Modi'in's Youth and the Philosophers' Stone

Published in Modi’in News

The five students that the Municipal Aleph High School sent last year to the prestigious Rimon Program did not know what was in store for them.  After learning that Aristo [Aristotle, in Hebrew]is not only the name of a fashion chain and that Beit Hillel were antagonists of Beit Shammai, they began to understand the beauty of philosophical reflection.  After a conversation with four of them, one feels like picking up a Platonic dialogue.

 

"We are not rough characters," the four young women seated opposite me admit.  Youth violence, drugs, murder, rape – these girls are far removed from any such realities, and as far as they are concerned, such problems may as well be taking place on another planet.  Herzl, Katzenelson, Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, Aristotle and Plato, on the other hand, are much closer to their sights.  These young women and dozens of other young adults spend their Friday evenings energetically discussing the state of Israeli democracy, Zionist identity, and philosophical arguments about the meaning of life. That's right, these young women are secular adolescents from Modi'in who did not land here from another planet, and they are 16 to 17 years old – precisely the age in which they should supposedly be interested in clothes, guys and dancing.

 

That is not to say that they are uninterested in those subjects, but their world is much broader and encompasses much more than that.  The four of them are 11th grade students at the Municipal Aleph High School, and they were among a handful of young adults handpicked to participate in the national Rimon Program. The Rimon Program is a small and exclusive program launched by a group of private donors and the Shalem Center. The program receives tens of thousands of dollars each year to develop humanistic thought among young adults and to introduce into their world figures from the world of philosophy, humanities, literature and the Bible. More importantly, the program aims to develop the ideas, imagination and critical thinking skills of these young adults. So far, the program seems to be achieving its goal with a great deal of success.

 

 

 

Yasmin Heffer, Yael Amroussi, Adi Aharoni and Noy Paz are four of the five students selected from the Municipal Aleph High School and the city of Modi'in to participate in the program.

"It all started in the middle of last year," Yasmin recounts. "The program was advertised at our school and anyone interested could take the tests. These exams didn’t test our knowledge of mathematics or physics, but mainly the books we were reading and our thoughts; they were less about knowledge and more about our interests."

Adi: "On the whole, not really. At our school, there wasn’t really a selection process; the teachers approached the students that seemed best suited to the program".

"Students that were good at the humanities – geeks," Yael chuckles. "Cool geeks," interposes Yasmin and her friends burst out laughing.

"It is a program for young adults from all over the country, which is in itself exciting," says Yael.  "It is neat to get together with other kids from all over the country for these seminars.  The program offers weekend seminars, Fridays through Saturdays, which take place in various places and concern all sorts of topics."

Yael: "Zionism, Bible, Democracy."

Yasmin: "All kinds of subjects that are not taught at school, and if taught, certainly not in depth".

"When was the last time you studied philosophy at school?" interrupts Adi with a question.  "The high school curriculum does not include philosophy," she answers.  "We may have mentioned Aristotle in passing in some history class, but no more than that.  The interesting thing about these seminars is that they connect philosophy to our daily lives."

 

One needs only to mention the program's name Rimon for the faces of the girls to break into big smiles. The last seminar at Masada was held only a few days ago, and the experiences have not yet faded.

 

"Of course!" they confirm in unison.  "The first seminar was in Caesarea near the sea. It was a philosophy seminar, and it was amazing," joins in Yael.

"It was quite a shock to me," recalls Yasmin.  "I had never been to a seminar before then. They picked us up on Friday morning and took us by bus with a bunch of kids I didn't know and had us attend a lecture as soon as we arrived.  To tell you the truth, I almost fell asleep during the first lecture."

Adi: "On the origins of philosophy, how philosophers look at different things and themselves."

"Until then Aristo(tle) had sounded to us like the name of the clothing chain Aristo- Shmat," laughs Yael.  "Ever since, things have steadily been falling into place.  We gradually developed our ability to listen and began to develop an understanding."

Noy: "The following day there were two more lectures; there is no doubt that that first seminar was fun, but it was also a big shock."

Yael: "The second seminar was already much easier; we improved our ability to pay attention at the lectures. You become a "SpongeBob" and can soak up information." All four girls point to the opportunity to give feedback at the end of each seminar as one significant advantage of the program.  Adi explains, "When they understood from our feedback that the lectures were too difficult for us, they slowly adjusted the level.  The following seminar included only one lecture and many more workshops and panel discussions.  With each seminar, we developed and improved our ability to soak up the material until we reached the stage where we could easily take in a three-hour lecture."

 

 

 

So far the participants of the Rimon Program have participated in five seminars, each dedicated to a different subject: the first one, held at Caesarea, was on philosophy; the second one in Jerusalem was on the Bible, the third one at Kibbutz Gal-On was about Herzl's utopia and Zionism. It was at that seminar that the program's participants received a copy of Herzl's Altneuland (Old New Land)as a gift.  The fourth seminar was held at Kibbutz Ramat HaShofet and discussed the Sages of the Talmud.  The last seminar, which took place only last week, was held at Masada and Arad and addressed the definition of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state.  As they recount the five seminars, it is, surprisingly, the seminar on the Talmudic Sages that elicits the most enthusiastic cheers.

