUITE, page 4

teacher Kimberly Agzigian. “I thought it was a good ex-

perience for students to educate themselves on politics.”

“Our students tend to be lib-eral, but you have to be willing to hear all points of view and then make an informed deci-sion,” she said.

“I think the students viewed his visit with a critical eye, but actions speak louder than words and the way in which some students embraced the gov-ernor speaks louder than any critique,” said English teacher Mark Barrionuevo.

“It is always good to have the more personal connection and maintain close relation-ships with elected officials,” said Cannon.

Senior Eitan Freedenberg agreed, and said that “it was important and comforting for him to show that we are part of the Maryland community and of the world community.”

Some students and faculty felt that the extensive media coverage of Ehrlich’s visit and of the security measures might have made the school more of a target for terrorists by means of overexposure.

Agzigian felt that the visit has the potential to be both pos-itive and negative.

“I think the visit was a dou-ble-edged sword. It was good that the governor showed his support for the Jews, but it seems to have made us a tar-get,” she said.

Landy was more skeptical. “It looks like we’re a target

much more than we are and I wonder if that will scare people away,” she said.

photo by Zachary Krame

photo by Daniel Brujis

THELION’STALE

September 29, 2004 News4

“We appreciate that the school is trying to improve the health of the children,” she said.

Senior David Goott took a more conservative stand in assessing the soda fountain extraction.

“I think it is a little extreme to completely take away the soda,” he said. “I think if they added the juice or other op-tions but still kept the soda, it would be healthier and fairer to the students.”

Sophomore Amy Zitelman likes the change. “The soda was not healthy and the fries were disgusting

every day anyway,” she said. “Kids eat a lot at school so it might as well be healthy.

Although this will alter a big part in their diets, I don’t know if this will inspire them to eat well at home.”

Despite the removal of the soda fountains from the lunchroom, the school still has maintained its contract with Coca-Cola.

There are still two Coca-Cola vending machines where soda can be bought, and the school’s juice is supplied by Coca-Cola.

“I would like to see [the vending machines] replaced by water and juice as well,” said Subar.

Students will have an opportunity this year to study topics never before available at JDS as a result of new electives and cur-riculum changes.

Romance LanguageThe Romance Language department will

be offering Introduction to Latin for the fi rst time in many years at JDS.

According to Department Chair June Graff, the department has tried to offer such a course for several years but never received the minimum requirement of ten students.

The course will be taught by Esther Berg-man, who learned the language by study-ing it for seven hours a week while in high school.

According to Graff, the 20 sophomores enrolled will receive one-half of a language credit upon completing the course, in place of the typical full credit accompanied by the completion of a full-year course.

“What I am going to try to do is have an accelerated semester course, so that we can

go as far as a public high school would do in a whole year,” said Bergman.

There is a lot of excitement for the class, which begins second semester, and possible hopes for more advanced Latin curricula in the future.

“We are hoping that kids will get excited about it and perhaps take Latin II in the fol-lowing year,” said Graff.

English According to English Department Chair

Dr. David Solomon, the popular music class called “Bob Dylan to Radiohead,” taught by English teacher Nicole Gharda, is “a sur-vey of contemporary music. The students are studying music as literature and also are looking at it from a cultural standpoint.”

Solomon is teaching a course on Shake-speare which is looking into four or fi ve plays this year as performances. “The goal of the class is to look at Shakespeare’s plays from a different angle,” he said.

Myths and Legends, which is taught by English teacher Megan Daum, will look at fairy tales, urban legends, and classical my-thology. “There is great value in the oral lore of storytelling,” Daum said.

English teacher Ellen Bresnick’s Ameri-can musical theater class is starting with The Producers and will continue to study Amer-ican theater and other literature.

Solomon is teaching the new “Shund to Seinfeld” class about Jewish entertainers.

“My dissertation was on American Jew-

ish Theater and the course ‘Shund to Sein-feld’ came out of it,” he said.

“We tried to go for electives that would cover a range of topics in which the students would be interested,” said Solomon.

HistoryThe History Department is also offering

two new electives. History teacher Michael Connell, who

has taught at West Point, is offering a course to seniors in military history.

In addition, History teacher Mark Buck-ley is offering a course called “Politics of the Presidency.”

“We are trying to give students a context of the presidency,” said Buckley. “We are using the current election as a means to look back and fi gure out what the presidency re-ally is and explore its intricacies.”

The two classes had previously not fi t into established curricula, but popularity caused the department to make changes.

“While students have a passion for His-tory, they also wanted current events and po-litical discussions in class,” said Buckley.

New General Studies Electives

Latin—Esther BergmanBob Dylan to Radiohead—Nicole GhardaShakespeare—David SolomonMyths and Legends—Megan DaumAmerican Musical Theater—Ellen BresnickShund to Seinfeld—David SolomonPolitics of the Presidency—Mark BuckleyHistory of Warfare—Michael Connell

the business team, which often dealt with private mat-ters, were placed in offi ces that required others to pass through them to access other offi ces, and often had to share room space.

“The [new] business offi ce was designed to ac-commodate the confi dentiality of the work that is done there and to protect the privacy and sensitivity of communications,” said Siegel.

“It’s not so much a question of where they are now, as much as where they were before. They were all in different places,” said Weinberg. “This will en-hance the ability for the headmaster and the princi-pals to communicate and that will keep them better in touch with one another, which will make the overall administration of the school a lot smoother and a lot smarter.”

The new complex also contains a more elaborate admissions offi ce, something that the school previ-ously lacked.

According to Siegel, the new admissions offi ce creates a “dignifi ed place for perspective parents to come to learn about the school.”

Additionally, according to Cannon, this renovation was important for the convenience of other locations in the school.

As a result of the renovation, the PTA offi ce was moved to a more convenient location for parents, and two classrooms, the Hebrew Center and ESOL, were relocated to areas of the School closer to the rest of the classes, Cannon said.

According to Board of Directors President Nancy Hamburger the project was done in a convenient time period.

The project was not problematic “since none of the teachers or students were inconvenienced,” she said.

In making the distinction between this project and previous whole-school renovations, Cannon said, “We really reconfi gured inside space,” and referred to the project as “professional” and “cost-effective.”

This year, as students poured into the lunchroom expect-ing soda and French fries, they unexpectedly encountered a new food group: health food.

French fries are an infrequent treat now, and meals such as salmon with all-natural fruit juice and no additional sweeteners have found their way into the cafeteria.

“[The health change] is something we want to focus on even more this year as our society is becoming more health conscience. This provides guidance for our students to en-courage them to make the right food and beverage choices,” co-chair of the Board of Directors Health, Safety and Secu-rity Committee and parent Dr. Kay Klass said.

Over the summer, the school’s Board and administration analyzed its hot lunch program with a certifi ed nutritionist and decided to enhance the nutritional value of the food and drinks served.

In addition, certifi ed nutritionist and parent Dr. Amy Su-bar will be joining the Health, Safety and Security Com-mittee.

“My primary interest was to start with the biggest issue: the soda, as part of school lunch, just because I felt in an ed-ucational place they should be using lunchrooms to educate people about nutrition,” she said. “This at least provides an environment where [unhealthy food] is not encouraged.”

“The soda fountains were changed out as a response to concerns about the link between sodas, childhood obesity and diabetes,” Head of School Jonathan Cannon said.

“Numerous members of the parent body feel that the children’s dietary needs should be addressed in part by the choices the school offers,” said co-chair of the Health, Safe-ty and Security Committee Matthew Weinberg.

“You don’t have to go very far to question the wisdom of whether children should be given choices which include only high sugar content foods or high carbohydrate foods, or whether children should be given healthier alternatives,” he said.

While the majority of parents have welcomed the deci-sion, many students’ feelings have been mixed, with some also criticizing the change.

Many disagreed with the removal of the soda and the di-etary changes and were angered by how they were enacted.

An August newsletter was sent to all families, informing them of the alteration after many hot lunch subscriptions had already been returned.

“I felt manipulated in that they did not inform us that they were taking away the soda prior to sending us the lunch forms,” said sophomore Alex Gruhin.

“If I am concerned enough about my health and have the will power necessary to pursue a diet, I feel that I should have the opportunity to make my own choice in whether I drink Coca-Cola or juice. In all truth, a little dose of caf-feine does not hurt my performance during the school days at all,” he said.

“I felt disappointed in that the administration does not have enough faith in their student[s] to make their own deci-sions,” he added.

However, Alex’s mother, Susan Bierman, felt differ-ently.

Cafeteria health standards improve by Michael Gaspar

New offi ces for administrators

A STUDENT POURS juice for himself from a new cafeteria juice fountain on Sept. 27. These fountains replaced the soda fountains which had been in use since original caf-eteria health standards were set in place fi ve years ago.

SUITE, from page 3

THE RECEPTION AREA of the new administrative suite in the Lower School, where offi ces are closer in prox-imity and make for easier administration business.

Curriculum changes add new classes to many departmentsby Danny Charnoff

photo courtesy Dimensions

photo by Zachary Krame

THELION’STALESeptember 29, 2004 News 5

the victim and threatened to beat him up if he didn’t empty his pockets,” the press release stated. “The victim didn’t have anything, and the suspects told him to run away, which he did.”

Later that evening, Head of School Jonathan Cannon and Interim Principal Roslyn Landy circulated an e-mail throughout the school community.

According to Landy, the decision was made to inform the community through an email rather than addressing the student body, as students had already left for the five-day Rosh Hashanah break.

“The first incident took place on the Tuesday afternoon before Rosh Hashanah. Students had already left for the holiday. Therefore, in order to inform the school commu-nity (which we believe is important), we sent an email home to parents and to the faculty,” Landy said. “My assumption was that since it was a five-day holiday, parents would have discussed the situation with their children.”

The e-mail ex-plained the events and that police action was already in place.

“The police were very responsive, and a

number of squad cars pa-trolled the area for some time after these incidents took place. The police are investigating,” the email

stated. “The school is working with Montgomery

County Police and ICS [the campus security company] to identify further action that can be taken to address this situation.”

“Please be assured that the safety of our students even after they

leave campus is important to us and that we will coop-

erate fully with the Police and Security Company on this matter,” the e-mail concluded.

Six days later, on Sept. 20, a similar incident occurred, this time conclud-ing in two arrests.

According to the press release, when again ap-proached by two of the same suspects from the previous robbery, the victim of that robbery immediately called the police, to inform them that his friends were being robbed.

“The suspects, both 14-year-old black males of Rockville, approached his friends, demanded money, and told the 13-year-old University Park male victim to empty his pockets and book bag,” the press release stated. “At that time, the 14-year-old University Park male victim tried to use his cell phone

CRIME, from page 1

Recent robbery spree, car theft around school

Despite over one-and-a-half years of failed efforts, the Board of Directors will maintain its search for a new principal, with Interim Principal Roslyn Landy continuing to fill the position.

According to Head of School Jonathan Cannon, the school simply has not found a qualified candidate.

“We have met many wonderful educators but have not yet found a candidate who we felt has the balance of experience, knowledge and personality to take on this challenging role,” he said.

“Each year there are new candidates, and the school will look throughout the education communities until an appropriate candidate is found,” said new Board of Directors President Nancy Hamburger, who added that this process “cannot be accelerated.”

“Candidates need to have an appreciation for Jew-ish and General Studies education and need to be able to demonstrate leadership in a multi-denominational environment,” Cannon said.

According to Landy, the search, which is headed by Cannon in coordination with a search firm, is look-ing for a candidate with more experience than that even of an assistant principal.

“[The school] wants someone with experience, and an assistant principal doesn’t have the same experi-ence as a principal,” she said. “Because we’re such a large school, we need someone who’s had that kind of experience.”

