Working for her community

Naomi Perl created a music school for ultra-Orthodox girls and launched a program that gives haredi men and women the tools to improve their leadership skills.

By PEGGY CIDOR
Naomi Perl (photo credit: Courtesy)
Naomi Perl
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Naomi Perl, the mother of 10 children, is not the average haredi woman one meets in the streets of Jerusalem. Besides the fact that she has a master’s degree in special education and another degree in music education, she is also the founder and director of an innovative project at the Mandel Leadership Institute, in itself a nest for many innovative projects.
Born to a Holocaust survivor mother from a Hassidic family and a haredi father from Switzerland who met after the war, Perl says that she was raised in a family that valued culture and that her parents bought her a piano when she was very young. At 13, upon finishing elementary school at Beit Ya’acov, she became aware of two things: “First, that I was in love with the haredi way of life; and second, that I wanted to expand my musical education,” she says.
Perl continued her high school studies at Beit Ya’acov, continuing her musical education as well. Although she was later accepted at the Rubin Academy, she decided to go to the Lewinsky Seminar to study special education, which she attended while already married and expecting her first child.
“It was clear to me that the most important things for me were in the haredi community – all those things so crucial to the resilience of the Jewish People and its fate,” she explains.
For years, she maintained a double track – studying and working in special education and music, until she met Arieh Hassid, a haredi man who created a music school for haredi girls in Har Nof. In 1988, the Ron-Shulamit conservatory became Perl’s second home. There, she says, she experienced some of her most cherished moments, teaching 14 haredi girls (soon to become much more) with an insatiable thirst for music and esthetics.
Later on, faithful to her principle of striving for excellence, she established a connection with Lewinski College and made it possible for the girls to obtain an academic degree in music studies.
“At the graduation ceremonies, only the fathers and brothers of the girls were allowed to listen to them perform. Otherwise, the girls do not perform in front of mixed audiences, not even for instrumental performances, according to the more strict Jerusalem custom,” says Perl.
Perl continued her studies at Lewinski, where she received a master’s degree in special education. It was at her graduation ceremony that she heard about the Mandel flagship fellowship program, the Mandel School for Educational Leadership in Jerusalem. In 2007 she was accepted into the school’s regular program.
“During all that time,” she recalls, “I acted strictly by the rules, never complaining about having to deal with a family, my work and my studies all together, for fear that I might be criticized for my [haredi] way of life.”
She first realized what had to be done and where she could make a difference upon a Mandel School visit to Netivot in the South.
“My husband studied there, one of my sons studied there, and although about 25 percent of Netivot’s residents were haredim, our guide said nothing about them, their needs, their lives – nothing. I was very upset. It was clearly the result of an outsider’s look, which lacked any deep understanding of what the haredi community is and needs,” she recounts.
A few days later, still upset about her visit to Netivot, Perl went to Dr. Eli Gottlieb, the director of MLI and the Mandel School for Educational Leadership, and told him about her negative feelings.
“His response was immediate,” she says. “‘Please give us a study day on the haredi community from your point of view, from your own experience,’ he said to me. I had a very short time to get prepared. The first thing that was clear to me was that I didn’t want to suggest anything that could disrupt the hierarchy of the inner system of the haredi community, where the spiritual leadership is always on top, followed by what I call the shlihei tzibur in various fields – politics, entrepreneurs, directors – and after them, the general haredi population,” she says.
Acknowledging the tremendous changes occurring within the haredi community and Israeli society in general, Perl prepared a Mandel Institute program that attracts haredim from around the country designed to give those shlihei tzibur the tools necessary to improve their activities.
“I was trembling with emotion and fear that I might have taken on too much, but I managed to find 16 haredi men – from all the various communities – to start the pilot program. The result was an outstanding success, and from then on the programs have run, two years each, with a great success. It includes academic studies as well,” she says.
Recently a women’s program has been added. In keeping with her own beliefs and those of her community, Perl calls it the Neshot Hayil program, avoiding any confusion with terminology that doesn’t stray from its Jewish roots.
“So no ism – whatever they stand for – but a Jewish approach that describes the best of what it is: giving members of our community the tools to perform their duty to the utmost and to reach the point where they are commended by their fellow community members,” says Perl.