Catholic school's Jewish life

Rabbi shares faith, culture with largely black student body

By Matthew Hay Brown
sun reporter
Baltimore Sun
February 25, 2006

Rabbi Gila Ruskin lights the Sabbath candles during the religion class she teaches at St. Frances Academy.  The course aims to ground students in Hebrew Scripture. (photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor)		Rabbi Gila Ruskin sings Sabbath songs during the religion class she teaches at St. Frances Academy.  The Catholic high school is anomalous in employing a rabbi as a full-time teacher.  (photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor)

The Hebrew words echoed through the halls of the Catholic school. Inside a classroom decorated with a crucifix, a rabbi led the African-American students in song.

Rabbi Gila Ruskin had lit the Sabbath candles, recited a blessing over her young charges and passed around a basket of animal crackers. Now, strumming the guitar, she sang: "Shabbat Shalom" - Sabbath Peace.

Justine Jones double-clapped on the beat. Styinyard Blue stomped his feet. For juniors at St. Frances Academy, virtually all of them Baptist, Catholic or some other stripe of Christian, the weekly celebration of the Jewish Sabbath is a highlight of religious studies class.

The predominantly black school in the Johnston Square neighborhood of East Baltimore is one of the few Catholic high schools anywhere to require a full year in Jewish studies - and it may be the only one to employ an ordained rabbi as a full-time teacher. Ruskin, who spent 15 years as a rabbi at the Conservative synagogue Chevrei Tzedek in Baltimore, has been teaching junior-year religion at St. Frances since September.

The course is intended to give students a grounding in Hebrew Scripture - incorporated into the Christian Bible as the Old Testament - and, for the many who had never before met a Jew, exposure to a different minority culture that has also endured dislocation and enslavement.

'Different traditions' "Sometimes, being in a closed environment, they have closed minds," said Sister John Francis Schilling, president of St. Frances Academy. "We want to expose them to different traditions to increase their awareness."

For her part, Ruskin wants to help the students deepen their understanding of Scriptures that many know from church.

"I want them to learn how Jews read the Bible," said the Reform Movement rabbi, who has taught at the Krieger Schecter Day School of Chizuk Amuno Congregation. "It's a conversation with the text. It's not obedience; it's challenging the text. The name Israel means 'One who struggles with God.' "

Local black and Jewish leaders have organized several efforts in recent decades to improve sometimes-troubled relations between the two communities. The Black/Jewish Forum of Baltimore, or BLEWS, conducts programs on issues of mutual interest. The Elijah Cummings Youth Program in Israel takes a dozen non-Jewish students from the 7th Congressional District to Israel for four weeks each summer. Several local synagogues and black churches hold joint worship services around Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

But a Jewish studies program at a black Catholic high school remains "quite unusual," according to the Rev. Dr. Christopher Leighton, executive director of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore.

"What's quite stunning and impressive about St. Frances is that it recognizes that we can no longer afford to graduate students who don't know how to navigate uncharted waters," said Leighton, a Presbyterian minister. "They're committed to education that emboldens their students to take risks and to ask hard questions and to consider that not everyone sees things just the way they do. And more importantly, that they actually have something valuable to learn about their own tradition by stepping outside of their own circle of comfort."

Founded in 1828 as the School for Colored Girls, St. Frances Academy has long enjoyed a reputation for unusual success with its inner-city students. Two-thirds of the 280 students now enrolled in grades nine through 12 meet federal poverty guidelines for free or reduced lunch. Many have lost parents to prison, addiction, violence or AIDS. Many are being raised by grandparents or other adults.

Still, Schilling says, more than 90 percent will go to college after graduation. She credits a strong counseling program, which includes a full-time social worker, two part-time therapists and several graduate interns; an atmosphere of discipline, with school uniforms, a code of conduct and nightly homework assignments; and the dedication of faculty and staff.

Stereotyping The school, which is run by the Oblate Sisters of Providence, introduced the Hoffberger Chair of Jewish Studies in 1997. Lou Mercorella, then an English teacher at the school, had been tutoring inner-city students through the Thomas More Project and noticed some tended to stereotype Jews.

"They would sometimes come out with things like 'Jews own all the property,' " said Mercorella, who grew up in a neighborhood of Catholics and Jews in Brooklyn, New York.

"We found that they really didn't know any Jews," he said. "As with most needy children, they had little contact with cultures other than their own."

An idea was born.

"Of course, what is basic to Judaism is intrinsic to Christianity also," said Mercorella, co-director of the Thomas More Project. "We figured by having a Jew actually teaching the Hebrew Scriptures, the very fact of the physical presence of this Jewish person on the faculty would be a statement. In a way, the teachers themselves are the texts that the children are reading."

Ruskin, the first rabbi to teach the course, brought years of classroom experience to the position but had to learn to apply them to a Catholic school. Among the adjustments: getting used to the crucifix on her classroom wall.

Uncomfortable with the Christian symbol, she sought and gained permission to take it down. But on reflection, she decided it would be better if she learned to live with it. Now, she says, it's a teaching tool.

"When I described the 613 commandments," said Ruskin, referring to the rules that guide Jewish life, "and the students were saying there's no way anyone could do it, I said, 'Well, he did.'

'He was Jewish' "He's the only other Jew in the classroom. It's a reminder for me and for them that he was Jewish."

Ruskin wears an amulet inscribed with the Shema, the Hebrew prayer that reads, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one." She has decorated the classroom with a biblical timeline, the family tree of Abraham, a poster of ancient Jerusalem and a map of Israel.

She sees her role as introducing her students to both the Jewish religion and the way of life. She has invited a Torah scribe and a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces to talk to students, and has led field trips to Chizuk Amuno and a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

During one recent class, she recounted the story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors, the basis for the musical. Many of her students already knew it from church.

"He pranced around in front of his brothers in this beautiful coat," Ruskin said. "How did that make them feel? Desmond?"

"They were jealous," Desmond Thomas said.

"And he also had these dreams, in which the sun and the moon and the stars all bowed down before him," Ruskin continued. "How do you think his brothers felt? Andre?"

"They didn't like it," Andre Irving said.

Ruskin has committed to a second year at St. Frances. Schilling described her as a positive addition to the faculty.

"It's been great," Schilling said. "She has a lot of energy, enthusiasm, ideas. The fact that she's a rabbi adds a whole new level. And that she's a female is good for the kids to see.

"I've learned a lot, just talking to her."

So has Kierra Smith.

"You get another way to look at the world," said the junior, a Baptist. "Growing up, you only get one religion. The rumors, I got them cleared up. ... They have holidays I don't even know about."

Chanaye Jackson recalled a class that Ruskin taught with a Catholic priest.

"At one time, Catholics and Jews wouldn't even look at each other," she said. "It's an example for us to come together. We all still believe in the same God."

matthew.brown@baltsun.com