“As a kid, you think, what does this have to do with my life today?” Teachers, Ozeri believes, have to make that connection for their students.
So the New York-based photographer developed a way for teens to use cameras and photographs as learning tools. His six-year-old project, the Jewish Lens, is now used in Jewish schools and in communities throughout the country and in Israel.
In Milwaukee, teens from four schools, five synagogues and BBYO-Wisconsin Region are participating in the semester-long project sponsored by the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the education program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, and funded by the Covenant Foundation.
He will speak at a reception and exhibit of student photography on Tuesday, May 11, 7-9, p.m., at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center.
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If you go
"My Jewish Lens…" Exhibit and Reception
May 11, 7-9 p.m.
Harry & Rose Samson Family JCC
Click for more information.
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Through its curriculum, the Jewish Lens “engages the next generation of Jews worldwide in an exploration of Jewish identity, values and peoplehood,” according to its Web site.
First, students learn to observe photographs and reflect using text, Ozeri said during a telephone interview.
What is the pshat (the intended meaning) and what is the drash (the interpretive meaning)? “What are the literal words saying and what do we read between the lines,” Ozeri posed. What is the objective and what is the subjective?
“Instead of dictating what Jewish values are,” let them discover those values through images. “They find it and they reflect on it” and look for it in Jewish sources.
“It’s very empowering for students,” Ozeri said. Students feel, “That means that what I have to say is important. How I see the world is important.”
Students then use that knowledge, plus practical training, to shoot their own photos.
Born in Israel to Yemenite immigrants, Ozeri is best known for his dramatic photos of Jews from around the world, a subject that springs from his personal experience, he said.
“The founding fathers and mothers of Israel were mostly European. The influx of Jews from Arab lands with no formal education were relegated to menial jobs. Ashkenazi Jews had one up on them.”
The inequity continued at school, he said, where “the curriculum includes more European history and not so much my own background…. Growing up like that, you try to find your place in that society.”
“Many times, I think that the reason I go and highlight small communities around the world is …. kind of a dahaf, an impulse, to give weight, to give legitimacy to these communities that are part of Jewish peoplehood.
But, he added, “of course it’s important not only to show people on the margins. Even in a bigger community, there’s a big mosaic.”
That mosaic is the subject of local students’ photographic aspirations. And Ozeri understands the challenge of taking remarkable shots of everyday local scenes.
“Taking photographs in India or in Africa, because it’s so exotic, is almost easy. But taking a photo of something familiar, something we don’t even think about, the familiarity of it makes it almost boring,” he said.
“To look at something that we have seen many times and to find the angle or [ask,] ‘How do I see it? What do I want to say about it?’ [is difficult], especially in America, where we think our lives are so mundane.”
Though the program’s primary goal is to educate about Jewish values and identity, it also helps students develop technical aptitude.
“We want them to hone their skills so that they will be better at taking photographs, so that their photographs will be more meaningful and will convey what they want to convey,” he said.
Ozeri’s involvement with Milwaukee teens began last summer, when he worked with the five participants in CJL’s Israel Alive Project. That Israel trip was the impetus for a new program that he’s developing to help American students learn about Israel.
It is one in a series of similar initiatives based on the Jewish Lens platform of using photos to teach and explore ideas, including a public school program in New York called The Diversity Lens and Hebrew-language programs in Israel. The Bedouin Lens operated in some Bedouin schools this year too.
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