Getting to God: Religious Identity Explores Prayer

This past week, on Wednesday, November 28, RealSchool's Religious Identity team began the first of a series of discussions about building a relationship with God. The year-long discussions series will be moderated by students and will explore different ways of grasping God. The first discussion, which was moderated by Akiva Mattenson, Penina Warburg and Solomon Wiener, was about Tanakh attitudes towards prayer. The moderators found different verses from Torah, Prophets and Writings and used them as jumping off points for students to explore various ways Tanakh approaches prayer.

The approximately fifteen students who took part in the discussion spent part of the time analyzing three verbs the Torah uses that might shed light on what is meant by prayer:

The above whiteboard notes illustrate some of the key points of the discourse: 

Is prayer . . . 

1) an encounter? If it is an encounter, does it happen by accident, fate, or does one prepare for it?

2) a two-way conversation?

3) a moment to stand and allow the worshiper to express his thoughts?

An interesting debate that emerged from the discussion is whether prayer IS an encounter with God OR prepares us to HAVE an encounter with Him.

Here is one student's thoughts from the evening:

When talking about prayer, one is faced with the question of whether it is an encounter, a conversation or an active stand with or towards God. An encounter is when one happens upon someone else. This is a very casual and passive way to think of prayer. A conversation is when two people talk to one another. This is a two-way street. God and the person praying must actively talk back and forth. An active stand is when one moves and it takes effort for one to pray. I think prayer is a conversation, because as Yaakov [Jacob] said [loose paraphrase here of Genesis 28:20], "If God does stuff for me, I will do stuff for God." -- Sammy ('15)

And here's a timely blog post by Eddie Maza reminding us why talking about prayer is so important:

My Soapbox by Eddie Maza

Computers in Class

Here are the top eleven activities students are using their computers for in class (And guess what? Taking notes didn't make it onto the list!)


11. Fantasy football
10. Looking up ESPN/NFL/NBA scores
9. Games
8. Facebook/Twitter
7. Shopping
6. E-Mail
5. Ichat/messaging
4. Movies with subtitles
3. Other school work
2. Youtube

And the number one answer -- because it utilizes two technologies! -- is

1. Hiding a phone behind the computer to text

Occupy Standardized Testing!

A RealSchool-like project in AP English Language has Oriel, a junior at The Frisch School, researching standardized testing. The impetus for the research topic was Oriel's SAT prep; Oriel says the test has nothing to do with real life or any skills he may or may not have. Here are Oriel's preliminary thoughts on standardized testing:

In recent years, standardized testing has moved to the forefront of discussions concerning the American educational system.  While standardized testing does have its merits, it is criticized by many experts to be an ineffective and unfair way of determining the breadth of a student’s knowledge.   Standardized testing, dating back to the 1920’s, has been the most efficient way for colleges and other groups to objectively rank students based on their knowledge, allowing colleges to sift through hundreds of college applications at the blink of an eye in order to focus primarily on those with the higher test scores.  While standardized testing is an efficient way of categorizing students and processing college applications, standardized testing is very limited in scope: it can only determine a given student’s knowledge in specific areas (and even this it cannot truly do).  Standardized testing steals students’ identities and replaces them with scores.  Standardized testing does not measure a student’s creativity, imagination, and thoughtfulness; on the contrary, these values, which are essential to life in “the real world,” are being destroyed by standardized testing.  Standardized testing believes that there is only one right answer to a given problem – creativity has no place in the realm of standardized testing.  Although standardized testing achieves much in terms of efficiency in evaluating students, its flaws outweigh the good it effects.  Standardized testing has been a way to evaluate student performance over the past 90 years, but a change in the system is clearly necessary.

Like Occupy Standardized Testing on Facebook:

Occupy Standardized Testing Facebook page

What's New in Religious Identity and The Arts

The Religious Identity team has decided on a topic for a series of discussions it wants to have this year about Judaism. The topic is -- drumroll, please! -- Relationship with God, and members of the Religious Identity team will moderate discussions about different approaches Judaism takes to building a relationship with the Creator. Those different approaches include:

* Prayer
* Philosophy
* The Torah
* The Halakha, the Jewish legal system

The first discussion will take place on November 28, 2012 and will be on Prayer!

