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FEBRUARY 21, 2019 | The Jewish Home
Around the Community
HAFTR Joins Sharsheret & Celebrates Pink Day
SKA Pauses for Speech
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AFTR Middle School and High School students were excited to join Sharsheret on Wednesday, February 13, for their annual Pink Day to support breast cancer awareness. Many wonderful programs were planned to raise money for this important organization. In the Middle School, students were given the opportunity to rid their uniform for a day! For a $2 donation, students dressed in their Pink Day best! Thank you to Molly Klein and family for sponsoring a wonderful treat of pink donuts, in honor of Molly’s Aunt Lisa Altman, a”h. All proceeds from the donuts will go to Sharsheret. HAFTR also had their first Pink Day Challah Sale! HAFTR High School welcomed Mrs. Rebecca Cohen, Long Island Outreach Coordinator, to speak to grades 9-12 about Sharsheret. Mrs. Cohen showed a moving video of breast cancer survivors and described how Sharsheret has helped many people in the community. High school faculty and students dressed in pink
S to promote breast cancer awareness. Students helped to sell pink donuts and pink lemonade, as well as raffle tickets for prizes donated by Clementine, Kiss & MakeUp, Mike’s Burgers, Jus by Julie, and H2O. Special shirts from Make It were also sold to raise funds for this wonderful organization. Thank you to all the students who worked hard to decorate, and thanks to all for donating raffle prizes and the amazing shirts!
tudents at the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls had an extraordinary opportunity to enrich their lives by elevating their speech when the PAUSE – Pausing and Understanding Speech’s Effect – committee organized a special program on Tuesday, February 12. The SKA students were honored to hear from Mrs. Toba Shifrin, director of Camp Heller, who used humor to speak about the power of words and how she used them in an unconventional way to bargain with Hashem. Senior Miriam Bornstein noted that “Mrs. Shifrin also made a brilliant point about lashon hara in her talk. When we feel angry or sad, we don’t directly tell the people who hurt us; we go to the people whom we trust the most and tell them, making them the recipients of lashon hara and causing harm to them.”
To set the tone of the day, committee members placed signs around the building exhorting students to remember that Hashem created the world through words. Workshops on different aspects of proper speech and avoiding lashon hara were given afterwards to much acclaim. Girls were also encouraged to sign up for a Machsom L’fi, taking a time spot to consciously avoid speaking or hearing lashon hara. Thanks go to Mrs. Mezei and her committee heads – Gavi Goldsmith, Jackie Rubin, Chaviva Salzberg, Devora Schreier, and Talia Wein – for organizing this very important program. A follow up shiur on lashon hara and kibbud av v’em given by Rabbi Isaac Rice, head of the Torah She’baal Peh Department, was held on Thursday to summarize the main points of the program.
MTA Represents China at YUNMUN
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fter months of intense preparation, fifteen MTA talmidim participated in the Yeshiva University National Model United Nations, which was held on Sunday, February 10 through Tuesday, February 12. The conference, located at the Crowne Plaza in Stamford, CT, included 45 yeshiva high schools from all over the United States, Canada, Brazil, South Africa, and Great Britain. MTA represented China and team members participated in UN committees debating resolutions on topics ranging
from slave trade to international law to the status of the South China Sea. Many of MTA’s delegates were cited by their committees for their outstanding preparation and work. Rafi Saperstein (’20) was awarded a Best Delegate Honorable Mention for his work on the Disarmament and International Security Committee. In addition to learning about the UN and China, MTA’s team members gained valuable diplomacy and public speaking skills and also enjoyed making new friends from
other schools. The team had an incredible experience, which was greatly enhanced by the many op-
portunities they had to participate in optional shiurim and the ability to daven with a minyan each day.