This year, Model Seder will be celebrated on Monday, March 29th.

The lineup includes two works with a Japanese connection: “Inside Hana’s Suitcase,” which follows a Tokyo teacher and her class as they unravel a Holocaust victim’s life from the few clues left in her suitcase, and “A Matter of Size,” about Israeli sumo wrestlers. The festival will also feature a bit of humor from Catholic-turned-Jewish comedian Yisrael Campbell’s “Circumcise Me” and the romantic comedy “Beau Jest.”

Filmmaker Lynn Roth will be at tomorrow’s opening night to introduce her film “The Little Traitor,” starring Alfred Molina. The film won the 2008 Audience Award for best feature film at the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival. Roth will also lead a discussion following the film.

Rabbi Peter Schaktman of festival sponsor Temple Emanu-El will also lead a post-screening discussion after “The Lemon Tree,” which addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (This year, Temple Emanu-El celebrates its “50 Years on the Pali” anniversary.)

The synagogue created the film festival in honor of the late civil rights attorney Kirk Cashmere, who was also interested in sharing Jewish culture with the people of Hawaii.

Small Group Activity in the 4’s Program

Gan Yerushalayim provides children with high quality, systematic, research-based curricula. The Creative Curriculum® is used in all classrooms with the additional component of programs from The Complete Resource Book – An Early Childhood Curriculum, The Comprehensive Preschool Curriculum, and Torah Alive! An Early Childhood Torah Curriculum implemented in our Pre-Kindergarten classrooms. These curricula meet the Hawaii Preschool Content Standards and prepare children for future school success in Kindergarten and beyond. All of our classroom staff receives specialized training in these curricula to help ensure the successful implementation of both programs.

The Creative Curriculum for Infants and Toddlers® (used in our Toddler and Two-year-old classes) focuses on the importance of developing trusting relationships between the teachers, children, and families. With these relationships as the framework, teachers guide children through important daily routines and provide them with a variety of activities that supports their individual growth in four main developmental areas: social/emotional, physical, cognitive, and language.

Mr. “A” Leads the Purim Parade

The Creative Curriculum for Preschool® (the next stage of this curriculum for children in our Three-year-old and Pre-K classes) combines both teacher-directed and child-initiated learning. This curriculum provides clear direction for the teacher to address content in literacy, math, science, social studies, the arts, and technology, yet never loses sight of the primary importance of social/emotional development in children’s learning.

A main component of The Creative Curriculum® is the Developmental Continuum which shows the sequence of steps children take as they master skills in all areas of development. The teachers use this tool to complete a comprehensive assessment of each child’s development two times a year. The information about your child gained from this assessment will be shared with you during Parent Conferences which are formally held twice a year.

This curriculum also features an internet-based resource center which provides teachers with a variety of additional planning tools to help them design meaningful lesson plans for your child.

The Scholastic Early Childhood Program® is a comprehensive, year-long curriculum, with an emphasis on literacy development that is implemented in addition to The Creative Curriculum® in all of our Pre-Kindergarten classrooms. The curriculum areas covered in The Scholastic Early Childhood Program® are: language and early literacy, math, social studies, science, fine arts, physical development, health and safety, personal and social development, and technology. This curriculum allows children many opportunities to explore their own interests while also providing explicit teacher-directed instruction in early language, reading, and math skills. It also offers regular take-home activities for you and your child to enjoy together.

With the combination of these methods of teaching and learning, children leave the Gan Yerushalayim Pre-Kindergarten program prepared to enter Kindergarten ready to succeed.

Morning Circle in the 3’s Program

Gan Yerushalayim is open year-round from 7:00a.m. to 5:30p.m.  We offer a 12-month program honoring both the state and Jewish holiday calendars.  Children may enroll full time or in a half-day program.  We accept children from 2-5 years of age.  Children in diapers are welcome in the 2’s Program, and we work with children individually to master potty training on their own schedules.

A one-time fee of $50 is required to register.  First month’s tuition, a non-refundable $200 deposit (applicable toward the last month’s tuition) and a comprehensive fee will be due upon confirmation of space.

Spaces are limited, and priority is given to members of the Temple and siblings of current and former students. We are a very diverse school and all denominations are welcome. Families who are not Jewish participate fully in all school activities.

Thank you for your interest in the Honolulu Community Jewish Preschool – Gan Yerushalayim (Garden of Jerusalem). We invite you to schedule a tour of the school to assist you in making your decision. Please call the office at (808) 595-7451 for an appointment or contact via email.

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“As a result there are hundreds of families over the past 25 years who had never had any connection with anyone Jewish, who now have positive feelings about Jews and understand a bit more about our lives,” said Rabbi Avi Magid, who counts that as a legacy of his service.

Seeing Hawaii’s welcoming openness reflected in the preschool, which was deliberately named with “community” first, gives Magid particular satisfaction. So does the face of Temple Emanu-El itself, where a third of the congregation is interfaith families.

“Look at children in the Hebrew school. A majority come from interfaith families. Their faces don’t match faces in synagogues anywhere else.

“The involvement of interfaith couples and multiethnic couples was a great rarity when I first came in 1979,” said Magid. It is a direction that the Reform Judaism movement supports, and “we did it in a formalized way. It just became: That is what we are.”

It was a openness that the rabbi fostered “as a result of my own personal inclination. I grew up with the civil rights movement in North Carolina.”

That inclusive spirit has been developed in the state’s largest synagogue during Magid’s 20 years as rabbi. His service as spiritual leader there ended quietly six months ago when Magid, 57, took medical leave. He retired in May.