The position is now vacant for a third year, since Rabbi Reuven Greenvald left at the end of the 2000-2001 school year. This will be Landy’s third year as interim principal and dean and her second year as as-sistant principal.

“The most frustrating part of this job is that I am trying to do three jobs at the same time. The result is that I don’t feel any of the positions get the attention that they deserve,” said Landy.

According to Cannon, Landy will return to her role as dean when the position is filled.

“Her experience, wisdom and sensitivity have re-sulted in the school continuing to be a place of excel-lence,” he said. “Although she has indicated that she is looking forward to us hiring a principal so that she can concentrate on her role as dean, she has also expressed a willingness to help out the school as needed.”

According to Landy, despite the long-term nature of her ‘interim’ position, she is still dedicated. “I am committed to doing the job until we find someone.”

Elsewhere in the administration, Dr. Gill Cook left her position as English Department Chair to assume the role of Assistant Dean for Academics, a job she held in the interim last year, while Dr. David Solomon has taken over as English Department Chair.

According to Cook, she became the permanent As-sistant Dean for Academics because of the need for another full-time administrator.

“The administration needed a full-time academic leader to supervise department chairs and faculty, and to oversee the curriculum and the instructional strate-gies used throughout the Upper School,” Cook said.

“The Academic Dean is responsible for the school’s academic program, professional development for teachers, supervision and evaluation of department chairs and teachers, and overseeing curriculum devel-opment and coordination,” she said.

Cook added that she will continue at this position even after a new principal is hired, and that she will continue to teach the senior seminar English class.

Solomon, a second-year JDS teacher, is enthusias-tic about his new position. “I think it’s a lot of fun and I’m going to learn an awful lot,” he said.

Solomon received an undergraduate degree from American University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland. In addition to his work at JDS, Solomon is in his seventh year as a teacher in the College Park Scholars in the Arts program. He teaches English and literature courses.

“It’s great working with such talented teachers,” said Solomon of his department. “I’ve picked up a lot of tips by hearing what they’re doing.”

“New leadership will be good for the department,” said Cook.

by Rachel Oliner and Lisa Snider

Landy still Interim; Cook leaves Chair

to call p o l i c e .

One of the suspects ran away and the

other sus-pect pushed

the 14-year-old vic-tim down to the ground

two times and threatened him if he didn’t stop using

the phone. The 14-year-old victim dropped the phone and

the suspect picked it up and ran away.” Shortly after, police

found the cell phone in a nearby bush and arrested two teenagers

identified as perpetrators in all three occurrences. “The suspects

were arrested and charged as juve-niles in all three incidents with Robbery

and Conspiracy to Commit Robbery,” the press release stat-ed. “Because they are juveniles, the suspects were released to their parents.” Additional arrests have not been made.

In addition to police monitoring, the school has taken ad-ditional actions to increase the safety of students.

“We have a security guard on duty from 3 to 5 p.m. in the back of the school,” Landy said. “In addition, those few students who take the bus from the back of the school will ride a different bus from the front of the school to Randolph Road so that they are able to avoid going through the back of the school.”

In addition, the school was recently affected by a differ-ent series of crimes.

In the first weeks of school, senior David May’s car was stolen from the student parking lot during school hours.

According to May, his Dodge Neon was stolen sometime between the start of school and 1:45 p.m., when he first no-ticed it was missing.

Yet, before he knew the car was missing, he noticed an unusual car in the parking lot, said May.

“I was the first to notice that there was another Dodge Neon left running,” he said. “I assumed that maybe some-one was in there. I didn’t assume that it had been hotwired because it’s a JDS parking lot I don’t think that something like that is going to happen in my backyard. Only after, when I put the pieces together, did I realize that it was part of something bigger.”

According to May, this was one in a chain of local Dodge Neon thefts.

“They were breaking in, hotwiring the cars, and using them as getaway cars for house robberies,” May said. “And as soon as they commit a robbery, they dump off the car and find a new Dodge Neon.”

According to Montgomery County Police Officer and Spokesman Derek Baliles, the car was later recovered in Pooks Hill, near Bethesda, sustaining only minor damages.

According to Security Director Thomas Shia, because such incidents are very com-mon, students should always be increasingly careful.

“Stolen vehicle incidents are very com-mon in the greater D.C. area,” he said. “Make sure you hang your CESJDS student [blue] parking tag in a visible location while on school property. Always lock your car, and roll up your windows. Use anti-theft devises if possible, and park in well lighted areas. Don’t leave valuable items in your ve-hicle in plain sight. Try to make your car a ‘hard target’ for the thieves to take.”

Still, May’s idea of school security has changed.

“You always say ‘not at JDS, we’re a sheltered community,’ and then a crime like that happens and you don’t feel so safe going to school, or you just don’t have the same ideas or feelings about the security,” May said.

A METRO BUS passes the Randolph Road bus stop to which students were traveling when mugged in separate recent incidents. Police have inves-tigated and responded to both robberies, making arrests of local teens.

THE REMOVED IGNITION of senior David May’s Dodge Neon, which was hotwired and stolen.

photos by Zachary Krame

THELION’STALE

September 29, 2004 Editorial6

With the recent visit of Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. and the subsequent press the school has received, we would be re-miss not to offer thoughts on the matter.

The local press and other media have issued many state-ments about our school, the governor and the Jewish commu-nity.

As the state grant was allocated for security expenses, some in the media portrayed our school as a ‘soft-target.’ Some in the school administration expressed fears about such a char-acterization, as no school wants to develop a reputation as a dangerous place.

But practically speaking, as a Jewish school or any other, we are a soft-target. Our school will never and should never be protected as a maximum-security prison. The real question is whether we specifically are being targeted. To date, thankfully, the answer has been no.

Elsewhere in the media, and much more disturbingly, mem-bers of the press and others have discussed this grant as cor-rupt Jewish favoritism, spewing anti-Semitic fears previously taboo to discuss openly.

While it may be harmful for the governor to have constitu-ents associating him as a friend to Jews, we as a school must realize that this grant is not a cause of increased anti-Semitism. Those among us who hate Jews for simply being Jewish will do so regardless of such grants.

The people who ignore the miniscule reality of this grant—$100,000 out of multi-billion dollar security expenditures—should be addressed, as the growth of open anti-Semitism is dangerous, but the unrighteous outcry of such people should not dissuade us from positive opportunities such as this grant.

Let’s also not forget the basic benefit of the state grant and visit. While $100,000 is almost nothing to the state and not backbreaking to our school, receiving such an amount for an undertaking such as our protection is valuable.

As the first Jewish school in the country to receive such funding, we are perhaps paving the way for more secure Jew-ish institutions. It is not dangerous to send children to Jewish schools. But with attacks such as the Los Angeles JCC shoot-ing, we do not live entirely free of risk, and any financial sup-port to secure the community makes a difference.

Our school also now has an established relationship with the governor of our state. The Lion’s Tale was able to interview the governor, potentially starting a relationship between our school’s press and the governor’s office; students interacted directly with the governor’s staff, receiving invitations to vis-it Annapolis and use this new relationship as an educational boon; and if our school were ever in dire need of aid, we now have a rapport with our state government’s highest office.

The visit itself also afforded students a rare opportunity to see the political system in action. Though Ehrlich’s speech to the high school was brief and may have left some students feel-ing shortchanged, it did allow all of us to receive a live civics education that we could not have had in any classroom.

As one teacher stated in an interview with The Lion’s Tale, there is always give-and-take when dealing with government. In this case, we feel that the positives outweigh any potential negatives.

Daniel Brujis (“Teach-ers Must Not ‘Teach’ Opinion,” 6/9/04) makes compelling points about teachers sharing their own personal perspectives on controversial issues dur-ing class discussions.

I concur with Brujis that teachers should not “preach” their beliefs in such a way that students feel stifled and are reticent to participate in a free and open exchange about the subject matter.

Where Brujis takes his

argument too far, though, is when he proposes that forums should be cre-ated where “teachers, as well as students, can have debates and can present their points of view in assertive and persuasive manners, but these should be optional and separate from class.”

In the alternative, claims Brujis, political discussions should occur only “from time to time”. In essence, Brujis is call-ing for teachers to be

stifled in the classroom so that students will not be.

I would propose an alternative learning en-vironment in which dia-logue between students and teachers can be en-couraged at all times.

In the discussion of controversial issues, teachers should make their best efforts to be “pedagogically neutral,” that is, to ensure that all significant sides of an is-sue are aired reasonably as well as passionately.

Being pedagogically neutral does not mean suppressing classroom de-bates on political or moral issues. Moreover, it is not necessary or even desir-able for a teacher who is pedagogically neutral to be morally or politically neutral, or even silent, as Brujis might have it.

The democratic class-room is a site where open dialogue on political and ethical issues can and should thrive.

Ben Jacobs (’89)

Zachary Krame

Andrew Grossman

Published by the students of the Upper SchoolCharles E. Smith Jewish Day School

Annette M. & Theodore N. Lerner Family Upper School Campus11710 Hunters Lane Rockville, MD 20852

301.692.4970 fax: 301.230.1986http://www.lionstale.org

Editors-in-Chief: Nicola Brodie and David FeithManaging Editor: Julie Brinn Siegel Copy Editor: Elliot LevittNews Editor: Jack KiderFeature Editor: Elliot Levitt ass’t: Adam Avigan Sports Editors: David Fox and Misha KestlerIn-Depth Editor: Benjamin Karp ass’t: Jonathan Dine Imaging Editors: Daniel Brujis and Zachary KrameArchivist: Elliot LevittBusiness Manager: Erica Strudler

Staff: Adam Bradlow, Danny Charnoff, Corey Cines, Michael Gaspar, Michael Goldfarb, David Goott, Sam Jacobson, Nathan-iel Levy, Rachel Oliner, Amy Schilit, Lisa Snider, Gabe Stutman, Gabi Weisel, Rachel Wexler.Photo Staff: Sara BrandenburgFaculty Adviser: Brian Bloomfield

Adviser Emerita: Susan ZuckermanBusiness Staff: Corey Cines, Michael Gaspar, Sam JacobsonMember: Columbia Scholastic Press Association, Maryland Scholastic Press Association, National Scholastic Press Associa-tion, Quill and Scroll

Recipient: CSPA Silver Crown, Gold Medalist Award; MSPA Marylander Award; Quill and Scroll George H. Gallup Award

The Lion’s Tale is a forum for student expression. Its purpose is to inform the CES/JDS community and to express the views of its staff and its readers. The staff has made every effort to ensure the accuracy and objectivity of its news.

All editorials are a reflection of the opinions of the majority of the Lion’s Tale editorial board.

The Lion’s Tale encourages its readers to write letters to the editor and reserves the right to edit letters for length and clarity. All letters must be typed and signed. Names may be withheld on request. Letters may be e-mailed to lionstale@cesjds.org.

© 2004, The Lion’s Tale.

THELION’STALE

Ehrlich visit net gain for school community

LettersDemocratic classroom environment needed

THELION’STALESeptember 29, 2004 Israel 7

I arrived home in Israel early in the morning, in time to see the sun rise. Stepping out of the plane, I was overcome by the familiar smell of the country. The Tel Aviv humidity clung to me, with promises of a hot day. The taxi driver and I engaged in the t y p i - cal political banter and questions about

the weather. Driving up the foothills of Jerusalem, I tried not to become too emotional but it was hard in the presence of such beauty.

At the same time, I was aware of all the objectives I had set for myself; spend qual-

ity time with family and friends, eat lots of cucumbers and tomatoes and pounds and pounds of cottage cheese and learn

as much Torah L’Shma as possible. I knew I had my hands full. What I had

not counted on was the difficulty in transi-tioning from being the teacher to being a student. Every day I would get up at 6:30 to study (the thought “what am I doing?” did run through my mind a number of times).

