Beyond Camels and Sand
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Beyond Camels and Sand
How teachers are using innovative posters to make modern Israel
come alive for Jewish students.
SAN FRANCISCO—Jul. 11, 2005 —If you’ve heard about the splash BlueStar PR’s pro-Israel poster campaign has been making on college campuses, then it won’t surprise you to hear that the cutting-edge posters are making it big in the middle and high school worlds as well.
“It has been really fascinating,” says Ruth Caprow describing her 6th and 7th grade art classes at Congregation Beth Sholom’s religious school in San Francisco. “I hung a handful of the posters on a large butcher-block paper on the classroom wall before the kids arrived. In class, I invited each of them up to the board with a marker in hand to scribble their own thoughts and reactions. The students loved buzzing around, chatting about the posters, and adding their two cents, graffiti style. They were really engaged and had a great time!”
“The posters-as-curriculum idea came to me after I had seen the images on bus shelters and billboards around the city,” she adds. “The uniquely positive messages about Israel are just the answer to the many negative viewpoints we’ve all heard. When I saw an article in the J (the Northern California Jewish Community Newspaper), with the web site listed for easy access to the posters, a light bulb went off. I knew that I could use the posters as the focus of my curriculum.”
“At the poster wall, students wrote enthusiastic notes in true middle school fashion; they wrote ‘cool’ and ‘beautiful’ and ‘this is great.’ But when I engaged them in a discussion, they had a lot more to say. They reported that the posters got them to stop and think about Israel — a topic that rarely crossed their minds before, except in relation to the Middle East conflict. They were very impressed by Israel’s physical beauty. They were intrigued by the country’s progressive social policies. And they were genuinely surprised by some of the sadder aspects of her history.”
“The students used the supplies I had already set out to create their own Israel posters. These are the ones hanging along our school hallways. Some focused on the beauty of the land itself, and many included colorful landscapes as part of their design. Others focused on the more complex messages, using images to create metaphors for Israel’s struggles and the historical oppression of Jews.”
“I think what makes the BlueStar PR posters so effective is that they are neither preachy nor dogmatic — two styles that typically turn adolescents off to ideas, no matter how sound they might be. There’s something for everyone. Whether students are interested about the environment, women’s rights, cultural diversity, music, politics, sports, or the young Israeli soccer players, there’s a relevant BlueStar poster shining a light on Israel. And with all their exposure to media, young people are more discerning than ever. Kids today question everything and resonate with the ‘hey, did you know?’ tact, rather than ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts.”
“Exactly,” adds Adrian Durlester of the Bethesda Jewish Congregation outside of Washington, D.C. “The posters are an inspiring way for me to insure that Israel’s message gets across without the ‘love Israel right or wrong’ rhetoric,” he says. "The ideas provide balance to the often pervasive negative rhetoric about Israel in a manner that isn't heavy-handed or overly machismo.”
In California at Oakland Hebrew Day School — and all the way across the country at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland —the posters are being used to promote the Blue String campaign, a drive initiated by the Washington DC JCRC. By wearing a blue string around their wrists, people of all backgrounds show solidarity with Israel.
“When I saw the BlueStar PR posters promoting the Blue String project, I was very excited because I could show my support for Israel,” said Rachel Lieber, co-president of the Rockville school’s student council. “The majority of students at my school now wear their blue strings everyday as a symbol of their solidarity with Israel. It’s wonderful to see.”
Often, the posters serve as neither campaign boosters, nor as a source for artistic inspiration, but simply as hallway or classroom decoration. “I've had this poster on a bulletin board for some time now and it has gathered more positive comments from students than any other Israel poster I have ever displayed,” wrote Durlester in a letter to BlueStar PR over a year ago about a poster showing an Israeli soccer. Now Durlester boasts twelve of the colorful posters on his classroom walls.
Durlester also recently handed out postcards designed and produced by BlueStar PR. “The postcards were an extremely hot item. I saved them for our Yom Yisrael program which we held proximate to Yom Ha'atzmaut. Students clamored for the postcards as rewards for various quizzes and activities at the program. Some were even trading postcards when they didn’t get one's they preferred, or saw one they liked even better!”
The poster campaign is also proving effective for specific religious school events. Iris Bendahan, Principal at the Abraham and Miriam Gannes Religious School (at Saratoga’s Congregation Beth David) uses them for holidays. “When we did a Passover program —actually, it was a program about freedom in general —we had a wide variety of posters and related activities about the holiday and what freedom means. The posters were used at the Nirtzah board as the seder’s conclusion, and we will also be using them for Yom HaAtzmaut. They have been a terrific addition to our education program; we've long needed posters which not only display the truth about the Middle East, but also build pride for Israel's accomplishments.”
The current excitement on the part of Hebrew and Jewish high school educators is surely just a sign of greater things to come. Jack Mintzer, Education Director for the Agudat Achim Religious School in Schenectady, New York just received his shipment of posters for an Israel celebration. Mintzer and the teachers are ecstatic. “I think these ideas and images are a fantastic way for reaching our students and keeping them interested and informed about Israel. They have a modern flair which attracts young people’s attention and gets them talking about Israel.”
What’s next for BlueStar? The young non-profit organization is seeking funding to develop a curriculum and teaching strategies to accompany their provocative posters. Just what the teachers ordered.
(Written by Peter Altman, the Deputy Director of BlueStar PR. He can be reached at 415-543-6300)
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(This article can be freely reprinted and republished.)
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