“The time came when I reached down for more energy and it wasn’t there,” said Magid in a recent interview. Besides serving the congregation, he was tapped to stand in for the Jewish military chaplain who was deployed to Iraq, and was on call to Jewish visitors as well.

He is taking medical advice to take care of himself but doesn’t rule out future involvement in the community: “I’m healing, trying to figure out what I want to do. I kind of want to hang out with myself for now. I’m considering a variety of things; I’d like to be able to give back to the community, as they say.”

Magid and his wife, Shayna, live in Kaneohe. Their daughter is a high school sophomore.

After his first 10 years, the rabbi left to take a six-year appointment with a New York synagogue, and returned in 1995. Both times when he was called to Hawaii, he found a congregation split with dissension over internal issues. “One of my strengths, which I didn’t know was a strength, was to act as a communitywide healer, a firefighter. Not that I set myself up to do that; it is interesting that it has fallen to my lot.”

Temple Emanu-El evolved from a Jewish Community Center that was established just before World War II. Since then, Hawaii’s Jewish community has divided according to standards of religious observance. The Nuuanu synagogue is Reform but also holds traditional Jewish services. Congregation Sof Ma’arav is a Conservative group, and Chabad of Hawaii is Orthodox. There are other smaller congregations on Oahu and the neighbor islands.

“One way this congregation is unlike others is that it has no roots. There are very few third- and fourth-generation members of the synagogue,” Magid said. “Consequently, passing on of leadership from one generation to the next is very difficult.

“The good thing about not having roots: There are very few people around telling you, ‘No, you can’t do that, we’ve never done that before.’” That opened the way for “an incredible number of changes,” implemented during his tenure. “The congregation was very creative in different kinds of ways.”

The worship services was changed from English language with hired choir and organ to “a lot of chanting, guitar music; the people participated a lot. The styles changed dramatically. It is a very different kind of worship service — I don’t want to say better or worse, just different.”

The role of rabbi is a teaching and storytelling one. He conducted “Introduction to Judaism” classes to prepare mixed-faith couples for marriage, taught youngsters in the School of Jewish Studies and adult education courses on a variety of subjects.

Magid expects to turn to writing in his retirement, possibly to undertake a history of Jewish people in Hawaii, to compile the series of tales he’s told the children about his great-grandfather, and to explore similarities between Jews and Hawaiians. “There are many similarities in Hawaiian words, Hawaiian concepts and customs. In the Bible the high priest who ministers and does the sacrifices is a public health officer, a counselor to the people. He is called the ‘kohen,’ and that’s where you get names like Cowan and Corbett. It is the exact same thing as the kahuna; you have kohens and kahunas.

“The term hanai means to give a child for someone else to raise. There is a story in the Bible about that, too, about Hannah, the exact same thing. It’s pretty astonishing — and I have lots more.”

Magid lived in Israel for a year in 1970-71 during his rabbinical study and has returned 13 times.

“I’d go now if I had the opportunity,” he said. “I have never had any sense of fear, although I am not foolhardy. It really does touch my soul; it is something extraordinary. You know you are in the midst of history while you’re there. I always wanted to take an interfaith group to Israel.”

It was on a visit to Israel that he decided to drop the first name his parents gave him.

“The passport lady said, ‘What is your last name?’ I said, ‘May-gid.’ She said, ‘Oh, “Mah-geed,”‘ a very good Hebrew name. It’s an itinerant preacher, a Jewish Billy Graham.”

When he told her his first name, Arnold, she asked instead for his Hebrew name, which is Avram. “She said Avi Magid, welcome to Israel. All of a sudden, I realized that’s who I am.”

Honolulu Star Bulletin, View from the Pew by Mary Adamski. September 10, 2005

Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle receives a briefing from Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski on the balcony of his office on May 18

WASHINGTON, June 9 (JTA) — The governor of Hawaii noticed something familiar when she stepped onto Israeli soil for the first time last month. “We’re both isolated,” said Linda Lingle, the Jewish Republican governor of the Aloha State. “We’re isolated by water; they’re isolated by unfriendly neighbors.” Beyond that similarity, both states have economies that are highly dependent on tourism and have been working in recent years to move into technology. Those are some of the reasons Lingle jumped at the opportunity to visit Israel, where she promoted an agricultural cooperative agreement between Hawaii and the Jewish state. She also met with senior political leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and got a taste of the political and economic climate in Israel. In a telephone interview last week, Lingle said she gained a better understanding of the need for Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and erect a security barrier in the West Bank. She said one of the things she really didn’t understand about Israel before the trip was that so much of the land in the country is government-owned. Also, she anticipated kibbutz life to be more widespread. Lingle was born in St. Louis and raised in Southern California before moving to Hawaii after graduating college. Her visit in May took her to the Negev Desert, where she discussed higher education issues with the president of Ben-Gurion University, as well as to a Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, where she learned how victims of terrorism are treated. Lingle said she found Israelis very supportive of the role the Bush administration has been playing in the Middle East. “I think they value very much America’s friendship and want it to continue,” she said. As one of few prominent Jewish Republicans, Lingle says she hopes to play a role in garnering Jewish support for President Bush’s re-election in November. Lingle already has touted Bush to Jewish audiences in Los Angeles. She says she hopes to do it more. Republican officials are hoping the same of her, but there may be logistical problems given that Lingle is two time zones away from Los Angeles. Facing a re-election battle in 2006 in a largely Democratic state, Jewish Republicans said she ought to reach out to the larger Jewish community this election year to help gain financial strength for her own battle ahead. As for November 2004, Lingle said it’s important for Jewish voters to know that Bush does not make Middle East-related decisions based on the views of European leaders or domestic public opinion polls. “The shift over to President Bush is related to his strong support for the State of Israel,” she said.