Reporting by a student
Today, Yud Tes Kislev, is the culmination of a massive two week ‘hachana’ in Beis Chana, Tzfas junior and high schools. This hachana included extra learning of Chassidus and memorizing Tanya (five lucky winners won tickets for a trip to Haditch!).
Additionally, every single class was assigned sub-topics within Emunah, such as ‘Emunah and Science’, ‘Emunah in the Rebbe’, ‘Believing in Yourself’, ‘Emunah and Hashgacha Protis’ and more. Each class transformed their classroom into an activity center with decorations & lighting, videos, stories, games and flashcards teaching their sub-topic in a captivating and meaningful way to their peers.
Fellow students spent two days exploring each activity center and enhancing their own Emunah. Beis Chana dorm students enjoyed a parallel program with daily ‘Ice-coffee-ya’ (Iskafiya)—early morning Chassidus classes before davening, as well as filling in a scoreboard by accomplishing certain Chassidishe objectives.
The zenith of this hachana was a professionally performed production by the Beis Chana seniors with intermittent dances and choirs by the younger grades. The production also carried the theme of Emunah by telling the mesmerizing story of Rabbi Beryl and Chana Gurevitch.
The young Gurevitch couple had only been married a couple months during the Soviet regime – (Beryl served in the Russian army during WWII and remarkably survived physically and spiritually). The young couple hoped to escape, as many Lubatchers of the time, through a legal loophole allowing Polish refugees (or those with forged Polish passports, as was the typical case) to leave the USSR and return to Poland.
Chana had this coveted passport, but Beryl did not and was caught by the Soviet police, forcibly separated from his newlywed wife. Chana, obviously distraught, wandered with her fellow Lubavitchers through post-war Europe, eventually settling in Paris.
Now an agunah, Chana wanted to return to the USSR and discover her husband’s fate, but she consulted the Rebbe Rayatz before taking such a risk. The Rebbe answered her, “Better her husband should return to her, than she should return to him.”
Living with these words of faith daily, Chana refused to give up on her husband’s safe return and turned down any suggestion of despair or hints of eventual remarriage. After two and a half years of separation, Beryl was miraculously released by the Soviets and permitted to cross into Poland from where he was able to track down his awaiting wife.
B”H, the Gurevitch family grew to include 12 children and many generations to come. This moving and true story of Emunah entranced the packed audience of the performance hall. It was also broadcast live over the internet to parents living abroad on Shlichus; their daughters are part of the Beis Chana-Naale program from Bnos HaShluchim and receive free tuition to study in Tzfas.
Following this production, high school students attended farbrengens with guests speakers from 7:30PM till 1AM, getting up in the morning to spend yet another day – immersed in more farbrengens, workshops and chavrusas.
The highlight of the day was a questions and answers symposium whose panel members were not famous Rabbis, but selected girls from the student body, whose well thought out answers personalized the Alter Rebbe’s Chassidus in real and vivid ways that speak to teens of our time (can I tell you the principal was moved to tears by these special young role models?!).
Learn more at www.beitchana.org or email [email protected]
12th grade!!! keep up the great work
I spy Faigy E!
it was not the sem…it was the high school! there is a program in the high school for girls from around the world…it is called naale. it is not just israeli girls….many shluchim’s daughters go there for high school. check it out…its a great program….and much cheaper than alot of other high schools! they should go machayil el chayil