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Educator Spotlight: Nily Katriel spoke, pantomimed, and loved her way into the hearts and minds of her students at Temple Beth Am

Nily is a veteran Hebrew and Judaic Studies teacher at Temple Beth Am in Pinecrest, Florida, in both the religious school and the Rambam Day School. A native of Tel Aviv, veteran of the IDF, and graduate of Beit Levinsky (Elementary Education) and Tel Aviv University (BA in Bible and Art), Nily’s career in Hebrew language education began in Venezuela in the 1970’s. Nily’s husband was sent on Shlichut by his employer, Solel Boneh, to Caracas, where Nily put all of her talents as a teacher, artist, and student of TaNacH to good use. Arriving with no Spanish language background to a community where no one spoke English, Hebrew was the common language between Nily and her students. She had been warned that without Spanish, she would fail, but the school needed a teacher and Nily needed a job, so both took a chance on each other.

Nily set out to speak, pantomime, and love her way into the hearts and minds of her Venezuelan-Jewish students, a group of students she will never forget and who never forgot her. Until this day, Nily corresponds with many of her first students, who are now in their forties and parents of their own adolescent children, and those correspondences continue to flow in written and spoken Hebrew.

Due to political turmoil, most of the Venezuelan Jewish community has since disbursed. Nily’s students relocated to other destinations in the Western Hemisphere and in Israel. After 14 years of living and working in Caracas, Nily’s family moved to Miami in 1989, and ever since, Nily’s career has continued to flourish at Temple Beth Am.

One turning point and highlight of Nily’s career was spending a summer studying Hebrew language acquisition and teaching at Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s School of Education, in a cohort of teachers that gathered from all over Latin America. Professor Shlomo Haramaty became Nily’s Hebrew language hero, and his methodology grabbed and captured her heart. Based on Haramaty’s system of language acquisition, Nily wrote a textbook, בלון של צבעים,, that became the foundation of her Hebrew language teaching for years to come. With persistence, the book was finally published in 2015. It’s charming stories are timeless and introduce a wealth of vocabulary and grammatical structures that lend themselves to Hebrew language proficiency. Beginning with simple line illustrations and two-word sentences, the characters develop, vocabulary grows, sentences become longer, and students learn to read and speak Hebrew. Nily resisted creating a “workbook” to accompany the text. She always preferred teaching from self-made materials that she created for her students, and strongly believes that each teacher needs to do the same, based on the needs of their students at each particular moment in history.

Nily Katriel is one of the thousands of heroic Israeli teachers whose partners’ careers led them to successful Hebrew language teaching careers in the Diaspora. Nily has dedicated her entire adult life to sharing her love of Torah, Israel, Hebrew and Israeli culture, and Hebrew language with Jewish children in Caracas and Miami. Today, Nily is proud to call her beloved daughter, Shelly Rauchwerger, a respected and valued colleague at Rambam Day School Temple Beth Am. When asked for advice for young Israelis beginning careers as Hebrew teachers in the Diaspora, Nily said, “teach with love, love, and more love.”

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ARNEE WINSHALL

President

Ms. Winshall is the Founding Board President of Hebrew at the Center and Founding Chair of JCDS, Boston’s Jewish Community Day School.  Arnee serves as an advisor to the Mayberg Foundation Jewish Education Innovation Challenge  and the Council for American Jewish Museums. Most recently she helped to guide the formation of DEEP , a professional learning community of Developing Embedded Expertise Programs that serve Jewish day schools. Through the years she has served on the board of numerous Jewish education organizations. She was the first recipient of Hebrew College’s Sidney Hillson/Rose Bronstein Award for distinguished leadership in Jewish education, Hebrew language, and the advancement of Jewish culture and civilization. In 2015, she was named as an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Hebrew Language in Jerusalem. Having pursued graduate studies in developmental psycholinguistics and studied 7 languages, Arnee is passionate about the power of learning languages and, in particular, Hebrew as the language of the Jewish people.

SHARONA GIVOL
CO-FOUNDER
Sharona, in her capacity as the Director of the Hebrew Language Program at JCDS, Boston’s Jewish Community Day School, served as the JCDS Project Manager for the Covenant Foundation Grant which helped to underwrite the pilot phase that led to the launch of HATC. After joining JCDS Boston in 2002, she began working with Dr. Ringvald to develop and refine the Hebrew language acquisition tools, teacher workshops, and mentoring programs that are now being shared with Hebrew language and Jewish educators around the world. While teaching grades 5-9 in Israel, Sharona was responsible for helping foster children adapt to their new families and communities. She managed a center for children with learning disabilities, working with dyslexic Middle School students. Later she co-founded the Community Day School of the Northern Golan Heights. From 1986 to 1997 Sharona worked for the “Logal” educational software company in Israel, as Director of Reading Comprehension and Language Arts.
VARDIT RINGVALD
CO-FOUNDER
Vardit Ringvald, Ph.D., is a CV Starr Research Professor of Languages and Linguistics. She is the founding Director of the Brandeis-Middlebury School of Hebrew, established in 2007. Prof. Ringvald recently concluded nearly three decades at Brandeis University, most recently as the Director of the Hebrew Language Department. Along with her colleagues, she published Brandeis Modern Hebrew, Vol. 1, which has become North America’s most popular college Hebrew language textbook. Vol. 2 was published in June, 2013. She is an expert in the application of the proficiency approach to foreign language instruction and the development of competency-based curriculum for teaching Modern Hebrew in all educational settings at all levels, implementing authentic materials and methods for integrating Hebrew culture into the classroom. She is a founding member of the Hebrew Language Council (HLC) of North America and in 2013, she was appointed to the Committee for Teacher Certification Examinations of NYSED (The New York State Education Department). She led the Hebrew language initiative of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and served as the chairperson of the SAT II for Hebrew. She is a founding board member of JCDS, Boston’s Jewish Community Day School.