local
Barrack, Perelman to Debut
Husband and Wife
Israeli Educators
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
B enaya and Ayala Yehuda are
coming to the Jack M. Barrack
Hebrew Academy and the
Perelman Jewish Day School, respec-
tively, to teach students about Israel, to
foster in them a stronger connection to
the Jewish homeland and to continue
building that bridge that helps solidify
the Jewish Diaspora.

But while they will proselytize about
the Jewish state, the Israelis may be even
more excited to become Americans for
a couple of years. Th ey are hoping that,
as they teach kids about Israel, those
same students, as well as their neighbors
and co-workers, will teach them about
the Jews’ adopted home in the religious
melting pot of the United States.

Aft er all, the Yehudas are not just
making a reverse aliyah to the land
of opportunity to take one in the
classrooms of local day schools. Th e
husband and wife are bringing their
fi ve children, all between the ages of
seven months and 12 years, with them
as well.

Benaya Yehuda, 37, who spent 13
years in the education fi eld in Israel, will
be the upper school Jewish life coordi-
nator at Barrack, teaching Hebrew and
Jewish studies. Ayala Yehuda, 36, who
also worked in the education fi eld in
Israel for about a decade, will serve as a
classroom teacher in Perelman’s Ganon
program, a Hebrew immersion setting
for kindergarten-age students, mean-
ing she will speak to them in Hebrew
throughout the day.

Th e Israelis will teach at the
Philadelphia-area schools, both in
Montgomery County, for two years.

Among their school-age children, two
will attend Perelman and the other two
will go to Barrack.

“We came for two years, and there’s a
possibility of a little bit more,” Benaya
Yehuda said. “It depends on how our
children adjust. If all is good, we’ll be
happy maybe to stay.”
An educator coming from Israel to
the United States, or anywhere else in
the Diaspora, to teach about Israel is
called a shaliach in Hebrew, according
to Barrack and Perelman offi cials. Th e
schools are bringing the educators over
through a World Zionist Organization
program that aims to build stronger
connections in the Diaspora. Th e orga-
nization is a non-governmental orga-
nization founded in 1897 at Th eodor
Herzl’s First Zionist Congress in
Switzerland. Both Barrack, which serves stu-
dents in grades 6-12, and Perelman,
which educates pre-K-5 students,
already have extensive Israel study
programs in history, culture and even
the Hebrew language. So, their goal
with a shaliach is not to add a program
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in the Israeli Army with Michael Levin,
the Philadelphia native who made ali-
yah in 2002, joined the army and died
in combat in 2006. As Yehuda recalled,
his relationship with Levin was the fi rst
time he understood the perspective of
an American Jew who loved Israel.

But there was still so much more he
wanted to learn.

“It was a mystery. How is that con-
nection made? Half of the Jews in the
world don’t live in Israel,” he said. “For
me, it’s important to teach my family
about Jews in America.”
Benaya Yehuda was perhaps inter-
ested in this connection because his
parents had made aliyah from the U.S.

And it was on a visit four years ago to
Ayala and Benaya Yehuda
his grandmother in Brooklyn that his
wife, Ayala, became intrigued as well.

In more than 10 years of marriage,
she had never met her husband’s
American family. And, by the end of
that trip, their eight-year-old daughter
started speaking English.

“I was amazed to see that,” Ayala
Yehuda said.

About two years aft er that trip, the
pandemic showed the Yehudas that,
if they wanted to see America, they
couldn’t wait.

“So we started to live and do what we
want. Not only dream,” Ayala Yehuda
said. JE
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
Photos by Jordan Cassway
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of study. It’s to deepen it.

As Rabbi Marshall Lesack, Barrack’s
head of school, explained, his insti-
tution focuses on three core areas in
Israel education: formal education in
the classroom, experiential learning
through eighth- and 11th-grade trips to
Israel and relational education through
exposure to a shaliach. Lesack believes
that American educators simply can’t
replicate the perspective of people who
have lived in Israel.

“You get tied to a place and country
through the relationships you develop
with people from that place,” he said.

“Th at’s why a shaliach is important.”
Rabbi Chaim Galfand, the school
rabbi at Perelman, and Emily Cook, the
principal of Perelman’s Stern Center in
Wynnewood, echoed Lesack’s point
about relational education. Galfand
called a shaliach “an ambassadorial
role.” “It also just adds to the richness,”
Cook said. “And then our students pass
that on to their families, and it just
builds on that love for Israel.”
Benaya Yehuda fi rst became intrigued
about this connection between Israel
and the United States when he served
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