STUDENT PROJECTS FROM PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF THE FIRST-YEAR WRITING/SEMINAR (taught by Dr. Arenstein)
Ulpan Etzion (Jerusalem, Israel): Rebecca S. (name has been changed)
(Unlike the two below, this example is not from an official course. While I was at Ulpan Etzion, an olah named Rebecca asked me if I could help her with an important writing project. We met several times, in what was essentially a series of the one-on-one conferences that I hold with all of my students and that are a hallmark of Inquiry: Israel.)
Rebecca's father is Jewish, and she was writing a letter to the beit din for her Orthodox conversion. The first draft she showed me was rather anodyne and generic. She wasn't happy with it, but she didn't know how to proceed. Through our conversations, I learned of a recent experience she had had at the Kotel that introduced her to the matter of women saying kaddish, and with which she had been preoccupied for several weeks. Although she had wanted to include the experience in her original draft, she was apprehensive about the fraught nature of the issue and had decided not to do so. This was the turning point: we had identified the reason for the draft's generic and unsatisfying tone -- and the key to revising the letter. As is often the case, the draft had proven most valuable in its role as a catalyst for further exploration and for identifying the true heart of the piece of writing.
As a result of our meetings, the final draft of Rebecca's letter was far more successful. Not only did it provide the required explanation of her motivations for converting and her connections to Judaism, it did so through an account of her experience at the Kotel, an interwoven recognition and summary of the halakhic debate on the issue, and her own reflections on the entire matter. This grounded her letter in specific, tangible details and brought it to life, resulting in the kind of real, heartfelt account that is recommended for this letter. It also provided Rebecca with an opportunity to do some learning on an issue of sincere interest to her and thereby also to demonstrate to the beit din that she was a serious, thoughtful applicant.
St. John's University (New York, NY): Alexis G.
Alexis was an immigrant from France, a major in Management, and a member of both the university's fencing team and a private fencing club in Manhattan. In a manner strongly reminiscent of his namesake and compatriot Alexis de Tocqueville, he had a serious interest in understanding American society.
During our conversations, I suggested that Alexis look into Tocqueville (Democracy in America, 1835) and Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone, 2000). After reading Tocqueville on the role of voluntary associations in nineteenth-century American democracy and Putnam on the twentieth-century decline in such civic involvement, and exploring these issues in his writing throughout the semester, Alexis took an applied approach to his final essay. His starting point was the fact that the private fencing club of which he was a member was being priced out of viability by rising rents. Alexis developed a proposal for a public-private partnership whose mission would be to purchase, renovate, and manage a building in order to provide subsidized space for local organizations such as the fencing club. Such a partnership would participate in the effort to reinvigorate American civil society for the twenty-first century.
Indiana University (Bloomington, IN): Stephen B. (name has been changed)
(Although Stephen may be a different kind of student than those we envision enrolling in Inquiry: Israel, his project demonstrates how this course in particular and the program in general can be powerful vehicles for personal growth.)
Stephen was a bright student, but he had no direction; he had coasted through high school and was struggling to find his footing in college. In my course, he was having difficulty moving beyond generic topics to do original, real, inquiry-driven work, and he made only minimal efforts during the first few weeks of the semester. In class, he alternated between appearing alienated and playing the role of "class clown." Gradually, however, the course led him to a breakthrough. One day, around a month into the semester, he came into class in a state of great excitement and animation and told me that he had figured out his Inquiry Question: "Why have I never tried?"
This was a tremendous breakthrough for this student. Once he had cleared this fundamental hurdle, Stephen got serious, taking a more intentional, deliberate approach to the course and to his education and life in general. Stephen had a truly transformative experience in the course, and this remains one of the most gratifying and inspiring experiences of my career.