SEPTEMBER 24 • 2020 | 21

ONLINE CONTENT
Due to school closures in 
March, the final field trips of 
the 2019-2020 school year 
— to a local Muslim mosque 
and Hindu temple — were 
done virtually. Religious 
Diversity Journeys program 
director Wendy Miller Gamer 
of Huntington Woods cre-
ated these virtual sessions to 
complete the year. For the 
2020-21 school year, a new 
program will provide engaging 
interfaith and intercultural 
learning opportunities using 
creative remote and virtual 
content. Students do not need 
to leave school and aspects 
of the program can be done 
independently or with teacher 
participation, she explained.
Two organizational part-
ners, Detroit Public Television 
and the Detroit Experience 
Factory, are developing the 

program, which will have two 
tracks — Foundation and 
Ambassador. The Foundation 
Track will be similar to the 
current curriculum with syn-
chronous learning (online in 
real time) and remote field 
trips to local houses of wor-
ship. The Ambassador Track is 
a leadership development pro-
gram to teach skills for build-
ing intercultural connections.
Detailed program informa-
tion, including tuition fees, 
scholarship availability and 
registration forms, are avail-
able online at detroitinterfaith 
council.com. The Interfaith 
Leadership Council is a faith-
based nonprofit civic organi-
zation made up of religious 
and lay leaders of many faiths 
whose shared values compel 
them to work toward a com-
munity that lives together in 
harmony. 

since the online application 
opened, 14 Chabad day 
schools have applied to the 
program. Shneur says the 
program has enrolled 131 
students to date, surpassing 
his initial goal of 100 by the 
fall semester. 
Though Aronson hopes 
that the Our Heritage 
Program will expand in the 
years to come, he says that 
in his experience working 
in Jewish life, small projects 
with simple goals are some-
times the most effective. He 
adds that the small number 
of student recruitments away 
from public schools won’
t 
pose a threat to the tradition-
al school system. 
“It’
s not as though we’
re 
draining students away from 
the public schools,” he said. 
“The public schools, and even 

the private schools right now, 
are struggling with how to 
educate the kids they have.”
Aronson says that in the 
long run, he believes the proj-
ect comes back to one of his 
and the Jewish community’
s 
primary goals: to engage as 
many students as possible. 
He thinks the Our Heritage 
Program is one important 
way to do so.
“J-school education is fun-
damental for creating Jewish 
identity,” Aronson said. “With 
all of the horrors and trage-
dies and societal upset that 
the virus has caused, it also 
provides an opportunity for 
us to improve the level of 
Jewish education, to attract 
more children to it and to 
increase that sense of Jewish 
identity in our young people.” 

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COVID-19 put Amy Greenhut in a difficult situation.
“My company kept operating through the shutdown,
but they rotated the staff through the schedule, so we
were all only working a day or two a week. There were
no full schedules, and no overtime,” Amy said. That lost
income, she said, was necessary to meet her expenses. 
“It’s just me and my dogs, and one paycheck. It was
great to remain employed, but I got behind on my
mortgage payments, and I was getting really worried,”
Amy said. “Not many places make personal loans, and
most of those require lots of paperwork and take a lot
of time. I had no idea where I was going to get that
money, and I was truly concerned about getting even
further behind while I searched for options.”
For a previous need, Amy’s cousin had suggested she
contact Jewish Family Service, which had referred her
to Hebrew Free Loan, so Amy returned to HFL for help.
“Hebrew Free Loan is full of kind, caring people who
go out of their way to help others,” Amy said. “With
the shutdown, I really liked using the online application.
It was so simple to begin the loan process, and they got
right back to me. Truly, it doesn’t get any easier than
going to HFL. I hope I come into money someday, so I
can give to Hebrew Free Loan, and help others the
way the agency helped me.”

 

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