Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on January 30, 2015

ST. LOUIS (AP) Last year, as Congregation Temple Israel was renovating its sanctuary, one of the bigger challenges was what to do with the old pews the largest ones 28 feet long.

At the same time, Karen Kalish, a St. Louis philanthropist who focuses on improving public education, stumbled upon an article online stating that students who live in homes with bookcases do better academically. She previously founded a teacher home visit program now in 27 schools, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/1BrnYpW ) reports.

"We know from teacher home visits that many of our families don't have bookcases, and some don't have tables for kids to do their homework on," Kalish said.

Over the coming weeks, Kalish's desire to create at-home study spaces for students would converge with the synagogue's need to unload a set of pews.

It started when Kalish first took her idea to Kelvin Adams, superintendent of St. Louis Public Schools.

"Do you have any wood shop classes?" Kalish asked. Adams told her there was one at Roosevelt High School. He loved the idea of students building desks and bookshelves but he told Kalish she would have to find the wood.

Kalish sent out about 100 emails and called lumber yards seeking donations. Her efforts got noticed by the St. Louis Jewish Light newspaper, which ran an item. Rabbi Amy Feder at Temple Israel called Kalish.

"We have pews that we would love to donate," Feder said.

On May 2, 79 pews were delivered to the school.

The students in teacher Bart Adastra's construction trades class met the moving truck outside the south St. Louis school, and hauled the pews inside, to an unused classroom. With the summer break quickly approaching, turning the pews into desks and bookshelves would be saved as a project for the new school year.

Read more from the original source:

Synagogue pews find new life in high school project

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