Frankel Students Welcome Catholic Students to Class

Some high schools host programs designed to help students get to know one another. The ’s Diversity Club took that a step further Thursday when it hosted students from Gabriel Richard Catholic High School of Riverview to help all the teens get to know others of a different faith.

“When we leave and go into college, it’s important to know that you can find similarities and relate with others,” said Frankel club president Anna Eisenberg, 18, of Birmingham. “This way, we get a feel of their religious aspect. They come here and do the same. It’s a way for us to connect as religious-based schools and make friends.”

Eisenberg said she helped found the Diversity Club three years ago with Lisa Gilan, FJA director of student life, and that Gabriel Richard students had been coming to FJA for “a couple of years prior” to founding the club.

Gilan said participation within the exchange program this year is as high as ever.

“This is the third time that we’ve gotten together this year — we went to the (in Farmington Hills) last fall, and we visited their campus last fall as well,” said Gilan. “As kids graduate and we bring in different classes, we’re seeing an increase in participation in both this (exchange) program and the Diversity Club."

Cheryl Knapp, campus minister at Gabriel Richard, confirmed that interest in her school's Diversity Club is on the rise as well. “Some of the kids here today aren’t members of the club, but they want to be next year, and they asked if they could come,” she said.

Sixteen students from Gabriel Richard came to study Thursday at FJA in eight classes, including Israel advocacy, Bible, Talmud, Hebrew language and ethics. The classes were spread out between two periods, and students from both clubs joined each other for lunch.

Eisenberg, a senior who has been accepted to Emery University (GA) and the University of California Los Angeles, said having Gabriel Richard students visit her class was an experience as interesting as her visiting their campus last fall.

“I went to a theology class at Gabriel Richard, and they asked me questions, and I told them my feelings, and it was interesting to have that kind of perspective," she said.

"It was definitely interesting to hear them discuss Israel," Eisenberg said. "A class like Hebrew language isn’t necessarily as engaging, but a class like Israel advocacy is, in my opinion, not just relevant to Jewish kids.”

At lunch, students publicly exchanged different questions they had written pertaining to faith and culture of Judaism and Catholicism. Gilan said the question-and-answer session was especially important to the program, in order to bring more attention to the differences and similarities between the two groups.

“They can easily connect on a teenage level in class in terms of interests, but we want them to connect deeper — religious traditions or family life or maybe where our things differ, and how the two interwine,” she said.

“We don’t want to isolate ourselves within the Jewish community," Gilan said. "We want to learn about other cultures.”