I found the position of sitting, and not standing as I had grown accustomed, quite maddening in the beginning.

But it wasn’t long before my student persona clicked in and I found sitting lis-tening to lectures, participating in hevrutot, and arguing over mefarshim, exciting and stimulating. To be in Jerusalem, studying

with long-time friends and teachers, was a real ta’anug (delight).

Studying was definitely my main activity during that month. However, it would be remiss of me if I did not mention the other side to my being in Israel. That which is not found in the walls of the Bet Midrash, but in the walls of apartments and restaurants, the alleyways of

Emek Refaim and the landscape of the Kin-neret.

Places where friendships are solidified, identity is challenged and a better sense of self is ultimately developed.

The walls of an apartment in Rechovot are one such place. I have been spending time in

Rechovot, where my 92-year-young savta has lived since I was a baby. I am very close to her.

I would say she is one of the most awe-inspiring women I have ever met.

She was born in Rechovot under Turkish rule and lived under the British Mandate. Her life is in-

tertwined with the history of the country and I am of-ten surprised to hear who she would “hang out” with

in her youth, the same people I read about in history books at school. Her words have been, and continue to

be, a guide in my life. The alleyways of Emek Refaim with its numerous

coffee shops are the place where I feel free. There is vi-brancy and a sense of life there that is hard to describe.

One of my most poignant memories this trip was at the banks of the Kinneret. There is a graveyard there, filled

with heroes from the past – Moshe Hess, Rachel the poetess and now, Naomi Shemer.

The woman who through her music inspired me, moved me, and seemed to speak directly to me about my longings for

Israel. I was with a group on our way to Zfat. We stopped by the graveyard to pay our respects. We stood by her fresh grave and

sang “Lu Yehi”. Which appropriately ends “Then grant tranquil-ity and also great strength/To all those we love. All that we seek

may it be” – a hope for all of us this new year.

Inaugural edition of ‘The Israel Page’: students, faculty reflect on Israel summer experiences

This past summer, the three of us partici-pated in the Ramah Israel Seminar, a program that brings 16- and 17- year-olds from all sev-en Camp Ramahs across the country to Israel, for six weeks of touring, learning, and com-munity service.

We made up our minds that we wanted to go on Seminar a year ago, immediately after we had returned from our last summer at our respective Camp Ramahs as campers.

Frankly, the decision was a no-brainer. Of course we would want to spend yet another summer with our closest friends from summer camp. However, our parents were skeptical of us traveling to Israel for a variety of reasons.

The hefty price of the trip, the constant se-curity concerns, as well the fact that we would be traveling to Israel yet again with the senior class less than a year later were all legitimate issues raised by our parents.

Nonetheless, after assuring them that we simply wanted to take advantage of a last sum-mer with our friends, our parents allowed us to go on Seminar and leave for Israel in early July.

Over the course of the summer, the 272 chanichim, or campers, participated in some of the most unforgettable activities.

Whether it was reading Eicha on Tisha B’Av while overlooking Jersualem, or hiking through narrow canyons in the Negev Desert, Seminar allowed us to see Israel in a way that none of us could ever have imagined.

Since returning to the United States, each of us has reached similar conclusions regard-ing our summer in Israel.

Our expectation had been that Seminar would be a fabulous program where we could spend more time with our precious camp friends, with Israel merely being the setting, or backdrop, in front of which we would con-tinue to bond.

Indeed, we expected it to be “camp in Is-rael.” Now we realize that Israel was the fo-cus of our trip, the key component that truly made this summer so extraordinary.

Yes, we continued to bond with our friends and become close. But we also learned to love and appreciate the State of Israel, and the brave people who founded it.

To be sure, we probably will see some of the identical sights that we saw this past summer again on our senior Israel trip.

This does not distress us in any way. In fact, since we’ve been home, our yearning to return to Israel has increased significantly.

We’ve learned that it is impossible to travel to Is-rael too many times, and that each trip is dif-ferent in some way.It is safe to say that none of us have fully adjusted to being back in America. We each miss the things that are subtle in Israel: the mezuzah on every door, the falafel stand on each corner, or the Hebrew coming out of every person’s mouth.

Soon though, we’ll be in the Holy Land with the senior class.

And one thing is for sure, we can’t wait to go back!

As we have noted in many editorials writ-ten by the Lion’s Tale editorial board over the years, the mission of the school includes the no-tion of “Ahavat Yisrael: to form an inextricable bond with the Jewish people—past, present, and future—to foster a sense of commitment to the State of Israel…”

To that end, the Lion’s Tale editorial board has decided to create an Israel page, which we hope will appear in all subsequent issues of the newspaper.

The goal of the Israel page is to educate the school community on a wide range of Israel

related issues, in order to create a knowledg-able, aware, educated and interested school-commnity.

We hope to combine feature articles, news stories, and opinion pieces written by all mem-bers of the community on our one page.

This inaugural edition of the Israel page comprises reflections written by students and faculty on the time they spent in Israel over this past summer.

We hope this page grows to become an in-tegral part of The Lion’s Tale and of our com-munity.

Tamar Rabinowitz

This summer I was given the opportunity to travel to Israel with a group of 26 American Jews on the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel program. The goals of the program were to create an ideal pluralistic community, to study Jewish texts with each person bringing his or her own unique perspective to the table, and to challenge yourself and to be challenged in a setting where Israel was very much the backdrop of the experience.

But in addi-tion to all of this in te l l ec tua l ly stimulating ac-tivity, I also had the opportunity to catch up on my Israeli rap.

Now, when it comes to American rap I’m a firm believer that the “c” is silent. But, Israeli rap is another story entirely. I have the utmost respect for artists who can curse in English, Hebrew and Spanish, screaming out obsceni-ties and at the same time commenting rather

fear—Mashiach is in the city,” to “we don’t have children for unnecessary wars” and all sorts of opinions in be-tween.

The fact that Israelis are not unified on every issue and that these bumper stickers exist is not new information. But the fact that all the opinions could be accommodated to fit into one song is oddly comforting.

These rap artists are perhaps paving the way for a pluralistic unification of Israelis. That perhaps we all have dif-ferent opinions and perhaps they are mutually exclusive, but all can become part of a song.

Nobody has to give up his or her opinion; we just have to be willing to allow the other opinions to be part of our song.

Nicola Brodieastutely on the Israeli political situation. This year, the favorite song among our group and among the Israelis with whom we spent time was a song by a group called The Dag Nachash (literally The Fish Snake) called “The Sticker Song”.

“The Sticker Song” is a unique venture. The artists took all of the bumper stickers you see posted around Israel and created one cohesive song from them. The song, therefore, comments

on the political situation in Israel from all angles and gives you a feel for the political climate and different opin-

ions in the country. But the two things I like best about this song

are the wide range of issues and the unifying chorus. The slogans and stickers highlighted in this song include everything from “the sinners of Oslo to justice,” to “a complete generation de-mands peace,” to “let the animals live,” to “no

These rap artists are perhaps paving the way for a pluralistic unification of Israelis.

Michael Goldfarb, Emma Gorin, Katie Kolben

THELION’STALE

September 29, 2004 In-Depth8

Undercover officers used to secure Games

Though the security for the first summer Olympics held after Sept. 11, 2001 was heavy—with credentials, infrared cameras and a plethora of undercover police of-ficers—the Games remained focused on the athletics.

Similar tactics were used in the security in the Greater Washington area during the JCC Maccabi Games hosted by the Jewish Community Center of Greater Wash-ington from Aug. 8-13.

At the Maccabi Games, “there were both visible and invisible ele-ments to security. Visible elements usually included police cars or police officers and invisible elements…usually meant undercover police of-ficers,” said Arnie Sohinki, CEO of the JCC of Greater Washington.

“On one level of security we needed to project visual security to deter people from doing any wrongdoing,” said Lieutenant Ronald Smith of the Montgomery County Police Department, who helped coordinate security at the games.

Further, he said the plainclothes police officers were used because the police considered them necessary for their “own surveillance and own security needs.”

Planning for security began 12 to 18 months before the Games when John Ver-standig, a local businessman and parent of a Maccabi athlete, and Montgomery County State’s Attorney Doug Gansler were appointed co-chairs of a security com-mittee.

Gansler and Verstandig approached Montgomery County law enforcement, who in turn brought in other agencies to assist in the planning of the games, said Games co-chair Steve Lustig.

This assistance did not overshadow or hinder the planning of the Games, accord-ing to Lustig.

“At no point did we ever feel threatened by the agencies and we never felt wor-ried about the process because the law enforcement agencies were protecting our interests,” he explained.

Maccabi athletes appreciated the security at the Games because it allowed them to focus on their athletic events and Jewish-related activities.

“At first I was a little bit worried about it, but during the Games I didn’t really think about it that much,” said ju-nior Ari Kobren, who played soc-cer for Greater Washington.

Despite the Department of Homeland Secu-rity’s raising of the terror threat level to ‘high,’ Kobren did not feel threatened and said that while he was at the Games he “felt perfectly safe.”

Junior Lauren Fluger, a swimmer, agreed that the security at the Games made her feel very safe and did not distract her from her sport.

Fluger remembered that once as she was walking into the JCC there was an athlete in front of her wearing the creden-tials backwards.

He was stopped by the security guard and was told that he had to wear his credentials for-ward.

Though this incident demonstrates the dili-gence of the security at the Games, “[the security] was not distracting at all,” Fluger said.

Additionally, the plainclothes officers were so co-vert that the students did not mention them while re-

counting their experiences at the Games.One reason for the success of the

security at the Maccabi Games, ac-cording to Smith, was that relation-ships between the different law enforcement agencies working at the Games were already es-tablished.

The relationships be-tween the different agencies were elaborate and essential, particularly in providing security for the opening ceremonies.

“We facilitated dialogue between the JCC, between the D.C. Metropolitan Police and the Metro Transit Police,” Smith said.

What many people saw at these Games were connections that have been around for years. They were just brought to bear on this event,” Smith added.

Reflecting on the Games, the Maccabi planners were pleased with the security outcome.

“We had a balance and a great response. I had no complaints from anyone. Every-one was satisfied with the security and no one thought it was over-blown,” Sohinki said.

Maccabi Games: athletic, cultural, logistical successes

ARRANGING HIGH SECURITY at the JCC Maccabi Games in Greater Washing-ton this summer was a main priority, according to the event’s planners. Athletes at the Games found the security to be tight, but not distracting.

photos by Sara Brandenburg

Everyone was satisfied with the se-curity and no one thought it was too overblown. Arnie Sohinki CEO of the JCC

Gold: Dance: Eliana BerryDafna Feith

Swimming:Jillian Berman Hilary Brandenburg Lauren FlugerDaniel KoblenzKevin Lieberman Ethan LitmanMichael Rosenberg

Girls Basketball (13-14):Jamie Slovon

Girls Basketball (15-16):Rachel CohenJennifer Schwarz Katie SlovonAmy Zitelman

Jackie Zitelman

Boys Basketball (13-14):Daniel CharnoffPhilip LiptonEzra Weisel

Boys Basketball (15-16):Jeremy Loya Zachary RosenbergGabi Weisel

Girls Soccer (15-16): Karlee LichtensteinJill MossCarlyn Tomares Boys Soccer (13-14):Eyal Breit Aaron Brooks Michael GreenbergDaniel Kaprow

Jacob MarxMichael MinerbiSimon MontJustin Schecker

Boys Soccer (15-16): Matthew Altman Ariel KobrenJonathan Sandler

Sprint Medley Relay:Avi Sunshine

Softball (under 16): Randi BurkaAmanda GittlesonErica Strudler Silver:Dance: Madeline Moss

Inline Hockey: Adam GoodmanAaron SchoolerJoseph Walters-Nevet

Running (3000 meter): Avi Sunshine

Bronze:Dance: Dafna FeithMadeline Moss

Table Tennis: Rachel May

Tennis: Hillary Aronoff

JDS Maccabi medalists

by Jonathan Dine

THELION’STALESeptember 29, 2004 In-Depth 9

The preparation for last month’s JCC Maccabi Games, a complex and expensive project, was anchored by members of the JDS community.

