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Jerusalem Post
Magic of an idea
08/23/2012 11:12By ANAV SILVERMAN
From Los Angeles to Ramle: How one girl's dream brought a city together.
Photo by: Courtesy: Dalia Nava
It’s an inspiring story of dreams coming true in an unlikely reality.
The
central figure is a 16- year-old Jewish girl from Los Angeles named Ellie Dubin.
The setting is Ramle, and the project is a summer musical featuring Ramle’s
Jewish,
Christian and Muslim teenagers.
“When I first got Ellie Dubin’s
e-mail and read the subject line,
I thought it was spam,” said Galit
Toledano-Harris, the executive director
of Israel’s Youth Renewal Fund (YRF), a
non-profit organization that provides
supplemental education to underprivileged
children in Israel.
“I almost didn’t read her e-mail. A student from LA
who wants to
bring a musical theater production called ‘Kesem Shel Shir’ to
Israel? It seemed a little bit like a Hollywood tale,” said
Toledano-Harris.
Fortunately for Dubin, after the YRF director read her
e-mail more carefully,
she realized that the Beverly Hills High School student
had an incredible idea.
“Ellie had a dream that she wanted to realize in Israel
and just needed to find
a way to make it come true,” said
Toledano-Harris.
Dubin founded Kesem Shel Shir, The Magic of Music, last
year as part of the
Nazarian youth leadership program via the Sinai Temple of
Los Angeles,
to which her family belongs. It was through that program that Dubin
developed a musical theater project for underprivileged children
whose schools
had little or no arts enrichment. A musical and theatrical performer
herself who
has been part of several school musicals, Dubin directed her
first theatrical
production, Cinderella, for an LA elementary school last year.
Following
this experience, Dubin decided to bring the program to Israel.
“My family
and I are big supporters of Israel, so it only made sense to bring
this project
to Israeli children,” Dubin told The Jerusalem Post.
With the help of her
family and friends in LA, Dubin raised funds for the project
and was able to
connect to the YRF in Israel thanks to YRF’s Executive in New York,
Karen
Berman. The YRF in Israel then decided that Dubin’s program would be best
suited
for pupils studying at the YRF’s Ethan H. Freed Learning Center in
Ramle.
“The idea was to create a two-week English-immersion program for
underprivileged kids in Ramle, through musical theater,” said Dubin.
“The
challenge was the geographical distance and limited amount of time
I had to put
the production together once I got to Israel in the summer.”
After
securing the Disney license to have the Ramle pupils perform
High School
Musical, Dubin decided that to save time, general auditions
for the High School
Musical cast would be held before she got to Israel
and cast the participants
herself. The YRF’s Ethan Freed Learning Center,
which has over 2,000 pupils
enrolled during the school year for interactive-English
lessons, took charge of
this aspect in the project and invited Ramle youth to try out for the production
via Facebook and local school administrators. Twenty-one pupils from the
seventh, eighth and ninth grades were selected from diverse cultural
backgrounds, characteristic of the mixed Jewish-Arab city.
“The pupils
were chosen based on musical and theatrical talent, not necessarily their
English skills,” said Toledano-Harris.
Elham Makhoul, the principal of
the Greek Orthodox elementary school in Ramle, which has both Christian and
Muslim pupils, several of whom were chosen to be part of the High School Musical
cast, was especially enthusiastic about Dubin’s two-week English-immersion
program.
“The YRF enriches Ramle very much and motivates the kids to
learn English thanks to great teachers at the Ethan Freed Learning Center. It
also creates important cooperation opportunities between Jews and Arabs,” said
the principal.
“This musical-theater program was such a great summer
activity for local children to be part of,” Makhoul added.
Stella Abu
Elazam, whose 15-year-old daughter Colleen auditioned for the production and won
the leading role of Gabby Montez, was born and raised in Ramle.
“Colleen
auditioned with an Adele song. I was standing outside the stage audition but I
knew Colleen was chosen when I heard all the clapping,” said Abu Elazam proudly.
“Colleen’s younger sister, Razan, was also picked to act in the production. I’m
so proud of my girls.”
Rina Levi, also a proud mother, whose 12-year-old
son, Dorel, played Zeke from High School Musical, emphasized the program was a
very special initiative.
Levi, of Iraqi descent, was born, raised and
married in Ramle. “Ramle is a very special city and home to many different types
of people,” she said. Levi explained that the theater program brought
together all parts of the socio-economic sectors of the city. “You have children
of doctors, janitors, and lawyers, who are part of this play. You can see here
that talent doesn’t depend on your social class,” she told the Post.
On
the August 8 opening night of the production, as proud parents and family
members gathered together from all walks of life and backgrounds – Orthodox Jewish, Christian and
Muslim Arabs, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews, Ethiopian immigrants – they were all
amazed at the amount of English their children had learned this summer as they
performed High School Musical on stage.
Michal Elisheva Hasson, director
of the Ethan Freed Learning Center attributed the amount of English learned to
Dubin. “Ellie’s a magician, what she did with these kids was magic,” Hasson told
the audience. “The fact that this musical is performed entirely in English was
no simple feat.”
Dubin acknowledged that there were many challenges in
making the project work.
“Here I am, 16 years old, in charge of
20 kids
who aren’t that much younger than me. And I have less than two weeks to
put this production together,” she said later. “We had a very tight set
schedule and we knew exactly what we would do with the kids every
day.
“Many of the kids had seen the movie High School Musical, so they
were familiar with the story line and could relate to it. They came prepared
with their lines memorized. Our job was to sit with each kid, go over the
correct pronunciations, read through the songs and make sure they understood
what they were saying. But quieting the kids down was a big job in
itself.”
In addition, Ellie, along with her 20- year-old cousin Sophie
Galant, a student at Claremont McKenna College in California, choreographed the
dance steps, modified the music and came up with moves that the children could
do.
“Sometimes we embarrassed ourselves dancing,” said Dubin. “But the
kids were great, they really respected us and even taught me some
Hebrew.”
“The first word they taught me to say was ‘flip-flop’,” she said
laughing. “I am really proud of the kids. Some of the children were so afraid to
speak in the beginning,” she continued. “There was Itai, who always had someone
translate what he wanted to say, and now he talks to us freely in
English.”
But perhaps, the proudest people of all are Ellie’s parents,
Mark and Cindy, who sat alongside the parents of Ramle and watched their
daughter direct the musical production. “It’s so important to us to give our
children Jewish roots and values,” said Mark, a radiologist.
“We can’t
make aliya now, even though I would love to someday, but this is what we can do:
impart a strong love of Israel to our kids and support Israel in creative
ways.”
At the end of the performance, the teenage cast of Ramle thanked
the Dubin family for their support.
“You made our dreams come true and we
thank you for your financial investment in this project,” said one of the
teenage members of the cast.
Following
the successful night's production, which featured several complex dance
scenes and much singing, as well as an auditorium filled with satisfied
parents and teens, Elle's next move is to get some rest.
"Now I can finally get some sleep," she concluded with a smile. "But I
am looking forward to working with YRF again in the future and having
more teenagers experience this special program elsewhere in Israel."
SIXTEEN YEAR-OLD Ellie Dubin, from Los Angeles, the night of the "High School Musical" perfromance", in Ramle, speaking to the audience about the program.
(Couresty: Dalia Nava)