Sandy's Message - October 2007

I am so very proud of our school and our wonderful staff. Each of our teachers is dedicated and committed to providing excellence in Jewish education.

Dr. Robert Copaken teaches a seventh grade class entitled "Understanding the Holocaust." This class includes readings from texts, meetings with survivors, audio-visual presentations and a field trip to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

This past summer, Dr. Copaken was selected, as one of 26 participants from English-speaking day schools around the world, to participate in a three-week educational seminar sponsored by The International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel.

The seminar was an intensive and comprehensive educational experience which included lectures by leading Holocaust scholars such as Prof. Yehuda Bauer, currently the academic adviser to Yad Vashem and the author of many books on the Holocaust, and Prof. David Bankier, senior lecturer at The Hebrew University and director of the International Institute for Holocaust Research, among others. Dr. Copaken also had a guided tour of the new Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and visited the Lochamei Ha' Ghetot (Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz, the first Holocaust memorial in the world, established in 1949). The group met with survivors and with two Schindler Juden. They also had access to the staff of the Archives, Visual Center and Pedagogical Center at Yad Vashem.

Dr. Copaken has a Ph.D. from The London School of Economics and has taught at The National Defense University at Fort McNair, as well as at George Washington University in the District of Columbia. He also works as a substitute teacher in Montgomery County Public Schools. He graduated Cum Laude from Beloit College in Wisconsin and attended Harvard Law School. He worked in Pakistan for the Ford Foundation and in India with the USAID program. He was awarded The Sir William Luce Fellowship in 2003 at The University of Durham in England, and worked for several Cabinet level departments in a variety of policy positions relating to Middle East energy and politics during his 30-year career in the federal government.

Thank you, Dr. Copaken, for honoring Tikvat Israel by representing our school at this rigorous and prestigious international seminar.

Please contact me at 301 424-4396 or slevine@tikvatisrael.org if you have any questions about Religious School - I'd be delighted to speak with you.

Sandy Levine
Director of Education