Two years ago, when the JCC of Greater Washington

was chosen as one of the

locations for the Games, Mark

Lerner and

Steve Lustig, cur-rent and former JDS

parents, respectively, took on the volunteer role

of co-chairs.“Our role was to help

in orga-n i z i n g key lead-

ers from our commu-

nity, who in turn took the initiative

and responsibility to create a steering com-

mittee, [which] in turn represented almost 1,500 vol-

unteers,” said Lerner. “We had

hundreds of people involved so my time was about making sure that globally, everything was mov-ing in the right direction.”

Lerner and Lustig oversaw an event which involved more than 1,000 volunteers, 800 host fam-

ilies and roughly 2,000 athletes from 38 American commu-nities and seven foreign countries. Their responsibilities in-cluded organizing an opening ceremony at the MCI Center which was attended by more than 12,000 people, overseeing 60-80 buses running at any given time, and managing more than 50,000 bottles of water and 18,000 meals.

In total, the JCC Maccabi Games cost more than $1,000,000, according to the co-chairs.

Another member of the JDS community involved was Susan Zuckerman, the head of the Educational Support Ser-vices at JDS. Zuckerman was a member of the steering com-mittee and co-chair of the subcommittee for Jewish content where she worked with Student Life Coordinator Victoria

Rothenberg.As members of the committee, Rothenberg

and Zuckerman wanted to “make sure there was Jewish content in all aspects of the Games,” said

Zuckerman. Specifically, the committee was re-sponsible for “hang time” and the “day of caring and

sharing.”“Hang time” was a room in the JCC where athletes could

relax with other athletes and participate in a variety of pro-grams with Jewish themes. The “day of caring and sharing” was a day on which all of the athletes visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The trip to the museum gave athletes a time to shift their focus from athletic competition to their Jewish roots.

“This was not going to be about taking 2,500 people to a museum about an event that happened a long time ago. It was about adding a strong message of ‘witness the past, build the future,” Zuckerman said.

According to Zuckerman, “The mission of the Maccabi Games was to provide Jewish teens with an opportunity to get together with other Jewish teens in an athletic setting permeated with Jewish values, culture and love of Israel.” JDS Athletic Director Victor Littman served on the athlet-ics committee, where he was responsible for tasks such as organizing officials, equipment and venues for the competi-tions.

This was not the first time that Littman had been involved in the JCC Maccabi Games. He coached girls basketball for Greater Washington from 1994 to 1996.

Another large component of the Maccabi Games’ orga-nization effort was the volunteers during the Games, many of whom were JDS students and parents. Rothenberg, in her capacity as Student Life Coordinator, arranged for students to earn community service hours for their volunteer work at

Maccabi Games: athletic, cultural, logistical successes

“They remember.” At the opening ceremonies of the JCC Maccabi

Games on Aug. 8, the roughly 12,000 people in at-tendance remembered the 11 Israeli Olympians mur-dered at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Ger-many. As Anouk Spitzer, daughter of slain Olympian Andre Spitzer, spoke alongside Jim McKay, the ABC television sportscaster who delivered the news of the massacre to the world 32 years ago, the remembrance added a suitably serious note to the ceremony.

Toward the end of their heartrending account of the “Black September” attack, McKay and Spitzer characterized the world’s response to the massacre as weak. Israel’s call that year for an end to the Games fell on the deaf ears of other delegations, and the world community has since failed to properly memo-rialize the athletes, McKay and Spitzer said.

But just before walking offstage on this sad note, Spitzer turned to McKay and said: “They remember.” This remark was the highlight of the entire evening, the reason the Maccabi Games are so important, and a testament to the success of planners who sought to keep the Games tied intimately to Judaism.

In saying “They,” Spitzer was referring to the 1,900 athletes and thousands of others in attendance. Most athletes said that they did not previously know the story of the Munich 11. Now they do.

Later in the evening, Abe Pollin, who has owned and operated the Washington Wizards, the Washing-ton Capitals and their arenas for decades, said that hosting the Maccabi Games’ opening ceremony was his single proudest moment as a Washingtonian.

As a Jew from the Holocaust generation, Pollin holds a view that young athletes may not be able to comprehend. Jewish children of privilege in contem-porary America may not be able to understand the urgency of the phrase “Never Forget.” But the fact remains that thousands of young Jews now know the story of the Munich 11, a story of their history which must be remembered.

McKay, Pollin and Spitzer turned what could have been merely a celebratory gathering of athletes into a night mixed with both joy and solemnity. The speak-ers eloquently and appropriately reminded all in at-tendance that the Maccabi Games are no mere gather-ing of athletes.

To collect nearly 2,000 Jewish athletes with the logistical and financial support of the world’s most powerful city is to score a great victory against 3,000 years of Jewish history. For all the persecution Jews have endured, the Maccabi Games are a resounding cry of “Am Yisrael Chai.”

Organizers of the Maccabi Games conveyed this message to athletes in a relevant, poignant and educa-tional way. They are to be applauded.

David FeithOpinion: Opening solemn, celebratory

photo courtesy JCC Maccabi Games ANOUK SPITZER, DAUGHTER of Israeli Olympian Andre Spitzer and Jim McKay, a veteran ABC network sportscaster, speak at the Maccabi Games’ opening ceremonies on Aug. 8 at the MCI Center downtown.

by Danny Charnoff and Corey Cines

Gold: Dance: Eliana BerryDafna Feith

Swimming:Jillian Berman Hilary Brandenburg Lauren FlugerDaniel KoblenzKevin Lieberman Ethan LitmanMichael Rosenberg

Girls Basketball (13-14):Jamie Slovon

Girls Basketball (15-16):Rachel CohenJennifer Schwarz Katie SlovonAmy Zitelman

Jackie Zitelman

Boys Basketball (13-14):Daniel CharnoffPhilip LiptonEzra Weisel

Boys Basketball (15-16):Jeremy Loya Zachary RosenbergGabi Weisel

Girls Soccer (15-16): Karlee LichtensteinJill MossCarlyn Tomares Boys Soccer (13-14):Eyal Breit Aaron Brooks Michael GreenbergDaniel Kaprow

Jacob MarxMichael MinerbiSimon MontJustin Schecker

Boys Soccer (15-16): Matthew Altman Ariel KobrenJonathan Sandler

Sprint Medley Relay:Avi Sunshine

Softball (under 16): Randi BurkaAmanda GittlesonErica Strudler Silver:Dance: Madeline Moss

Inline Hockey: Adam GoodmanAaron SchoolerJoseph Walters-Nevet

Running (3000 meter): Avi Sunshine

Bronze:Dance: Dafna FeithMadeline Moss

Table Tennis: Rachel May

Tennis: Hillary Aronoff

JDS Maccabi medaliststhe Games.

“That was a joint effort between JDS and the Games. Students approached me and said, ‘how can we make vol-unteer hours count?’ and we worked with them make sure that everyone who worked at the Maccabi Games could get up to 30 hours,” Rothenberg said.

“Without volunteers, the games just would have been chaotic. Every volunteer helped out a lot and made the whole experience great for all the athletes,” said junior volunteer Jesse Bernstein.

Parents, faculty, students volunteer

THELION’STALE

September 29, 2004 Feature10

player names, yards gained and lost.Injury lists. Trade offers. Forceful and

disparaging chatter among best friends. It must be fantasy football season.What, you may ask, does this term that

is plastered on Internet sites, magazines, advertisements and television shows mean? A decade ago, only a handful of sports en-thusiasts could explain the game of fantasy football. Today, some 15 million adults and many additional children reportedly play fantasy football nationwide and in cy-berspace.

In fantasy football, fantasy teams are se-lected and managed by fantasy “owners.” When a fantasy league is created, owners (ten, in most leagues) come together to draft their teams from a player pool comprising Na-tional Football League (NFL) athletes. As those real-life players succeed and score points in the NFL, fantasy owners who have those athletes on their fantasy teams score points as well: fantasy points.

The object of the game is to outscore the other fantasy teams on a weekly basis. At the end of the fantasy season—which coincides with the end of the NFL regular season—the fantasy team with the most wins against its fantasy opponents wins its league.

To those who are active in fantasy foot-ball, the ins and outs of competition are not nearly as complicated as they may seem to others. For active fantasy owners, the game is simple—it’s about winning. More spe-cifically, it is about beating one’s friends, as fantasy football is as much about hubris as it is about football.

“I’m all about winning. You always want to show up your friends. Maybe you don’t have the best team, but when you do win you want to show everyone and laugh in their faces,” said senior and fantasy owner Alex Tuvin.

Junior David Hecht’s fantasy league, he says, “is very intense and people get into it

with each other, but it’s all fun.” Intensely competitive and fun, in this

case, are not contradictory terms. Those who play fantasy football find the competi-tion to be a welcome and bond-building di-version from their usual schedules.

“It’s a great activity because every day after school when you take a break from homework and you need something to do, it’s really exciting and it’s really social. It gets you involved with your friends,” Hecht said.

“Fantasy is great. It brings groups to-gether, brings unity and communication to the group. I defi-nitely think it’s some-thing that builds good friendship sand it’s all fun recreation,” said Physical Education Chair Jeffrey Rose, who has participated in fantasy football for ten years and this year reunited with a college

friend in joining a league.Aggressive arguing—‘trash talk,’ as fan-

tasy owners say—is an essential part of the game.

“That’s what makes fantasy football—getting into arguments on draft night. Later, when you’re right, it’s like you’re a genius,” boasts Tuvin.

Interactive websites, which include open message boards for discussing football—or, as the case may be, rivalries, inside-jokes and insults—help feed the trash talk.

“Every week people post messages whether it’s talking trash or proposing trades,” Hecht said. “And every day you go online and check in.”

Of course, going online to check in was impossible just a few years ago. Before the Internet, fantasy football was essentially a dead game, and those who played did so with difficulty.

“Ten years ago you had to keep records yourself. It was just time-consuming. The commissioner ended up having to spend a few hours each Monday and Tuesday calcu-lating everybody’s’ results from a USA To-day. The Internet’s made a fantastic differ-

ence. You can basically work up to the last minute and the Internet calculates all your points,” Rose said.

The Internet—through companies such as Yahoo!, CBSSportsline, ESPN, Fan-ball and the NFL itself—now facilitates all functions of fantasy leagues, from mes-sage boards and score calcu-lations to league standings, match-ups, tournaments and eventual champions.

For owners, there is now very little work involved—all that is needed is a com-puter. “Now, the Internet automatically updates points for all the games going on so you can watch your play-ers almost in real time,” said sophomore Elliot Blask, who has participated in fantasy football with JDS classmates since seventh grade.

Since the Internet returned fantasy football to promi-nence, the game’s popularity has spread to other media, including magazines, news-paper sections, 24-hour tele-vision and radio.

Owning millionaire football players is easy—online

FANTASY, from page 1

Seventeen Washington-area Jewish high school students traveled to El Sal-vador on a community service trip from Aug. 19-26. The trip, in which 14 JDS students participated, was co-sponsored by the Jewish Youth Philanthropy In-stitute (JYPI) and the American Jewish World Services.

