Excited and nervous. That’s how Ethan Klein, a sixth-grader from Gerrard Berman Day School, Solomon Schechter of North Jersey, in Oakland, felt the day he and other students recorded a song in tribute to Israel’s 60th anniversary, which will be part of a double CD set.

"It was the first time I was in such a big studio," Ethan added.

Ethan is the soloist in "Shabechi Yerushalayim," one of the 32 songs on "Schechter Sings for Israel @60!" in which children from 32 Schechter schools in 14 states and Canada participated.

The set, to be released today, is a project of the Solomon Schechter Day School Association, a member of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

Learning and teaching the history of the Holocaust

Eleven high students from Jersey City, New Milford, and Overland Park, Kan., are getting to see up close what they have learned about the Holocaust.

The trip, from April 19 to 29, was to include Berlin, Prague, and parts of Poland.

In Poland, the students were planning to visit the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau.

The trip is being led by June Chang, language and arts supervisor at the Jersey City school district, and Colleen Tambuscio, a teacher at New Milford High School.

Jewish leaders are pondering the significance of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States last week.

Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, who attended a meeting with the pope at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., last Thursday, called it "more show that substance, but for the Vatican even show is substance."

The fact that the pope invited the approximately 50 Jewish representatives to meet with him in a private room was an important gesture, said Foxman, because he "greeted us on the occasion of a Jewish festival, which basically was a recognition of religious Jewish life, Jewish faith, and Jewish rituals, and had that significance."

An Arab mayor sips coffee. Two teenagers, one Jewish, one Arab, touch hands. An elderly woman sits at a sewing machine. A family of six poses in front of crates.

Those are some of the 80 pictures in an exhibit, "The Land Between Us," that opened on Saturday at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck.

Consisting of four sets of photographs, the exhibit features the works of two Israeli photographers, Rachel Banai and Rauf Abu Fani.

One set by Banai is of members of Kibbutz Sarid, where she was born 60 years ago. The kibbutz, in the lower Galilee, seven miles west of Afula, was founded in 1926 by immigrants from Europe, among them Banai’s grandmother, Franci Fishel, who hailed from the former Czechoslovakia.

Prices rise but variety grows

This we already know: The centuries-old holiday of Passover celebrates the freedom of an oppressed people. This we are beginning to get used to: In the Land of the Free, Passover has become the holiday of the free — yolk-free egg matzoh, glutten-free oat matzoh, sugar-free cookies, lactose- and coloring-free sorbet, and free Haggadot.

And not to mention the free items that several supermarkets offer if you spend a certain amount of money there. According to a study done in 2006 by Mintel, a research firm, the kosher food market enjoys more than $100 billion in sales a year.

Indeed, supermarket chains and manufacturers have responded to an increasing demand for kosher and kosher-for-Passover items, which has made the observance of the holiday much easier for thousands of American Jews.

The 17-year-old Short Hills resident and senior at Millburn High School was part of a group of 500 American students on a six-week trip organized by the National Federation of Temple Youth when war between Israel and Hezbollah broke out on July 12, 2006.

That day, at about 9 a.m, Hezbollah attacked a number of targets on the Israeli border. Two soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, were abducted, three were killed, and two were wounded. Their abduction was preceded by that of another soldier, Gilad Shalit, on June 25, on the border with Gaza.

An extra treat awaits the recipients: The packages will also contain crafts from the children of the Jewish Community Center of Bayonne Nursery School, the United Synagogue of Hoboken Learning Center, and the United Synagogue of Hoboken preschool.

The packages, tote bags that volunteers are scheduled to fill today, will contain chicken, grape juice, gefilte fish, horseradish, matzoh, macaroons, and a Haggadah.

Married professionals in their 20s or 30s wanted to help revitalize an established Jewish community. Convenient commute to New York City and easy access to routes 4, 17, 80, 208, and the Garden State Parkway. Plenty of stores nearby, a friendly synagogue headed by a well-known rabbi, a newly renovated mikvah, several kosher restaurants, a bakery, and seven Orthodox synagogues.

That’s how Cong. Shomrei Torah, Fair Lawn’s largest Orthodox synagogue, wants to market the community to young families.

The initiative comes from the synagogue’s Torah Enrichment Center, in partnership with Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future (CJF), which aims to strengthen Jewish communities throughout the country.

A little-known Jewish language

Haketia, a language spoken by Jews in Spanish enclaves of northern Morocco, is getting new billing in a new book, "Tu boca en los cielos: El haketia de Menashe y Alfonso," by Gladys Benaim Bunan (Renaissance House, Beverly Hills, CA, 96 pgs, $29,95).

The title of the book, loosely translated, means "Your Mouth in the Heavens: The Haketia of Menashe and Alfonso."

"Tu boca en los cielos" is an expression popular among Haketia-speaking Jews meaning "May your wishes come true."

TEANECK – A township resident born in Russia of Polish parents and raised in Cuba wants Spanish-speaking Jews to join the club he just founded. Isaac Student, a Teaneck resident for 30 years, came up with the idea of the Club Hispano Hebraico after a recent conversation he had with another member of the Jewish Center of Teaneck, Susan Rabkin, about its Spanish speakers.

"I found it extremely interesting in talking to them," he remembers telling Rabkin.

Rabkin suggested that he start a group similar to the JCT’s Yiddish club and Student started looking for potential members.

"I thought that this would be a wonderful idea and talked about it to some of these Spanish speakers and found a very enthusiastic support for this idea," Student said.

The club was to have its first meeting on Wednesday.