 

The girls laugh, but don't deny their excitement.  "This was one of the most amazing experiences we had," adds Adi.  Yasmin is the first one to regain seriousness and explains, "In my opinion, this stems from the schools being stuck in a routine of very boring subjects.  Spending Bible classes studying about the dual meaning of a verse or about poetic techniques of opposite parallelism is superfluous, when you consider all the amazing stories in the Bible."

Adi: "Before that seminar, I only knew that the acronym Chazal stood for "Our Sages of blessed memory" and that they were a bunch of old men. And now what don't I know?  How their schools were established, how important they still are for contemporary Judaism.  I left that seminar with an appreciation of how important it is to listen to different opinions and to discuss and probe ideas."

Yasmin: "It was over-the-top exposure to things we never would have learned if not for these seminars."

 

 

 

The seminars did not only deal with philosophy and Talmudic Sages.  Their main purpose was to develop critical thinking skills, and this new critical aptitude led to places that certainly none of the seminar's organizers had anticipated.  "At the first seminar," Adi explains, "the organizers set our schedule and the lectures. Afterwards, we submitted our feedback and explained to them that we would like to set aside some time in the evening to discuss a general topic of our choice and to have them moderate the discussion. This free discussion drifted to Harry Potter and Avatar, the movie. We simply applied the critical methods we had learned during our discussions to other topics and we wound up discussing the philosophical meanings even of Harry Potter."

 

"Yes," Adi laughs, "it came to the point that we spent last Friday night arguing about the separation between church and state from 11 PM to one o'clock in the morning."

Yael: "These discussions used to have us at each others throats, angry and yelling, but now we have learned to accept each other. We held a quiet discussion and listened to one another.  This type of listening and understanding was something we undoubtedly picked up in the seminars. We are much more open and willing to listen to other people's views."

 

Noy: "Open-mindedness. One is continuously exposed to opposing views and becoming aware of all the different facets and aspects of each issue. At the Masada seminar, for instance, we were first told the story that everyone has heard about the fall of Masada, and then they brought three different sources that presented the story differently.  They took pains to encourage us to be as receptive as possible to the views of others, and then we held a group discussion."

Yael: "I learned to appreciate youth.  I had always been under the impression that the gap between adolescents and adults was big, and suddenly I discovered that the gaps between us are in fact not so large, and that we, young adults, can all listen to one another and be friends."

Adi: "These encounters with other kids helped me move beyond many stereotypes."

 

Adi: "People think that adolescents are horny and smoke Nargilas all the time, and that simply is not true.  We are not hoodlums like the media tried to portray us after the teen rape story in North Tel- Aviv broke.  We are all under pressure from our upcoming matriculation exams, desperately waiting for the school year to end, and in our case, we are also all crazy about the Rimon Program."

Yael: "We discovered during these encounters that we, the youth of Modi'in, live in a bubble – even Modi'in's delinquent youth are nothing by comparison. We met all these people from Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Beit She'an, Mazkeret Batya, people coming from very different worlds, only to discover that in spite of everything, we were not very different after all."

"The main thing, in my opinion," adds Yasmin, "was that we were exposed to so many things that we had no chance of learning in school. We gained tremendous access to things that I never would have imagined that I would study".

 

 

 

The girls do not exaggerate the amount of material that they learned in the seminars, nor did the seminars' organizers relax their academic standards.  "We tackled excerpts from Josephus Flavius's writings," Yael says, "as well as Talmudic stories. After that, reading Herzl's writings was actually easy, and these are all things we would never ordinarily read, not even on special occasions; we just would not have put in the effort to understand such works.  Here we tried harder, because we wanted to learn and understand what is written in these texts.  It was important to us." "You have to understand," adds Adi, "that we do not leave these seminars with a diploma, or any material benefit, but these materialistic considerations do not interest us."

 

The girls are full of praise for the project, which is entirely funded by donations. The participants are only asked to contribute 50 NIS for each seminar, which is two days long and includes lodging, transportation, meals, lectures given by outstanding experts and the entrance fees to the sites…

 

 

 

Ido Hevroni, academic director of the Rimon Program, explains the idea behind the program: "Over the past few decades, the Israeli educational system has been concentrating on encouraging high performance in scientific subjects. Without detracting from the vital importance of the High-Tech industry to Israel's economy and development, a strictly scientific education is ill-suited for raising a new generation of leaders and visionaries.  The Israeli public desperately needs such people. The sense that there are social problems, polarization and gaping divisions in Israeli society pose an existential threat no smaller than economic and security threats. The Rimon Program aims to help socially conscious high school students with intellectual aspirations to cultivate their humanistic side, encourage their natural curiosity, ask big questions and unravel the vast areas of knowledge encapsulated in Israeli identity. The ultimate goal of the Rimon Program is to cultivate the desire to become one of the visionary leaders who will make Israel a place where better citizens live."

 

"It is not suited for every one," the girls all agree.  "Nor is it a matter of character," explains Yael. "Instead, it is about open-mindedness.  This is a quality one should possess even before the first seminar, although it does increase from one seminar to the next."  "It is obvious to me," she laughs, "that if I were to ask anyone in my grade whether he or she would like to study philosophy in their free time, he or she would make a face and snort back at me."