MONTREAL — Bialik High School guidance counsellors Janet Dwoskin and Leonie Richler are two of 35 North American high school guidance counsellors who returned recently from Israel to their native cities singing the praises of MASA.
High school guidance counsellors Janet Dwoskin, left, Cathy Shreiber and Leonie Richler recently returned from Israel, where they visited programs that are offered to youth.
MASA – the Hebrew word for “journey” – is an Israeli organization serving as a “gateway,” its website says, for more than 150 semester- or year-long post-high-school and post-university Israeli programs.
A joint, non-profit project of the Jewish Agency and Israeli government founded in 2003, MASA builds on the hope that one year might stretch into a longer commitment to Israel.
MASA, Dwoskin and Richler said, serves both as a sort of umbrella access agency for Israel-based programs, as well as a catalyst for Jewish young people from 18 to 30 trying to find just the right fit and build indelible connections with Israel.
“There is just this incredible enthusiasm on the part of everyone involved in MASA,” Richler said. “It really helps you decide what is best for you.”
In Israel, Dwoskin and Richler were joined by a colleague from Montreal’s Royal Vale High School, Cathy Shreiber, as well as two guidance counsellors from the Anne and Max Tanenbaum Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, Caryn Nutik and Carol Morton, on the week-long mission that took place this past January.
The itinerary of the mission was typical: a whirlwind of busyness from dawn to dusk that included mandatory touristy stuff.
But the real meat, Dwoskin and Richler said, was in gaining indispensable exposure to the MASA programs for young people. The group visited and met with officials from Young Judea, Hebrew University, Ben-Gurion University, Tel Aviv University, the Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, Bar-Ilan University, Haifa University and even a few not-as-well-known programs such as the Kivunim (The Institute of Experiential Learning for Israel and World Jewish Communities) travel program.
“I think we visited three or four programs a day,” Dwoskin said. “We met with students, talked to students. Each always thought their program was the best.”
Richler added: “We also found that the type of programs kids were attracted to is often a function of their maturity. The good thing about MASA is that it helps you decide.”
While the monetary cost might well be worth it in terms of fostering strengthened Jewish identity and emotional connection with Israel, it doesn’t come all that cheap. One-year programs in Israel can cost upward of $15,000. However, MASA does offer grants as high as several thousand dollars (depending on the applicant’s age and country of origin) to first-year participants and needs-based scholarships.
MASA has also developed an extra-curricular program that includes cultural activities and workshops for program participants. Online networking on Facebook facilitates contact among MASA participants, including forming study groups.
Dwoskin and Richler, for their part, could not have been more enthusiastic about MASA or about what they saw on their mission.
“MASA is an ideal thing to do after CEGEP and can be a real maturing thing for people in this age group,” Richler said.
They said that their task on returning to Montreal was to work to get the word out about MASA to the community.
Dwoskin and Richler are hoping to welcome MASA’s director of North American operations, Avi Rubel, to Montreal in the near future to further develop local interest in MASA.
For more information about MASA, visit www.masaisrael.org, e-mail [email protected] or call 1-866-864-3279.
