A local photographer has captured Jewish communities around the world, now he's using his pictures to teach Jewish lessons.
Lindsay Feldman - Special To The Jewish Week

Students participating in the Jewish Lens Project took photographs, such as this one by Lisle Winston at the recent Darfur rally in Washington, that reflect Jewish values.

For the past 26 years, Zion Ozeri has been photographing Jewish communities around the world. A decade ago, Ozeri, concerned about the state of Jewish education, began to use his photographs as a device to generate greater interest in Jewish values and history.

"Not enough appreciation is given to learning our own text and our own philosophy that has accumulated over 2000 years," Ozeri said.

"I think we've missed one component and that's using the arts, in this case photography, to teach."

Seeing the emotional impact and intellectual curiosity his photographs aroused in viewers, Ozeri realized his own work could be used as an educational tool. In 2004, he created the Jewish Lens Project, a curriculum for middle and high school students that uses Ozeri's photographs of the world's Jewish community to teach Jewish values, identity and tradition.

The curriculum, developed by Ozeri and a professional educator, has been implemented in 20 schools across the United States and Israel. Recently, Temple Israel Center, a Conservative synagogue and Hebrew school in White Plains, adopted the curriculum, and on May 31 the first class came to an end with an Ozeri-inspired photography exhibit, which will be open to the public through June.

In the first part of the course, the 30 student participants learned how to "read" and interpret photographs. Those interpretations were then paired with readings from biblical and Rabbinic texts.

Among the images the students studied was Ozeri's "Synagogue Attic" a sepia-toned photograph of an elderly man seated in the corner of a tiny attic stacked ceiling high with books. After viewing the photograph, the students were then asked to create a subjective story about the man in the attic.

Students discussed what they saw in terms of values. In this particular photograph, the students concluded, the value was the importance of learning or of keeping books. Ozeri said that value was exactly what he intended to convey when he snapped the photograph in Riga, Latvia, in 1991.

Ozeri, an Israeli of Yemenite decent who now lives in New York City, said the discussions of the photographs helped to drive home numerous lessons.

"Now when they study the relevant text in the Torah, the value of learning resonates," Ozeri said.

In the last phase of the program, the students at Temple Israel Center took photographs of their own families, community and synagogue. Some of the students also went international, showing how Jewish values could be applied to global crises.

Lisle Winston's photograph taken at the Darfur rally in Washington, D.C., depicts a bearded man in a New York Mets cap holding a sign with a Hebrew quote from Leviticus, "Do not stand idle while your neighbor bleeds."

For the students, the class represented a new way of learning. "It was different than what we had done in the past," said Roscoe Bolter, 14. "We were doing a lot of writing and reading of the Torah and it was nice to step out of that where we got to do something physically."

Lisa Hackel, a parent of a student at Temple Israel Center, initiated the synagogue's Jewish Lens Project after she fell in love with Ozeri's work upon seeing some of his photographs at a friend's house last summer. She then went to meet Ozeri, who told her about his curriculum.

"I just loved the concept and felt that it would be really great to have it at Temple Israel," said Hackel, who hopes that the program will persuade students to continue their Jewish studies beyond bar mitzvah.

"I do think that over time when you do things that really engage the students and help them be more coherent as a group and more hands on, that those are all ways to keep them interested," Hackel said.

Sheridan Gayer, one of two teachers who taught the Jewish Lens Project curriculum at Temple Israel Center, said that in addition to engaging her Jewish students, the value of Ozeri's international photographs was in exposing them to different Jewish communities.

"Seeing Jewish communities from India, Yemen and Jerusalem exposes them to a whole different perspective on what Jewish looks like and what Jewish means," she said.

In an effort to capture such communities, just as Ozeri has, students brought their cameras as far as Israel. A photograph by Adam Hackel depicts Israeli soldiers gratefully reading cards created by sixth graders at the synagogue.

"He bought himself a digital camera with his bar mitzvah money and his trip to Israel was his first chance to really use it," Adam's mother, Lisa Hackel, said. "He got very into it, and I thought 'that's a wonderful place to begin your photography interest.'"

The Jewish Lens Project exhibit will be on display throughout June at the Jewish Art Museum (JAM) at Temple Israel Center in White Plains. For more information about the Jewish Lens Project or the exhibit, please call (914) 948-2800.