The goal of the trip was to advance youth philanthropic and civic involve-ment by taking advantage of students’ affinity for travel and allowing them to travel while doing community service,

according to JYPI director Eytan Ham-merman.

Most of the participants’ days were spent working in local agriculture to lessen the work load on Salvadoran farmers. They took a break in the middle of each day for lunch and a study session about community service.

“[The study sessions] made me real-ize how much Judaism focuses on the idea of helping the world,” said junior Jacob Heller. “As a Jew, I learned I was obligated to go and help.”

Every 3-4 participants were paired with a Salvadoran “adopted family” with whom they ate meals.

“Their houses were very small, but we were amazed at all the technology they had,” said sophomore Joshua Ham-

burger. “They had a TV with channels like Nickelodeon and their clothes were like ours. Seeing different aspects of American culture there was surprising.”

There were also many aspects of Jew-ish practice and observance which were highlighted each Shabbat.

“Shabbat was a challenge and an opportunity to take advantage of the breadth of our participants,” said Ham-merman.

“At home, Shabbat means you don’t go to school and you go to shul,” said Heller. “In El Salvador, Shabbat means that there is no work; no manual labor

in the hot sun. We had time to do a lot of things, like take a tour of the town. It was a day to learn.”

Participants also had a chance to im-prove their language skills.

“It was difficult to communicate but I learned to speak Spanish better. The trip was a challenge to grow from,” said Heller.

Unlike most teen community service programs, this one was at the summer’s end. This presented a unique transition for students returning from El Salvador.

“Going to El Salvador made me ap-preciate my life here. Going from nor-mal life in El Salvador to normal life at home at JDS gave me perspective. Tests didn’t seem like such a big deal anymore,” Heller said. “It was an eye-

JUNIOR JACOB HELLER in a Salvadorian field during his summer commu-nity program. Sixteen other JDS students went on the same trip which fo-cused students on the obligation of Jews to perform community service.

by Julie Brinn Siegel

FOR STUDENTS SUCH as senior Alex Tuvin (above), fanta-sy football allows for a type of intense competition they can get nowhere else. As JDS has no football team, some fantasy owners say that fantasy football is their football.

“You can get so much news from so many different outlets—from ESPN or Fox or Yahoo!, almost every website has a sports section with fantasy statistics and helpful things. And on TV, they used to not have fantasy football shows but it’s become part of athletic life and now fantasy football is everywhere,” Tuvin said.

Because of the excess of available re-sources, there is now a large fantasy foot-ball preparation process each year and each week.

“Every year before the draft, I buy a fan-tasy football magazine, read that, go online and do research on players,” Hecht said, not mentioning the weekly preparation which goes into fielding a team for 17 weeks.

Tuvin focuses his attention on that week-ly work. “On a week-to-week basis you have to look at the NFL match-ups. Most of the time, I look at the player news and see how the past match-ups have gone. You have to make little preparations so you don’t make an idiot out of yourself,” he said.

When game day rolls around each Sun-day, fantasy owners rest from their week of preparation by further inundating them-selves with football.

While Tuvin watches hours of games on Comcast Cable’s new NFL Network, Rose makes sure to watch as much football as technologically and financially feasible.

“I have DirecTV and NFL Sunday Tick-et,” Rose said, referring to satellite televi-sion packages built around NFL program-ming. “I have two televisions in one room of my house and I can see through from there to a big screen television—I watch three televisions at once every Sunday.”

For some, fantasy football is a hobby. For others, the game borders on obsession. Whether for recreation, cash or other prizes, fantasy football owners love the game and are increasingly loyal to their imagined, cy-berspace-based teams.

As Rose sums up the fantasy football boom, “you do it because you enjoy it and because it’s the NFL. It’s here to stay.”

Trip teaches students about ‘helping the world’

I have two televisions in one room of my house and I can see through from there to a big screen television. I watch three televisions at once every Sunday. Jeffrey Rose Physical Education Chair

photo courtesy Jacob Heller

photo illuatration by Zachary Krame

THELION’STALESeptember 29, 2004 Feature 11

must grab him by his horns/Then we have a big party!”

Some of the bar’s patrons look

disturbed—or, at the very least, confused—

but some begin to sing along.

“You must grab him by his horns!” sings one woman in refrain, pantomiming horns on her head with her index fi ngers.

Others join in, clapping, and by the end of the performance, it seems that the whole crowd has joined in.

And here, it becomes clear what Cohen is doing. When people are in the

presence of what they think is a c l u e l e s s foreigner and are given the impression that what they say

and do will be shown on Kazakh TV and nowhere else, they will say and do things that they would never do otherwise.

“Part of the idea of Borat is to get people to feel relaxed enough that they fully open up,” explained Cohen to a New York Times reporter in July. “And they say things that they never would on normal TV. So if they are anti-Semitic or racist or sexist, they’ll say it.”

And they do.In the show’s fi rst season, Borat visited

James Broadwater, a southern Baptist min-ister running for congress in Mississippi. When the inept Kazakh asks the candidate about his policies, Broadwater explains that his Christianity infl uences many of his be-liefs.

“I want to go to this place…heaven?” Borat says. “Which religion must I choose to go there?”

“The Christian bible says that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven,” Broad-water replies.

“If people choose the Jews,” Borat prods, “will they go heaven or hell?”

Broadwater looks nervous. He winces.“Well, um, I would have to say that they

would go to hell,” he fi nally admits.Borat nods in agreement.Cohen has used the tactic beyond

“plumbing the depths of American-anti-Semitism,” as NPR’s Robert Siegel put it in a radio interview with Cohen, on one of the rare occasions on which Cohen agreed to make a live appearance out-of-character.

Elsewhere in Mississippi, the head of a wine-tasting society tells Borat that the end of slavery was “a good thing—for them.”

In a segment fi lmed for the fi rst season that was not aired, he coaxes a Vietnam veteran at a pro-America rally to refer to gays as “anti-everything.”

How exactly does anyone get away with making the

kind of anti-Semitic comments that Cohen does on

n a -

tional television?It may help that

the comedian is Jew-ish himself.

HBO’s ‘Da Show’ shows humor, breeds controversyALI G,

from page 1

photo illustration by Zachary

Krame

TRIFECTA OF FUNNY: Sacha Baron Cohen as (from left) TV personality Borat Sagdiyev, emcee Ali G and gay fash-ionista Bruno.

on Cohen. In their guise, he travels the U.S. interview-ing unsuspecting victims like Ralph Nader and Donald Trump and leaving a trail of confused looks in his path.

The show’s roots are on Britain’s The 11 O’Clock Show, on which Cohen fi rst created the Ali G caricature. As the character grew popular, The 11 O’Clock Show’s network, Channel 4, designed Da Ali G Show around him. Before long, though, the show’s popu-larity had done it in: after two successful seasons, an Ali G book and a fea-ture fi lm, C o h e n ’ s alter ego was just too popular and rec-ognizable to get the interviews that are the show’s backbone.

So, Da Ali G Show just packed up and moved…to the U.S.

The American version fi rst aired on HBO in February 2003 to lukewarm reviews from The New York Times and The Washington Post, but the show has since found an audi-ence—and its creator has begun to fi nd hu-mor in some very unlikely places.

In the show’s very fi rst episode, one of Cohen’s characters—Borat, a TV reporter from Kazakhstan—visits the offi ces of a dating agency.

The employee compiling Borat’s profi le asks if he would be open to dating members of all races.

“Yes,” he says. “But no Jew.”The remark passes in a blink, but is only

the fi rst in a string of similar comments.In the second season of the show, Borat

explores American hobbies by visiting a martial arts instructor.

“What is best way to defend from a Jew?” he asks in thickly-accented, broken English.

“Well, we don’t, uh, if people have dif-ferent beliefs, if they believe in God, Allah, Mohammed, Jesus, whatever they believe in,” stammers the surprised teacher, “we try to respect that they believe that way.”

“Yes,” nods Borat, who clearly hasn’t understood a word.

“But how do you stop their claw?” he asks enthusiastically, attacking the instruc-tor again and again with his hand to illus-trate the point.

Borat’s behavior generated laughter from most audiences and an irate letter to D.C. newspaper The Hill from the press attaché of the Embassy of Kazakhstan, decrying Cohen’s portrayal of Kazakhs as “Stone Age people who mistreat women and hate Jews.”

In a second-season episode, Borat takes the stage in a cowboy hat at a bar in Tucson, Arizona to sing a country song to an unsus-pecting crowd.

The song is titled In My Country There is a Problem and begins with a tuneful com-plaint about the state of Kazakhstan’s transportation system. But as the be-fuddled audience listens, the song’s tone changes suddenly.

“In my country there is problem,” sings Borat, “And that problem is the Jew/They take everybody money/They never give it back.”

And then, the chorus:“Throw the Jew down the well!” Borat

belts out, “So my country can be free/You

Born in Britain to an Orthodox Jewish family—his mother was Israeli—some of Cohen’s earliest acting experiences were in the HaBonim Jewish youth group, where he performed in Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues. At the age of 18, he traveled to Israel where he spent a year on the Rosh HaNikra kibbutz.

Later, he earned a history degree at Christ’s College in Cambridge. His thesis, entitled “The Black-Jewish Alliance: A Case of Missing Identity,” advocated cooperation between the two groups.

Cohen continued to put himself in the spotlight; with his younger brother, he often performed at a local comedy club. Accord-ing to The New York Times, his comedy was “mostly based on Jewish culture and histo-ry.” His stage act often included an original song called “Schvitzing,” about two Ortho-dox rabbis who strip down to their under-wear when their traditional black clothing becomes too hot.

Now, according to a 2002 article from British newspaper The Observer, Cohen is “an observant Jew who keeps kosher.” Re-cently, according to the article, he brought Madonna—who is a fan of his work and even enlisted him for a cameo in the video for her hit song “Music”—to his house for Shabbat dinner.

In March, it was announced that Cohen was set to marry his girlfriend, Isla Fisher, and that Fisher was converting to Judaism so that Cohen could have a traditional Jew-ish wedding.

But while his obvious dedication to his

religion might put some at ease when they see his characters discriminating against it on national television, Cohen seems to have struck a nerve among some members of the Jewish community.

In September 2002, before Da Ali G Show had moved to the U.S. and before Bo-rat’s anti-Semitism became widely known, a group of British rabbis joined a campaign calling on Cohen to “bring the curtain down on Ali G,” according to an article in British newspaper The Age.

The rabbis opposed the way that the char-acter exaggerated

common stereotypes of blacks. Even though Cohen is not black at all, he plays Ali G as a black man, even asking upset interviewees if their frustration stems from racism.

Among the rabbis in the campaign was Rabbi Julian Schindler, who has offi ciated at Cohen’s family’s synagogue.

“Cohen’s depiction of racial stereotypes was, at best, in bad taste—even if the paro-dy was intended to be humorous,” Shindler said, citing the fact that Ali G “uses a lot of abusive/foul language.”

Shindler called the show’s creator “bright and talented” but said that “from a rabbini-cal point of view, I expressed distaste/disap-proval.”

Shindler’s group was not the only to publicly accuse Cohen of promoting racial stereotypes, but Da Ali G Show managed to win a Best TV Entertainment Production award at the Ethnic Multicultural Awards in 2000.

The most criticism came after the “Throw the Jew down the well” stunt.

The Jewish Week reported that following the episode’s airing, a fl ood of calls poured into HBO and the Anti-Defamation League, which published an open letter to Cohen the following week.’

While the letter acknowledged that the song’s mission was to expose anti-Semitism and not to spread it, it expressed concern that “the irony may have been lost on some of your audience” and that “your viewers may have simply accepted Borat’s state-ments about Jews at face value.”

