Music, religion and politics are all topics of conversation that
come up among students in a program that allows them to talk face
to face while over 7,000 miles apart.
The wonders of videoconferencing have allowed students at UCLA
and the University of Tel Aviv in Israel to get to know one
another’s faces, voices and mannerisms, as well as learn
about each other’s culture without actually having been in
the same physical place.
Panim el Panim, a Hebrew phrase meaning “face to
face,” is a program that features monthly videoconferences
between UCLA students and students at the University of Tel Aviv in
an effort to spark an interest in UCLA students about religion,
politics and life in Israel.
The videoconferences allow people “who have been
completely uninvolved in the Jewish community and who were
completely uninformed about Israel” to engage with fellow
students in another country and to gain “a huge amount of
knowledge about people on the other side of the world,” said
Shiran Zohar, a third-year political science student who was
co-chair of the program in 2002.
“It’s an amazing forum to ask what’s going
on,” said Daniela Karlin, a second-year Jewish studies
student, who is heading up the program this year.
UCLA students “ask questions … about culture, what the
Israeli students like to study and what it’s like to live in
Israel in this age,” Karlin said. “Likewise, the
Israelis ask what it’s like here in America. It’s a
forum for discussion and bonding and communications.”
The program was started about five years ago by a woman named
Shanit Hasad in an effort to dispel what she saw as student apathy
toward Judaism and Israel, said Arash Nafisi, a fourth-year
psychobiology student who was the head of the program last
year.
The program is sponsored by Bruins for Israel and began in 1999
with teleconferences between students at UCLA and the University of
Ariel, Zohar said. She was co-chair of the program when it switched
to videoconferencing with the University of Tel Aviv in 2002.
The videoconferencing sessions, which cost about $500 an hour,
are paid for by the Jewish Federation, Nafisi said.
The program takes place over a five-month period.
“It started because there was a desire for it,”
Karlin said. “There were many students who really wanted to
know what was going on but couldn’t pick up all their stuff
and go to Israel.
“Many people think going to Israel is too dangerous or
expensive, so the videoconferences are a way to meet and have a
continual relationship.”
“Our target people are students who want to know a lot
more information, who want to get involved with Judaism and Israel
but haven’t before and don’t have a substantial amount
of knowledge about it, or people who have the desire to know but
lack the drive,” Nafisi said.
Nafisi, who headed the program last year, cited himself as a
good example of a target student for the program.
“My second year, I didn’t know a lot about Judaism
or religion. … I was doing it just because I wanted to see what
it was like,” Nafisi said.
Then he sat in on a one-hour videoconference, an experience
Nafisi called “life-altering.”
Getting to talk to other people, to see their faces and interact
with them “just made it real to me,” Nafisi said.
Since then Nafisi has become very active in the Jewish community
within and outside of UCLA.
“It really started with Panim,” he said.
“We’re looking to make people who are passionate for
Israel out of people who aren’t so interested right
now.”
When they don’t have videoconferences, the students have
conferences where they bring in experts on a broad range of topics
to give themselves a foundation for when they talk to the students
from Tel Aviv, Zohar said.
“People do form really strong bonds,” Zohar said,
noting instances of students who have used their own funds to go to
Israel and meet the people they spent a year videoconferencing
with.
Panim el Panim is still accepting applications for this school
year, Karlin said. “Anyone can apply that’s interested.
The program is most geared toward people who don’t get
constant connection with the Israelis.”
“It’s very simple. … We meet with people one on
one because we know paper doesn’t speak for people,”
Karlin said.