Meanwhile, as usual, The Arts is supporting Religious Identity's endeavors. The team is going to the Jewish Museum this Sunday, November 18, to see an exhibit on Hebrew illuminated manuscripts from the Bodleian Library collection. That exhibit will kick off a year-long study of Hebrew illuminated manuscripts that will result in an exhibit at RealSchool's Second Annual Yom Iyun, Day of Learning,which we call Sikhot b'Emunah, Discussions in Faith.

While the Religious Identity team will get you ready for the Festival of Lights by enlightening you about Prayer, The Arts team is using the following lecture on Chanukah by Menachem Leibtag as a jumping off point for an exhibit that will hopefully enhance your holiday:

Lecture on Chanukah by Rabbi Menachem Leibtag

Even More 5 1/2 Entrepreneurship Facts

David Solomon has this round of 5 1/2 facts from RS: Social Entrepreneurship:

Columbus Circle from Time Warner Center

1. The company Applied Immune Technologies is trying to create antibodies that will kill malignant cells.

2. The startup companies only need a couple of million dollars at most to start their companies.

3. USIBC [US-Israel Business Council] started the WE Summit to give six brilliant Israeli female entrepreneurs the chance to raise start-up funds their companies.

4. BrandsForce is an innovative social media marketing platform. Here people can recruit customers to support their brands.

5. Watching the networking before the program gave me a better understanding of what it takes to make connections and get customers. Everyone was talking to each other about their respective businesses.

5 1/2. The Time Warner building was really cool because it was very technologically advanced and ornamented with interesting flashing light figures that stood out to me.

5 1/2 More Entrepreneurship Facts

Here are Yisroel Quint's 5 1/2 facts from the Women Entrepreneur's Summit on Monday, October 22, 2012:

Five and a half things I learned were:

1. "Orville Wright didn't have a flying license": You don't need to be an expert to have a genius idea.

2. You need to be able to sell your product just as much as you can create the product.

3. "There's nothing new under the sun": Most of the ideas presented at the conference had lots of competition and weren't anything revolutionary, but small innovation makes them worthwhile.

4. It's important to acknowledge an imperfect idea and be able to take constructive criticism because only having "yes men" around you will cause stagnancy.

5. Money will be lost before it's gained. Most of the people, when presenting, showed losses for the first couple of years.

5.5. You don't want to present last at a long conference because most people will be itching to get out of the door.

Yisroel Quint

Social Entrepreneurship goes to the WE Summit!

The Time Warner Building

RealSchool: Social Entrepreneurship got off to a great start this past week, on Monday, October 22, when three members of RS, Eddie Maza, Yisroel Quint and David Solomon, attended a Women's Entrepreneurship Conference that David's father Eddie Solomon invited them to join. The summit, which took place in NYC at the Time Warner Center, was run by the U.S-Israel Business Council and featured presentations from six promising female-led start-ups. The conference also linked investors and executives, giving them the chance to explore investment opportunities and learn about the latest trends dominating the industry.

Here's some information about the summit:

USI Women Entrepreneurship Summit

We asked Eddie, Yis and David to send us 5 1/2 facts they learned from the summit. We'll go in alphabetical order and share those facts with you throughout the day:

Eddie Maza:

1) For the past ten years, there has been no increase in the number of start-ups founded by women (still 5%) [Ed. note: And the three members of RS who attended the women's conference were all male!].

2) It is very important to be able to show how your product/service is unique.

3) It is important to identify a specific niche in which your product will be bought.

4) Investors are not interested in the actual product, only the business plan. When presenting your idea, focus on the business plan. Investors only want to know they'll make money!

5) A main goal of many start-up companies is to be bought by a larger company. The business world will applaud you if you manage that!

1/2 fact: The view from the tenth-floor cafe of the Time Warner building is fantastic!