14 | JANUARY 19 • 2023 

schools with few or no Jews.
”
Abramson-Goldstein began the program 
with 10 student presenters. Her successor 
at Student to Student, Fawn Chapel, reports 
that now, in St. Louis alone, each year, 120 
Jewish students give presentations to 3,000-
4,000 non-Jewish high schools students. 
Beginning in 2015, with the help of a 
grant from the Natan Fund, the program 
spread to four other communities. As it 
did, it outgrew its structure in the St. Louis 
JCRC, and the spinoff organization, Be the 
Narrative, continued the work of bringing 
Student to Student to additional communi-
ties, including Metro Detroit. 
Chapel, who led Student to Student for 
the JCRC for 18 years, now serves as nation-
al program director. The new organization 
hired Rabbi Terkel, a specialist in informal 
Jewish education, to serve as CEO, sup-
porting Student to Student and planning to 
develop other outreach programs. 
Rabbi Terkel is a veteran practitioner of 
informal Jewish education. He grew up in 
what was then a small town in Oklahoma, 
Broken Arrow, which had only one Jewish 
family — his. “Kids and teachers were 
always asking me questions about Judaism,
” 
he said. “From a very young age, I had to be 
this ambassador and representative. After 
Sunday school at temple, I’
d be in the rabbi 
or the cantor’s office, asking them some 
of the questions that kids were asking me. 
It taught me that anybody can do this. If 
you’re very clear, whether you’re learned or 
observant or not, you’re still representing 
this faith, this community.
”
Chapel said the goals of Student to 
Student are “to counter antisemitism by 
demystifying Judaism, breaking down ste-
reotypes and putting a face on the Jewish 
people.
“Having students explain their Jewish 
experiences to non-Jewish students builds 

bridges between communities and comple-
ments the JCRC mission,
” she added.

ORIENTATION AND TRAINING
At the orientation and training meeting 
at the Federation building in November, 
Chapel gave Dubin and the students a 
taste of best practices developed over the 
years. For every community that launch-
es a Student to Student program, Be the 
Narrative (BTN) provides the coordinator 
with a program handbook and speaks with 
the coordinator on a regular basis about 
best practices. BTN staff will go to the new 
cities to help train participants. 
During training, according to Chapel, the 
coordinator and students “see mock presen-
tations and take part in a discussion of how 
to answer challenging questions.
”
Teachers tell Chapel that the program 
succeeds in breaking down stereotypes, an 
appraisal supported by independent eval-
uators in a longitudinal study surveying 
students from the target schools. 
Student to Student also has a significant 
impact on the Jewish student participants. 
Rabbi Terkel said that Student to Students 
“is about Jewish identity building.
”
“Rather than learning passively, by having 
someone teach students about Judaism, this 
program asks students, ‘What do you think 
about this?’ The students have to put their 
own story together and share it.
” 

MAKING AN IMPACT
Former program participant Mushka 
Novack, who now works in Jewish edu-
cation, remembers her high school years 
when she trained to do presentations, 
became a group leader, then served on the 
steering committee. 
“I can talk about how it impacted my 
high school experience. I enjoy public 
speaking, getting in front of people … I 

know that what I say can have impact on 
people.
”
Novack also enjoyed working with stu-
dents from different branches of Judaism. 
“No matter how somebody observes 
Judaism, at the end of the day, we are all 
part of the same trunk,
” she said. “The 
beauty of Judaism comes from 
all the different branches.
”
Myles Rosenblum, about 
to graduate from Tulane 
University with a triple major 
in history, anthropology and 
Jewish studies, recalls his 
roles in Student to Student 
during his high school years. At one of his 
earliest presentations, his group showed 
a huge book with thousands of pages to 
the students at a Christian high school in 
a suburb of St. Louis. Each page had only 
one word, “Jew,
” repeated over 
and over in small type; in total, 
the book read “Jew” 6 million 
times. Rosenblum remembers 
explaining, “Every time it says 
‘Jew’ in this book, that’s some-
one’s mother, that’s someone’s 
father, that’s a brother, that is 
someone who was loved and someone who 
was lost.
” 
When Rosenblum looked across the 
crowd: “Every student was there,
” he said. 
“There was eye contact. There was no tex-
ting. There were no side comments. There 
was just what I assume every high school 
teacher wants: undivided attention.
”
He remembers that the students, who 
may have never met a Jew before, asked “a 
plethora of fantastic questions.
” 
Rosenblum said he enjoyed represent-
ing his branch of Judaism, Conservative 
Judaism. “I realized that my actions in 
giving those presentations really shaped my 
life,
” he added. 

Mushka 
Novack

Myles 
Rosenblum

“HAVING STUDENTS EXPLAIN THEIR JEWISH 
EXPERIENCES TO NON-JEWISH STUDENTS 
BUILDS BRIDGES BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 

AND COMPLEMENTS THE JCRC MISSION.”

— FAWN CHAPEL

OUR COMMUNITY
ON THE COVER

continued from page 13

A Jewish student 
presents in 
St. Louis.

