By Natan Manevic, a 9th grade student in the ORT Rogozin High School writes about a joint project involving students from Migdal HaEmek and Detroit Jewish Academy students.

One day, Rachel Gadot, our literature teacher, suggested that we participate in a joint curriculum with Jewish students in Detroit, reading the same book about the Shoa and sharing, in letters and e-mail, our thoughts about the book and the subjects discussed in class. We liked the idea and readily agreed. With time, we learnt that this was not in vain.

We met once a week for an English study workshop. The class was divided into groups to discuss the project, write letters and read letters that were sent to us. We mostly worked as a group, each group sending the letters written by group members as one file and each group receiving a file that contained the letters sent by its counterpart group in Detroit.

Our first joint activity with Detroit were letters of introduction - each side writing in the native language of those who will read the letter, telling the others about herself/himself. Everyone spent a lot of time in composing the introductory letters. The students wrote the letters and our English teachers helped us correct mistakes. With the help of our English teachers, each student was able to write a letter regardless of his/her knowledge of English.

The Americans preceded us and sent their letters first. There were some grammar mistakes but that wasn't a problem, we were able to read and understand their letters. They even sent photographs. We were very excited and wrote back, telling them about us and attaching photographs of ourselves.

Once the round of introductory letters was completed, we moved to the main focus of the Project. Each class read the book "Tonight" in which Eli Weisel describes his experience during the Shoa and how he managed to survive. We were very touched and fascinated by the book. We discussed the book during numerous lessons and shared our thoughts with our friends in Detroit.

At some point, a delegation from the Central Galilee was scheduled to visit Michigan and we decided to surprise our friends with a gift. We bought good quality pens and engraved an inscription - "9th graders, Rogozin, Migdal HaEmek". They were indeed surprised and thanked us.

The next joint activity focused on "Jerusalem Day". Two days later, we met and sent letters sharing our thoughts about Jerusalem Day, its significance and how we had celebrated it - the ceremony we attended and the trip we took to Jerusalem. We wrote about our conflict with the Palestinians and at the end of each letter we asked the Americans a question which we wanted to have answered. The questions were mainly concerned with Israel's public image in the States and how they had celebrated "Jerusalem Day".

A week later we received their answers. The letters, which were written in Hebrew, were also about "Jerusalem Day". They told us that they had also attended a ceremony and wrote about Israel's public image in the States.

According to them, Israel's public image is "complex". That is, the American media usually attacks Israel and not the Palestinians. But they say that they know that not all is true and some of them get information about events in Israel from their relatives who live in Israel. They were very interested to hear what it is like to live in Israel with all the security problems and how we feel about slanderous reporting in the international media. We hastened to reply that life in Israel is very different from what they see on television.

At the end of the year, we organized a ceremony to mark the conclusion of the Project. The school principal and a representative from the Ghetto Fighters' Museum attended the ceremony. During the ceremony we displayed the final project we had prepared - a file in which we had collected all the materials. We received a gift from our friends in Detroit - a Jewish Academic key chain. This event concluded our activity in this interesting Project that contributed extensively to familiarize us with new people from another country and helped us communicate with them. We truly hope to continue our involvement in the Project next year.

Studying the same subject and hearing the opinions of those that live far away and come from another culture is very interesting. Furthermore, we have found new friends and hope that this will be the beginning of a process and that some day, in the future, we can meet them face to face.

  Tevet 5762 - January 2002