By Diana Brement,
JTNews Columnist
Boaz Pnini would like to share some good news. No, not financial news — sorry — but news about Israel.
“What we know about Israel comes from the media and relates to the conflict, but real life in Israel is 95 percent about other things,” he says. When he’s in Israel he sees “all the good things that happen…mostly peaceful, very different from what you imagine.”
A native Israeli who has lived in the U.S. for 18 years, he adds, “I love Israel and I love my life here…it is natural for me to be a bridge between the two worlds.”
To that end, he recently started a blog.
“It wasn’t something I planned to do,” he says. Returning from a recent visit home, he wanted to share the goodness of Israel. “I just got the idea one night and started writing. Then I got excited because I received responses.”
He’d set the stage for this through his organization, Bridges2Israel, with which he leads tours to Israel (one is coming up in December) and started a volunteer project to provide home-knitted hats for Israeli soldiers, an endeavor he says has developed “its own life” as word spread as far as New York and California. Now he takes hats to Israel on every visit.
He promotes personal connections for his tour groups, too, “not just to see…the regular sites,” he says, “but actually meet with Israelis.”
Participants have met with Israeli soldiers, an Israeli Arab writer, friends from his Kibbutz, and have even had Shabbat dinner and a party with his family!
Boaz grew up on the religious-Zionist Kibbutz Kvutzat Yavne, and came to the States after marrying an American Jewish woman. After living in Chicago and Florida, they settled in the Seattle area. Now single — and eligible — Boaz serves as the cantor for Emanuel Congregation in Northeast Seattle and is a B’nai Mitzvah tutor and Hebrew instructor at Temple Beth Am. He is also training to become a HANDLE (Holistic Approach to NeuroDevelopment and Learning Efficiency) practitioner — a program that treats autism and other neurological disorders.
“Everywhere there is good and bad,” he observes. “I hope I am not naïve, but I would like people to get a more real and positive view of Israel. My mission is to create bridges between people and help [them]…connect with all that is good in Israel.”
You’ll find more at bridges2israel.com, and Boaz’s personal comments at bridges2israel.homestead.com, where you can read a local story about the Hats 2 Israel project, and learn about Israelis helping Gaza orphans, the Orthodox dating scene in Israel, Israeli entertainers and more.
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Halen Baker was merely 9 years old when a friend’s mom gave her the idea — based on her body type — that she could be a ballerina. Of course, in the world of ballet, “that’s a pretty late start,” Halen explains. But now she’s “completely up to speed.”
That’s an understatement for a girl who auditioned for, and was accepted to, the Pacific Northwest Ballet school with no real experience, and has been dancing ever since. A junior at Northwest Yeshiva High School, Halen is now in PNB’s level seven class (eight is the highest). She recently danced the part of one of the two attendants to the Blue Fairy in the school’s production of Pinocchio. (The Blue Fairy role was danced by the only professional in the show, so Halen says it was “a good opportunity for me.”)
Halen’s mom, Kari Haas, explains that her daughter is very focused and very driven. She has to be to perform the delicate balancing act between school and ballet.
“School starts at 8 and I…do all my Jewish studies in the morning,” Halen says, “then I take the first three [academic] classes at Yeshiva.” With afternoon classes on a rotating schedule, she misses two a week in almost every subject, but the school is very supportive and teachers work with her to make up assignments. The strong student-teacher connection is something she appreciates about her school.
“They really help me try to succeed,” she says.
Leaving school at 2:15 p.m., she goes directly to afternoon ballet class. Most nights this is followed by either Spanish instruction (to make up for missed language credits in school) or SAT tutoring. “Then I come home, I eat, I do all my homework and go to bed pretty late,” she says.
On Fridays she has to get home in time for Shabbat. She really appreciates that day when she can relax and spend time with family. On Sundays, Halen volunteers for Friendship Circle, playing and socializing with special needs children.
“It’s a lot of work,” she observes, “but I enjoy ballet so much that it’s definitely worth it for me.”
The Bellevue resident, whose family belongs to Herzl-Ner Tamid, is not sure if she will dance professionally, but she’ll dance in college for sure. With a strong interest in disease research, she’d like to attend Columbia where she can tackle both subjects.
Halen spent last summer in New York studying with the Joffrey Ballet summer intensive, and she will return there this summer.