Volume 30 Issue 6

the

lion’s tale

Special spring break issue

charles e. smith jewish day school • 11710 hunters lane, rockville, maryland friday, march 22, 2013 • vol. 30 issue 6

North Korean defector: fight for human rights

photo by Daniel Brandsdorfer

photo provided

by Robert Couse-Baker via Creative

What is good music?

Seder traditions

The other kind of bullying

An unending distraction photo provided by Seth Anderson via Creative Commons

photo by Jonathan Reem

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• the lion’s tale • opinion the

lion’s tale

print editors

editors-in-chief •

ari charnoff, dore feith managing •

stu krantz copy •

aaron boxerman, dina rabinovitz

design •

jeremy etelson, jonathan reem news •

malka himelhoch, nina simpkins

NEWS

03 North Korean visits

CHADASHOT

05

Quirks at the seder

FEATURES

04 Cyberbullying

ENTERTAINMENT

06

Music trends

Flipping the way we learn Flipping

chadashot •

matthew foldi, shira ungar

features •

alison kraner, yael krifcher entertainment •

eitan snyder, hannah wexler in depth •

maddie dworkin, haley lerner

sports •

brian schonfeld, jesse zweben

graphic •

r’ay fodor photo •

david kulp social media •

yosi vogel

business •

alec schrager, allie wiener

web editors editors-in-chief •

alexander flum, jeremy kaplan

copy •

cole aronson, jonathan orbach section editors •

evan kravitz, matt litman & adina pollak

senior reporters kobi fodor • matt halpern gefen kabik • danny waksman

reporters mijal altmann • robbie belson michael berkowitz • cole cooper isaac dubrawsky • emma hofman sj hyman • yonah hyman hannah nechin • gaby pilarski steven reichel • uri schwartz jonah shrock • carol silber

photographers samantha berman • daniel brandsdorfer noa dahan • hadas elazar-mittelman hannah josovitz • talya kravitz joshua lempert • jonathan silverman

staff adviser claire burke

adviser emerita susan zuckerman The Lion’s Tale Editorial and Ethics Policy As the student newspaper of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, The Lion’s Tale is a forum for student opinion and expression. All content is determined by students. Its purpose is to inform the CESJDS community and to express the views of its staff and readers. The staff has made every effort to ensure the accuracy and objectivity of its news.

Signed columns reflect the opinion of the writer; staff editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of The Lion’s Tale editorial board. The Lion’s Tale staff welcomes letters to the editor and guest columns, all of which must be signed.

The staff reserves the right to refuse any material and may edit letters or columns for length, clarity, libel, obscenity and/or disruptiveness.

Submissions may be emailed to jdslionstale@gmail.com, mailed to The Lion’s Tale, or brought to room 328.

The Lion’s Tale is funded by The Simon Hirshman Endowment for the Upper School Newspaper and The Kuttner-Levenson Endowment for the Upper School Cultural Arts and Student Publications, and community advertisement.

The Lion’s Tale reserves the right to refuse advertisement for any reason.

The staff will adhere to the ethics policies of The Society of Professional Journalists and the National Scholastic Press Association. The adviser will be held to the Journalism Education Association’s Adviser Code of Ethics.

Math teacher Reuben Silberman spends a lot of time lecturing his ninth grade Advanced Geometry class; he just does it through pre-recorded videos. Silberman is experimenting with a teaching method called “flipped classroom,” in which students watch videos and do other preparatory work, like reading, at home, and then solve problems or discuss the material they studied during class.

A flipped classroom has a number of advantages that make it worth all teachers’ consideration for at least some of their lessons. Most, if not all, English classes are already taught in a flipped classroom.

Students are assigned to read a chapter in a book, a poem, or an essay, and then the teacher facilitates a discussion in class. If flipped classroom learning were awful — or even not as good as the regular style of teaching — it is unlikely that the English department would have used it for so long. Another advantage to a flipped classroom approach is that it allows teachers to be with their students for what is often the most difficult part of a lesson: its application. Many clarification questions asked in class are the result of students not paying close attention and not of a teacher’s poor instruction. With distractions largely eliminated — a student can just go somewhere quiet in his house to watch a video or read a poem — and with the ability to rewatch a video or re-read a chapter,

student comprehension of lessons would likely increase. A resulting advantage is that a teacher will be present to help students when their needs are most individualized and most likely to result from lack of understanding rather than distraction. This would be during the actual solving of problems or the analysis of a text.

