Meet the Exceptional Minds Behind Kol Tzofayich
Staff Spotlights
Moriyah Ashkenazi
Teacher
Moriyah teaches ceramics, sculpting and pottery to middle and high school students.
She studied in Betzalel for her first degree and specialized in sculpting and pottery. Then she became an artist in different fields, including painting. Her work is represented in different exhibitions.
She received a masters at University of Haifa in Asian studies, Indian culture, art and language.
Moriyah is also a poet. She has a book that just came out and publishes short prose.
She likes combining Judaism, Zohar and art.
“I was looking to teach and found Kol Tzofayich,” she said. “It sounded like an amazing opportunity for me.”
She now teaches grades 7-12, introducing them to the ceramic world. The older ones learn pottery and sculpting, including more conceptual ideas and connecting to emotions and expression.
This type of hands-on creativity is also a chance to connect with her students.
“It’s a great opportunity to meet the students in a special zone, where things come up during creating, and other subjects come up that would never have come up otherwise. It’s an opportunity for a very special bond to be made. During this time I feel that it’s a process built of trust, building their own way of expressing themselves and believing in themselves.”
Moriyah Ashkenazi
Teacher
Natanel Burstein teaches Torah, Mishna, Halacha, and Navi, as well as archaeology, geography and history.
Natanel’s father was a school principal, and he grew up on a Kfar similar to where Kol Tzofayich is located.
“For me to be in a school like this is fulfilling a dream of bringing my own kids to that kind of environment,” he said.
Of teaching, he said he tries to share bigger-picture values and to have an impact on his students, beyond the subjects they are learning. His background is in the field of archaeology.
“It’s about bringing your personal values and teaching them to the next generation, to be a role model for the students, to show them your own unique way of being, of living, of cultivating Judaism,” he said. “To model for them someone who did not just do what was told to him as a kid but pursued his own passions. I show them that there is a way to do that.”
Natanel has been in the field for 15 years, and an educator for 12. He received degrees in archaeology from Bar-Ilan University, a teaching certificate, as well as professional development in his specific fields of education. He started a course in archeology. The small group of students uses a special archaeological site recently discovered inside the Kfar. They are working with the government antiquity authority to survey the area, then start preparing for excavation.
Seventh and eighth graders get to help clean the area and uncover the archaeological remains on the surface.
“We started a unique and wonderful project in collaboration with the Antiquities Authority,” he said. “We found out that there is an ancient archaeological site in the kfar, and thanks to the new Gefen program of the Ministry of Education, archaeologists from the Haifa district came to us and, with the cooperation of everyone together, we started the project.”
Rabbi Didi Reicher
Teacher
Rav Didi teaches mostly Lemudai Kodesh, including Gemarah, Torah and Mishnah, as well as Makshevet Yisrael and Tanakh for bagrut.
After much thought and research, he chose to be a teacher and found a warm, welcoming home at Kol Tzofayich.
“I realized that the connection that a person has to the Torah depends on the teacher,” he said. “If a person has a good teacher, he has a good connection to the Torah.”
He admits that people often choose not to be a teacher for various reasons, but that it’s an essential profession.
“In our world people often think more of high-tech or things that make more money. And of course when we talk about arachim (values) and theologia, it’s very important to our chinuch, to pass it over to the next generation — Torah, mesorah and yirat shamayim,” Rabbi Reicher said.
Since most of his family are teachers, at first he hesitated taking the same path. He went to his rebbe, Rabbi Adin Steinsalz, and asked for guidance. “So he said to me, ‘You know, you don’t always have to do the opposite. Sometimes you can do what everybody else does.’ He was trying to tell me that maybe it’s a good thing for me to be a teacher.”
What he loves most about teaching is getting to work with and talk with teenagers, and to be a role model.
“I believe that the most important things that come through chinuch are not what you say in the class. It’s all about how you behave and what kind of person you are.“
School Founders:
Yehuda and Adina Rothner
Kol Tzofayich founders Yehuda and Adina Rothner worked together as the directors of Camp Stone for over 20 years, and it was there that their unique educational philosophy crystallized. During their tenure at Camp Stone, a summer campus located in Pennsylvania, they pioneered a completely immersive, interdisciplinary, and experiential platform designed to provide a transformative Jewish educational experience.
During their tenure, the camp grew from around 100 campers and 30 staff members in 1997 to nearly 1,000 campers and 500 staff members in 2016.
After two decades at Camp Stone, the Rothners felt it was time to hand it off to the next generation of leadership and move their efforts to Israel in order to establish an educational institution that would build on many of the same principles, while reaching an even more diverse group of students and helping heal some of the rifts in Israeli society.
(קול צופיך נשאו קול יחדו ירננו כי עין בעין יראו בשוב ה` ציון” (ישעיהו נב:ח”
The words Kol Tzofayich come from a pasuk (passage) in Yeshayahu. In this prophecy Yeshayahu describes the future redemption of Tzion or Yerushalayim and consequently the redemption of the Jewish people. This process will be so animating that even the ruins of Yerushalayim, both metaphorically and in reality, will rejoice and begin the process of rebuilding. As part of the redemptive process, the Nations of the World will also come to recognize the majesty as well as the salvation of the Lord. In this sense, the Tzofeh is the harbinger of things to come. The tzofeh foreshadows and foretells what will happen. The Kol Tzofayich program, the Voice of the Harbinger, seeks, through our students, to foretell the coming of something better, a change which will affect the very fabric of our Nation.
We believe that through an educational process which is ultimately experiential and interdisciplinary, we will be able to introduce a fundamental change in the way that knowledge is learned and transmitted. Through the ideals of Torah Va’Avodah, basically translated as Torah study and Labor, which not only metaphorically express the melding of the worlds of the intellect and the creative process, but actualize an emphasis on the value of responsibility and labor as part of the learning process, we can fundamentally change society and consequently the world.
Our Commitment to Excellence
Our team at YKT is not just a group of educators; they are mentors, guides, and inspirations. Each staff member plays a crucial role in creating a dynamic and innovative learning environment. Together, we strive to nurture minds, inspire creativity, and instill a love for learning in every student.
Join us in acknowledging the dedication and passion of our exceptional staff. The journey of education at YKT is not just about curriculum; it's about the people who make the learning experience truly extraordinary.