WINNIPEG — Winnipeg gave a warm welcome to six Israeli high school students and their teacher in late October.
From left in the back row are Danciger High School students Yuval Malul, Dorin Gold and Shani Friedman; from left in the front row are Revital Meiri, teacher, with students Meidan Yacobi, Shimon Moyal and Gavriel Zerach.
They visited for 10 days as part of the Partnership 2000/ Kesher Chai (Living Bridge) initiative.
“This is a nice, warm community,” said Revital Meiri, Danciger High School’s mass communications teacher. “We were made to feel at home here.”
The Danciger students visited the city as part of an annual student and teacher exchange program, going back 10 years, between the northern Israeli high school and the Gray Academy of Jewish Education. The exchange program is part of Partnership 2000, an initiative that links seven Canadian Jewish communities – not including Montreal and Toronto – with communities in northern Israel.
David Greaves, Combined Jewish Appeal’s assistant director, said the goal of the program is to increase capacity in northern Israel – through refurbishing or building community centres, for example – to help keep people, and especially youths, in the northern communities, rather than having them move to Tel Aviv or Haifa.
“Our focus is on youth and education, and youth at risk. We support summer camps and counselling programs, too.”
The Danciger High School students – Dorin Gold, Shani Friedman, Yuval Malul, Shimon Moyal, Meidan Yacobi and Gavriel Zerach – and their teacher arrived in Winnipeg on Oct. 26. The group led workshops for Gray Academy students – with a special emphasis on the Grade 3 classes – as well as students in the Hebrew bilingual program at Brock Corydon School.
They also led the Gray Academy’s annual memorial program for Yitzhak Rabin, the former prime minister of Israel who was assassinated 12 years ago. The memorial program took place on Oct. 29, in the Berney Theatre at the Asper Jewish Community Campus.
The program began with a video overview of Rabin’s life. The visiting students did readings, and Dorin sang a song in tribute to the slain prime minister.
In off hours, the students toured the legislature with cabinet minister Christine Melnick as their guide and met Winnipeg Premier Greg Selinger. They also visited the Forks, a 56-acre waterfront development in downtown Winnipeg, and the Museum of Man and Nature. On Shabbat, two of the group’s observant members went to the Herzlia Synagogue in south Winnipeg, while the others attended services at Congregation Etz Chayim in the north end.
The students stayed with local families. “Our students and the host family’s children all knew each other before we came,” Meiri said. “They have been communicating on Facebook.”
The Gray Academy sends a delegation of its students and teachers to the school in Israel in the spring, at a time that coincides with Memorial Day in Israel.
Meiri said that two of the Danciger students, Meidan and Shani, both of whom are in Grade 12, will join a group going to Poland to visit sites associated with the Holocaust shortly after they return to Israel.
“I think our visit to Winnipeg will give them the strength they need for that visit,” Meiri says. “That’s because we experienced a lot of love here. It is rare for Israelis to find in the world the kind of welcome we received in Winnipeg.”