Every student has had a night when he has gone home, opened his algebra book to a word problem, and not known where to begin. With flipped classroom, no more — or at least, not as often — since teachers will be present while their students apply the lesson.

The flipped classroom method is not perfect. If a student does not comprehend the initial lesson, the class time spent on application will largely be wasted. But that is also a problem with the methods most

Our peace has not yet come As we sit down on the 14th of Nissan to commemorate events in Egypt on that day 3,500 years ago, by dore feith let’s consider editor-in-chief also what happened in Egypt just 34 years ago. The ancient Israelites had left Egypt and hoped to reach the Promised Land, which flowed with milk and honey. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat left Egypt in 1977 for Jerusalem to end the war with Israel — and to create a peace in which large amounts of U.S. aid for Egypt would flow.

On March 22, 1979, a year and a half after Sadat’s daring trip (which eventually cost him his

life), the Knesset approved Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt.

At the White House signing ceremony four days later, U.S. President Jimmy Carter declared, “Peace has come.” This was understandably hopeful, but premature and overstated. A peace treaty is a piece of paper.

It may contribute to peace, but it is not the very thing. Peace has a lot to do with what is in a people’s hearts and that does not necessarily change much, if at all, simply because a political leader, especially when he’s a dictator, signs a treaty.

In that previous Israelite interaction with the Egyptians, our ancestors achieved, for a moment, what looked like a peace after victory. They crossed the parted sea to freedom, with the Egyptian army drowned be-

hind them. Miriam sang and the angels rejoiced. The Israelites may have believed they would never again have to deal with such threats and fears. But, the 40-year road to Eretz Yisrael was full of war and adversity.

Modern-day Israel yearns for peace. The treaty with Egypt helped produce a kind of peace, though it was cold and the Egyptian people generally remained hostile and anti-Semitic. Now, with a new government in Cairo, the treaty itself is threatened and there are sporadic flare-ups of violence on the Israel-Egypt border.

Praying for peace is a mitzvah. As Jews work to achieve peace, our history warns us to do so realistically and, notwithstanding Passover’s four cups of wine, soberly.

For more tales from the lion’s den, visit:

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teachers use today and is largely unavoidable without constant student access to teachers.

The flipped classroom method of teaching is potentially adaptable to any subject, and The Lion’s Tale would like to encourage all teachers to consider it when planning future lessons. The Lion’s Tale would also like to encourage all students who have a fear of the flipped method to try it, and for all students who have difficulty with the current method to encourage their teachers to do the same. The worst thing that could happen is that we discover that “flipped classrooms” are not as innovative as we thought, and that what we were doing all along was in fact better for the majority of students.

How to write a letter to the editor 1. Think of something to share with the JDS community. It can be a comment, concern, congratulation or any other opinion about something you are passionate about.

2. Using your computer, compose a 200-350 word letter.

3. Email the letter to LTE@lionstale. org.

4. Be joyous, because your letter may be published in The Lion’s Tale or on lionstale.org!

news • the lion’s tale •

Shedding light on North Korean North Korea defector discusses

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escape from dark past

by stu krantz

managing editor

This satellite image displays the Korean Peninsula at night. In North Korea, only the capital, Pyongyang, has stable electricity. Most small towns in North Korea only have enough light to illuminate statues of the ruling Kim family. On the other side of the demilitarized zone, South Korea’s prosperity is evident with heavy light concentration across the whole country.

photo courtesy of NASA

As Passover neared and Jews around the world prepared to celebrate the escape of b’nai yisrael from oppression and slavery in Egypt, high school students and faculty had the privilege of hearing from Evan Kim, a Virginia high school senior and North Korean defector. In addition to studying at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Kim helps fellow North Koreans to one day rid themselves of their totalitarian government.

Kim, who now interns for the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, vividly described the culture of fear built and cultivated by Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and, most recently, Kim Jong-un, the three Communist dictators of North Korea who have been in power since Kim Il-sung declared statehood in 1948.

Kim began his speech by saying, “It’s a well known fact that North Korea is the most oppressive country in the world, allowing citizens no freedom at all. People are going through so many hardships and human rights violations.” He added, “my duty as defector is to spread knowledge and spread awareness.”

For students, some of the most shocking details of Kim’s speech were his stories of North Korea’s concentration camps, which survivors have likened to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp.

