la! Success
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
hen Rachel Welford decided to
make a cave, her original thought
was clay.
But then she and partner Alex
Shiffman stumbled on foam in a
spray can, and they knew they
had found what they needed. Add
some cookie crumbs, rock candy
(for the stalactites) and a little
popcorn and, voila, the Oregon
Caves were born.
:'. 4 te."..4s T.?.-7.i .47
.‘;;.
Hillel students
create their
own Mt.
Rushmore,
t , ) Statue of
Liberty and
,
c- - Dinosaur
L1J National
14
Monument.
miniature cardboard houses and
dyed-green cotton-ball trees.
"Patrick Henry was a lawyer
and he had a little town like this
and he owned all these houses
but they're not here anymore,"
Micha says, standing before his
class. And just in case visitors
have never heard of Patrick Hen-
ry: "The British were giving us
lots of taxes so he fought a war
against them and there was
:;;7::
this famous speech, 'Give me
nji
Left: First-graders Matthew Newsman, Be
Dell and Jacob Abramson hold a piece of St. death or give me freedom."
Micha, Dr. Goldberg tells
Louis, Mo.
the children, did all his own
research.
In addition to teaching the
Below: Third-graders Tara Zdrojewski and
Allison Poss with their version of a
class, Dr. Goldberg serves as
monument remembering slain Olympian
curator of the Museum of
David Berger and other Israelis killed during Monuments. "Does anyone
the games in Munich. The memorial features know what my job as curator
Olympic columns broken into 11 pieces, for
is?" she asks.
the 11 Israelis murdered by Arab terrorists.
"It's keeping all these
things safe," one stu-
dent volunteers.
"That's it exactly,"
Dr. Goldberg responds.
Josh Cohen and
Jessie Alperin made a
gold dinosaur from Di-
nosaur National Mon-
ument in Utah and
Colorado. It was built
in 1915 and is 211,000
acres southwest of De-
troit, they tell the class.
A second group of
visitors is especially in-
terested in a replica of
Mount Rushmore.
They quickly identify
Minds-Open Hearts George Washington and Abra-
program in which Hil- ham Lincoln. Thomas Jefferson
lel students become and Teddy Roosevelt take a little
pen pals with inner- longer.
One student is impressed to
city youth, was reading
a book about national hear that the Washington head
memorials. She decid- at Mt. Rushmore is 60 feet tall.
"Did he have a big brain?" the
ed to share with her
students the concept boy asks.
Other monuments included a
that "a monument
doesn't have to be a clay version of the Lincoln Memo-
statue, as many people rial, by Rachel Diskin; an im-
believe, but any kind of pressive Jefferson Memorial,
landform that recalls made of straws and styrofoam,
by Sammy Siegel and Michael
something special."
After participants Gross; the Russell Cave Nation-
created their works of al Monument, complete with
art, Hillel classes were shells, cardboard bones and
miniature baskets, made by Marc
invited in for a tour.
"Micha, you did a Dubowski and Bryan Koss; a
wonderful job on this!" Statue of Liberty, about 5'7" tall,
an admirer calls as by Emily Kaplan, Michael Kel-
Above: Josh Blechman and Danny Devries
with their exploding volcano.
Micha Varda begins an menson and Zachary Koloff; and
explanation of Red Hill the Cleveland, Ohio, memorial to
Shrine in Virginia, slain Olympic athlete David
Left: Michael Kelmenson, Emily Kaplan,
which he created with Berger, by Tara Zdrojewski and
Zachary Koloff and Miss Liberty.
his partner, Erin Allison Poss. ❑
Lifton. It features
Rachel and Alex are partici-
pants in Shelley Goldberg's
Special Interest class at Hillel
Day School, a weekly course that
develops both individual re-
search skills and group coopera-
tion, and considers, through
projects, new ways to understand
the world. The group's latest ef-
fort was making a Museum of
Monuments, depicting memori-
T. 70::..,"•?
:,:, :. -, •
- • - -
als from throughout the United
States.
Students were asked, at the re-
quest of "the famous excavation
company Dig M. Goldberg," to
create a monument or memorial,
discuss its history and size, and
note its direction and distance
from Detroit.
It all started when Dr. Gold-
berg, who also started the Open