According to The Jewish Week, HBO s p o k e s p e r -son Quentin Schaffer re-sponded to criticism by saying that “Through his a l t e r - e g o s , [Cohen] de-livers an ob-

vious satire that exposes people’s ignorance and prejudice in much the way All in the Family did years ago.”

The New York Post reported in late Au-gust that “The British version of the FCC and the U.K.’s Jewish Board of Deputies are investigating Cohen” for the song.

The reaction to Borat’s antics might make HBO think twice about Cohen’s use of anti-Semitism if Da Ali G Show signs on for a third season.

When Ali G asks Buzz Al-drin if he thinks man will ever walk on the sun “in winter, when the sun is cold” or questions Newt Gingrich as to whether a woman president would

“spend all their time on facials, shop-

ping and getting new shoes,” you know the show won’t soon be out of material. Da Ali G Show airs Sundays at 10:30pm.

How exactly does anyone get away How exactly does anyone get away with making the kind of anti-Semitic with making the kind of anti-Semitic comments that Cohen does on national comments that Cohen does on national television? television?

Through his alter-egos, [Cohen] deliv-Through his alter-egos, [Cohen] deliv-ers an obvious satire that exposes peo-ers an obvious satire that exposes peo-ple’s ignorance and prejudice in much ple’s ignorance and prejudice in much the way the way All in the Family did years ago. did years ago. Quentin Schaffer Quentin Schaffer Spokesperson, HBO Spokesperson, HBO

THELION’STALE

September 29, 2004 Feature12

by Adam Avigan

graphics by Zachary

Krame

see TEACHERS, page 13

New teachers bring skills, interests to classroom

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Lauren Swearingen-Steadwell, Shoshana Sfarzada, Mordechai Rackover, Anabella Kraut, Rebeca Rydel,

Sara Coxe, Steven Forestieri, Jessica Marat-sos, Grace McMillan

CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM:

Elizabeth Col-lela, Michele Zem-

sky, Melissa Gartner, Jennifer Gertman,

Rebecca Harrington, Mark Barrionuevo, Jen-

nifer Molinoff

Any number of words could describe a place like Las Vegas, famed for its legalized gambling and loose behavior. One might pick exotic, exciting, or even ap-palling. But for Mark Anthony Barrionuevo, it is home.

Barrionuevo converted to Mor-monism when he was 17 years old, having admired a friend’s Mormon lifestyle.

As an undergraduate, he en-rolled at Brigham Young Univer-sity, where he earned his B.A. in English literature and marriage/family therapy. He earned his M.A. in cultural and ethnic stud-ies from Georgetown University. He teaches English literature and creative writing to sophomores, juniors and seniors.

Under the pen name Garcia An-thony, he has written a screenplay entitled American Desert and a novel entitled Raintree. His band Vital Featuring an American Poet played in the Olympic Village during the Salt Lake City games.

If Laura Swearin-gen-Steadwell could be any profession other than a teacher, she says she would be a carpenter. In the past she has worked on houses and loves the thrill of creation: “To use something you’ve made—it’s one of the most satisfy-ing feelings,” she said.

Raised in D.C., she at-tended Amherst College where she studied creative writing. She teaches Eng-lish to seventh-graders and juniors and creative writ-ing to seniors.

Her favorite musical art-ists include Björk, Beck or anybody who has a lot of flexibility and “makes you want to dance.”

Her acting résumé includes: Pastel City, a play written by her friend, Shakespeare’s Pericles and Marat/Sade.

Rebecca Harrington, a struc-tured study hall teacher, has always been a progressive-minded indi-vidual, but it was a college profes-sor of feminist studies—because of her enthusiasm for the subject and personal interactions with the students—who influenced her to pursue an interdisciplinary major in that subject at Bates College.

Harrington became active in the feminist community. She vol-unteered at the Women’s Resource Center and breast cancer fundrais-ing and education organizations.

Harrington’s passions include singing and acting. In high school she performed in a group that sang sixteenth and seventeenth century Italian folk songs, and in college she participated in a choir. She also acted in small student-direct-ed plays. She is the middle-school drama teacher and a capella direc-tor.

A boyfriend introduced Jenni-fer Molinoff to Adventure Races in college and since then has com-peted in five such races with her husband and friend. They typically consist of seven through nine miles of running, 15 miles of mountain

biking and one mile of kayaking.Molinoff grew up in Cross-

wicks, New Jersey. She graduated from Rutgers University where she studied history, worked in technology consulting for many years and then received a graduate degree from Columbia University in social studies education.

Her hobbies include mountain biking, sea kayaking, reading, cooking and taking care of her baby daughter Charlotte.

Her favorite bands are Wilco, Gomez and Eels.

Molinoff is in the Educational Support Services Department and supervises the middle school writ-ing center.

Elizabeth Colella’s favorite dance is the cha-cha, a synco-pated Latin dance that

gets its name from a repetitive foot rhythm. “It is ener-getic, but most importantly easy to learn,” she said.

After Colella earned all the necessary credits that she needed to graduate from the University at Buffalo, she decided to take a class in ballroom dancing. There she learned to foxtrot, tango and swing

Collela, a structured study hall teacher, earned her Masters and Bachelors degrees in communica-tion. After working last spring as a substitute teacher in the Upper School, Colella “really enjoyed the school’s commitment to edu-cation and the wonderful sense of community.” She said, “I was eager to take a full time position working with such bright, talented students.”

Annabella Kraut went to the University of Maryland where she studied psychology and biological anthropology. She teaches seventh grade Life Science and ninth grade biology.

Kraut plays badminton and en-joys listening to the music of The Calling, Lifehouse and Evanes-cence. Her favorite books are those in the Harry Potter series and The Clan of the Cave Bear. To students she says, “I am excited to join the JDS community and am looking forward to a wonderful and pro-

ductive first year!” Dr. Sara Coxe grew up in Vir-

ginia Beach. She attended Emory University where she majored in religion and earned her Masters Degree in Jewish Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary. Lat-er she received a Ph.D. in Ameri-can Religion.

She teaches courses on Israel and the Holocaust.

Books that she likes include Atlas Shrugged and The Pillars of the Earth.

To students she says, “I’m ex-cited to be here at JDS teaching this year. I’m looking forward to meeting all of you, and I think it

will be a lot of fun to get to know you. I’m open to just about any conversation,

so if you’re curi-ous, just ask.”

A couple of years ago M e l i s s a Gartner

p a r -ticipated in a 300 mile, three-

day AIDS bike ride, which went from Boston to New York. It rained for two days and Gartner, a guid-ance counselor, remembers being “really cold” and “really unhappy.” She was exhausted, slumped over and looking down at her feet when a man passed her and said, “If all you do is look down, you miss it all.”

“So I looked up,” Gartner said, “and saw a rainbow just spinning with life. I looked up the whole way home.”

Gartner grew up in New York. She went to American University where she received her B.A. in Public Communication and Sociology. She received her Masters degree from Washington University in St. Louis.

Some of her favor-ite musical artists include Mar-tin Sexton, the Counting Crows and Miles Davis. Her favorite book is Cry, The Beloved Country, “It provided me with a more global perspec-

tive,” she said. Jessica Maratsos grew up in

Minneapolis. She attended Am-herst College where she studied Italian literature and art history with a special emphasis on the Late Gothic and Early Renais-sance periods.

During her studies, she spent six months in Italy studying the art of that country. Her favorite artist is Fra Angelico, because his paint-ings have a “transcendental qual-ity” and appeal to more than just Christian audiences.

Maratsos has been dancing bal-let and modern styles since the age of six. Just out of college, she has previously taught a pilates class for dancers.

Although unable to pick favor-ites, books that she likes include The God of Small Things, which she “really enjoyed,” The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Born in Iran, Shoshana Sfarza-da immigrated to Israel as a child. There her family settled in the city of Ofakim. After her mandatory service in the Israeli army, she en-rolled at Hebrew University where she studied educational counseling and Hebrew literature.

Although a Hebrew teacher, she does not limit herself to He-brew books. One of her favorite English books is Bee Season by Myla Goldberg.

Her role models are her par-ents because after moving to the United States 13 years ago,

she now realizes how hard it is to adjust to a completely new place.

Rebeca Rydel was born in

Buenos Aires and made aliyah to Israel at the age of ten where she lived in the town of Azur, south of Tel Aviv. She studied education and Jewish Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has been teaching for 15 years in a variety of places including Israel, Russia and the U.S.

She enjoys hiking, read-ing and wood-painting, although she does not consider herself a great art-ist.

She likes Israeli and new-age music, especially Hava Alberstein, the Hagevatron Group and Paul Winter. Her favorite book is Mister God, This is Anna and her favorite movie is The Sounds of Music.

If she could live during any time period, she would live during Israel’s War of Independence.

“It was a very meaningful time in Israel. They did things because they believed in the cause. There was really a sense of doing some-thing valuable for the nation and not because of personal gain,” she said.

Rabbi Mordechai Rackover grew up in Montreal. He received his B.A. in Jewish Studies from McGill University and is complet-ing a M.A. in Jewish Education from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He spent the last eight years in Israel studying at various Yeshivot.

Currently, he is the Youth Di-rector of Beth Sholom Congrega-tion in Potomac. He teaches sev-enth grade rabbinics, ninth grade tanakh and 11/12 Talmud.

He listens to 60s-70s rock and lately has listened to a lot of Bob Dylan. Books that he likes include Ender’s Game and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which he has read five times. His favorite movie is Star Wars.

He does not know whether he would rather live 100 years from now “to see the future we hope to be brighter” or 1,950 years ago “to see Jerusalem in its final glory.”

All Michele Zemsky would need to survive on a deserted is-land is an agreement with Borders to send her new books every three months.

Zemsky grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Hunter College where she majored in so-ciology and education, or, as she puts it “what makes people tick.”

After several years teaching sixth grade classes in New York, Maryland and Michigan, she switched careers and became a li-brarian.

THELION’STALESeptember 29, 2004 Feature 13

“I had always wanted to be a li-brarian when I was younger,” she says. “I loved books and learning, so it was natural for me.”

Zemsky, who will be joining the library staff, says she has no favorite book, though she loves the author Isabel Allende.

If Zemsky could be any oth-er profession she says that she would want to be a pilot.

Although she cannot articulate why flying appeals to her, she can trace it back to seeing her fa-vorite movie, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Ever since she has “always wanted to fly above the clouds,” she said.

Dr. Stanley Neuder grew up in New York City. He attended the University of Maryland where he majored in physics and math.

He has taught math, physics, statistics and astronomy at Union College.

He likes sports, especially the Yankees, building the interiors of houses and reading scientific ar-ticles.

His favorite artist is Claude Monet, the nineteenth-century impressionist painter, because his paintings’ soft image conveys a sense of movement not present in other styles.

Neuder’s role model is Al-

bert Einstein: “He had the most unusual mind and revolutionary ideas for the time. He redefined physics and brought us into the modern age,” he said.

Grace McMillan received her B.A. from Oberlin College and majored in religion. She earned a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, with a focus on Ju-daism.

The courses she is teach-ing are Israel, T h e m e s from Jew-ish His-tory II and Denomina-tions.

In the last 18 years McMillan has lived in 10 cities, including four years in Jerusalem where she worked as a copy editor for The Jerusalem Post.

She likes folk music and pop-ular rock from the 1980s. Her favorite books are A Prayer for Owen Meany and Bridget Jones’s Diary.

Jennifer Gertman, a struc-tured study hall teacher, was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from the University of Rochester with a major in re-ligion and a minor in history. She

enjoys reading, traveling, playing with her nieces and biking.

Gertman likes country and pop music, and her favorite books in-clude The Red Tent and The Once and Future King.