“What was most meaningful was that the speaker wasn’t just an advocate for the people of North Korea, but [he] was actually someone from North Korea [who] has experienced what it’s been like living there,” sophomore Talia Gasko said. “You don’t get to meet someone like that a lot.”

Kim, an author and painter — he released a book titled “Three Names” in 2012 and has exhibited paintings depicting life in North Korea — lived in North Korea until age nine, after which he lived in Singapore for a year and South Korea for six before coming to the U.S. His most intense memories of North Korea are from his year in kindergarten.

“Kindergarten had a strong focus

on music and I learned to play a lot of different instruments,” Kim said. “All the songs I learned to play were Kim Jong-il [and] Kim Il-sung worship songs. It was natural to play those songs when I had instrument in front of me. I didn’t know of the existence of any other songs. This is how North Korean children are exposed to being brainwashed by the regime.”

As at many North Korean schools, Kim’s kindergarten had a room devoted to moral teachings, which according to Kim were “solely based on the morals of the [ruling] Kim family.”

“There was an array of statues and posters about the description of supernatural events that took place when Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung were born,” Kim said. “When I entered, I couldn’t breathe comfortably because I was afraid my breath would cause dust in the air to sit on one of the portraits.”

Worship of the leaders permeated Kim’s life outside of school as well.

“I believed everything that they taught me,” Kim explained to the audience. “I was grateful to the Kim family when I found happiness. If I [heard] great news, I went to the Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung portraits to show my respect and gratitude.”

Although he is now horrified at the propaganda in North Korea, Kim says that at the time he was too young to realize what was being done to him and his friends.

“I was waiting to go serve in the military and fight against the U.S. and that’s how perception is formed and how North Koreans are brainwashed,” Kim said. “Other than the U.S. being my enemy, I didn’t know anything about any other countries in the world and the U.S. or South Korea.”

Now the situation is reversed — Kim fights against the North Korean regime in order to guarantee its citizens the same fundamental rights that are protected in America.

“The fastest way to stop human rights violations in North Korea is to have people talk about it,” Kim said. “It needs attention.”

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• the lion’s tale • features

bullied. by malka himelhoch news editor

Cyberbullying lives in your pocket: hidden unless you look for it, but easy to find as soon as you do.

Though rarely discussed, cyberbullying lurks on tilted screens and covered phones, exposed with one click of a button. “[Computers] make it easier for people to [bully],” said one cyberbullying victim, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of further bullying. “I still don’t know who it was [that bullied me] so it’s kind of scary looking around and thinking it could be anyone.”

Cyberbullies have the ability to be anonymous, giving them the freedom to make comments they would never voice in person.

“Bullies can hide behind screens and often times that lets them say things that they would never say to people’s faces,” Dean of Students Roslyn Landy said.

Cyberbullying can often begin as a harmless joke. But over the Internet, sarcastic and nuanced phrases are easily misinterpreted.

“People aren’t always on the same page, and ... over text and the Internet that’s intensified,” junior Ilan Goldstein said. “There are so many miscommunications over technology that it’s hard to tell what people are thinking.”

The ambiguous nature of the Internet allows potentially hurtful comments to have more impact than may have been intended.

“When you say something hurtful, you don’t know how the recipient is going to take it or whether the recipient is having a tough time in school or in their lives,” Landy said.

This uncertainty makes it difficult to judge what comments might push someone over the edge.

“If you’re thinking of saying it as a joke, don’t say it at all,” eighth-grader Mory Gould said.

“Don’t say ‘no offense, but you do

this’ or something like that, or don’t wait until the last moment to say that you’re kidding … so [you] don’t give them that scare.”

Fortunately, these issues have not yet produced a prominent case of cyberbullying in the school community. “[Our school] fosters a caring community,” freshman Yonatan Greenberg said. “I think that they try to make sure that everyone cares for each other and cares for their feelings.”

Landy’s goal is for students to carry these values with them even when they leave the school building.

“We want students in our school [to] understand how to be kind and how to be respectful all the time, “ she said.

Students do not always live up to Landy’s expectations when away from the eyes of the staff. Even so, she still feels a responsibility for dealing with incidents that occur outside of school.

“A student always has to come forward,” Landy said.” It doesn’t have to be the victim, but someone has to come forward to be able to act. Whenever anyone brings us any evidence of cyberbullying we always follow up because we are a community 24/7.”

