Volume 45, Issue 4 (February 2012) - The Rampage

The Rampage

Volume XXXXV Number 4

Rachel Huebner ‘13 On the evening of Sunday, January 8, approximately 1,300 guests, identifiable by their blue and yellow Ramaz bracelets, attended the Ramaz Dinner Dance at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square. This year’s Dinner Dance marked the 75th anniversary of Ramaz’s founding and paid tribute to Head of School Ms. Judith Fagin, who is retiring at the end of the year. To mark the occasion, Kol Ram, the adult community choir, performed at the event. “In order to celebrate Ramaz at 75 we wanted as many parts of the Ramaz family represented in the dinner performance and asked Mr. Henkin to include Kol Ram, which has faculty, parents, grandparents and of course alumni as part of the group,” said Mr. Kenny Rochlin, Director of Institutional Advancement at Ramaz. The third and fourth grade members of the Lower School Choir were also invited to perform “in honor

The Ramaz Upper School

The Big 7-5

of Ms. Fagin and her schoolwide oversight.” In order to celebrate Ramaz’s 75 years, the student performers, along with some administrators and faculty members, prepared a flash mob. As guests were enjoying the Smorgasbord, they

were ambushed by a rush of performers making their way to the center of the room. These performers congregated and began to dance simultaneously to a Chamber Choir and Kol Ram Choir recording of the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.” The Ramaz version

Model Behavior Jon Herman ‘13 On February 5, known to many as Super Bowl Sunday, 12 students boarded a bus headed for the Stamford Plaza Hotel, the site of the 22nd Yeshiva University National Model United Nations (YUNMUN). Surprisingly enough, the first activity on the agenda was watching the Super Bowl, not what one would expect of an academic conference. Some expected watching the Super Bowl at a YU event, away from friends and family, to be a bore, but most members of the Model UN team found they actually enjoyed themselves. The game was projected on a wall in a ballroom filled with hundreds of adolescents, many of whom were already friendly from camp or through mutual friends, and as expected of any Jewish event, plenty of food was served. “Even though I was away form a lot of my friends for the Super Bowl, nothing can replace seeing the looks on twenty Boston kids’ faces as the clock expired,” said Jonathan Deluty ’12 regarding watching the game at YUN-

MUN, But this special football viewing was where the fun and games ended. The rest of the event, which consisted of over 10 hours of committee meetings on top of additional speeches, took on a much more serious air. Interestingly, at the committee meetings students did not instinctively defend Israel like most Yeshiva students would. Rather, they answered the questions the way they felt their assigned countries realistically would. “I was [originally] interested in Model UN because the actual UN is notoriously anti-Israel,” said Noam Kornsgold ’13. “For me, this experience proved to be especially interesting because I represented the country of Lebanon, which is obviously against Israel.” Ultimately, the Ramaz Model UN team left the competition empty-handed. But the trip was not futile; the Ramaz delegation put up a hard fight and gained experience from the competition. “I think it was definitely

worthwhile,” said co-captain Emmanuel Cantor ’13. “They award recipients based upon several factors. While the delegates from Ramaz may have not fit the exact expectations of the judges this time around, I still believe that many of us have gained valuable experience in the art of public speaking and learned the fundamentals of UN procedure.” A key factor evaluating the team’s performance might be the amount of time the Ramaz delegation invested. Deluty felt that the paucity of afterschool meetings contributed directly to Ramaz’s less than stellar performance. “Look at YULA; they treat [Model UN] like a sports team and they always finish as a top team. You can tell they’re always prepared and know what’s going on. For us, a meeting a week or a meeting every other week would for sure have helped.” Kornsgold admitted that the team did not have many meetings in school. However, he, along with the other Continued on Page 6

February 2012/Shvat 5772

of the song contained lyrics appropriate for the affair, such as “There’s no homework tonight and we’re on a roll!” and “I got my sushi- Let’s eat it up,” alluding to the seemingly everlasting supply of sushi available at the event. “I thought that it was very

creative and well executed,” said Avi Schwarzschild ’13. “A performance including both students and faculty that is exciting and contemporary is really cool.” The flash mob was the highlight for many of the performers as well as for the spectators. “The flash mob was spectacular,” said Isabel Dicker ’13. “It was amazing to see so many people join together in something so cool and creative.” The night’s performances portion opened with a presentation by the Percussion Ensemble, a nine-person group directed by Mr. Elisha. The ensemble performed “Celebrate! Generate! Percolate!,” a piece composed by Mr. Elisha, who used a motif created by a past student. “I was so moved to be part of something Mr. Elisha, a very talented musician, wrote,” said Percussion Ensemble member Sam Strauss Continued on Page 11

Club Fosters Open Discussion Rebecca Brill ‘12 Seven students attended the Sexuality, Identity, and Society Club (SIS)’s first meeting, where the members planned out the club’s agenda for the rest of the year. They hope to discuss issues like reparative therapy, teen bullying and slurs, legal issues, gay stereotypes in the media, and popular perception of homosexuality. “What makes this club unique is that we’re focusing not only on general topics, but also on issues of sexuality that affect the Jewish community,” said one of the founders, Rachel Leah Weintrob ‘12. The club also hopes to discuss the various sects of Judaism’s views on homosexuality, and a recently released controversial statement of principles. “There will be a lot of discussion about how to integrate men and women with different sexual identities into the Modern Orthodox community,” said Dr. Zeitchik, SIS’s faculty adviser. When rumors of a new Ramaz club, said to discuss issues of sexual identity and gay rights, surfaced on Thursday, February 9, it seemed confidential and

subdued. After all, unlike with other extracurricular groups, its founders, Weintrob and Amram Altzman ’13, did not send out a mass email or hang flyers on the bulletin boards for publicity. Instead, they informed only a few of their peers about the club by word of mouth. The group also met in Dr. Zeitchik’s small office instead of a classroom, which led some to further speculate that it was private, perhaps even exclusive. “Actually,” revealed Altzman, “it wasn’t originally like that.” “The office placed us in the room that math clinic was in so there was nothing else to do,” said Weintrob. And the lack of advertisement, according to Dr. Zeitchik, was simply because the club had not yet decided on a name. “If I felt that I couldn’t publicize it, I wouldn’t have a club,” he said. “But I did feel strongly that I wanted to pick a title that was not charged. [I didn’t want] to stir up a buzz that was all about controversy as opposed to the substance of [the club].” The club thought about several Continued on Page 10