High school in Israel seeks college- bound students

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – One reason that Rabbi Leor Sinai suggests that parents should consider sending their child for a semester to the Alexander Muss High School in Hod HaSharon, Israel, is that overseas studies will distinguish that student from members of his or her peer group who also are applying for college admission.

Sinai, co-executive director of the Jewish National Fund-run high school in Israel, said that competition for college admissions is becoming more and more competitive.  “It is not enough to be an AP (Advanced Placement) student today, because everyone is an AP student,” he said.  “What happens is that universities are increasingly looking for those students who stand out, whether in leadership positions, or as the captain of the football team, or in global studies.  A semester abroad helps to differentiate a lot of these students for these university admissions offices.”

What impresses the college admission officers, Sinai told me over a cup of coffee at D.Z. Akin’s Deli and Restaurant, is “the fact that the students spent a semester away from home and maintained their GPA (grade point average), and mom and dad weren’t hovering over them and reminding them to do their homework and to study for exams.  They did it themselves, and that is a true sign that a student is ready for college.”

The Alexander Muss High School offers semester programs for 10th, 11th and 12th graders.

Asked if he had any favorite success stories, Sinai told of a family that came to visit from Australia.  The son already had attended the Alexander Muss High School, and now the younger daughter was planning to attend.  “I asked the son, ‘who were you teachers?’ What was it like?’ and as he is answering, being very expressive, I see the mother off to the side and she is crying, literally crying.”  Sinai said he asked her a bit later why she was upset, and she responded, “You don’t understand.  My son had no friends growing up.  He was the most unsocial, awkward kid in his class.  He was made fun of, had no friends, and he came to your program for four months and when he returned he was a completely different kid.  Now he is a class leader.  He’s an extrovert.”

What accounts for students experiencing such a change in personality? I asked.

“Parents treat kids as kids even into their teenage years,” the rabbi responded.   He added that when high school students interact and live with other high school students from around the world, they learn about them and in the process they learn about themselves.  Students in their cohort will ask about each other, ask their opinions, and students realize “no one ever asked me that before,” the rabbi said.  “As you grow, you change.”

“I tell parents, ‘These kids in high school are sophisticated.  We treat them like adults.  There is no goofing around – sure, there is fun to be had, and jokes, a good time – but they also need to be held accountable. If the kid did something and broke the rules, and the other kids are going off for a trip, he or she may have to stay on campus.’”

The Alexander Muss High School, commenced in 1972, now has some 30,000 alumni, many of whom are active both in Jewish life and in the larger world, Sinai said.  Today the school, in which students are housed in dormitories, serves about 1,500 students per year, and “our goal is to get to 5,000 a year,” said Sinai.  “We have three tracks.  The first is the High School in Israel track, which can be a full semester (18 weeks), a ‘mini-mester’ (8 weeks) and a summer session (6 weeks).  Basic cost is $1,000 per week, before scholarships, which benefit approximately 80 percent of the student body, according to Sinai.

“The other track we have is partnerships with day schools such as the San Diego Jewish Academy,” he said. They send us students and we develop a program together.” In the case of San Diego Academy, he said, “It is a non-academic studies program, because the [SDJA] students have wrapped up their general studies requirement in school, and they come during their final semester.”  It’s a time “where they can enjoy the study of history, traveling throughout the country, and really meeting Israel.  This is right before they go to college.”

I asked Sinai to describe a typical day for students in the semester-long track. He said the students generally awaken at 7 a.m., have breakfast at the campus cafeteria, and then spend the first half of the academic day studying Israel, learning the country’s 4,000-year history, “starting with Abraham and Sarah, all the way up to Start-Up-Nation, modern day Israel.  So, for the first half we are reading texts, having debates, discussing things that they never realized.”

Lunch follows over the noon hour, and students have the choice of eating on campus, or signing themselves off campus for lunch at one of the establishments in Hod HaSharon, which is about 20 minutes north of Tel Aviv.  At 1:30 p.m., classwork resumes.  The afternoon is devoted to a general studies curriculum, “so whatever it is they are studying at home they will take on campus – language, physics, mathematics, science, AP courses, whatever they are taking at home.  The faculty are American, European, Australian – teachers from all over the world who live in Israel, and who teach the same curriculum they would be teaching back home….”  Classes typically end between 5 and 6 p.m.  Then the students will have dinner, do homework, study for tests, hang out, and perhaps play the guitar.

“The next day, in regard to Israel studies, whatever the students have learned in class, they will go out into the field and actually walk through history, visiting the actual locations where it took place,” Sinai said.  “It is not just textbook study, or formal study, it is also informal or experiential study.  They are literally walking through history.”

Lengthy study trips are highlights of the program.  One trip is a sea-to-sea, four-day hike, that takes students on a route between the Mediterranean and the Sea of Galilee.  Another trip is a week-long visit to Poland, conducted under the high school’s auspices.  Cost of the trips is covered in the basic tuition.

Founded in 1972 by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation and Rabbi Morris and Lenore Kipper, the non-denominational high school’s name was changed in 1983 after the Muss family became its principal donor.  In 2013, the high school was taken over by the Jewish National Fund, with which Rabbi Sinai previously had worked as a developmental officer.

Sinai, the son of a security chief and a consular officer in Israel’s Consulate General in New York, was raised in an Israeli-American home.  His parents decided to remain in the United States, and Sinai said he knew very little about Israel or the Jewish people until he participated in a study abroad program at the University of Haifa prior to graduating from Hunter College in New York City.  He was in Haifa in 1995, the year that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.  He said he can vividly recall how deeply his fellow students mourned Rabin’s assassination and how worried they were about Israel’s future.  Up to then, he said, he really never had worried about anything beyond having a good time, or earning money as the organizer of parties for his peer group. So, the depth of his fellow students’ emotions prompted him to wonder what it was, exactly, that he believed in.  His self-questioning led him to sign up for graduate courses at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, and eventually to enroll it JTS’s rabbinical program.

In 1999, while still attending JTS, Sinai became involved with the Jewish National Fund.  Its chief executive, Russell Robinson, hired him to serve as a fund raiser in the Long Island, New York area.  He was ordained in 2009, and two years later, with his wife who is an attorney, he made aliyah to Israel.  Following the 2013 merger with Jewish National Fund, Robinson called upon Sinai to handle marketing and outreach for the high school program.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com