The existence of a school community even when school is out makes it even more important for students and faculty to look out for one another. “[Cyberbullying] is a new way for kids to be hurtful and step over the line,” Landy said. “Any kind of bullying affects us as a community because it makes kids feel unwelcome. It changes us as a community.”

Typing taunts instead of

throwing

High school and middle school Kehillahs will be holding discussions about bullying and cyberbullying after spring break. Check lionstale.org in early April for an article covering these sessions.

chadashot • the lion’s tale •

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Diversity at the Passover seder

Props and food not normally found at the table by shira ungar chadashot editor

The Passover seder has been an important part of Jewish tradition for hundreds of years.

The customs of the seder have changed, just as Judaism has. Because of

CESJDS’s diverse Jewish community, there is no shortage of creative seder traditions practiced by its students.

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A less common Passover custom is the placement of an orange on the seder plate. This tradition was started by Susannah Heschel, daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

While speaking at a university, Susannah Heschel heard that some students had started placing crusts of bread on their seder plates to express the exclusion of women and LGBTQ individuals from Judaism. Realizing the value of the idea, Heschel modified the act to fit Passover dietary restrictions. Heschel decided to place an orange on her seder plate. At her seder,

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everyone had a piece of the orange and spit out the seeds which represented homophobia.

Since then, as families have begun to adopt this tradition of recognizing both the LGBTQ community and women’s rights, the orange has spread throughout the Jewish community.

Sophomore Eli Seemann’s family is one these families.

“My little cousin brought [an orange] to us one day and we decided it seemed like without this [tradition] women’s rights would not have gone to the length that they have gone today without symbols of equality like this,” Seemann said.

or

d Fo ’ay

One of the main purposes of the Passover seder is to tell the story of the Exodus to the next generation.

Many families choose to use props to aid in the storytelling.

Plastic frogs and other animals are often used to add to the entertainment.

“I remember putting little plastic animals in the chandelier above my dining room table,” freshman Miles Waldman said. “It was pretty awesome.”

The use of pingpong balls and other props helped explain the story better to students when they were younger.

“We would buy pingpong balls and little toy frogs and throw them all over the house with the kids,” freshman Adam Landa said.

“It gets pretty scary when everyone throws pingpong balls [to symbolize] hail,” sophomore Maya Bornstein said.

For many students, the story of Elijah is an integral part of their annual family seder. This iconic figure of Jewish history is represented at many traditional seders by a single glass of wine or an empty place setting at the table.

However, some families have a different way of honoring Elijah.

“My aunt dresses up as Elijah and greets the guests,” sophomore Noa Zarka said.

Zarka remembers her aunt dressing up and acting as Elijah at the seder. She

has realized that it is the little silly things that make Passover seders memorable and fun for the entire family.

In order to stay awake during the long evening seder, young children use special haggadot for entertainment.

“My family has all the younger kids read from haggadot that they made in school,” junior Joshua Bloch said. “These haggadot are not traditional haggadot. They drew pictures [in them and] wrote stories.”

Sophomore Sanam Zadeh is one of many Sephardic Persians at JDS whose seder traditions are less familiar to the JDS community.

“Because I am Sephardic I get to have rice and corn and a bunch of other stuff because it is our tradition,” Zadeh said.

While the consumption of grain-based products is not seen often at an Ashkenazic Passover seder, there are

a few other unique Sephardic Passover traditions.

“During Dayenu we hit each other with the green onions,” Zadeh said.

This tradition, going back hundreds of years, is practiced to symbolize the oppression of Jewish slaves in Egypt. It is done during Dayenu, a Hebrew song about miracles, to remind participants that it was through a miracle that they were redeemed.

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• the lion’s tale • entertainment

When listening to One Direction telling you what makes you beautiful, Macklemore popping some tags or Britney Spears wanting to scream and shout, we think about how much we like the songs. But we rarely give any thought as to why.

What do you like in a song?

“Often times you have these lyrics that are all about getting drunk or going out and partying and that’s not meaningful to me.”

-junior Natalie Mark

“When it’s easy for people to remember.”

-freshman Tuval Nimni “I don’t like inconsistent rhythm.”

-eighth-grader Aaron Robinson

“If people sing it in the shower.”

-freshman Brett Halpern

“If people can relate to it.”

-freshman Alexandra Wolff

“If it’s over-played and whiny.”

-sophomore Maxine Elovitz

“If the music is interesting, it is melodic, and I remember the words and can sing along to them.”

