The "Or Hanna" Summer Program at Orot

When thousands of students throughout the Ukraine are leaving school for the summer vacation, an elite group of girls from the Bet Hanna Seminar in Dnepropetrovsk Ukraine are coming to Orot for a special summer program of experiential studies. The success of this unique program should be attributed to the president of the college, Rabbi Prof. Neriah Guttel, Dr. Shraga Fisherman and the support of the Teacher Training Dept. of the Ministry of Education, the Claims Conference, the Jewish community in Dnepropetrovsk and others.

This is the twelfth consecutive year that the students of the Bet Hanna Seminar are coming to Orot. The goal of the program is to enhance their level of Jewish studies and Hebrew language, to get acquainted with the Land of Israel, and thus developing their relationship to Zionism and love of Eretz Yisrael as well as their connection to the Torah and Jewish Law.
The six weeks program consists of studies on a large variety of subjects given in Hebrew and in Russian by the best lecturers. Of course, the main emphasis is on the enhancement of their Hebrew language skills. 30 weekly hours are devoted to this purpose. The students are also learning methods of teaching the Holocaust in Jewish schools in the former Soviet Union.
In addition, the students are introduced to updated methodologies of teaching Jewish subjects and Hebrew. They also participate in experiential educational creativity in the well-equipped modern resource center of Orot. Furthermore, the students contribute the knowledge and the tools that they have acquired to groups of new immigrant children (girls) in Israel.
The teachers are partly from the Orot staff as well as from other places all over Israel and have been chosen scrupulously by the program administration.
The need for teachers in Hebrew and Jewish Studies in the former Soviet Union is clear and many efforts are invested in this program. The only college for teacher training in the former Soviet Union is the "Bet Hanna" Seminary. The Ministry of Education is well aware of the importance to increase the bond to Israel and its heritage in the Jewish schools of the Former Soviet Union, and therefore invests special efforts in this unique program.
In order to reach utmost success and efficiency from the program, the heads of Orot and the staff of Bet Hanna have meetings months before the program starts and together they crystallize the goals of the program, choosing scrupulously the suitable students for this program.
"Until now the program has proven itself to be extremely successful" says Rabbi Moshe Weber, Head of this year's program. "The knowledge that the students acquire here in the summer program in the fields of Hebrew, methodology and Jewish tradition, and especially the Israeli way of life, is equivalent to a few years of studies in Ukraine".
This year, one of the students will get married during the program – another proof of the program's success!