If she could be any other pro-fession, she would be a rabbi

and if she could meet any historical fig-

ure, she would pick Golda Meir.

“I would love to dis-cuss her experience as a female

Prime Minis-ter,” she said.

Gertman tutored mid-

dle school students at the Roches-ter Leadership Academy as well as local community centers and synagogues.

Jamie Harris-Gershon grew up in Pittsburgh, PA. She went to Indiana University where she majored in Jewish studies and ge-ography.

She is a big fan of Ani DiFran-co and listens to anything that she can dance to.

Her favorite books include A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible.

One of her role models is Bru-riah, the wife of Rabbi Meir, who was famous for her intelligence.

Steven Forestieri was born in Delaware. He went to the Univer-sity of Delaware where he studied Exercise Physiology and Fitness Management.

His passions include traveling, martial arts—Karate-do, Aiki-jutsu and Kenjutsu—and writing and playing music on guitar and trumpet.

He appreciates all types of music; however, his favorite mu-sical artists are Jack Johnson and Donavon Frankenreiter.

He coaches boys JV soccer and assists boys varsity soccer.

Dr. Dara Spey comes from a family of animal lovers.

Her parents bred Alsatians and her in-laws bred Borzois.

She owns four pets: a dog, Dubi; two parakeets, Mazel and Kachol; and a fish, Cinderella.

Spey grew up in Manhattan and Warwick, New York.

She attended Union College where she majored in psychology and Health Care Administration. She is a middle school counselor.

If she could be any other pro-fession, she would be a lawyer because she likes problem solv-ing.

“In guidance there is not al-ways an answer,” she said.

‘DEATH IN GAZA’ premiered on HBO on Aug. 12. The movie high-lighted the stories of children in the Palestinian territories.

HBO documentary about Israeli-Arab conflict surprisingly balanced

by Elliot Levitt

Diverse backgrounds represented in new faculty membersTEACHERS, from

page 12

In one of the more harrowing scenes in the new HBO documen-tary Death in Gaza, a ragtag group of Palestinian children gather to play in an empty street, the way any group of American kids might come together for a game of base-ball or soccer.

But these children take out wooden rifles and begin shooting at one another, ducking behind houses and around each other. One boy sets a cardboard ‘tank’—an effigy of the Israeli tanks that these children often see rolling past their own homes—in the middle of the street, then lights it on fire.

A young boy, Abdul, runs into the midst of the fighting. He fires a few shots and then stops sud-denly, collapsing dramatically to the ground. He is now a martyr. He has won the game.

But this is no game; it’s a small-scale dramatization of the conflict that these children see exploding around them each day.

This is what sets Death in Gaza apart from other coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict: its ability to take us deeper into the tumult than we are normally allowed, and its especially unique focus: It turns from the faces of the soldiers and rebel leaders who inundate most coverage of the intifada and fo-cuses on those Palestinian citizens that we don’t see as often—the children.

“We’re trying to understand

how people learn to hate so deeply they’re prepared to die in order to kill,” narrator Saira Shah says as the documentary opens on an ex-plosion in the city of Nablus. “So we’re looking for the next genera-tion—the children who will make either peace or war.”

If the film’s closer look at the children—and future leaders—of Palestine is any indication, the future of the Middle East seems grim.

In a class of young Palestinian students, the teacher introduces a patriotic poem from the 1960s to teach his class that “the occupier” kills children “so children don’t grow up and liberate their land from occupation.” The children repeat his words like a mantra.

It is reasonable to understand the Palestinians’ hatred of a na-tion they see as ‘occupying’ their country, but the film also captures a dangerous misunderstanding among many of the Palestinians interviewed.

The game that Abdul and his friends played is called “Jews and Arabs,” and this title clues us in to a belief that may lie at the heart of the hatred.

“Some pigs [Israelis] do pray, but their prayer is useless,” says a boy named Mohammed. “They don’t say ‘God is Greatest,’ they don’t know the Koran.”

Of course, this generalization is far from the truth. The Palestinians are not at war with the Jews, after all—they are fighting the Israelis,

many of whom include dedicated Muslims and Arabs, a fact that the film is quick to acknowledge.

But the children interviewed see the fighting as a religious con-flict, not a political one.

“I want to be nice to all the world, apart from our enemies, the Jews,” Mohammed says.

Even more worrisome is that many Palestinian adults seem to know no better.

“Do you like the Jews, Ayyah?” a Palestinian woman asks her young daughter, the way a mother would ask her 4-year-old to re-cite the alphabet to show off to friends.

“No!” Ayyah returns.“Why not?”

“Because they’re sons of dogs!” Ayyah explains. It is less an opin-ion than a programmed response.

“But have you ever seen a Jew?” Shah inquires, visibly shak-en by such an aggressive response from a girl who moments ago had seemed so innocent and friendly.

Yes, she says, she has. On tele-vision.

While some only dramatize the violence, others are involved in it directly. Provoked by the death of a friend, a boy named Ahmed began helping the masked mili-tant groups that organize suicide bombings and other retaliations against Israel.

The militant members play games with Ahmed, show him how

to hold a rocket launcher and talk to him about his schoolteachers.

“We think of Ahmed as our lit-tle brother,” one militant says.

But, asks Shah, isn’t a 12-year-old boy too young to be handling dangerous weapons and spying for opposition groups?

“When we say goodbye to Ahmed, there are a thousand more kids like him,” the masked soldier says coldly. It is clear that the fight-ers see Ahmed more as a pawn to assist them in their fight than as a little brother.

At night, Ahmed follows the guerrillas as they come out into the open.

“Ahmed acts as a lookout for us on the streets. He informs the soldiers if there is any danger,” ex-plains one paramilitary. “This job is perfect for a little boy. Because nobody suspects him.”

The documentary had been planned as a two-part story: that of the Palestinian children caught up in the conflict, and also of the perspective of youth from across the border.

But director James Miller never got the chance to capture the Is-raeli side; while leaving the house of a Palestinian family, Israeli sol-diers shot at Miller, killing him instantly.

What footage had already been gathered was finished by Shah, and, though the film does feel in-complete (Shah acknowledges in the opening that “the story isn’t finished”) it remains incredibly balanced.

We see the good and the bad of the Palestinian side of this story.

We see a young girl weeping as she recounts the family mem-bers that have been lost to enemy bombs and fire, and the wild state of a hospital room as doctors try and fail to save a boy shot by Israeli tanks, but that footage is balanced with images of Palestinian youth throwing rocks at Israeli armored vehicles and of rebel groups using graffiti to publicize their involve-ment in a recent suicide bombing.

Nothing is shown without an explanation of its causes, and this obsessive attempt to maintain sta-bility in the presentation of the conflict shows.

Such balance allows the view-er to draw their own conclusion, and the thoughts provoked by this documentary do not concern who is right and who is wrong in a two-sided fight, but rather whether it is right at all for adults to create such an impressionable and dangerous situation for their children to expe-rience at so young an age.

STANLEY NEUDER AND Dara Spey

imag

es c

ourt

esy

HBO

THELION’STALE

September 29, 2004 Sports14

The ideal summer for most soccer players and athletes involves sitting on the couch and watching the 1 p.m. Sportscenter while eating breakfast. However, for the boys varsity soccer team, the summer has become a time of in-tense training.

According to Head Coach Robert Bokman, last year’s team came into the season out of shape and the team lost practice time while the players caught up on their condi-tioning. In order to play on this season’s team, Bokman in-stituted a new rule that all members of the team would be required to run a mile-and-a-half in nine minutes and 45 seconds.

“When we came in last year on the first day of tryouts I saw that we were really unfit and we had a long way to go. So, basically the goal was to be fit by the end of the season. That really set us back. So I knew that this year we couldn’t have that, so I wanted them to have at least some fitness taken care of before we started so we could just move on and get more done,” he said.

In order to meet the time requirement, many of the play-ers made sure to run and stay active over the summer.

“I ran at least five times over the summer and I played for the D.C. United youth team to stay in shape. And also I played for the Maryland state team,” said junior Ari Ko-bren.

Senior captain David May took the workouts a step fur-ther and organized summer practices for the team, which included both running and soccer drills.

“[During summer practices] we’d start out with a run, whether it be laps around the field or one of the courses charted out by the track team, so we knew the distance and measured our times and compared to see how our times re-late to the mile-and-a-half. And we’d do a lot of technique and one-on-one, trying to get people comfortable with the ball,” said May.

At practices this fall, conditioning has remained a focal

This year’s summer league boys basketball team had an “open door policy”– players who did not play on a high school basketball team during the winter season were still able to contribute significantly and work on their game over the summer. This course of action allowed high school players to join the team and play in games by signing up with Head Coach Victor Littman.

According to senior Joel Schwarz, “Littman tries to see who else is out there and gets to know the JV players coming up to varsity.”

Many players who do not participate in winter bas-ketball got significant amounts of playing time early in the summer season, including junior Jacob Lerner.

“The summer league basketball team gave me an opportunity to get a feel for where I was with basket-ball. The summer team gave the students the oppor-tunity to play and the coaches the opportunity to look at the students who are interested in basketball…If a freshman comes to summer league and is dedicated, Littman has the ability to see that he is willing to go the ‘extra mile’ and becomes aware that he has a pres-ence in basketball,” he said.

Senior Osher Masica, who did not make the varsity team last winter, played in all games for the summer league team. Although he did not score significant points, he said that he “went in and got a couple of rebounds, helped out on defense and gave other guys a chance to rest on the bench.”

“I kind of thought of the summer league as a help because Littman is watching you and he is helping you at the same time and telling you what you should work on or what you should do out on the court. So it helps you a lot when you go to tryout in the winter,” he said.

Freshman Phillip Lipton contributed significantly to the team in all of its contests and averaged six points toward the end of the season. He participated on the middle school team last year and plans to con-tinue working on his basketball skills either on the junior varsity or varsity team. “The summer league team helped me because it gave me a chance to play against juniors and seniors from other schools that are on varsity and are better than me,” Lipton said.

The Lions finished with a 6-4 record overall.

On a seven year PVAC championship drought, the girls varsity soccer team is looking to its rising stars to propel them toward a title banner in the upcoming season.

The Lions, coming off a disappointing playoff loss to the Sandy Spring Wildebeests in the 2003 season, only lost one starter from last season in Allee Lichtenstein (`04), but have gained two in eighth-grader Keryn Bernstein and freshman Stephanie Cantor.

According to Head Coach Michael Neustadt, both Ber-nstein and Cantor will be strong contributors on offense.

“Keryn will take Allee’s place as another scoring threat,” said Neustadt. “She has good skills on the ball, good speed, and good leg strength, which will help her step in a n d score a lot of goals. Stephanie is a strong player as well, and she’ll help us in a n u m b e r of ways.”Said Ber- nstein of her im-

portant role on

the team, “I feel that my older teammates will help me a lot, and I can help the team succeed. It’s a challenge for me to live up to and achieve.”

According to junior Rachel Cohen, with players of all ages contributing to the team dynamic, the Lions will be a strong force in the PVAC.

“It also helps individual players,” said Cohen, “because the upperclassmen can be mentors for the younger girls.”

As an underclassmen herself, Bernstein agrees.“I learn different techniques and skills from my older

teammates,” she said. “Also, we all play at different levels on other teams outside of school, so we all know a few things from different coaches. When we combine our knowledge, we all benefit.”

The Lions opened their conference play with a victory over the Montrose Christian Mus-tangs by a score of 12-0. The Lions are cur-rently 4-3 overall.

by Gabi Weisel

SENIOR CAPTAIN DAVID MAY chases after the ball in the Lions’ 4-1 victory against the Field Falcons on Sept. 22. The Lions are currently 5-1 overall.