-junior Julianna Nechin

Read about and watch past Kabbalat Shabbat musical performances by scanning this QR code or by going online at lionstale.org.

The next episode will begin in 30 seconds Netflix presents our minds with countless distractions, but it is our responsibility to turn away

by hannah wexler entertainment editor

The credits come on, the show ends, and the Netflix screen reappears.

Netflix tells me that the next episode will begin in 30 seconds. Without my even having to move a finger, the next episode begins to play.

Netflix, a website that provides television shows and movies to subscribed viewers, sits at my fingertips just waiting to be used. During the school week, it is often difficult to control the desire to lie in bed and watch hours upon hours of your favorite television show without giving a thought to homework.

For me, Netflix is a way to relax and rest my mind after the hard day of work at school. Every day when I come home, the first thing that pops into my head is “now I get to watch ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’”

I sit down at my desk, log into my Netflix account and click on the play button. With a single click, Netflix will automatically play hours of “Grey’s Anatomy.” I do all of this thinking that I am only going to watch for the next 30 minutes.

As I watch the show, I keep an eye on the clock. However, instead

of stopping myself after 30 minutes, I continue watching for 35 minutes, then 40, and before I know it, I have watched an entire episode.

This new feature that Netflix has adopted to automatically begin the next episode of the show without even having to click start is where my procrastination causes a problem for me. This tool causes the weak-willed watchers like myself to not even have an opportunity to exit out of the page before the next episode begins.

Even though this new feature causes much distraction and procras-

tination, it teaches a valuable lesson in self-discipline. Once you have made the mistake of spending hours watching television or searching a movie and then realizing you still have a lot of work is an overwhelming and unpleasant feeling. It is important to remember that school should come first, so it is important to pace yourself and enjoy every episode as much as possible.

Netflix does a lot to keep us watching, but it is our responsibility to resist the temptation.

advertisement • the lion’s tale •

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sports • the lion’s tale •

MARCH MADNESS by alexander flum web editor-in-chief

easily as he had in the past.

“What I enjoy most is that they play a lot of day games,” Weinberger said, “so you can walk around school with the TV on and be in the alcove and check scores of games.”

Weinberger, along with the rest of the student body, will no longer be able to watch because many TVs no longer have functioning channels that students can watch.

“I think it could be a big distraction,” Landy said.

Even so, students will try to preserve the March Madness tradition with and attempt to find some way to watch the games they are interested in.

During March Madness, all NCAA tournament games are streamed live. This live streaming of games during school hours provides a distraction from regular learning.

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photo illustration by Brian Schonfeld

Each March, a unique craze hits CESJDS. The halls fill with students gazing at phones, laptops and TVs. Students change tabs on their laptops and bury their phones in their laps during classes as teachers walk by. This “March Madness” is a result of the yearly NCAA Basketball Tournament, specifically the games that are played during school hours in the early rounds of the tournament.

Following the selection and seeding of 68 college basketball teams, millions of fans scramble to create the perfect bracket. The competition to have the best bracket generates excitement and compels fans to watch even the least significant games. At JDS this is no different. Students and teachers fill out their own brackets in a pool with their colleagues and friends.

Last year, most teachers participated in a bracket pool for the tournament, run by Math teacher Victoria Ball. Director of Jewish Life Miriam Stein won first place. “[Filling out the bracket] was really thrilling,” Stein said.

This year, however, the excitement surrounding March Madness might be diminished because of the new internet restrictions set up to accompany the Bring Your Own Device policy. In addition, due to the constant use of computers, teachers will be much more vigilant of students watching games during their classes.

“Teachers will have to be vigilant,” Dean of Students Roslyn Landy said. “If they think students are watching games, they should ask them

to close their computers.”

While Landy does enjoy March Madness herself, she feels that it should be something students only keep up with outside of the classroom.

Chair of the Jewish History Department Aileen Goldstein does not find it permissible for students to keep up with the games during class.

“Any student in my class who does that would have some serious conversations to be had,” Goldstein said. “It is not appropriate.”

Despite the measures the school might take to prevent students from accessing streams of the games, students say they will inevitably find a way around them.

“I imagine that the kids at JDS are capable of figuring something out,” junior Jacob Weinberger said.

“If it’s a close ending [in a game], I will try to find a way [to watch].”

Weinberger, like many other students, is disappointed that he will not be able to access the games as

WHO WILL CUT THE NET DOWN THIS YEAR ?

graphic by Brian Schonfeld

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