Training regimen implemented for BVS

by Sam Jacobson by Gabe Stutman

EIGHTH-GRADER KERYN BERNSTEIN dribbles by the Montrose Christian Mustangs’ defense in a 12-0 win on Sept. 7

Young stars play vital role for GVS

Summer league welcomes all

point of the team in order to keep the players in peak shape for the season.

“There’s a lot of conditioning and drills we run in order to keep in shape and on top of our game. And we don’t get that much break time, like a couple for water, so most of the time we stay active,” said senior Osher Masica.

Bokman is already noticing the difference be-tween this and last year’s teams.

“We’re at a much better place this year than we were last year. The kids are more fit, able to do more things, cover more ground on the field, and play for longer; it’s been a great help so far. We’re way ahead of where we were last year,” he said.

The players also have noticed the difference. “Last season when we were starting off we

were in terrible physical shape, but this year we have a huge jump ahead in our stamina and our level of play. I think it will put a brand new spin on things for the upcoming season,” said senior Ari Evans.

With the Jewish holidays, however, the team will have limited opportunity to practice and Bokman has told the players to continue work-ing out individually during that time, in addition to scheduling Sunday practices.

“They’ll have homework to run a couple of miles in a certain amount of time, but the other thing is that we are going to have some Sunday training sessions,” said Bokman.

Although the conditioning requirements have been difficult, the players feel that the extra work will pay off during games.

“It’s going to help a lot because the starters are going to be able to last for much longer and the people on the bench are going to help us with fresh legs when they step on the field,” said Kobren.

photos by Daniel Brujis

THELION’STALESeptember 29, 2004 Sports 15

Last year’s girls junior varsity soccer team won one game and scored three goals all season. How-ever, behind a new coach and fi rst-year players, the Lions have focused their attention on individu-al skills and fi tness.

Last year, the Lions were led by Head Coach Richard Adsit. But with Adsit’s de-parture, last year’s Assistant Coach, Tom Parker, was promoted to Head Coach.

The girls are very excited about the change.

“Parker is strict but he really wants the best for us,” said sophomore Natalie Azhdam. “He makes us run twice as hard as we would ever run in a game but it’s because we are a small team and he really wants us to be in shape,” she said.

However, Parker has found that with the lack of facilities provided to his team, he has to focus the girls’ attention more on their individual progres-

sion.“Some days we don’t even have a soccer fi eld

to practice on,” he said. (The varsity, junior varsity and middle school teams split time on the fi elds.) “So with the small areas we have, we are working more on skills.”

According to Parker, there was a lack of aggressive-ness on the team.

“This year so far we have a few more girls that are aggressive, and those that aren’t can feed off of that.”

Azhdam says the team is work-ing much harder to live up to the coach’s expecta-tions.

“Now, our games are slow compared to practic-es. Last year, the games were too fast for us because we weren’t prepared,” she said.

After its fi rst year of league play, some players on the girls middle school volleyball team played during the off-season to achieve further indi-vidual and team success.

Over the summer, eighth-graders Stephanie Milner and Talia Nachbi both went to American University for a one-week volleyball camp where they were coached by American Uni-versity players.

According to Nachbi, the camp was not easy, but the hard work and the individual attention helped her to improve.

“We worked so hard that we were sore every day.”

“The camp helped so much just because our skills were constantly be-ing looked at.They gave us tips every second and at the end I really felt like I had improved,” Nachbi said.

Head Coach Tracy Renken and the team wanted to have a camp at school over the summer, but the idea fell through.

“I talked with some other parents and they wanted to have some sort of camp at the school, but that never

Having graduated last year from the fi rst ever girls middle school volleyball team, the fresh-men on this year’s varsity squad bring an added degree of depth to the returning team of four

seniors and six sophomores. This year’s middle school volleyball players come

with greater exposure to the game than they have in past years.

“There’s about four or fi ve girls that played on the middle school team, and they’ve really come around because they’ve kind of had that basic learning expe-

rience last year,” said coach Kate Hannas. The freshmen will be considered role players this

year.“We’re young in terms of age, but not in terms of

ability. I really think we’re going to be good this year because there are more people that are coming in from

the beginning and know what they’re doing and under-stand volleyball,” sophomore Adina Fradkin said.

As the new season opens for the girls middle school soccer team, the Lions fi nd themselves looking to repeat their championship run from last year.

The team’s main focus so far has been on the offensive side of the ball. Unlike last year’s defensively minded team, the Lions are looking to score more frequently this year.

“We’ve been working on scoring and trying to work as a team,” said eighth-grader Talia Lieber.

Remington’s focus on the offense has left little focus on the defense, but he is not concerned about the slow progression of the defense thus far.

“The defense is unproven, but I think by the end of the year the defense will come around to be one of the stronger points of the team,” he said.

Remington understands that the team is a work in progress, but he knows that the soccer season is a long one and that there is ample time for the team to progress and for

Depth adds t the Lions GVV SOPHOMORE ALIYA HELLER re-turns a serve in the Lions’ 3-1 win against Hebrew academy on Sept. 14.

SEVENTH-GRADER GABRIELLE COHEN kicks the ball in the team’s 12-0 win over the Barrie Mustangs, Sept. 23.

by Rachel Wexler

individual players to develop. “I would like to improve throughout the

year. I’m not so much worried about our regular season, but I’d like to peak around playoff time and make a run at the champi-onship,” Remington said.

Offense major focus for GMS

by David Goott

Summer experience enhances GMV

by Nathaniel Levy

JV girls welcome new coach, shift attention to individual skills

by Danny Charnoff

Parker is strict but he re-ally wants the best for us. He makes us run twice as hard as we would ever run in a game but it’s because we are a small team and he really wants us to be in shape. Natalie Azhdam

sophomore

worked out. I’m sure in the future there will be something,” she said.

Renken hopes that the continuous play of Mil-ner and Nachbi will help improve an overall in-experienced middle school team.

“We just want to work on getting these players some time in the games and getting them experi-ence.” “

Winning is great, but it’s not our main objec-tive,” she said.

photo by Daniel Brujis

by Adam Bradlow

Freshmen reorganize BJV

The boys junior varsity soc-cer team has been revived by the enthusiasm of a new coach and a new set of freshman players one year after low player interest forced it to disband.

Athletic Director Victor Litt-man said that there are more play-ers this year because this years ninth grade has shown a greater interest in soccer.

“I was pretty confi dent with all the eight graders moving up from the middle school [that] we would have enough players,” he said.

Also, Head Coach Steve For-estieri’s fi rst year at JDS allows him to remain unfazed by the team’s troubled history.

“Having not been here last year [I think] we have a lot of numbers,” he said. “We look to have a really good junior varsity program.”

Despite Forestieri’s lack of

previous experience in coaching soccer at the junior varsity level or in the PVAC, he inspires confi dence in the team.

“I’m not too concerned with the opposing teams as I am with getting the best out of the team we have here at JDS,” he said.

Forestieri has focused on improv-ing the Lions’ chemistry by making the boys play ‘Continuous 3-on-3’ during practice, according to fresh-man Eran Friedman.

“The drill, which can be up to an hour of continuous running, works on communication, spacing and en-durance,” Friedman said.

Forestieri hopes that the players will begin to get to know each other in practice. The practice regimen used by Forestieri will enable the team to be prepared in games.

“He works us hard in practice and I think we’ll be prepared in the game,” freshman Justin Schecker said.

The Lions are currently 2-2 over-all.

photo by David Feith

by Amy Schilit

Seventh graders dominate roster

The boys middle school soccer team is starting the new season with only four returning players.

Middle school soccer Head Coach Gus Stathes said that he is looking for “players who are en-thusiastic and athletic.”

Twenty-nine boys tried out for the team; the majority were sev-enth-graders.

“It was surprising to see how many new seventh-graders showed up to try out,” said Daniel

Kaprow, one of the few returning eighth-graders.

During early season practices the team focused primarily on ba-sic individual skills and condition-ing.

They also practiced more un-conventional drills like playing “keep away.”

“I think that will help our team the most because it helps us com-municate and teaches us how to pass the ball unifying us as a team,” said eighth grader, Eyal Breit.

The Lions are 2-1-2 overall this year.

photo by Daniel Brujis

SEVENTH-GRADER JOSHUA WALFISH tracks the ball down in the Lions’ 3-0 home win against the Sandy Spring Wilde-beests on Sept. 13.

THELION’STALE

September 29, 2004 Sports16

Time now for X-countryOn an afternoon in mid-July, senior Alan Fradkin was surprised to find a letter ad-

dressed to him from school. The letter opened by saying, “you are getting this letter because you have come to my attention

when I was looking to recruit for the upcoming cross country season.”

“I am looking for students that have good work ethic,

athletic skills, a positive attitude and mental toughness.” The letter closes by saying “With your help we can make the upcoming cross country season the best

we have had in years. I hope to see you on the first day of practice.”

The letter, sent by cross coun-

try Head Coach Jeffrey Mehr to about 50 return-ing members of

the cross country team, is indicative

of the new intensity Mehr is attempting to instill in his team. Mehr hopes that this in-tensity, in addition to a

new more structured and efficient practice routine, will translate into im-proved team results in the

championship meet.The revamped practice regi-

men includes a warm-up before and a cool-down after each prac-

tice, in which the team runs in one large pack while Mehr records the time from the first runner to the last runner.

Even though there is a wide range of people on the team, the fo-cus of the team is unity.

“It’s a difficult thing when you have 80 people on the team, so ev-ery day we try to make them realize

that we are a team, and we’re going to do things together,” he said.

Additionally, each workout is now designed and geared to-

wards accomplishing a certain goal and improving a skill. According to senior Sybil Ottenstein, these work-outs are quite difficult and strenuous, but will ulti-mately pay off.

“Mehr has been hav-ing us do a lot more hill workouts so that on

the hills we won’t slow down. We’ve done a lot more interval train-ing so we can in-crease our speed,

as well as some ex-tended dis-tance train-ing to increase our stamina,” she said.

Mehr has also encouraged run-ners to participate in road races through the Montgomery County Road Runners Club and to attend op-tional practices before school.

Some runners have seen drastic improvements as a re-sult of the more intense prac-tices.

“We’re a lot faster this year. From the first time we ran the course until today, I think I had a 50-second improvement,” said Fradkin.

However, the changes in the cross country program have not pleased everyone on the team.

According to a student who wished to remain anonymous, “it’s a lot less relaxed. For me, I would say it’s been a negative change. In the past the team was very unified in a more relaxed way. The type of spirit we had in the past is sort of dying down.”

This student also found the new practice routine to be unnecessary and forced. When asked about the negative feelings students have toward the practices, Mehr responded: “too bad.”

“We have to do our warm-ups and cool-downs together on meet days to scare other teams—not necessarily so that we feel like a team, but so we look like a team,” the student said.

As for the upcoming season, seniors Alan Fradkin and Ron Meyers and sophomore Avi Sunshine lead the boys while freshmen Ellie Dugan and Daphna Katz lead the girls.

Though Mehr is concerned with setting a solid foundation and building for the fu-ture, his main goals seem to be in the short term.

“We want to win and we want to do it now. As for the future, we have a lot of good young runners, but our time is now,” he said.

by Michael Goldfarb

H E A D C O A C H

J E F F R E Y Mehr goes over

the team’s results af-ter a home meet. Mehr

went through each individ-ual, their time, and their contri-

bution to the team; another one of his methods in creating a positive, winning

atmosphere for the cross country team. SENIOR ALIZA SANDBERG, junior Orly May and fresh-man Yarden Waksman keep pace in a Sept. 14 meet. photos by Zachary Krame